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The Obama Administration sent Secretary of State John Kerry to Israel to insist on a cease fire in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responds not only with a no but with a “hell no” and Kerry backed down, but Bibi didn’t let it end there, telling Kerry and US Ambassador Daniel Shapiro “don’t ever second guess me again.” The Administration pleaded for a halt in the fighting but it only criticized Israel directly once after there was irrefutable evidence that it had shelled a United Nations (UN) school killing 17 and wounding ninety. A subsequent UN school shooting, one of three major incidents, that killed ten more civilians produced a State Department comment that it was “appalled.” But at the same time the White House resupplied the Israeli Army with the munitions used against the schools to include tank shells and mortar rounds.

US weaponry supplied to Israel is by law only supposed to be used for defensive purposes. Tank and mortar fire is conceivably defensive when a dug in position is being attacked, but that is not the case in Gaza. Tanks and mortars are instead being used offensively to bombard Palestinian buildings, to include the UN schools and also hospitals where civilians have taken refuge. The devastation has been enormous and more than 1,800 mostly civilian Palestinians have died. This makes the United States, which likes to think of itself as a moral nation, complicit in the carrying out of a horrific war crime, only rivaled in recent years by the bloody Israeli “Cast Lead” assault on Gaze in 2009 in which more than 1,400 were killed.

Nearly simultaneously with the resupply of Israeli weapons the US Congress has approved legislation to give Israel an additional $225 million to “replenish” its Iron Dome missile defense system. Only eight congressman voted against the largesse. This is on top of $3.1 billion in military assistance that Israel receives annually.

The Senate and House also approved unanimously non-binding resolutions fully supporting Israel in its attack on the Palestinians. The House resolution, likely drafted with the assistance of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), states that Hamas has been using human shields; that terrorist Hamas has been firing thousands of rockets into Israel; that Israel is fighting humanely; that the United Nations (UN) is unfairly citing Israel; that Iran, Hezbollah and Syria are all behind Hamas; and that Israelis are living in fear. The resolution then goes on to condemn both Hamas and the UN while holding Israel blameless as it is defending itself.

Note how all the blocks are ticked from the Israeli perspective: terrorist Hamas is completely bad and responsible for the killing in spite of the statistical disparity in those being killed; it is committing war crimes and is somehow threatening Israel’s existence forcing the humane Israelis to defend themselves; and lurking are Israel’s (and the world’s) sworn enemies Iran and Hezbollah. The entire resolution is the usual farrago of half-truths that one is used to hearing from Israel’s friends in congress.

The Senate version is similar except that it omits the human shields charge and instead includes among Hamas’s crimes its entry into a Palestinian unity government with Fatah which “implies Fatah’s and the Palestinian Authority’s support for Hamas’ belligerent actions against Israel, potentially contributing to a false perception of legitimacy for Hamas’ belligerent action.” Confusing, but I suppose that the AIPAC drafters intended that to mean that all Palestinians are to blame, not just Hamas.

Note particularly the unanimous votes demonizing Palestinians and exonerating Israel. Where were Rand Paul, Walter Jones, Keith Ellison, Justin Amash and the Black Caucus? Rand explained that “I wouldn’t question what they need to do to defend themselves. There are difficult decisions people make in war when someone attacks you. It’s not our job to second guess.” The other congressmen were perhaps hiding under their desks or maybe even proudly voting “yea” with their colleagues. If Rand were truly his father’s son he should be asking just how Israel is engaged in “defending” itself given the fact that Netanyahu arranged the war on a pretext and the disparity of forces between the two sides, but that is perhaps not something he understands very well, particularly as he wants to become president and Sheldon Adelson has a lot of money.

The Israelis are now shifting their propaganda to arguing that they must destroy all the tunnels giving access to Israel. Ah yes, the terrorist tunnels. And just how many terrorists have slipped across from Gaza using the tunnels to kill Israelis? The answer insofar as I could determine it is “none.” The tunnels being used by Hamas with some success to resist the Israeli army are all within Gaza, enabling shooters to move from building to building underground. If the tunnels actually go into Israel, they could be detected by ground penetrating radar, which the Israelis possess. It is all perfect wag the dog theater as politics with Netanyahu again lying like a rug while showing who is in charge with the American politicians all lining up to kiss his ring.

The fact that the Israeli view of things is largely fantasy and unsustainable has meant that the Tel Aviv propaganda mill has gone to extraordinary lengths to falsely describe what is occurring. The Washington Post has been running daily op-eds, blogs and editorials supporting Israel from its usual stable of hacks including Charles Krauthammer, Richard Cohen, Jennifer Rubin and Eliot Cohen. Full paid ads appearing in the Post last week included one by Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and another by This World: The Values Network featuring Elie Wiesel. Norman Finkelstein has excoriated Wiesel for his role in the holocaust industry, but he seems to be popular among the politicos for the usual reasons.

CUFI tends to be trotted out of the woodwork every time the overwhelmingly Jewish Israel Lobby wants to pretend that it is actually intercommunal. It consists of a gaggle of Christian dispensationalists who are so pigshit ignorant about Jesus Christ’s actual message that it is an embarrassment to even call them Christians. Unfortunately they are allowed to vote which intimidates always fearful congressmen in Bible thumping states. The expression “useful idiots” comes to mind.

CUFI’s ad stated that “Israel’s Enemies Are Our Enemies” and that “Israel’s Fight is Our Fight.” Both assertion are untrue but the ad goes on to provide its reasons – Hamas wants to destroy Israel, rejects negotiations and wants to kill all Jews. I don’t detect anything about Americans in the justifications and would point out that Hamas cannot destroy Israel or kill all Jews even if it actually wanted to and that it is Israel that torpedoed the Palestinian unity government which was prepared to negotiate a peace settlement. It is Israel that has no desire to see a Palestinian state in any way, shape or form.

Wiesel is more weasel-ly. This World is an organization that promotes “universal Jewish values.” It is headed by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” whose views on slaughtering Palestinians I examined last week. Elie describes Hamas as a “death cult,” using its own children as human shields. The current war “is a battle of civilization versus barbarism” involving “those who celebrate life and those who champion death.”

Wiesel may or may not be aware that the “human shield” narrative comes straight from the Israeli propaganda machine and he might even know that Hamas supporters live comingled with other Gazans in a rather crowded urban environment where there are no “military targets.” The numbers and the kinds of deaths being reported would also suggest that if there is a cult that “champions death” it would most likely be the Israeli government.

But so much for Elie – he’s rarely seen a Jewish or Israeli cause that he couldn’t profit from (his speaking fee is reported to be $25,000). I would however note in passing recent media reports indicating that fully 94% of all Department of Homeland Security discretionary grants go to Jewish organizations and wonder how Elie would rationalize that. As the danger to Jews in the US would appear to be minimal one has to wonder about how it came about that so much public money is being spent to protect facilities that just happen to be owned and operated by the wealthiest ethno-religious group in the nation. It just might be part of knowing how to game the system and it goes hand-in-hand with holocaust survivors getting special benefits through Medicare, though it is all small potatoes compared to the manipulation that goes on to get the United States involved in Israel’s many wars.

The United States is apt to moralize about what it does and does not do, but in practice it is not at all guided neither by ethical considerations nor by national interests. It rather responds to pressure groups and lobbies. A recently introduced Senate bill would defund International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, surely an idiotic move if one wants to resolve the nuclear program issue peacefully. Of course the intention is to make impossible such a resolution because Israel wants the United States to make war against Iran and Congress is going along with the charade.

And foreign policy lunacy is not limited to issues that touch on Israel. The Obama Administration, awash in anti-Russian propaganda, has also recently ramped up sanctions against Moscow over the made-in-Washington crisis in Ukraine. Ironically, the international support for sanctions increased dramatically in the wake of the shoot down of Malaysian Airlines flight 17, even though no evidence has been produced that Vladimir Putin was in any way involved. Indeed, Russia’s total engagement in Ukraine has been far more humane than Israel’s intervention in Gaza without even considering Netanyahu’s continued brutal occupation of the West Bank. One might well ask Congress and the White House where are the sanctions on Israel?

 
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  1. KA says:

    Britain learnt the lesson .America will also. That will be the end of the master pupil relationship. But the school will als close indefinitely

  2. Don Nash says: • Website

    It crops up rather curious that Obama declared, “we tortured some folks.” Oh yeah. The US tortured ‘folks’, truth, basic human decency, and facts surrounding Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
    It is a given that Congress is wholly occupied Israeli territory and will serve Israel first regardless of the consequences. That serving Israel first would also apply to America’s el Jefé. Barack Hussein Obama is a feckless son-of-a-bitch and that needs no debate whatsoever.

    • Replies: @William
  3. NB says: • Website

    Philip Giraldi rails against the House resolution that he describes as “the usual farrago of half-truths that one is used to hearing from Israel’s friends in congress.” I suppose that’s not as bad as Giraldi’s usual farrago of lies. Giraldi claims: “And just how many terrorists have slipped across from Gaza using the tunnels to kill Israelis? The answer insofar as I could determine it is ‘none.’” I’m curious how Giraldi determined this, given that a cursory Google search shows that at least 7 Israelis (IDF soldiers) have been killed by terrorists infiltrating into Israel via tunnels:
    http://news.yahoo.com/gaza-militants-kill-five-israeli-soldiers-infiltrating-tunnel-033649910.html
    http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/middle-east-unrest/hamas-fighters-cross-israel-through-tunnel-kill-2-soldiers-n160251
    And far more terrorists have slipped across from Gaza via the tunnels (one of several such reports):
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.605662

    Giraldi ponders: “I would however note in passing recent media reports indicating that fully 94% of all Department of Homeland Security discretionary grants go to Jewish organizations and wonder how Elie would rationalize that.”
    I’m guessing Elie would note that most victims of religious-based hate crimes in the US are Jewish:
    http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2011/narratives/victims
    And that an active participant on an anti-Semitic messageboard with a significant amount of overlapping content with unz.com is the alleged gunman behind the recent shootings at a Kansas City Jewish community center:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overland_Park_Jewish_Community_Center_shooting

    Giraldi continues: “It just might be part of knowing how to game the system and it goes hand-in-hand with holocaust survivors getting special benefits through Medicare…” (emphasis mine)
    Googling “Jews game the system” gives few hits outside of sites like Stormfront.

    “though it is all small potatoes compared to the manipulation that goes on to get the United States involved in Israel’s many wars
    channeling Goebbels? A Nazi propaganda poster declared: “Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin bear the responsibility for the war; behind them stands the Jew.” “According to German wartime media…an insidious, belligerent Jewish clique, so crafty and powerful…managed to manipulate the actions of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin…”
    http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674027381

    Note how Giraldi has dispensed with fingering merely AIPAC here — he is explicitly accusing “the wealthiest ethno-religious group in the nation” of gaming the system and manipulating the US government.

