Another occupation weekend, another dozen Palestinians slaughtered by Israeli goons. In one incident, 5 boys, the youngest of them six years old died victims of an IDF booby trap. Is there no end to this Israeli national cult of sadism against the Palestinians? What kind of men are these that would commit such a crime while fully dressed in their country’s national uniform. I will tell you. The kind of men who do this filthy business are the kind of men one would expect in the Army of a country that habitually elects war criminals to the highest office in the land. Begin was a war criminal. As was Shamir. Ben Gurion was the ultimate war criminal who didn’t get his hand dirty, but managed to ethnically cleanse 78% of Palestine. Rabin worked for Ben Gurion in 1948 and his record in Ramle is clear. Peres was responsible for Kana, where 100 Lebanese and Palestinians where killed while seeking shelter in a United Nations compound. Prime Minister Sharon, a man with a fetish for violence, inspires yet another generation of Israelis who seem to believe that someday the Palestinians will accept permanent enslavement by the Jews or be forced into permanent exile.
I understand Israelis. Their story is not that complicated. It is a story that keeps changing with the passage of time. But the broad lines are fairly constant. Fiction begets newer editions of fiction. Quite a few of them genuinely buy into their ‘historical rights’ to displace the native Palestinians who are viewed as ‘two thousand year’ squatters that need to move on to ‘another country.’ But the majority of them know exactly what goes on in Gaza and the West Bank. Repression of the native Palestinian population is something that is part of their national essence. From a tender young age, their kids are taught to vilify Arabs and Palestinians. You need to teach that sort of thing to your kids before you organize them to steal native land. They just wish the few Israeli voices that are willing to make a little noise about it would keep their mouth shut, lest the goys in America get the notion that something doesn’t add up in the Holy Land.
Gideon Levy is not a popular man in Israel. Here is a sample of Gideon’s journalism: Five children get up in the morning and leave home for school. Dressed in their school uniforms, carrying a school bag in which is a pencil-case, they cross an open field at the end of their neighborhood, not far from their house. Suddenly there is a huge explosion. All five are killed.
At first the circumstances are not clear. Maybe the Israelis were shelling the area – the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) unit in the area fired from tanks a few days earlier, wounding a mother and her two children. Maybe some ammunition fell, maybe it was a land mine.
Israel isn’t claiming it was a so-called “work accident” – a terrorist blowing himself up while arming a bomb – because the dead are children. Nor can Israel claim that the victims were on their way to perpetrate a terrorist attack, as the IDF usually does without anyone being able to check it out.
Then the picture becomes clearer – the five children were apparently killed by a bomb left at the site by the IDF. At first the IDF spokesman declines to comment, even though it’s pretty obvious the IDF knows very well what caused the death of the children. The horrific pictures are screened around the world.
(On the way to school, By Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz, 11/26/2001).
There are frequent accounts in the Israeli press that paint a fairly accurate picture of what Israelis do to Palestinians living under occupation. Except for a tiny minority, most Israelis know and approve of the land theft, the exclusive Jewish settlements, the murder of innocent Palestinians by right wing elements wearing IDF uniforms, the terror of the settlers, the collective punishment, the torture, the yearlong sieges. Virtually every Israeli is aware that Sharon is a habitual war criminal. They elected him in the hope that, with such a record, Sharon would have no restraint in intensifying the reign of terror against the Palestinians. The more honest ones will admit that this is the only way to steal land from the Palestinians. And real estate fantasies of a ‘Greater Israel’ are still good marketing tools for Israeli politicians.
Now take a look at the journalism of the Yiddish supremacists who control the mass media in America. They know better than to enlighten their consumers with what goes on in the promised land. Show me one that would write what Gideon Levy dares to write in Israel. They keep promising to give you ‘real news, real fast’ or ‘fair and balanced’ . These are the current self-promotional slogans of CNN and FOX. Did you ever wonder why they need to constantly reassure their audience that they are telling the truth. Well, maybe it is because they are so acutely aware of their own penchant for deception.
I was watching CNN today, November 26th, 2001. It was a day when an American ‘peace mission’ led by Anthony Zinni landed in Tel Aviv. Zinni is an unpaid part-time volunteer on some kind of errand for Powell. Something to do with making a Diplomatic Show to win hearts and minds in the ‘Arab Street’. Just to be certain that the Israelis don’t get alarmed, the State Department issued a soothing message that no one should expect ‘instant results’. Let them bleed, Colin says. Of course, he knows which side is going to do the most bleeding. To show his gratitude, Sharon had prepared a little greeting for Zinni. A hard-line right wing general would be their contact and he would be allowed to negotiate after there was a week of ‘quiet.’
