- In a recent article, Jonathan Rauch said, "No one
knows what Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is up to with his recent
announcement that Israel intends to withdraw from most of its settlements
in Gaza, but everyone knows it is momentous."
-
- Rauch also commented, "Less than a year ago, notes
David Makovsky, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, Sharon insisted that he considered settlements in Gaza to
be as important as Tel Aviv."
-
- Martin Indyk, former US Ambassador to Israel called Sharon's
move "a revolution", according to Rauch. The remainder of Rauch's
article attempts to analyse why Sharon was making such a revolutionary
move. The analysis, unfortunately, is either disinformation or an attempt
to attribute plausible and justifiable reasons to Sharon's action.
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- None of the reasons posited by Rauch included Sharon's
dedication to ridding the occupied territories of the Palestinians. In
this, he has a great deal of support in the USA, both from the politicians
who were elected with Israel's blessings and the media controlled by Zionists.
-
- Several months ago, following in-depth research and analysis,
I concluded that 9/11 was an operation prompted and abetted by Israel.
Reason: to create an excuse for pre-emptive occupation by the USA of the
Middle East and to eliminate any potential weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) attack on Israel.
-
- This, I concluded would make it possible for Israel to
rid the West Bank of the Palestinians. So long as a country like Iraq might
develop WMDs, leaving Palestinians where they were amounted to Israel's
human shield. Israel's nuclear weapons (between 84 and 200) wouldn't do
them any good if Iraq could attack without endangering more Palestinians
than Israelis. See my article "<http://www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/pjballes15.htm>What
remains must be the truth".
-
- Sharon's latest plan to remove Israeli settlements from
Gaza fits neatly into an overall plan to pressure West Bank Palestinians
to go to Gaza and create new Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
That "The Wall" supported by Israeli propaganda can accomplish
this goal should be clear from Uri Avnery's article "<http://www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/uavnery75.htm>The
ghetto inside".
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- As Avnery says:
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- The struggle against the Wall has many aspects. It is
not only a struggle to liberate the inhabitants of the West Bank from the
monstrous obstacle that turns their life into hell and puts them under
pressure to leave "voluntarily". It is not only a struggle to
liberate the two peoples of this country from a situation that imposes
on them an ever-widening cycle of bloodshed. It is also a struggle to liberate
the Israeli nation from the ghetto that is inside our hearts.
-
- The situation is ominous for Israelis as well since many
of them can't see the kind of trickery their leader is up to. Because Israel
has the unbridled support of the US government, the situation could become
perilous for Jews everywhere. People everywhere are waking up to the manipulation
and cost of the underhanded manoeuvres by Sharon and his hawks in tandem
with the neo-conservative hawks in America. Ultimately, that awakening
could explode into intense hatred.
-
- How many temples, like the ones in Turkey or France or
Manitoba, need to be blown up around the world before the message becomes
clear? How many Americans and Europeans will be afflicted by real anti-Semitism
as they become sickened by the subterfuge and deceit. As Uri Avnery has
pointed out, a classic Israeli maxim is: "If your case is weak, raise
your voice!" If Israelis and their supporters follow that maxim and
their opponents can't shout them down, they could turn to more destructive
outlets for their growing hatred.
-
- One reliable way to stimulate that hatred is to follow
the path of people like Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL),
Mortimer Zuckerman, editor-in-chief, US News, Harvard law professor Alan
Dershowitz, and op ed writers Anne Coulter, George Will, Michael Kelley,
Charles Krauthammer and William Safire. They're all trigger happy with
the "anti-Semitic" bullets in their keyboard guns.
-
- The spurious labelling of any criticism of Israel as
anti-Semitism does nothing but offend the majority of critics who are not
anti-Semitic and who become exasperated when wrongly accused. Alan Dershowitz,
in his book The Case for Israel, claims that any singling out of Israel
for criticism is a hallmark of anti-Semitism. Will Youmans has said of
Alan Dershowitz that he's "the kind of guy who never lets the facts
get in the way of a good argument".
-
- Many of these writers have been getting away with their
fraudulent image making of Israel's perfection and brazen attempts to justify
anything Israel does. They forget that there are a number of people, especially
since the spread of the Internet, who have seen the larger picture and
have exposed the lies. Of course, every time that kind of exposure takes
place, the voice of truth gets labelled anti-Semitic in that loud voice
intended to shut the critic up.
-
- Abe Foxman, the man who Baltimore attorney William Hughes
says is "a one-man, hot-air propaganda machine" for Israel, "swears
Israel has a healthy democracy" as long as they're not opposed to
the Apartheid Wall. Israeli activist Gil Naamati was shot in December 2003
for exercising his democratic right to protest.
-
- Abe Foxman and the ADL went ballistic and called for
the world to condemn then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia when
he said, "The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But
today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die
for them." There was no question of discussing or debating Mahathir's
claim. He was vilified as "anti-Semitic" and the Malaysian government
was called on by the ADL to denounce anti-Semitism.