    • Replies: @gdpbull
    , @JoaoAlfaiate
    , @KA
  4. @NB, what lies has Giraldi told? Answer: None. You, as a Zionist, however live a life of lies. It is the fuel for your mouth.

    • Agree: Z-man
    • Replies: @TR
  5. Karl says:

    Philip: you need to comprehend the following…. Arabic speakers have LESS right to own a jurisdiction anywhere in the indigenous territory of the Hebrews, than they did anywhere in Spain (“al Andalus”)

    And just like in Spain…. they’re not gonna get to, going back to being our colonial masters

    • Replies: @JoaoAlfaiate
    , @Eileen Kuch
  6. gdpbull says:
    @NB

    Playing the anti-semitic card, race card, whatever card, is usually a way to avoid looking at one’s self in the mirror. Victimhood is more comforting. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real bigots out there, but when all criticism is deflected using PC cards, its telling. ADL has itself morphed into a hate site.

    • Replies: @Anonymous
  7. Lorraine says:

    It is a small consolation that just yesterday I penned a letter to the Augusta Chronicle expressing my own agony at the lies, distortions and manipulations being brandished by the Israelis and our government officials. The media is of course the vehicle for AIPAC. Trolls like NB and Eliezer (above) demonstrate how very deep their agents have burrowed. I grieve deeply for our nation when a small interest group wields such power over our national conscience / consciousness, and seemingly none in power will stand up to it.

  8. moi says:

    We no longer have a government or media or corporations that put their country first.

  9. @NB

    @NB

    So NB believes that israel’s friends in the USG like Feith, Wolfowitz and Perle and in the MSM like Miller and Gordon were not instrumental in getting Uncle Sam to invade Iraq for israel’s benefit? Hog wash. These folks have long records of pro israel activity and abused their positions of trust for the benefit of a foreign country.

    As for her suggestion that Jews are the most frequent victims of hate crimes in the USA, the statistics she cites are undoubtedly the result of an institutionalized reporting structure put in place by Abe Foxman and the ADL.

    Concerning tunnels from Gaza; first, Gaza is occupied territory according to international law and fighters using those tunnels are resistance fighters not terrorists. Second, the resistance attacked israeli soldiers, not civilians, unlike the zionists who murdered countless women and children in Gaza.

    • Replies: @Karl
  10. @Karl

    Sure, but only so long as you are the “colonial masters” of the US Congress.

  11. Giraldi is to be thanked for his ongoing writing to present the truth. We are indeed indebted to him. The votes in the house and senate make it apparent that the take over is nearly complete. While many citizens are speaking out on the atrocities and demonstrating, our spineless politicians check with AIPAC to find out how they should vote. The mainstream media is taken over as is Hollywood, Major League Sports, and financial institutions. It is time to learn to speak Hebrew.

  12. Phil, a revealing aspect of the transfer of munitions to the Israelis is that the munitions were already prepositioned in Israeli. So our handing over these munitions, particularly mortar rounds, is just a paper transaction. The Israelis just pull up to a depot and take what they want after a release is signed. I don’t think the American public understands how slavishly at the service of this little gangster state our resources are.

    Coverage of the shelling and rocketing of Gazans is opening eyes. Some things are so obvious that no amount of spin can overcome them. I can sense a shift in opinion. Ironically, that shift is among the same liberal-left that a generation ago supported NB’s gangster state relatives. The passage of time and the inevitable leftward drift of all such groups means that the overclass of this country will side with the Arabs more and more. And no amount of Adelson money can prevent it.

    The Israeli’s will need to find a new patron, Russia perhaps?

  13. KA says:
    @NB

    Anti Muslim bias has been fostered by the media that is mostly Zionist in outlook . Anti muslim biase in government bodies have been fostered and cultured by the forces that support Israel, that is intimately involved with Israel,and that has heads often as Zionist.
    While common folks still learn hard way that Zionism is destroying the economic futures of American and unfortunately they displace the anger on Jews who have nothing to do with the facts who decide billion dollars bail out every year and freebies and extra millions here nd there every other months for Israel.

  14. Obvious and well known trolls should be ignored, their presence is illustrative, but they should not be responded to, or every thread will be annulled, which is the purpose of their squeaking. Continued response to NB has to be considered an intentional own-goal. don’t feed the trolls!

    • Replies: @KA
  15. KA says:
    @Jeff Albertson

    But FBI data on religion based ” hate crimes” is interesting . It needs deep psychological analysis.
    Are people fed up and are displaying ineffectual and potentially harmful to Americans sense of justice? It is definitely fodder for more propaganda .

  16. Yes, ashamed, ashamed.

    Americans should be ashamed of taking land from the Indians. Americans should be ashamed of slavery. Americans should be ashamed of this. Americans should be ashamed of that.

    So long as there is some brown-skinned or sexually deviant population somewhere that isn’t doing wonderfully, Americans should be ashamed of it.

    We should put our national anthem in a minor key and change the lyrics to “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sooo soooooo sorry”, repeated over and over again for six verses.

    Yeah, that’ll get the rest of the world to respect us!

    • Replies: @Lea
  17. “Continued response to NB has to be considered an intentional own-goal.”

    I logged in last night when there were only two comments and wondered if the men in the butterfly nets had come for her or changed her medication or something. I see now she was only slightly off her game, doubtless due to the important work she is doing on Twitter fighting the evil goyim.

    I think, at this point, a good response to NB would involve photoshoping stills from B-movies. I recommend “Ilsa the She Wolf.”

    • Replies: @Ron Unz
  18. Retired says:

    Giraldi
    I hear that Hamas is taking applications for tunnel diggers. But they would rather accept a large wire transfer.

    • Replies: @Philip Giraldi
  19. @Retired

    Retired – Do you mean like the $3.1 billion that Israel receives every October 1st?

    • Replies: @Anonymous
    , @retired
  20. Karl says:
    @JoaoAlfaiate

    The indigenous population of Gaza was…. the Coptic Christians. So the Arabic-speakers are the occupiers. And we will restore Gaza to its indigenii.

    There is one place in the world, and only one place in the world, where Arabic is an indigenous language: Arabia.

    the same is true of the so-called “Arab Christians” of Israel (who by the way have a quite high rate of voluntary enlistment into the IDF) – their indigenous language was Aramaic. Which is as close as you can get to identical-with Modern Hebrew (identical alphabet, for one thing) an still be considered by any linguist to be different.

    We Hebrews ==did== succeed to get the “Arab Christians” to stop marrying off their girls at menarche, and we ==will== succeed== to get them back onto their indigenous alphabet Aramaic-pride identity. Yes, we control the culture here just like we do in Hollywood. If you don’t like it, you can escape that reality very easily…. go to Mosul and live in the Islamic Caliphate.

    3000 years from now, Joao, when your descendents are speaking Brazilian-accented Ebonics…. ours will still be speaking Hebrew.

    And everyone here knows that’s true.

    • Replies: @KA
    , @Anonymous
    , @Anonymous
    , @KA
    , @KA
    , @KA
  21. geokat62 says:

    “And foreign policy lunacy is not limited to issues that touch on Israel. The Obama Administration, awash in anti-Russian propaganda, has also recently ramped up sanctions against Moscow over the made-in-Washington crisis in Ukraine.”

    I think anti-Russian propaganda has a lot to do with Israel:
    1) the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO benefits the merchants of death by increasing their sales
    2) Putin is being punished for his foreign policy in the ME especially his support for Syria and Iran
    3) Those flyers purportedly requiring Jews to register are prompting many Ukrainian Jews to make Aliyah.

    While the first two points are self-evident, the evidence for the third comes straight from the mouth of Natan Sharansky, even though he was reluctant to “share the details.”

    According to the Times of Israel: One family at a time, Jews are being saved from countries such as Iran, Ukraine and Yemen, Jewish Agency for Israel Chairman Natan Sharansky said Thursday.
    The aim is “to reach every Jew in the world and strengthen their connection to Israel and the Jewish tradition,” and the Jewish Agency is doing so, the former minister stated. Speaking to a large Sydney crowd at The Central Synagogue, Sharansky provided an insight into most issues preoccupying the Jewish world: from Ukraine to the Women of the Wall to the civil war in Syria.
    “Not only in Ukraine, also in Yemen, Morocco, Tunisia and Iran — and in other problematic countries — we’re saving families one at a time,” Sharansky told the crowded hall. “It’s happening all over, all the time, and it’s better not to share the details.”
    http://www.timesofisrael.com/sharansky-we-are-saving-jewish-from-ukraine-iran/

    “…though it is all small potatoes compared to the manipulation that goes on to get the United States involved in Israel’s many wars.”

    Mearsheimer and Walt in Ch 8 of their book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy provide the incriminating evidence that the Iraq war was pushed by the Lobby to enhance Israel’s security:
    http://mailstar.net/iraq-war.html

    Israel’s enthusiasm for war eventually led some of its allies in America to tell Israeli officials to damp down their hawkish rhetoric, lest the war look like it was being fought for Israel. In the fall of 2002, for example, a group of American political consultants known as the Israel Project circulated a six-page memorandum to key Israelis and pro-Israel leaders in the United States. The memo was titled “Talking about Iraq” and was intended as a guide for public statements about the war. “If your goal is regime change, you must be much more careful with your language because of the potential backlash. You do not want Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel rather than to protect America.”

  22. Ron Unz says:
    @Scott Locklin

    As it happens, “NB” showed up at a talk I was invited to give last year at the University of Chicago Law School.

    Based on her appearance, mannerisms, style of dress, and general behavior, your suggestions of mental illness seem right on the mark…

  23. Power Child, the US shouldn’t be paying for someone else’s imperialism in blood and treasure.

    Eliezer Ben Yehuda, its interesting that Israel is allowed to control its immigration policy and let in their own ethnic group and kick out the others, but its Neocon supporters do not allow the US to do the same. They hold the same position as American businesses. The white christian zionist provides Israel with its bread and butter in the US so why is it out to turn them into a minority? They are Israel’s biggest supporters, so what if they don’t like brown people? Israel doesn’t either. What happens if they figure it out? I don’t think anyone will be speaking Hebrew in a 3000 years. They will assimilate because old religions cannot fend off scientific progress. Also copulation does not seem to be their forte. They’ve had thousands of years. What is the problem? Shouldn’t Israel be giving Israeli women aphrodisiacs instead of birth control? http://www.salon.com/2013/01/28/israel_admits_ethiopian_jewish_immigrants_were_given_birth_control_shots/

    • Replies: @Power Child
  24. “There are difficult decisions people make in war when someone attacks you. It’s not our job to second guess.”

    It is your job as a leader, when one country’s taxpayers, among them the folks in Detroit without money to pay for water, are supplying unaccountable billions of their own dollars in weaponry to another country’s warlords, without the slightest say in the use it is put to – “Don’t you EVER second-guess me again!” Evidently goyim are to be mere hewers and drawers – never questioning why, only do or die.

