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Disaster in the Making
by Charley Reese

You can observe three important things simultaneously in the Middle East: One, Israel’s total disregard for the lives and property of the Arab people; two, the effectiveness of the Israeli propaganda machine; and three, the utterly craven support for Israel by the U.S. government.

A fourth thing, if you can stand to watch television news, is how casually the talking faces dispense falsehoods because of their ignorance, which is understandable. Middle East history is too complex for a fly-in TV star to avoid the trap of failing to separate fact from propaganda.

Hezbollah, for example, raided an Israeli military outpost on what Hezbollah considers the Lebanese side of the border. Hezbollah kidnapped two soldiers. It did not fire any rockets at Israel as several television people have said – mimicking, of course, Israeli propaganda.

Instead of sending a special-forces team or setting up negotiations for a prisoner exchange, Israel launched an all-out attack, knocking out bridges, roads, airports and fuel facilities, and doing enormous damage to civilians. Only then did Hezbollah respond with rockets, as it certainly had a right to do. Israeli journalists have pointed out that Israel has been planning for years to destroy Hezbollah and is using the raid as an excuse.

The Israelis did the same thing in Gaza. When a handful of militants kidnapped one soldier, what did the Israelis do? They destroyed the power plant, bridges and all the government facilities in Gaza. Once again, they are using the kidnapping as an excuse to do what they had planned to do anyway – destroy Hamas and the ability of the Palestinian people to govern themselves. It takes an enormous amount of chutzpah to destroy the Palestinian government and then demand that it control the militants. “With what?” American reporters ought to be asking the Israelis.

By the way, the Israelis never ended their occupation of Gaza. They forced settlers to withdraw because it was too much trouble to guard them. But they retained control of Gaza. Nobody can go in or out without Israeli permission. The airport is closed. They cut off the tax money that is paid by Palestinians and rightfully should have gone to the Palestinian Authority. In other words, they turned Gaza, already one of the most densely populated areas in the world, into a Middle East version of the Warsaw Ghetto. And they regularly bombed it or sprayed it with artillery.

Yet, so effective is Israeli propaganda and so ineffective is American news coverage, Israel is once again playing the poor victim. Gee, the Israelis tell the American media, we hate to destroy Lebanon – even as their planes and artillery continue to do just that – but we can’t stand living under a rain of terrorist rockets.

Well, obviously, they have not been. Hezbollah only fires its Katyusha rockets (a short-range, unguided missile with a 50-pound conventional warhead) in response to Israel’s violation of Lebanon’s borders, which it routinely does with its fighter planes. Even now, what Hezbollah is firing can hardly be called a “rain.” It’s more like a scattered shower. As for the “thousands” of rockets Hezbollah allegedly has, that number comes from the Israeli government. It may or may not be accurate.

Like President Bush, the Israelis offer no evidence. Bush, who revealed himself inadvertently in St. Petersburg, Russia, as the arrogant, foul-mouthed slob he is, blames Syria and Iran for Hezbollah but offers no evidence whatsoever. If Hezbollah had thousands of rockets, you’d think it wouldn’t be so sparing in the use of them.

One reason Lebanon never disarmed Hezbollah is because its members are considered heroes by the Lebanese Shi’ites. They were the ones who made Israel’s occupation of Lebanon so costly that the Israeli people demanded that it be ended. They also provide a wide range of welfare services to the Lebanese people, and they are not terrorists. The largest terrorist organization in the Middle East is the state of Israel, which kills civilians by the hundreds.

What you are witnessing is a disaster in the making – not only for Lebanon, which will require 50 years to recover, but for the United States, which stands exposed once again as a prejudiced hypocrite and an accessory to Israel’s war crimes.

I Was Israel’s Dupe

By TOM HAYDEN

Alexander Cockburn writes: Twenty four years ago Ariel Sharon’s artillerymen bombarded Beirut, causing huge terrible civilian casualties, just as Israel’s bombs are doing today. The destruction was so savage that NYT’s Beirut correspondent Thomas Friedman complained bitterly in an indiscreet in-house memo when his editors axed the word “indiscriminate� which Friedman had used to describe the bombing. I published that internal memo in the Village Voice and Friedman thought he was going to lose his job. Standing next to those Israeli gunners and cheering them on were Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, eager to promote Hayden’s political career in California. It was one of the most disgusting political spectacles of the 1980s and I wrote angrily that “in the halls of the National Gallery in Washington DC there are 54 portraits of Benedict Arnold. None look alike. All resemble Tom Hayden.� Now, amid another Israeli onslaught Hayden makes amends, with a mea culpa for that trip and an important glimpse of how what’s loosely called “the lobby� really works, when it comes to electing its chosen politicians.