-
- Foxman conveniently overlooked Ariel Sharon's earlier
comment verifying the accuracy of Mahathir's observation: According to
the Israeli Hebrew radio Kol Yisrael (Wednesday, 3 October 2001), Shimon
Peres warned Sharon that "refusing to heed incessant American requests
for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests
and turn the US against us".
-
- At this point, a furious Sharon reportedly turned toward
Peres, saying "every time we do something you tell me America will
do this and will do that... I want to tell you something very clear: Don't
worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control
America, and the Americans know it." Foxman has been so busy intimidating
Americans and anyone else who speaks the truth about Israel that he missed
this bit of news from his leader.
-
- Mortimer Zuckerman wrote the following disgusting editorial
fabrication about the Palestinians in The U. News (24 February 2004): "Sharon's
judgement that a negotiated partition is out of reach is a reasonable,
indeed inescapable, conclusion. The Palestinian response to the unprecedented
offer of 95 per cent of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, at the Camp David
summit, was terrorism. The response to the even more generous Clinton parameters
was even more terrorism." His articles about the Middle East reek
with hatred of Palestinians.
-
- Abu Mazin, reporting after the Camp David summit, made
it clear that their positions were "based on United Nations Resolutions
242, 338 and 194. They are based on agreements signed between the Israelis
and us, they are based on Israeli documents concerning the 1948 nakba (catastrophe)
and the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, and they are
based on UN Security Council resolutions dealing with Jerusalem and Jewish
settlements." It was the Israelis who refused to relinquish what they
had taken illegally. Anyone citing the evidence disproving Zuckerman's
allegations would be labelled anti-Semitic.
-
- Last June (2003) Charles Krauthammer summed up his continuously
biased railing against Palestine in an article in the Washington Post entitled
"The unilateral surrender of Israel continues." The entire article
merely repeats the Israeli propaganda line blaming the Palestinians for
every failed peace effort. It's nothing more than a rehash of both Krauthammer's
and The Washington Post's Israeli tilt. Question the accuracy of Krauthammer
and a loud voice will shout anti-Semitic!
-
- Krauthammer, along with George Will and Michael Kelley,
have actually called for the Israelis to "destroy, kill, capture and
expel the armed Palestinian forces". All of these columnists "repeat
the fiction", as Husain Ibish, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
(ADC) Communications Director pointed out, "that the intifada is taking
place in Israel rather than in territories under Israeli occupation".
To say so, however, is to invite accusations of anti-Semitism.
-
- According to Krauthammer, Mel Gibson's film "The
Passion of Christ" is clearly anti-Semitic because it relates a historical
truth about the role Jews played in Christ's crucifixion. Krauthammer also
claims that "Europe is passionate about the Palestinians" though
they "don't shed a tear" about other oppressed people of the
world. Based on this incredible fiction, Krauthammer <http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/isreport/june02/defense.html>claims
that the European passion for the Palestinians "has, without question,
its roots in anti-Semitism".
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- An avowed friend of Ariel Sharon, William Safire, makes
regular visits to the wailing wall of his American and Israeli readers
in his New York Times columns. Should anyone call Safire on his myopic
support of Israel and his friend Sharon, or his scapegoating of Yasser
Arafat, the critic would again be bequeathed the anti-Semitic label. The
same would apply to anyone criticizing any of a large number of "columnists
and commentators who can be counted on to <http://www.fpp.co.uk/BoD/origins/MSNBC_List.html>support
Israel reflexively and without qualification".
-
- Anne Coulter hasn't missed an opportunity to snipe at
Islam or Muslims since she began her career as a writer. If an Arab happens
to commit a crime, Coulter will generalize about all Arabs in the most
insidious ways. It would be difficult to find a writer as offensive and
obnoxious to anyone belonging to a group that she happens to dislike. That
includes all liberals and any Arabs.
-
- After 9/11, she wrote about the Arabs, "We should
invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
In her unadulterated hatred of Arabs, she referred to the Iraqis who oppose
the US occupation as "termites". Coulter overlooked the fact
that Arabs, too, happen to be Semites.
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- So what, after all that, is Sharon up to with his momentous
plans to move settlers from Gaza to the West Bank and complete the Separation
Wall? Extermination of "termites" (read Palestinians). Elimination
of all but Jewish residents from both Gaza and the West Bank. In short:
genocide of one Semitic tribe (Palestinians) by another - anti-Semitic
Israelis.
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- With the loud-mouthed support of Arab-hating American
voices who scream anti-Semitism at any criticism of Israel, Sharon may
further increase his eminence as Israel's democratically elected terrorist
butcher.
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- *Paul Balles is a retired American university professor
and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for 35 years. For
more information, see
- <http://www.writerfreelance.com/>http://www.writerfreelance.com
and <http://www.pballes.com/>http://www.pballes.com.
-
- © Paul J. Balles
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