    I agree that that the CUFI leaders are clueless about Christ – they “warship,” not worship, a War Jesus, out of their own imaginations. Hard to think critically with Sheldon chipping in to support your militant “ministry.”

  25. Yakov says:

    Israel’s actions are perfectly legitimate by all laws human and divine. US killed much more civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and many other places. That loss of life was considered regrettable but acceptable in a military conflict. Why should US be ashamed?


    Video Link

    • Replies: @schmenz
  26. Anonymous • Disclaimer says:
    @gdpbull

    But he is right, whatever you say against Israels murder and crime is pure antisemitic. Read books like this crazy work called Thora. It’s allowed to kill the goys enslave them and do whatever you want to press your fortune out of them.

    That’s the meaning of this anti-semitic claims, but they don’t explain it in detail. Reason too why Jews as “true believers” has to be hated from all the other folks.

    Except christians and moslems for instance. Their religion write the same fucking stuff. But at that very moment they insist on it a bit lesser.

  27. Anonymous • Disclaimer says:

    Hey giraldi, you are welcome to my country iraq anytime. We need some white asslickers here to lick our muslim asses. Of course you would have to live in a barbed wire compound because most of my countrymen would kill you in a heartbeat.

    • Replies: @Anonymous
  28. Anonymous • Disclaimer says:
    @Anonymous

    Get one from Israel. They steal your knickers after twisting it . The barbed wires will be gone also. Don’t tell that you are a Muslim. They don’t like the suckers.

  29. KA says:
    @Karl

    That’s what the latest twists sanctioned by Book of Jubilee,read by Sakled , Bennett, Netanhyu, and Moshe Feiglin. The viper prophet by name Ben Guron while lashing out with forked tongue read it out aloud to the peasants from Poland some 80 yrs ago.

  30. KA says:

    Americans should be afraid. No donkey will be spared.

    ” “And Samuel said to Saul, ‘The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/08/03/israel-genocide-and-the-logic-of-zionism/

    It is scary stuff . This is the price of opposing Zionist when Israel steal from US spy on US and hurt American interests It could be one of these or all of these. No donkey will be left behind. Senate and Congress should read it . Asinine ignorance is not an excuse.

  31. Cahokia says:

    “Hey giraldi, you are welcome to my country iraq anytime. We need some white asslickers here to lick our muslim asses. Of course you would have to live in a barbed wire compound because most of my countrymen would kill you in a heartbeat.”

    It’s good to read propaganda like this.

    It’s a reminder of the depths to which hasbara proponents will descend.

    Israel’s apologists love for Christians and Muslims to war against each other.

    The same Israel supporters who condemn Islamists will sneer at Christian evangelicals and social conservative rednecks!

    It’s the oldest game in the book – divide and conquer. I encourage people not to fall for it and to think for themselves.

  32. Anonymous • Disclaimer says:
    @Karl

    People have lived in Gaza (and most of the Middle East) for thousands of years, well before Christianity or Judasim so I think you need to do some study. Zionists claim the land of Canaan from 3 thousand years ago but wasn’t it conquered by Joshua? That means someone else was there beforehand. Christianity started LESS than two thousand years ago (after the death of Jesus) so the Coptic Christians weren’t the real indigenous population. It’s all ridiculous anyway; just because Abraham heard a voice in his head doesn’t mean that any Jew has a right to live there. ps. I’m an atheist who doesn’t have much faith in all of those old fairytales/myths. And who cares if you hang on to an ancient language instead of have a progressive one which adapts to the times? English has changed greatly in just a few hundred years and it doesn’t matter!

  33. macilrae says:

    Isn’t it in Israel’s interest to maintain the US in a state of animosity with Russia and China and to perpetually be waging ‘war’ with far weaker opponents? This then feeds our paranoia, maintains the defense budget and causes us to be increasingly despised (albeit surreptitiously) by all except, of course, our ‘best friend’ – who has our back – and whom we shall continue to support come what may.

    Even when the US economy goes down the tubes, we shall still remain the most formidable military on the planet (for a while), guarding Israel’s security as well as protecting ourselves from the consequences of our massive defaults.

    Israel seems to have a disproportionate number of sympathizers in influential positions at State and Defense to keep the tensions high and to maintain necessary ‘communications’: was this also the case back during the Cold War? I think so – but on a lesser scale.

  34. NB says: • Website

    Ron Unz, is that the best you can do to discredit me? You’ve never managed to refute my debunking of your anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Harvard discriminates against white Gentiles in favor of Jews, so I guess all you can do is resort to ad hominem arguments.

    I must say, however, it seems a bit odd that you of all people would try to diagnose me with mental illness. What would motivate you to go through lists of over 30,000 names to count the number of Jews? btw, are you still living in squalor (despite your wealth) as described here?
    http://www.laweekly.com/1999-12-02/news/being-ron-unz/

    Gosh, I must look really bad if this guy is insulting the way I dress:
    http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/06/01/time/prop.277.html
    “No, Ron Unz says, it’s not true that he owns only two suits. He owns one. The other wore out weeks ago. And the one left ‘is on its last legs,’ he says. ‘I’ve patched the pants a couple of times.’ But it is true that he eats mostly at Burger Kings and pizza joints. And, yes, he lives in a house with no wife…”

    As for this particular piece, your writer stated, “And just how many terrorists have slipped across from Gaza using the tunnels to kill Israelis? The answer insofar as I could determine it is ‘none.’ The tunnels being used by Hamas with some success to resist the Israeli army are all within Gaza…”
    I presented multiple articles from reputable sources documenting not just Hamas tunnels opening into Israel, but also Hamas militants using said tunnels to infiltrate into Israel and kill Israelis. And, as usual, the replies I’ve gotten are all personal attacks.

  35. @Karl

    Eliezer, you need to know this: Ashkenazi Jews such as yourself are NOT indigenous to the land of Palestine; the Palestinians are. They’ve inhabited the lands for centuries. Your ancestors? The truth is; your ancestors originated from the Caucasus region known back then as Khazaria, a kingdom that covered the regions around the Black Sea: Ukraine, Crimea, and parts of Russia. Before their mass conversion to Judaism around 740 AD, these Khazars were a fierce pagan warrior tribe; alas, their conversion didn’t change their barbaric behavior. Their kingdom fell to the Christian Kievan Rus under St. Vladimir the Great; thus, the Khazar Jews migrated west into Eastern and Central Europe, where they established financial institutions and synagogues, until the Europeans grew tired of the usury practiced by these Ashkenazi Jews. These Jews didn’t begin trickling into Palestine until the latter part of the 19th Century, following the founding of Zionism by Theodr Herzl in Basel, Switzerland.

  36. Anonymous • Disclaimer says:
    @Philip Giraldi

    Philip Giraldi…I’ve read your articles/opinions online for many years and my few words cannot hope to express my admiration and respect for your efforts over the years in consistently and honestly clarifying the differences between the real reality’s and the propagandized “talking points” of numerous special interests groups that powerfully manipulate so many of these tragic events, not only in Gaza but globally.

    I sometimes sense tho that some enlightened people like yourself, who truly understand human capacity to acquiesce to monsters in our midst, must feel like they are standing on the rails watching a monstrous train, loaded with these monsters, careening out of control down the tracks into history with us as spectators having as few means to stop it as were all the innocent Palestinians who were blown to a blood soaked mist in Gaza.

    I honestly worry for your safety…take care, from Canada.

  37. spider says:

    Rand Paul’s chief message seems to be that he is enthralled to AIPAC. This apple fell too far from the tree to make me support him. He is just another Israeli quisling. The only good that has come from this conflict is to reveal the Israelis for what they are–a barbarous race of blood thirty brutes, and that their apartheid government has led to its natural conclusion–genocide. And with genocide there is no debate. If you support it or excuse as the entire Congress and Executive office does you have turned down a road from which there is no retreat. You are what you are and at least we know the truth. At present all that can be done is for those of good conscience to bear witness. Teach this to your children and grandchildren as perhaps so day, no matter how long it takes. there will be an accounting.

  38. Anonymous • Disclaimer says:
    @Karl

    “Yes, we control the culture here just like we do in Hollywood.”

    You mean to say that what you guys produce in Hollywood is culture? That’s a good one, I have to write it down to tell my friends. A good laugh is always welcome in these hard times…

    On the other hand, I completely agree with you in that you control the “culture” in Israel. During the last month all the world could see a display of your “culture”. But if we don’t like it, which we certainly don’t, there’s no need to go to Mosul, it’s enough to stay here in Europe while doing our best to keep our frontiers closed to your israeli scum.

    And everyone here knows that’s true.

  39. NB’s tactic of referencing Zionist penned “news” articles to defend Israel’s war crimes is like fundamentalist Christians who use the Holy Bible (which was also penned by Jews) to “prove” their insane views and assertions.

  40. @Johnny F. Ive

    I didn’t say anything about foreign aid. I’m generally against copious foreign aid except perhaps as one-offs after natural disasters and things like that. As it is, our foreign aid money comes with strings tied to all kind of nasty policies that shoot us in the foot in the long run anyway.

    However, this is a separate matter from what I was talking about. Whether the US didn’t fund or completely funded Israel’s military actions, I’m pretty sick of people in the press telling me that wherever brown-skinned people are suffering, Americans (especially beige-skinned ones like me) should feel ashamed about it.

    Why exactly should I feel ashamed that a Western outpost (i.e. an outpost of civilization and functioning society) with a superior military is trouncing a bunch of barbarians? Why should I want to see the Western outpost kneel and grovel and beg for forgiveness the way Michael Richards or Paula Deen did? What good did this posture bring Michael Richards and Paula Deen in the end?

    It’s not imperialism, either. Israel may be called a young colony, and it may have long tendrils of influence in the US and Europe, but you’ve gotta be smoking something wacky to look at Israel and see even a wanna-be empire. It would be like calling Australia an empire because they killed off a few aborigines earlier on.

    Philip Giraldi’s obviously a very smart guy, but to call Israel’s actions “imperialism” and to say “Americans should be ashamed” is, to my ears at least, a sorry example of naive ethnomasochism. Even if Israel completely reversed their course in their relationships with their neighbors, offering olive branches and even reparations, what exactly does he think the result would be? They’d become friends? They’d all be holding hands and singing koombayah?

  41. anonymous • Disclaimer says:

    Netanyahu to USA: don’t tell me what to do but send the money anyway.