Twenty-five years ago I stared into the eyes of Michael Berman, chief operative for his congressman-brother, Howard Berman. I was a neophyte running for the California Assembly in a district that the Bermans claimed belonged to them.

“I represent the Israeli defense forces,� Michael said. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. Michael seemed to imagine himself the gatekeeper protecting Los Angeles’ Westside for Israel’s political interests, and those of the famous Berman-Waxman machine. Since Jews represented one-third of the Democratic district’s primary voters, Berman held a balance of power.

All that year I tried to navigate the district’s Jewish politics. The solid historical liberalism of the Westside was a favorable factor, as was the strong support of many Jewish community leaders. But the community was moving in a more conservative direction. Some were infuriated at my sponsorship of Santa Monica’s tough rent control ordinance. Many in the organized community were suspicious of the New Left for becoming Palestinian sympathizers after the Six Day War; they would become today’s neoconservatives.

I had traveled to Israel in a generally supportive capacity, meeting officials from all parties, studying energy projects, befriending peace advocates like the writer Amos Oz. I also met with Palestinians and commented favorably on the works of Edward Said. As a result, a Berman ally prepared an anti-Hayden dossier in an attempt to discredit my candidacy with the Democratic leadership in the California state capital.

This led to the deli lunch with Michael Berman. He and his brother were privately leaning toward an upcoming young prosecutor named Adam Schiff, who later became the congressman from Pasadena. But they calculated that Schiff couldn’t win without name recognition, so they were considering “renting� me the Assembly seat, Berman said. But there was one condition: that I always be a “good friend of Israel.�

This wasn’t a particular problem at the time. Since the 1970s I had favored some sort of two-state solution. I felt close to the local Jewish activists who descended from the labor movement and participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements. I wanted to take up the cause of the aging Holocaust survivors against the global insurance companies that had plundered their assets.

While I believed the Palestinians had a right to self-determination, I didn’t share the animus of some on the American left who questioned Israel’s very legitimacy. I was more inclined toward the politics of Israel’s Peace Now and those Palestinian nationalists and human rights activists who accepted Israel’s pre-1967 borders as a reality to accommodate. I disliked the apocalyptic visions of the Israeli settlers I had met, and thought that even hard-line Palestinians would grudgingly accept a genuine peace initiative.

I can offer my real-life experience to the present discussion about the existence and power of an “Israel lobby.� It is not as monolithic as some argue, but it is far more than just another interest group in a pluralist political world. In recognizing its diversity, distinctions must be drawn between voters and elites, between Reform and Orthodox tendencies, between the less observant and the more observant. During my ultimate 18 years in office, I received most of my Jewish support from the ranks of the liberal and less observant voters. But I also received support from conservative Jews who saw themselves as excluded by a Jewish (and Democratic) establishment.

However, all these rank-and-file constituencies were attuned to the question of Israel, even in local and state elections, and would never vote for a candidate perceived as anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian. I had to be certified “kosher,� not once but over and over again.

The certifiers were the elites, beginning with rabbis and heads of the multiple mainstream Jewish organizations, especially each city’s Jewish Federation. An important vetting role was held as well by the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), a group closely associated with official parties in Israel. When necessary, Israeli ambassadors, counsels general and other officials would intervene with statements declaring someone a “friend of Israel.�

In my case, a key to the “friendship issue� was the Los Angeles-based counsel general Benjamin Navon. Though politics drew us together, our personal friendship was genuine enough. I think that Benny, as he was called, wanted to pull me and my then-wife, Jane Fonda, into a pro-Israel stance, but he himself was an old-school labor/social democrat who personally believed in a negotiated political settlement. We enjoyed personal and intellectual time together, and I still keep on my bookshelf a wooden sculpture by his wife, of an anguished victim of violence.