  42. bick2863 says:

    The premise for the creation of a Jewish homeland, soon to be hardened into a Jewish state, was to provide for Jews of the Diaspora a refuge from anti-semitism. Founders of the Zionist movement claimed to find in the Dreyfus affair and the Russian pogroms evidence of an ineradicable hatred of Jews that made such a safe haven necessary. Immigrants to Israel, largely from Russia and eastern Europe, have carried their hatred of the goyim to their new home, and they have applied it to Palestinians with a barbarism that Jabotinsky could not have imagined. The Palestinians have resisted, and their resistance has widened the circle of sympathy for their plight throughout the world. Israelis present themselves as victims, forever under siege, always scuttling to bomb shelters to escape the crude and mostly ineffectual rockets from Gaza, creating barriers across the West Bank to prevent Palestinian solidarity, ever promoting wars (to be financed and fought by other countries) against the pretentiously-labeled “existential” enemy. Ninety-seven years after the Balfour Declaration, what has become of the “safe haven?” Israeli Jews face an enemy unreconciled to Israel’s land theft and barbarities, and they see in the rest of the world a rising tide of disgust at their behavior, a disgust they call anti-semitism. From their standpoint there is no safe haven, which means that Zionism has been a sham, a waste, and a crime.

  43. Gloop says:

    It’s apparent from reading the posts above that NB makes arguments, however unpopular, and that her opponents make personal attacks. It would serve the readers better if those opponents would attempt to refute her arguments, rather than behave like children.

    A while back, Mr. Giraldi wrote that he and the organization he represents “take no position on the Holocaust.” That craven, revealing comment was a moral obscenity, and it should be borne in mind whenever he takes pen in hand and skewers Israel. His attacks on Israel and on the “ethno-religious group” he targets with an increasingly shrill and hateful tone should give one pause to consider just what he is trying to accomplish.

    Perhaps it is his own condescending, hate-mongering self who should feel fortunate for still being granted the right to vote.

    • Replies: @Anonymous
    , @Power Child
  44. schmenz says:
    @Yakov

    “…by all laws human and DIVINE”? Did I read that correctly? Am I to understand that God willed that Eastern European Jews should come to the Holy Land around 1948 and beyond, ethnically cleanse it of the historic semitic inhabitants and now mercilessly kill women, children, old men, young men, anyone who is not of their ethnicity and commit atrocious war crimes?

    My friend, you are very seriously deluded not only about the occupiers of the Holy Land but apparently about God as well.

  45. Anonymous • Disclaimer says:
    @Gloop

    Gloop
    Why dont you refute the facts or remarks (re Giraldi )with your set of facts?

  46. Anonymous • Disclaimer says:

    Thank you Giraldi for a wonderful article.
    One good that might come out of this barbaric and intentional killing of hundreds of innocent children in Gaza by the Zionist is that more and more people will come to realize that Zionism is a cancer on this planet that must be eliminated before it’s tentacles engulf the entire planet.
    The saddest part is that my country (USA) as well as some other countries are complicit in these murders. I worry for the future of my children and grandchildren .

  47. @Gloop

    I disagree with the gist of Giraldi’s article, but I don’t see how it’s “hateful” or “hate mongering.” These are terms used (or at least way over-used) by victim groups as smears when they can’t come up with anything logical to say.

    It’s unfortunate that so many Jews engage in this low tactic because they ought to be smart enough, on average anyway, to know better.

  48. tadzio308 says:

    It appears that the special treatment for ‘holocaust’ survivors was shuttled to a subcommittee where it died, a fate deserved by all attempted Racist legislation.
    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR02786:@@@X
    Here is a list of infamy, the co-sponsors of Racism:
    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR02786:@@@P
    Whether similar legislation has since passed I do not know. It would be appreciated if anyone with knowledge of such could inform us.

  49. Gloop says:

    To the visually impaired who can’t detect hateful words when they see them:

    “a horrific war crime” – And how does Giraldi know this for certain, without any investigation and despite much data to the contrary? By a death toll provided by the ever so reliable Hamas? About a dozen years ago in Jenin, 50 Arab combatants were slain but the world’s media (and the UN) reported the figure as 500. I’m sure Giraldi himself parroted the dubious toll, as he is now.

    “the usual farrago of half-truths that one is used to hearing from Israel’s friends in congress” – So anything uttered by a supporter of Israel is to be dismissed as a lie every time? Giraldi is implying that any friend of Israel is a paid liar, never speaking out of conviction or principle.

    “Wiesel is more weasel-ly.” – Leave it to a shameless rabble rouser like Giraldi to reach for the most obvious, witless, juvenile and offensive pun he could find.

    “But so much for Elie – he’s rarely seen a Jewish or Israeli cause that he couldn’t profit from.” – Oh right. No hatred there. No negative stereotypes being tapped into. Nothing offensive whatsoever. Sure thing. That’s the ticket.

    “the holocaust industry” – Another offensive smear, promulgating the same ancient, negative, damaging stereotype.

    “…facilities that just happen to be owned and operated by the wealthiest ethno-religious group in the nation.” – Really? The whole “group” owns a facility? Guilt by association, anyone? Is it so bloody hard to see that the “author” is using prominent individuals to whip up hatred against an entire group? He even USED the word “group”!

    “It is Israel that has no desire to see a Palestinian state in any way, shape or form.” – Again, the “author” indicts an entire country, when in fact there are literally millions of Israelis who have supported a two state solution. Giraldi uses the word Israel when he really should refer to the individuals who are opposed to two states. Naturally, he’d rather smear the whole “group”.

    The “low tactic” is in goading me to point out hatred that has been made so plain.

  50. Anonymous • Disclaimer says:

    Please help put a stop to this genocide in Gaza. Demand that Ban Ki-moon acknowledge it. Please sign and share this petition.
    Please join this campaign: https://www.change.org/petitions/ban-ki-moon-acknowledge-the-gaza-genocide?recruiter=136554085&utm_campaign=mailto_link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition

  51. @Gloop

    How exactly does one prove he does NOT hate Jews, once you’ve accused him of hating Jews?

    That’s my problem with the slinging of “hate” accusations. Like accusations of “racism” and whatever else, they can only serve the purpose of smearing, not describing.

    • Replies: @Gloop
  52. KA says:

    This nation was built on deceit,violence,and by breaking of the laws . Its fate is sealed ,the dissemination of the information both past and the current will make it a pariah state to each nation on the earth.America and some countries in the west will hate it more that Palestine does once the inside details of the past and continued blackmail of the western powers by Israel get exposed to every concerned citizen.

    • Replies: @LA Dude
  53. Dave says:

    The majority of Americans have no shame, in that way they are a mirror image of their Jewish masters. They are essentially retarded, overstimulated sheep. And sheep are made to be sheared. On the upside, as the American star approaches nadir, so goes the Zionist parasite terror state. They’ll be hard pressed to find another population so thoroughly brainwashed on a combination of Scofield Bible horsesh-t and Jew victimology fairy tales.

  54. Gloop says:
    @Power Child

    Your willful ignorance is really getting on my nerves.

    I BACKED UP MY ACCUSATION WITH FACTS.

    I said the man is hateful, I was then challenged to prove it, and so I listed SEVERAL EXAMPLES to support my accusation.

    I jumped through the hoop you had me jump through.

    Stop pretending I smeared the man without backing up my claim!

    And give me a break: it’s not my mere ACCUSATION that makes him hateful, it’s HIS OWN DAMN WORDS, which I have now used repeatedly to make my point.

    Do you get it yet? Do you speak English? Can you read?

    I’m not responding to any more idiotic whining. I made an accusation, I backed it up with multiple quotes, and yet you COMPLETELY IGNORED my arguments and my proof. If you don’t have the good sense to comprehend the points I’ve made, please cease and desist. Good grief!

    • Replies: @Power Child
  55. I have to thank NB for sharing that article on Run Unz from the LA Weekly. I never knew Mr.Unz’s background or history.

    NB distributed this obvious hit piece in retaliation to Unz’s report on her appearance. That’s fair enough.

    The article describes Mr. Unz as a frugal, eccentric individual of great intelligence who puts his money where his mouth is. He had a difficult childhood from which emerged a great success. Despite characterizations of him as a right wing bigot, he is revealed as a pro immigration activist. He seems to eschew many right wing positions and is obviously a free thinker. I’ve never met him but frankly, he comes across in the article like a person of value.

  56. @Gloop

    I actually had typed out individual responses to each of your examples showing that while many of them are evidence of Giraldi’s sloppy thinking, in my opinion none of them prove hatefulness.

    But I thought it was cumbersome to include such a long string of words when my final question at the end sufficed. So I deleted everything else and left it at that. Guess I was wrong.

    “Racism” is used in place of 7 or 8 other terms that would be more appropriate in various kinds of contexts, most of them undeserving of a negative value judgment. “Hate” is probably the same way.

  57. @Gloop

    Gloop – I was not going to respond to your rant, but sometimes a little correction is merited. You know nothing about me. I do not hate Jews. I do not hate anyone. I do object to the people, many of whom are Jews with a pro Israel agenda, who are bankrupting my country and forcing us to fight unnecessary wars. As for your other points: First, Israel committed war crimes in 2009 in Gaza and has behaved even worse this time around. War crimes? Yes. Second Yes, every supporter of Israel in Congress is indeed a paid liar. They are paid by Israeli PACs and are afraid of not being reelected if they cross the line and criticize Israel even though they know full well that we are regularly and consistently being screwed by Tel Aviv. Third, Wiesel is a Weasel and a profiteer from the suffering of others. I suggest you google him about flaws in his bio and deportent and about his penchant to make lots and lots of money out of the holocaust. He has great compassion for everyone as long as they are Jewish. Fourth, I did not coin the expression”Holocaust Industry.” Norman Finkelstein did that and lost his job as a university professor for doing so even though his analysis was spot on. Read the book. Fifth, if the owners and operators of synagogues and cultural centers are not some kind of collective, what are they? Why should they be getting 94% of homeland security funds? Finally, Israel as a polity has no desire to see a Palestinian state as they keep electing assholes like BN. Indeed, some Israelis oppose him as do many American Jews but what of it? Israel is moving more and more to the right and is currently something akin to a Fascist/militarized state. Maybe you should read up a bit more before you open your mouth and start screaming about “hate.”

    • Replies: @LA Dude
    , @Gloop
  58. LA Dude says:
    @KA

    KA – Are you Muslim or originally from a Muslim-majority country? You frequently comment on a single theme here, so it would be interesting to know your background. (It seems that English is not your first language.)

    • Replies: @KA
  59. KA says:
    @Karl

    “The fellahin are not descendants of the Arab conquerors, who captured Eretz Israel and Syria in the seventh century CE. The Arab victors did not destroy the agricultural population they found in the country. They expelled only the alien Byzantine rulers, and did not touch the local population. Nor did the Arabs go in for settlement. Even in their former habitations the Arabs did not engage in farming…their whole interest in the new countries was political, religious and material: to rule, to propagate Islam, and to collect taxes…the Jewish farmer, like any other farmer, was not easily torn from his soil…Despite the repression and suffering the rural population remained unchanged.[vii]
    Ben Guiron .

    Paul Atwood university of Massachusetts Boston
    Feb 2014 http://www.counterpunch.com

  60. KA says:
    @Karl

    Ben Gurion’s co-author in the statement above, Yitzak Ben Zvi, a rock-ribbed Zionist, later wrote that “The great majority of the fellahin do not descend from the Arab conquerors, but before that, from the Jewish fellahin, who were the foundation of this country before its conquest by Islam.[viii]

    Paul Atwood who is the interim director of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social William Joiner Center for the Study of Wars and Social Consequences and a faculty at American Studies Drpartment , U of Mass -Boston
    Counterpunch

  61. KA says:
    @Karl

    “One of the Zionist founders of Israel, Israel Belkind, wrote that “The historians are accustomed to say that after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the Jews were scattered all over the world and no longer inhabited their country. But, this too, is a historical error, which must be removed and the true facts discovered.” According to Sands, Belkind believed that he and his fellow pioneers were meeting “ a good many of our own people, our own flesh and blood.” In 1967 the founder of the Department of Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, Abraham Polak, wrote an essay entitled “The origins of the Arabs of the Country,” in which he argued that there was “considerable likelihood that Judeans did convert to Islam,” and urged that scientific study be devoted to this issue. His article was met with hostility and no university took up his challenge.

    Paul Atwood

  62. KA says:

    Forked tongue of Weasel

    ” “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivitiess become irrelevant.”

    Elie Wiesel, From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences

    “My loyalty to my people, to our people, and to Israel comes first and prevents me from saying anything critical of Israel outside Israel… As a Jew I see my role as a melitz yosher, a defender of Israel: I defend even her mistakes… I must identify with whatever Israel does – even with her errors.”

    Elie Wiesel, Against Silence (AS)
    http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/29/countering-the-israel-lobbys-dominance/

  63. KA says:

    How pathetic this guy is

    “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivitiess become irrelevant.”

    Elie Wiesel, From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences

    “My loyalty to my people, to our people, and to Israel comes first and prevents me from saying anything critical of Israel outside Israel… As a Jew I see my role as a melitz yosher, a defender of Israel: I defend even her mistakes… I must identify with whatever Israel does – even with her errors.”

    Elie Wiesel, Against Silence (AS)

    [MORE]

    In the end, whether Israel’s penchant for serial atrocities encounters an effective obstacle will hinge on two types of resistance, elicited not from the fictitious “international community”, but from the active opponents of Israel’s ongoing projects, and from the withdrawal of moral and financial support for the ongoing reproduction of Israel as an apartheid Zionist State.

    Among the first type of response are the increasingly visible efforts, which gained momentum in the wake of the May 2010 flotilla murders, to promote sanctions, boycott and divestiture. A broad range of individuals and groups -rock stars Elvis Costello and The Pixies, the actor Meg Ryan, Britain’s largest union, Unite, the United Methodist Church, the cosmetics firm Lush, the University of London Union, Deutsche Bahn, the German railway operator, large supermarket chains in Italy, dockworkers in many cities around the world refusing to unload Israli cargo- has either actively called for or effectively engaged in actions in support of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel’s occupation and in support of Palestinian resistance. (For an up to date list of such actions see http://www.bdsmovement.net.)

    The second kind of response includes refusals to any longer make excuses for Israeli abominations, willingness finally to speak out in public protest, and the cessation of financial support for the rogue State. An especially powerful development would be the readiness of American Jews to announce loud and clear that Israel does not speak for them, to distance themselves from the agenda of the politically powerful Israel lobby, and to cross over into solidarity with the Palestinian people. None of this, I will suggest below, is as far-fetched as it might have seemed fifteen years ago.

    Among the key habits of thought, feeling and action that must be defeated is what we might call the Wiesel Doctrine, as expressed in the second passage at the head of this article, which pledges to “defend even [Israel’s] mistakes… [to] identify with whatever Israel does – even with her errors.” The Doctrine saturates the political consciousness of too many older (an important qualifier) liberal American Jews. These are the Jews most likely to contribute to AIPAC and for whom their perception of a given Senate, House or presidential candidate’s friendliness to Israeli policy is sufficient to determine support.

    The Doctrine’s stalwarts have been marinating in a political-ethnic milieu largely formed since the early 1950s by the self-promotional and political-marketing zeal of Elie Wiesel, the world’s leading holocaust entrepreneur. The man has been adroit in milking Western guilt over the holocaust in the service of making it virtually impossible for soi disant humanitarians to dissent from Israeli propaganda. He has also helped to create an atmosphere in which the likes of Alan Dershowitz can thrive, and the jobs and reputations of both politicians and university professors who challenge the Israeli line can be jeopardized on the spurious grounds that they peddle anti-semitism. Wiesel has contributed hugely to the mystified ideological settlement that invites a well heeled and ardently motivated entity like AIPAC to win enviable gains for Israel on Capitol Hill and to prevent critical issues from being raised in the US media, even as these same issues are put forward and contested in the more democratic Israeli press.

    Wiesel and his Doctrine are to the typical American Jewish apologist for Israel as the standard meter is to the meter stick in your workshop. Wiesel is the Platonic Form made flesh in every Zionist apologist. Listen to the argumentss of your Zionist friends. They channel the teachings of St. Elie.

    It beehooves us, then, to review what Wiesel is about.

    Wiesel as Archetype of the Soul of Zionism

    Elie Wiesel is in a class by himself. Take his word for it. The man promotes himself with unflagging persistence as the living embodiment of Jewish humanitarianism. This makes him, he’d have us believe, the -not ‘a’, but ‘the’- humble representative and wounded spokesman of the community of holocaust survivors, the preeminent guardian of Jewish memory and witness to Jewish suffering. What this comes to is granting Israel carte blanche to treat Palestinians as it chooses and to habitually lie about its political intentions.

    In Wiesel’s stance we find a paradigmatic expression of the apologetics that has become the party line for so many older American Jews for whom nothing Israel does warrants open opposition.

    Wiesel pulls no punches. In the second citation at the head of this article he announces that facts and evidence are irrelevant to his assessment of Israel’s behavior. Thus, Wiesel misled when he remarked, regarding his assessment of Israel’s May 2010 flotilla raid, “I don’t know enough. ..For me to say anything now would be irresponsible.” (June 2, 2010) We are to believe that Wiesel is open to evidence of Israeli wrongdoing. But he has made it clear that he is not. When pushed to the wall on Israeli misbehavior, Wiesel’s tactic is patented: he changes the subject to the holocaust. Moments after the above remark Wiesel whimpered “Holocaust denial today – what it does to the children of survivors,” he said. “I believe Holocaust denial should be illegal.” There followed a philosophical debate on freedom of thought and the limits of censorship. Mission accomplished: the original issue, the assessment of Israel’s murders of noncombatants in international waters, has been forgotten.

    It is essential to Wiesel’s agenda that he depict his categorical refusal to criticize Israel as more than a merely individual decision. He is merely acknowledging a moral obligation binding everyone, everywhere, to eternal silence regarding Israel’s abominations. That’s the Wiesel Doctrine: “The nations that kept silent during the Holocaust ought to keep silent now as well. The world that then condemned itself by its silence has lost all rights to judge Israel now.” (AS, 2, 191.)

    The holocaust is made into political plastic carrying an unlimited line of exculpatory credit.

    In his speech to the United Nations last September Benjamin Netanyahu began by conflating Nazi Germany, contemporary Iran, al Qaeda (a Sunni tendency foreign to Shiite Iran), and global terrorism. The word ‘Nazi’ appeared five times in the first thirty paragraphs. This kind of nonsense is made possible and certified by the Wiesel Doctrine.

    The Doctrine also rules out solidarity with the Palestinian people. As a holocaust survivor, Wiesel must accept whatever claims Israel makes about its relation to Palestinians: “Do not ask me, a traumatized Jew, to be pro-Palestinian. I totally identify with Israel and cannot go along with leftist intellectuals who reject it.” ( AS, 1, 223) These two sentences are packed with Israel-serving dogma: the fact of the holocaust permits open season on Palestinians, speaking the truth about Israel is an inherently “leftist” prejudice, and criticizing Israeli policy is the same as “reject”ing Israel, whatever that may mean.

    Wiesel As Terrorist and The Requirement of Hypocrisy

    In his essay “To a Young Palestinian Arab” (1979) Wiesel intones “I feel responsible for your sorrow, but not for the way you use it, for in its name you have massacred innocent children, slaughtered children.” (‘sorrow’ is a favorite word of Wiesel’s, which he deploys almost as frequently as you and I use ‘the’) Wiesel’s claim to feel “responsible” for Palestinian “sorrow” (Why not refer to Palestinian deaths? Why not indeed.) is disingenuous. He refuses to acknowledge the death and destruction visited upon Palestinians by Israel except in the context of blaming Palestinians. He acknowledges no responsibility to do anything as an expression of his professed responsibility, nor does he acknowledge that this responsibility stems from wrongdoing by Israel. And he has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the occupation as a political matter, preferring “sorrow” as the required non-political “moral” attitude.

    Wiesel goes on to anticipate the young Palestinian’s response that these acts were performed by “extremists”, not typical Palestinians. He rejoins that “they acted on your behalf, with your approval, since you did not raise your voice to reason with them. You will tell me that it is your tragedy which incited them to murder. By murdering, they debased that tragedy, they betrayed it.” Wiesel goes on to contrast Palestinians’ insidious political response to their suffering to holocaust survivors’ humanistic “moral” response to their brutalization. Here we have a typical case of the hypocrisy that is a leitmotif in Wiesel’s repertoire.

    Wiesel is surely not ignorant of European Zionists’ response to persecution by pioneering innovations in the art of terrorism. Zionists crusading in Palestine prior to the establishment of Israel created a range of modern terrorist tactics. In 1938 the Zionist terror outfit Irgun executed attacks against Arab civilians, including placing bombs in milk cans in a Haifa market, killing twenty three Arab shoppers. In 1947 the Zionist group the Stern Gang was the first to use letter bombs, mailed to British Cabinet members. The Gang assassinated high-level British diplomats and the chief UN mediator attempting to negotiate a two-state solution for Palestine. Irgun, then under the leadership of Menachim Begin, planted bombs in Arab East Jerusalem, killing civilians in an effort to drive Palestinians out. As the British mandate was coming to an end in April 1948 and a civil war between Arabs and Zionists was beginning, Irgun and the Stern Gang attacked the village of Deir Yassin, killing over a hundred unarmed villagers, including women and children. The villagers had not been involved in any violence prior to the attack. In 1954 Israel became the first country to hijack an airplane for political purposes, seizing a Syrian civilian plane in a botched effort to trade hostages for Mossad intelligence agents captured by the Syrians.