The de facto Israeli endorsement would be communicated indirectly, in compliance with laws that prohibit foreign interference in an American election. We would be seen and photographed together in public. Benny would make positive public statements that could be quoted in campaign mailings. As a result, I was being declared “kosher� by the ultimate source, the region’s representative of the state of Israel.

Nevertheless, throughout the spring 1982 campaign I was accused of being a left-wing madman allied to terrorism and communism. The national Democratic leader Walter Mondale commented jokingly during a local visit that I was being described as worse than Lenin. It was a wild ride.

I won the hard-fought primary by 51% to 45%. The Bermans stayed neutral. Willie Brown, Richard Alatorre and the rest of the California Democratic establishment were quietly supportive. I easily won the general election in November.

But that summer I made the mistake of my political career. The Israel Defense Forces invaded Lebanon, and Benny Navon wanted Jane and me to be supportive. It happened that I had visited the contested border in the past, witnessed the shelling of civilian Israeli homes, and interviewed Israeli and Lebanese zealots—crazies, I thought, who were preaching preventive war. I opposed cross-border rocket attacks and naively favored a demilitarized zone.

Ever curious, and aware of my district’s politics, I decided we should go to the Middle East—but only as long as the Israeli “incursion,� as it was delicately called, was limited to the 10-kilometer space near the Lebanese border, as a cushion against rocket fire. Benny Navon assured me that the “incursion� was limited, and would be followed by negotiations and a solution. I also made clear our opposition to the use of any fragmentation bombs in the area, and my ultimate political identification with what Israeli Peace Now would say.

There followed a descent into moral ambiguity and realpolitick that still haunts me today. When we arrived at the Israeli-Lebanon border, the game plan promised by Benny Navon had changed utterly. Instead of a localized border conflict, Israel was invading and occupying all of Lebanon—with us in tow. Its purpose was to destroy militarily the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) haven in Lebanon. This had been Gen. Ariel Sharon’s secret plan all along, and I never will know with certainty whether Benny Navon had been deceived along with everyone else.

For the next few weeks, I found myself defending Israel’s “right� to self-defense on its border, only to realize privately how foolish I was becoming. In the meantime, Israel’s invasion was continuing, with ardent Jewish support in America.

Finally, a close friend and political advisor of mine, Ralph Brave, took me for a walk, looked into my eyes and said: “Tom, you can’t do this. You have to stop.� He was right, and I did. In the California Legislature, I went to work on Holocaust survivor issues while withdrawing from the bind of Israeli-Palestinian politics. When the first Palestinian intifada began, I sensed from experience that the balance of forces had changed, and that the Israeli occupation was finished. Frictions developed between me and some of my Israeli and Jewish friends when I suggested that Israel must make a peace deal immediately or accept a worse deal later.

It is still painful and embarrassing to describe these events of nearly 25 years ago, but with Israel today again bombing Lebanon and Israeli officials bragging about “rolling back the clock by twenty years� and reconfiguring the Middle East, I feel obliged to speak out against history repeating.

How do I read today’s news through the lens of the past?

What I fear is that the “Israeli lobby� is working overtime to influence American public opinion on behalf of Israel’s military effort to “roll back the clock� and “change the map� of the region, going far beyond issues like prisoner exchange.

What I fear is that the progress of the American peace movement against the Iraq war will be diverted and undermined, at least for now, by the entry of Israel from the sidelines into the center of the equation.

What I fear is the rehabilitation of the discredited U.S. neoconservative agenda to ignite a larger war against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. The neoconservatives’ 1996 “Clean Break� memo advocated that Israel “roll back� Lebanon and destabilize Syria in addition to overthrowing Saddam Hussein. An intellectual dean of the neoconservatives, Bernard Lewis, has long advocated the “Lebanonization� of the Middle East, meaning the disintegration of nation states into “a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions and parties.�

This divide-and-conquer strategy, a brainchild of the region’s British colonizers, is already taking effect in Iraq, where America overthrew a secular state, installed a Shiite majority and its militias in power and now portrays itself as the only protection for Sunnis against those same Shiites. The resulting quagmire has become a justification for American troops to remain.