    When the Deir Yassin occurred Wiesel was on the payroll of Irgun’s newspaper Zion in Kampf, having offered his services as a translator in Paris. This makes Wiesel, by his own standards, a terrorist. Accordingly, he has never denounced these massacres. Might not a Deir Yassin survivor charge Wiesel with his own words: “they acted on your behalf, with your approval, since you did not raise your voice to reason with them. You will tell me that it is your tragedy which incited them to murder. By murdering, they debased that tragedy, they betrayed it.”

    Zionist terrorist attacks against Palestinians and others, which intensified between 1945 and 1949, including the kidnappings and hanging of British soldiers in 1947, were accomplished for political purposes. But the Wiesel Doctrine requires that Palestine never be understood in political terms. In 2003 Pope John Paul II proposed that “what the Middle East needs is bridges, not walls.” Wiesel’s attack immediately followed: “From the leader of one of the largest and most important religions in the world, I expected something very different, namely a statement condemning terror and the killing of innocents, without mixing in political considerations and above all comparing these things to a work of pure self-defense. To politicize terrorism like that is wrong.” (The New York Times, 11/17/2003) Wiesel no doubt associates the political in this context with the culpable exercise of power by the powerful against the powerless. This kind of thing, Wiesel seems to concur, would require action in resistance, including the exercise of counterpower by the oppressed. But for Wiesel, Isreal must never be blamed, nor must any actions, such as boycott, sanctions and divestment, much less forceful resistance by Palestinians, be taken against Israeli power. Hence, Israeli policy must not be seen as political. At most, Wiesel permits a moral response, typically expressed as “sorrow” and never requiring one to get off his political ass. Consistency was never this gasbag’s forte.

    Mirror, Mirror On the Wall, Who is the Zionest of Them All? Wiesel As Co-Recipient of Requited Self Love

    Wiesel moved to New York in 1955, where he continued to work as a correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ah’ronot. In was then that he set upon the task of establishing himself as the self-appointed spokesperson for all holocaust victims and survivors (the latter group treated erroneously by Wiesel as monolithic and homogenous). In 1956 he was struck by a taxi near Times Square. Given to grandiose self-description by nature, he later claimed: “I flew an entire block. I was hit at 45th Street and the ambulance picked me up at 44th. It sounds crazy. But I was totally messed up.” (NYT, March 5, 1997) The story is preposterous, but Wiesel has covered himself: “Some events do take place but are not true; others are true although they never occurred.” (Legends of Our Time, viii.) Telling a “true lie” in the name of making a legend of oneself is, as one says nowadays, “no problem” for Wiesel.

    In this story Wiesel appears to possess superhuman powers, much like a cartoon Superhero. He’s hit by a taxi and bo-o-o-oing! he flies through the air, landing a city block away. Wiesel’s megalomania takes many forms. He has criticized every notable holocaust survivor/commentator, notably the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, as less authentic and profound than he. His case is characteristically self serving. Rival commentators are rejected on the grounds that they are among “the intellectuals”. What’s wrong with that? Intellectuals analyze, they bring intellectual discourse to bear on our comprehension of the holocaust. But Wiesel insists that the holocaust is a sacred and spiritual phenomenon, and hence a mystery. As such it transcends mundane, normal boundaries of language and conceptualization. It’s like A Kantian noumenon – it’s “out there” but none of our human categories are remotely adequate to capturing its reality. The best we can do is to exhibit the kind of doleful, agonized visage Wiesel sports 24/7. If someone points to our countenance and asks “What’s that?”, we just say “sorrow”.

    Note that this puts Wiesel beyond challenge. Critical analysis is expressed in language, and is analytical in form. But language and analysis are foreign to the mystical nature of Jewish suffering. As Wittgenstein once remarked, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” That suits Wiesel just fine. Like Israel, Wiesel is unassailable.

    The fact is that many Jewish liberals have ingested and digested this political serving. Little wonder that they cannot be counted on to call a Zionist spade a spade. But strong evidence indicates that this may be changing. As Israeli Jews are moving ever rightward, young American Jews are moving in the opposite direction. Let’s have a look at this.

    Decline of Nationalist Zionism Among Young American Jews

    There is ample evidence that younger American Jews are decreasingly identifying with the Zionist State. A number of independent studies indicate that younger Jews are less likely to experience criticism of Israel as an assault on their identity. Peter Beinart has recently discussed a number of important studies confirming younger Jews’ indifference to criticism of Israel. His essay and book (2) also issue a call to moral arms to American Jews.

    Several surveys have revealed, as Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College and and Ari Kelman of the University of California at Davis report, that “non-Orthodox younger Jews, on the whole, feel much less attached to Israel than their elders,” with many professing “a near-total absence of positive feelings.” Although the majority of American Jews of all ages continue to identify as “pro-Israel,” those under 35 are less likely to identify as “Zionist.” Over 40% of American Jews under 35 believe that “Israel occupies land belonging to someone else,” and over 30% report sometimes feeling “ashamed” of Israel’s actions. A paradigm case is the 2008 rejection by the student senate at Brandeis University -the only nonsectarian Jewish sponsored university in America- of a resolution commemorating the sixtieth anniversity of the Jewish State. (3)

    This development has been troubling prominent members of the Jewish establishment since the mid-1990s. In 2003 several of them commissioned the pollster Frank Luntz to find out what younger Jews thought about Israel. The underlying aim of the poll was to explain why Jewish college students are not on the whole inclined to defend Israel against campus critics.

    Luntz’s findings were distressing to his employers. “Six times we have brought Jewish youth together as a group to talk about their Jewishness and connection to Israel,” he reported, and “Six times the topic of Israel did not come up until it was prompted. Six times these Jewish youth used the word ‘they’ rather than ‘us’ to describe the situation.”

    The attitudes Luntz found most consistently expressed were a resistance to the kind of “group-think” the young Jews saw as suppressing “open and frank” discussion of Israel, a “desperate” desire for peace and, in some cases, empathy with the plight of the Palestinians. The students come across as broadly “liberal” in the sense in which American Jews have always been perceived as liberal. The “trouble” with these students was that their liberalism is traditionally Jewish, and consistent: if Israeli policy contravenes basic canons of liberalism, then so much the worse for Israeli policy.

    Among American Jews there are plenty of liberals and plenty of Zionists. What these studies indicate is that these two groups share fewer and fewer members. Younger Jewish Zionists are decreasingly likely to be liberal, and younger Jewish liberals decreasingly likely to be Zionists. This portends the American Jewish establishment’s further movement to the right. As Beinart observes, “As secular Jews drift away from America’s Zionist institutions, their orthodox counterparts will likely step into the breach.” Thus, the distance between largely secular American Jews and the Zionist establishment is likely to widen. But this will weaken the political power of the Israel lobby -inextricably linked, of course, to the Jewish establishment- only if American Jews as a whole are prepared to announce unambiguously their antipathy to their soi disant representatives. The political and moral responsibility this places on American Jewish liberals cannot be overestimated.

    Intensification of Zionist Nationalism in Israel

    American Jewish liberals and Zionism in Israel are moving in opposite directions. While the studies mentioned above indicate that a decreasing percentage of American Jews will feel sympathetic attachment to Israeli Zionism, some of the most unsavory forms of Zionism are growing in Israel.

    A 2008 survey reported in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ah’ronot found that 40 percent of Jewish Israelis would deny the vote to Arab Israelis. More recent surveys found 56 percent of Jewish Israeli high school students sharing this sentiment. A survey conducted by Professor Camil Fuchs from the Statistics Department of Tel Aviv University found that half of Israeli teens don’t want Arab students in their class. Most Israeli teens aged fifteen to eighteen don’t think Arabs enjoy equal rights in Israel, and most of those don’t think Arabs deserve equal rights. The survey also revealed that 96 percent of the respondents want Israel to be a Jewish and democratic state, but 27 percent believe that those who object should be tried in court, and 41 percent support stripping them of their citizenship. In answer to a question whether they would be willing to learn in a classroom with one or more students with special needs, 32 percent answered in the negative. When the question was asked regarding Arab students, 50 percent of respondents answered in the negative. In addition, 23 percent said that they wouldn’t want gays or lesbians in their class.

    These findings are disturbingly consistent with the Netanyahu coalition government’s reflection of the worst elements among contemporary Israelis: the growing extreme-Orthodox population, the increasingly radical settler movement, which has come to occupy an increasing percentage of both the Israeli political establishment and the army, and the conspicuously anti-Arab Russian immigrant community.

    Netanyahu himself is a Palestinian-State denier. In his 1993 book A Place Among the Nations he explicitly repudiates the notion of a Palestinian State. Like Golda Meier he denies that there are Palestinians, and he argues that to support Palestinian statehood is equivalent to endorsing…. you guessed it, Nazism! His Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman would revoke the citizenship of Israeli Arabs who refuse to swear loyalty to the Jewish State, deny citizenship to Arab nationals of other countries who marry Arab citizens of Israel, execute Arab Knesset members who meet with Hamas representatives and imprison Arabs who dare to publicly mourn on Israeli Independence Day. Holy Moses.

    Beinart’s reflections on these abominations are a lamentation of the refusal of the “leading institutions of American Jewry” to openly challenge Israel’s treatment of its Arab citizens. (The NYR essay was written three weeks before, and published two weeks after, the May 31 attack on the Mavi Marmara.) And Beinart is no one-stater. “Saving liberal Zionism in the United States,” he writes, “so that American Jews can help save liberal Zionism in Israel, is the great American Jewish challenge of our age.”

    Bienart sees that as an American Jew he bears a special responsibility to act on the words, hypocritically penned by Elie Wiesel, cited at the head of this article: “We must always take sides…. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.” I say he’s right.

    Alan Nasser is professor emeritus of Political Economy at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. His book The “New Normal”: Persistent Austerity, Declining Democracy and the Globalization of Resistance is forthcoming in 2013. His website/blogsite is http://www.alannasser.wordpress.com. He can be reached at [email protected].

    (1) AS is a three-volume collection of the most representative of Wiesel’s lectures, articles, op-eds, letters, etc.)

    (2) See “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment”, The New York Review, June 10, 2010, further developed in his book The Crisis of Zionism, Henry Holt, 2012.

    (3) See Cohen and Kelman’s “Beyond Distancing: Young Adult American Jews and Their Alienation from Israel” at http://www.acbp.net/About/PDF/Beyond%20Distancing.pdf.

  64. LA Dude says:
    @Philip Giraldi

    Philip – Why do you refer to Tel Aviv as the locus of Israel’s decision-making? The national governmental institutions of Israel are based in Jerusalem.

    How do you figure that U.S. aid to Israel is “bankrupting my country”? Total U.S. federal expenditures for 2014 are projected to be around $3.7 trillion. Total U.S. foreign aid worldwide is about $37 billion, of which aid to Israel comprises approx. 8%.

    And it would seem like quite a stretch to finger Israel as the primary cause of all U.S. military expenditures across the region. Why ignore Oil, Islamism, and Arab tribalism? Look up Sayyid Qutb, the ideological godfather of Islamism in the Arab World. Israel was not the catalyst of his political project now carried on by ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, etc.. Also, look up what Iran calls “The Great Satan” (hint: it is not Israel).

    • Replies: @Philip Giraldi
    , @tadzio308
  65. KA says:
    @LA Dude

    Do you have problem with that?

    • Replies: @LA Dude
  66. KA says:

    Is Giraldi more vitriolic than Wiesel ? Don’t think so. Is he more reliable? Absolutely? Is Giraldi more for justice and truth than Wiesel is ? Always .
    Does Wiesel promote war nd violence instead of clear thinking and honest arbitration ?

    Yes.No doubt.

    Here the war monger Wiesel ” Apart from his support for its dissidents Wiesel is a long-standing super-hawk on Iran, which he confirmed immediately following the publication of his appeal. In a quasi-postscript in the form of an interview he avowed that he would not shed a tear “if he heard that Ahmadinejad was assassinated” and, calling him “a pathological danger to world peace,” he averred that Iran’s President “intends to destroy Israel and bring disaster to the entire world.” Wiesel also seized the occasion to blast the Goldstone Report as “a crime against the Jewish people.”

    From counterpunch by
    Arno J Mayer , emeritus professor of history at Princeton University. He is the author of The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions.and Plowshares Into Swords: From Zionism to Israel (Verso).

    He also supported war against Iraq.

  67. @LA Dude

    LA Dude – Tel Aviv is the internationally accepted capital of Israel. Jerusalem, as contested ground, is not recognized by anyone. The wars on borrowed money in the Middle East and Asia against Islamic regimes are what is contributing greatly to the bankrupting of the US, though the other deficits by Bush and Obama have also contributed greatly to it. The decisive factor in the US war in Iraq was Israel and it is also a major factor in Syria and the only real factor against Iran. Yes, the US has other interests in the region but Israel is the number one concern for US policymakers due to the effectiveness of the Israel Lobby. The US should only involve itself in local politics if there is a vital interest at stake. Israel is a fraudulent vital interest.

    • Replies: @LA Dude
  68. TR says: • Website
    @ISmellBagels

    In the depths of their black evil hearts, the Zionists who are slaughtering children in Gaza
    know they are committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansing and are busy spouting a string of transparent lies in the mistaken belief that the world will excuse their conduct. The world will NOT forgive the Zionists for the 2,000 innocent men, women and children that Israel has butchered. The entire world, except for the Jewish controlled American government, is demanding justice for the Palestinians, and not just for the current horrors Israel is inflicting on the innocent Palestinian victims in the Zionist occupied territories. Israel must be disarmed (particularly it’s nuclear arsenal), an arms embargo imposed on Israel and U.N. troops stationed on the 1967 borders or the carnage will never end.

  69. William says:
    @Don Nash

    Kudos to Don Nash. I think it was Sen. Fulbright who said many years ago that congress is Israeli occupied territory. More recently, Chuck Hagel said that congress was afraid of Israel. That was before he was nominated to be Sec. of Defense. He was quickly forced to retract and deny those words; otherwise his nomination would never be approved by the U.S. Senate. I was greatly disappointed in Mr. Hagel, but he would never have become Sec. of Defense if he had not retracted those words. Courage on the battle field is common, but moral courage is extremely rare. (those are not my words, but I can’t remember who said them or where I got them from, but I thoroughly agree with them).

  70. tadzio308 says:
    @LA Dude

    The United States does not recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. It recognizes Tel Aviv. Mr. Giraldi is an American. If you are American why would you do differently? If you are and do I encourage you to move to the land of your loyalty. I wish you well there but you no longer belong here.

    • Replies: @LA Dude
  71. retired says:
    @Philip Giraldi

    I’m opposed to that, but hoping you can turn your verbiage into action and maybe donate a truck full of cement or so Gaza’s rebuilding effort rather than cluck from the sidelines.

  72. Anonymous • Disclaimer says:

    It is time to stop believing the US and Israel are two different countries. Israel is used to launder US tax dollars back to US politicians in exchange for slaughtering muslims

  73. LA Dude says:
    @Philip Giraldi

    Philip – Thanks for clarifying. It seems that perhaps your primary foreign policy concern for the US is our military expenditures in the region. I suppose this might explain why you are currently quiet about the Syrian Civil War (approx. 180,000 dead so far), ISIS’ murderous rampage, etc.

    I understand the US’ diplomatic position on Jerusalem, but referring to the source of animate Israeli government action as Tel Aviv seems gratuitous (e.g. “the Tel Aviv propaganda mill”). When Kerry goes to meet Israeli officials in Jerusalem, does he tell his driver that he will be met by them in Tel Aviv?

    Lastly, could you please briefly summarize your belief about Israel being “the decisive factor in the US war in Iraq”? This seems to be an uncommon point of view even among those who always opposed the war in Iraq.

    Thanks.

  74. LA Dude says:
    @tadzio308

    See above for my comment to Philip Giraldi about Tel Aviv vs. Jerusalem.

    Your suggestion that, as a private US citizen, having a disagreement with official US policy is reason to expatriate is lame, and anti-democratic. Official US policy currently treats Israel as an ally and designates Hamas as a terrorist organization. If you are American and disagree with such policy positions, I guess you should also expatriate? Anybody who disagrees with official government policy should expatriate! Heh.

    I understand that you are not a fan of Israel, to say the least, but you need to think harder.

  75. LA Dude says:
    @KA

    Do you have problem with that?

    I have a problem understanding your disproportionate silence concerning the slaughters taking place in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Sudan, etc. — *especially* if you are a Muslim. Can you please explain?

    • Replies: @KA
    , @KA
  76. geokat62 says:

    “Lastly, could you please briefly summarize your belief about Israel being “the decisive factor in the US war in Iraq”? This seems to be an uncommon point of view even among those who always opposed the war in Iraq.”

    Mearsheimer and Walt in Ch 8 of their book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy provide the incriminating evidence that the Iraq war was pushed by the Lobby to enhance Israel’s security:
    http://mailstar.net/iraq-war.html

    Israel’s enthusiasm for war eventually led some of its allies in America to tell Israeli officials to damp down their hawkish rhetoric, lest the war look like it was being fought for Israel. In the fall of 2002, for example, a group of American political consultants known as the Israel Project circulated a six-page memorandum to key Israelis and pro-Israel leaders in the United States. The memo was titled “Talking about Iraq” and was intended as a guide for public statements about the war. “If your goal is regime change, you must be much more careful with your language because of the potential backlash. You do not want Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel rather than to protect America.”

  77. Brown killing brown?
    That’s just how things go down.
    Who cares? The world keeps going ’round.

    Brown killed by white?
    That can never be alright!
    Feel ashamed! Somehow you caused this plight.

  78. geokat62 says:

    “I have a problem understanding your disproportionate silence concerning the slaughters taking place in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Sudan, etc. — *especially* if you are a Muslim.”

    I’m surprised a Zionist would bring this topic up! Along with the Iraq war, these slaughters are all part of the master plan (see Clean Break and Oded Yinon Plan) of remaking the ME to make the jungle safer for the villa.

  79. A major problem of the Middle East is that the ethnocentric revenge religions endemic to the areas contested for sole occupation by ethnic cleansers, as specified by their religious texts, fuel the catastrophes they visit upon one another. It’s too bad that they mutually drive out and persecute those who follow the one who commanded, “Love your enemy.” That creed would be their only hope.

    It’s sick and destructive for those of us in America to support or profit in any way from all this murder half a world away. How tragic that absolutely the wrong lessons have been learned from the Holocaust, most tragically by those who invoke its horrors the most, as justifications for revenge and murder without limit. If nothing has been learned, the six million have died for nothing – not to mention the other millions of victims who were neither the first nor the last to die for every bad reason made up by incompetent or insane self-aggrandizing elites.

    The diaspora of Jews was an important contributing impetus for converting western humanity to a consensus for classical liberal freedoms for individuals. That the restoration of Zion should become the vehicle for its antithesis is a terrible betrayal of those long nurtured Jewish sensibilities, a rejection of Jewish values. Israel would not be the first country to reject its own peoples’ great cultural heritage for the pottage of an extreme nationalism and the fatal illness of ethnic cleansing.

  80. KA says:
    @LA Dude

    Did the Zionist start the wars in Iraq and did the Zionist demand the continuation of the wars into Iran,Syria,Libya,Yemen,and Lebanon so that in addition to fulfilling the dreams of Michael Ledeen (2002) https://medium.com/@DanSanchezV/the-cauldron-doctrine-931bf65bd5e9 ,
    meeting the orders (2000AD) of thr following-James Colbert, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
    Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Johns Hopkins University/SAIS
    Douglas Feith, Feith and Zell Associates
    Robert Loewenberg, President, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies
    Jonathan Torop, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
    David Wurmser, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies
    Meyrav Wurmser, Johns Hopkins University
    (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1438.htm)
    ,following the dictates of PNAC (1996AD) ,carrying out blakanization plan of Yoded Yinon( 1982 )http://www.monabaker.com/pMachine/more.php?id=A2298_0_1_0_M
    ,serving the
    desire of the ” Sunshine Warrior ” Wolfowitz ( planned from 1979 ) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/22/magazine/the-sunshine-warrior.html,
    own the land between Egypt and Euphrates ( Herzl 1900 and Rabbi Fishmann 1947 to UN – http://endtimedeception.org/books/The%20Hidden%20History%20of%20Zionism.pdf)-----

    the Zionist would use the chaos in Middle East to blame the victims for focussing too much on Palestine ?

    The concept of original sin never fully allied or jelled with my belief . But here it does. Israel was the reason of Iraq war . Israel is the reason of the current chaos . ( The Transparent Cabal by Stephen Sniegoski . Numerous assertions and quotes from — Wesley Clark , Colin Powell, Philip Zelikow and a number of figures from European political parties and government, US intelligence, and military )

    • Replies: @KA
    , @LA Dude
  81. KA says:
    @KA

    Also Thomas Friedman , Joe Klein , Novak, Joe Sorbonne
    (

  82. @NB:
    I couldn’t find any Ilsa the She wolf meme makers, but this one will do nicely:

    http://www.quickmeme.com/p/3vynyz

  83. LA Dude says:
    @KA

    KA – Since you ducked my question, I will repeat: where is your outrage over the Muslim-on-Muslim slaughters in the Middle East? To date, approximately 180,000 Arabs have died in the current Syrian Civil War alone — this dramatically eclipses the loss of life in Gaza. If your key interest is the well-being of those living in the Middle East, why have you spilled a hugely disproportionate amount of digital ink on the war in Gaza?