What I fear is trepidation and confusion among rank-and-file voters and activists, and the paralysis of politicians, especially Democrats, who last week were moving gradually toward setting a deadline for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. The politics of the present crisis favor the Republicans and the White House in the short run. How many politicians will favor withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq under present conditions? Isn’t this Karl Rove’s game plan for the November elections?

What I know is that I will not make the same mistake again. I hope that my story deepens the resolve of all those whose feelings are torn, conflicted or confused in the present. It is not being a “friend of Israel� to turn a blind eye to its never-ending occupation.

One might argue, and many Americans today might agree, that Hezbollah and Hamas started this round of war with their provocative kidnappings of Israeli soldiers. Lost in the headlines, however, is the fact that the Israelis have 9,000 Palestinian prisoners, and have negotiated prisoner swaps before. Others will blame the Islamists for incessant rocket attacks on Israel. But the roots of this virulent spiral of vengeance lie in the permanent occupation of Palestinian territories by the overconfident Israelis. As it did in 1982, Israel now admits that the war is not about prisoner exchanges or cease-fires; it is about eradicating Hezbollah and Hamas altogether, if necessary by an escalation against Syria or even Iran. It should be clear by now that the present Israeli government will never accept an independent Palestinian state, but rather harbors a colonial ambition to decide which Palestinian leaders are acceptable.

In 1982, Israel said the same thing about eliminating PLO sanctuaries in Lebanon. It was after that 1982 Israeli invasion that Hezbollah was born. I remember Israeli national security experts even taking credit for fostering Hamas and Islamic fundamentalism as safe, reclusive alternatives to Palestinian secular nationalism. I remember watching Israeli soldiers blow up Palestinian houses and carry out collective punishment because, they told me matter-of-factly, punishment is the only language that Arabs understand. Israelis are inflicting collective punishment on Lebanese civilians for the same reason today.

It is clear that apocalyptic forces, openly green-lighted by President Bush, are gambling on the impossible. They are trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Iraq through escalation in Lebanon and beyond. This is yet another faith-based initiative.

If the American people do not see through the headlines; if the Democrats turn hawkish; if the international community fails to intervene immediately, the peace movement may be sidelined to a prophetic and marginal role for the moment. But we can say the following for now:

Militarism and occupation cannot extinguish the force of Islamic nationalism. Billions in American tax dollars are funding the Israeli troops and bombs.

There needs to be an exit strategy. The absence of any such exit plan is the weakest element of the U.S.-Israeli campaign. Just as the White House says it plans to deploy 50,000 troops on permanent bases in an occupied Iraq, so the Israelis speak of permanently eliminating their enemies, from Gaza to Tehran. The result will be further occupation, resistance and deeper quagmire.

The immediate conflict should not become a pretext for continuing the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. American soldiers should not be stuck waist-deep in a sectarian quagmire. Congressional insistence on denying funds for permanent military bases is a vital first step. Otherwise we will witness a tacit alliance between Israel and the U.S. to dominate the Middle East militarily.

Most important, Americans must not be timid in speaking up, as I was 25 years ago. Silence is consent to occupation.

This article first appeared June 18 on the truthdig site, edited by Robert Scheer.

Tom Hayden is a scum bucket. I hope his death is slow, miserable and wracked with pain. And when death finally draws near in his tortured body, divine intervention occurs and takes this fucker on another pain racked torturous journey so when he experiences rebirth as a maggot, he is given the power of reason and memory so he can savor the moment.
No Alex, I ain’t a jew..but to beat em you’ve gotta think like em!

Haven’t seen one comparison or reference to Hitler and his Hateful Nation yet. On the lookout.

I don’t mean to sound like Spicoli but ISRAEL IS A MAJOR FUCKIN’ DRAG MAN.

hal turner is talking about this subject over on his site.
as usual, he’s trying to convince some poor sucker to carry out violence that would do nothing but harm to the WN movement.
plus, he said on his show that he had sources telling him that tel aviv was gonna get 500 missiles rained down on it.
as usual, hal’s just a bag of hot air, as far as i’m concerned.

yeah, but hal said tel aviv was gonna get 500 missiles thrown at it.
it never happened.
if it did, or does, let me know.
othewise, you can call me a “tel aviv holocaust” denier, ok?