    KA – In the West, we “kufr” are very accustomed to engaging in a style of communication called ‘rational discourse’. This is a form of discussion relying on facts and logic that deals with questions and assertions on their own merits rather than resorting to evasion (i.e. ignoring arguments), name calling, or emotional appeals. You have posted countless external links here to anti-Israel sources, but they are superfluous since Unz.com already contains huge volumes of the same type of content (i.e. the arguments in your hyper-linked sources can already be found on this website).

    Why don’t you try to engage in a direct exchange of ideas without using the quotes of other people as crutches or trying to bury me in links to other sources? (By the way, there are also plenty of links that can be referenced in support of pro-Israel views — perhaps you are unaware of this if you still reside in a Muslim autocracy.)

    Extra Question: Do you believe that Muslim Arabs bear principle moral responsibility when they kill each other (whether Sunni or Shia) and when they kill non-Muslim civilians? Alternatively, do you believe that Israel bears principal moral responsibility in these cases?

  84. Gloop says:
    @Philip Giraldi

    Giraldi –

    You’re obsessed with Israel. You write about almost nothing else. Perhaps you’re the paid liar. Whose payroll are you on? Whom do you represent? The same group that “doesn’t take a position on the Holocaust”? You conspicuously dodged that point. What you wrote is a moral obscenity that casts a shadow over everything you write where Jews and Israel are concerned.

    The bankrupting of the USA comes not from foreign entanglements. Obama has added seven trillion to the debt, and it didn’t come from starting wars. Like I said, you’re the one who sounds like a paid liar, a hack who calls others hacks and scribbles hyperbole intended to mislead and enrage.

    When it comes to Israeli “war crimes”, you just parrot what others with the same agenda have said. And condemning every single person in Congress for supporting Israel betrays your ignorance about their constituents. These people didn’t malign Israel before they were elected and suddenly discover a love for the Jewish state once in government. You’re in denial about how pro-Israel millions of their constituents are. It’s not like all the people who voted for them want to lynch them for their pro-Israel activities. Your smears suggest there’s a disconnect between every single one of these representatives and their constituents but you offer no proof that one exists. You simply hate Israel so much that you can’t believe anyone could possibly have a positive view of it unless they were bribed.

    I know you didn’t coin the term “Holocaust industry” but you parrot it with glee, much like your other dubious motifs. And you yourself are a weasel for pretending you were only referring to “synagogue owners”. You said “ethno-religious group” and you emphasized its wealth. You knew exactly what you were saying and implying.

    You know absolutely nothing about what it’s like to be an ordinary Israeli, especially the ones who live next to Gaza and its death-squad conveying tunnels. You indict them for electing a hard liner as if that’s a sign of their expansionist bloodlust, when in fact they’re surrounded by so much hostility and barbarism (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran sponsoring all the above, ISIS not too far away, Morsi and the Brotherhood in power until recently), and they perceive a global wave of antisemitism, particularly in Europe, as well as Obama’s seeming retreat from the region (and icy attitude towards Israel), that it’s not surprising a majority of them would opt for a strong leader. You operate with the usual playbook of the anti-Israel mob: remove all geopolitical context, bash Israel, and ignore her genocidal enemies.

    You’re not too thoughtful an analyst if you think any rightward swing within Israel simply arose in a vacuum, absent the slightest connection to developments outside the country. Ah, but a corrosive rabble rouser like you ain’t in the business of thoughtful consideration where Israel is concerned. It’s easier to traffic in paranoid, splenetic outbursts.

    • Replies: @LA Dude
  85. LA Dude says:

    To be fair, Giraldi’s PhD is apparently in Modern History, so perhaps he is unaware that Islam’s long and vicious march predates the Modern Era?

    • Replies: @Gilles
  86. LA Dude says:
    @Gloop

    You’re obsessed with Israel. You write about almost nothing else.

    Giraldi apparently spent a significant amount of time working in the Middle East — presumably among Arab diplomats and functionaries — so perhaps he drank the Kool-Aid that Israel is the main source of their problems. It is well known that the Arab autocracies focus on Israel, to the neglect of their own massive homegrown problems, in order to deflect Arab public attention away from their own failings and to avoid feeling ashamed about them. Giraldi might have absorbed this unhealthy Israel obsession by osmosis without critically examining it as a self-aware observer. I wonder if Giraldi is fluent in Arabic.

    • Replies: @Power Child
  87. @LA Dude

    WHAT?! Are you saying that some of the problems Arab Muslims face might not be the fault of white Israelis?!?! That Arab Muslim leaders might from time to time eschew the immediate practical interests of their dire-straits constituents in favor of ideological and political grandstanding on the international stage?! That shame and honor might be more important modes of operation in these countries than rational discourse?? Impossible!

  88. Gilles says:
    @LA Dude

    To be fair, Giraldi’s PhD is apparently in Modern History, so perhaps he is unaware that Islam’s long and vicious march predates the Modern Era?

    But I’m certain that his studies in Modern History are sufficient to be aware of Political Zionism’s current long and vicious march towards Eretz Yisrael in this Modern Era.

    -G

    • Replies: @KA
  89. geokat62 says:

    Boy, it looks like someone has decided to release the attack dogs… a sure sign you’re having an annoying impact on their hasbara campaign. Keep up the good work, Phil!

    • Replies: @Philip Giraldi
  90. @geokat62

    Yeah, I noticed. Thanks geokat. I wonder what their actual names are and where they are writing from?

    • Replies: @LA Dude
  91. geokat62 says:

    “A lobby is like a night flower: it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.” – STEVEN ROSEN

    This flower has been thriving in the dark for decades. We finally have some courageous people – Mearsheimer & Walt, Justin Raimondo, Paul Craig Roberts, Ray McGovern, Paul, Findley, Alison Weir and Phil Giraldi – who dare to expose it to a little sunlight and the Israel Firsters are all over them!

    I say, kudos to them for their yeoman efforts!

  92. Gloop says:

    Notice how Giraldi and his acolytes fail to respond like intelligent people. Their only recourse is to make it personal, vomit the usual debate-ending words like “hasbara”, and so on.

    Speculating about who and where I am (for whatever the reason) is an admission of failure, and perhaps a reflection of a vindictive mindset consistent with the points I’ve made. Almost sounds like someone wants to silence me!

    Still taking “no position” on the Holocaust, by the way? By convention, that word tends to be capitalized, except of course by those who intend disrespect.

    • Replies: @Anonymous
  93. KA says:

    Video Link
    Carl Bernstein ” Jewish NeoCon Responible for Iraq war

    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/26/journalist-carl-bernstein-tells-joe-scarborough-jewish-neocons-responsible-in-part-for-iraq-war/. Responding to what many would consider a remark offensive to Jews, Scarborough chimed in, even saying that Bernstein can stand accused of exhibiting symptoms of “Bush Derangement Syndrome.”

  94. Anonymous • Disclaimer says:
    @Gloop

    Then let me wish you a capital Happy Holocaust! My position is that the holocaust was pretty cool. It nearly fixed the Problem in Europe and it provides decent gentile-Americans with a model for solving their own Problem. Another Holocaust is coming and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  95. geokat62 says:

    “By sending vast amounts of military aid to Israel, members of the U.S. Congress, President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel have aided and abetted the commission of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity by Israeli officials and commanders in Gaza.”- Marjorie Cohn, Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild.

    There are truly exceptional humanitarians on this planet… and I consider Marjorie Cohn one of them.

    @Gloop regarding the Shoah, I recently saw someone carrying a poster at a rally that read “I’m the child of Holocaust survivors and they taught me that never again meant for everyone.”

    I condemn the perpetration of the Holocaust against the Jewish people. Do you condemn the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people? And I expect you to “respond like an intelligent person.”

  96. “Also Thomas Friedman , Joe Klein , Novak, Joe Sorbonne”

    Novak converted to Catholicism.

    • Replies: @KA
  97. KA says:
    @Fran Macadam

    I was not referring to the faith. I mentioned these names who had also swuarely blamed the neocon cabal ( Mostly Jewish ) for the Iraq war.

  98. LA Dude says:
    @Philip Giraldi

    I wonder what their actual names are and where they are writing from?

    I wonder what the names of your CNI donors are and where they are donating from.

  99. buddyc.22 says:

    Excellent article, Phil. Always enjoy reading your writings.

    In regard to Rand Paul and his recent expressed support of Israel, he appears to have presidential aspirations, and as such, must pay homage to the Israel cult in order to have any realistic chance of getting into the White House. AIPAC and other organs of the Israel Lobby have full control of who gets into the White House.

  100. fnn says:

    BTW, the accepted Guernica story is a Communist myth:

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/6004986/Picassos_Guernica__the_canvas_fraud_that_reflects_the_lie_it_proclaims/

    The truth about Guernica, which the painting distorts, was that this “innocent market town” was actually a divisional headquarters, with three arms factories, two Republican battalions in garrison and 23 more attempting to retreat through it. Any Nationalist commander who had not attacked it would have deserved to face a court martial.

    So far from the 1,654 dead invented by the NKVD propaganda machine, the number killed was 250 – far less than one night’s death toll for the Cheka execution squads in Madrid. The Republicans, who had air superiority in the early days of the war, pioneered aerial bombardment of towns. Guernica is just part of the tissue of lies – including Robert Capa’s photograph of a militiaman’s death and Laurie Lee’s false claim to have fought in the International Brigades – that sustains the myth of Red Spain. It is appropriate that a copy of Guernica hangs in the United Nations chamber – the leading forum of liars, tyrants and genocides in the world.

    • Replies: @Peter Grafström
  101. @fnn

    Moreover 80% of the damage to the civilian buildings was caused by the ‘defenders’ using petrol to set fire and by exploding dynamite in the sewers. Hardly any evidence for aerial bombardment other than in the outskirts and the city was a strategically important node.
    Further Picassos painting was made before the concerned events.
    On the other hand the republicans really bombed civilians in cities without strategic importance.
    George Orwell was influenced by his observations of the propagandawar.

  102. Anonymous [AKA "Angella"] says:

    I have read your post. your post is filled with the unique and important information which i am searching for. Your blog is one of the best sites i have visited it. The style of your website of posting article is perfect for me. I have glad to visit it. Thanks for posting. Your all information is very helpful for me. In regard to Rand Paul and his recent expressed support of Israel. Thanks.

  103. Lea says:
    @Power Child

    Americans should be surely ashamed for allowing their government to spend their money on wars for other countries that are no threat to Americans. So sad that Israel owns America. But that has always been the plan. Just take a look at the vaccine pushers and those who run the universities. And Americans just go along with it all, their own destruction and a threat to the entire world, due to their apathy, ignorance and indoctrination. Can Americans stop this run away government of theirs? Not if they rely on the farce called elections.

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