The Jews didn’t wreck the country. That’s hyperbole. For my response to your comments, see my comments on the poem.

You are a liar, Johnny the criminal jew. All jews are criminals and they all start shit so that non-jews won’t kill you. You people are nothing but a bunch of paranoid, schizophrenic, cold-blooded murders who have up to this point have gotten away with every grave misdeed you ever started. If you didn’t have the U.S.’s support at all, all of you would have been dead years ago, and we wouldn’t have to put up with your crap and your persistant lying about your innocence.

America is the JEWZ bitch! Israel is directly controlled by the globalist financial kike kabal mainly centered in New York City and London.

…..

July 18, 2006

United States Special Forces Seize Control Of Israeli Nuclear Weapons Complex

By: Sorcha Faal

Russian Military Analysts, and FSB sources, are reporting today that United States Military Special Forces have seized control of the nation of Israel’s nuclear complex located at Dimona with a contingent of their Special Forces Troops from the American war zone currently located in Iraq.

These reports detail that this action by the American Military Leadership was in direct response to China’s President Hu’s ‘threat to the American President that should the Straight of Hormoz be blockaded by Iran, due to the escalating crisis between Israel and its Muslim neighbors, China would consider that action as a ‘declaration of war’ against the Chinese people.

The America response to this ‘threat’ from China, coming from China’s President Hu in his ‘face-to-face’ meeting with the United States President Bush at the G-8 Summit, was to assure both China’s President Hu, and Russia’s President Putin, that the American Military Leadership would ‘secure’ Israel’s nuclear weapons and limit their, Israel’s, incursion into Lebanon.

In return for the American Military Leadership’s securing Israel’s nuclear weapons both President Putin and President Hu have allowed a ’72-hour-window’ for Israel to secure its Northern Border with Lebanon, with the ‘understanding’ that Israel will not attack either Syria or Iran, and whom Israel has blamed for being the instigators behind this current war.

These reports further detail that the American President has dispatched his Secretary of State to report to Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert the full details of this agreement, but which these reports state that the government of Israel is in ‘violent’ opposition to.
We expect another update within the next 24 hours on these issue, and which we will report to you once received.

© July 18, 2006 EU and US all rights reserved.

[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors to protect their safety.]

….

re: Bullshit Detector

the proof of the puddin’ will be in the dumplins’ as they say.
Yidsrael w/out KIKE-SA backing is a paper tiger
ANd no way will the JewSA enter an un-winnable war with Russia or China….ZOG knows that would spell their doom!

“In return for the American Military Leadership’s securing Israel’s nuclear weapons both President Putin and President Hu have allowed a ’72-hour-window’ for Israel to secure its Northern Border with Lebanon, with the ‘understanding’ that Israel will not attack either Syria or Iran and whom Israel has blamed for being the instigators behind this current war”

seeing wot Yidsrael does or doesn’t do over the next coupla days will be the acid test, IMHO.

“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!”

-George Bernard Shaw

Anybody notice how that butcher sharon just will not die. We moslems have long known that you are accountable for all deeds in the afterlife. This fat jew pig will not shuffle off the mortal coil becuase he knows what awaits him there. In fact the life of this world is all the jew gets. in the next world only punishment, where they are made to swallow molten copper for the practise of usuary. Hitler says in Mein Kampf that they all pretend to “hate” zionsim, and he soon tired of their hypocrisy. I say the only good jew is a dead one. You americans must struggle to rid your country of this menace to mankind. You must liberate your sons and daughters from the hebrew bondage and cut the throats of these parasites wherever you find them. To find them, simply look for brothels, casino’s and tv stations. Where there is immorality, there you shall find the jew. and do not look upon them with mercy, for here is truly a viper of the first order. Do what you must to rid yourselves of this disease, and curse your forefathers for allowing them into america. And I hope it is not too much to ask, but please can you impeach that moron of a president you have. I think that a post op labotomised chimpansee could do a better job of running america. Plus, of corse the chimp will be better looking. This president you have has narrow eyes like a pig, and he rapes the english language everytime he opens his mouth. Please folks, get rid of him. He is a puss filled vagina.

I wish strength, luck and victory to all americans like you. You guys can think, and most importantly you refuse to accept the kike reality.