On the CNN ticker, there was a little something about a mosque being built in Nazareth, which was identified as the ‘boyhood home of Jesus’. Nothing about the murder of a dozen Palestinians over the weekend. Nothing about the five kids in Gaza. Nothing about Sharon’s obvious attempts to derail Colin Powell’s halfhearted attempt to implement the Tenet Security plan which might lead to Mitchell which might lead to another ten years of negotiations which might lead to a Palestinian State in half of Gaza. The CNN folks love to play these games. A few weeks ago when Israeli tanks were murdering Palestinians in the streets of Bethlehem, this news outfit failed to mention that it was ‘the birthplace of babyJesus run over by Sharon’s tanks’. These die hard pro-Israeli CNN journalists are either getting a little money on the side from Mossad or maybe they are biased based on their ethnic persuasion. You decide.
Mossad money? no. Issacson pays them enough. Ethnic persuasion? probably. Would that effect their views or their news? Wolf Blitzer, a hard-line Likudnik, followed by Aaron Brown, followed by Larry King, followed by Jeff Greenberg. A complete line-up of Yiddish journalists. Hour after hour, day after day. Same lie all day. Different lie, depending on the occasion. So you want balance on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict or the Middle East? Get your own cable network. This is an Ethnically dominated industry and deception is part of the trade. Besides, did we tell you it was really news? Ted Turner just wanted to graft a mind numbing billboard sign on your brain to honor his roots in the business.
You would think that these Yiddish pundits would be mildly interested in an American Peace mission to Israel. Not today. They know Sharon wants to dismiss Zinni and get back to pulverizing the Palestinians. Sharon demands seven days of quiet and then proceeds to make all the noise he wants with tank shells fired against civilians in the densely populated Gaza strip. The CNN crowd is always happy to oblige. They will lie and distort and misinform and not inform and do whatever is necessary for the state they worship. They will defame Arabs and Muslims and Christians and pit one against the other if it serves the ethnic interests of the folks in Brooklyn, the Lower East Side, Miami, West LA and Tel Aviv. So, their focus, as usual, is on ‘when do we get to bomb Iraq?’. Blitzer and company never stop asking that question. It distracts attention from Israeli repression and CNN’s role in actively lobbying for American political and economic subsidies to sustain Israel in its ongoing project of tormenting the Palestinians. Besides, it has the potential of killing more Arabs. Something they really really love to see live on CNN. They prod. They plead. They get down on their knees and make like Lewinsky. They would do anything to please their favorite state; a state of Israel at permanent war with the native people of Palestine.
So, the high point of this evening is a CNN interview with Colin Powell. This former AOL/Time Warner/ CNN board member knows how to play the game like every American politician who knows not to mess with the Israel Firsters and their immense lobby. Powell pays his full allegiance to Israel and allows that he is also ‘Pro-Palestinian, to the extent that they are human beings’. Sometimes, considering the other demented members of the Bush administration, I get an urge to be Pro-Powell. But only to the extent that he is a human being. Anyhow, you should have seen the smile on Larry King’s face. These Israel Firsters like nothing more than making an American Secretary of State take a bow to Sharon on their show. They can boast about it later amongst themselves. Then, to disabuse anyone who figured there might be a hint of a change in American policy, Larry asked Powell if he thought there would be a Palestinian state in his lifetime. Powell wasn’t certain. He is on the same schedule as Sharon. What kind of medal to they pin on these Yiddish pundits when they show up for award ceremonies at IDF headquarters? how many medals does Larry have? Is that more medals than Blitzer? Howard Fineman and Thomas Friedman are probably snickering at CNN’s haul. They have been active collectors for years.
But wait. CNN also has Christiane Amanpour, the wife of former US State Department spokesman James Rubin, a card carrying Israel Firster. I wonder what their pillow talk is about. ‘What did you do for Israel today, honey?’. And so it goes, on and on. The ethnic bias. The deception. The repression of any possible dissent against their control of America’s foreign policy agenda, especially on the Israeli/Arab conflict.
What we have in America today is a constituency that actively advocates the continued repression of Palestinians. Not because this serves American interests, but because the Yiddish supremacists love to go along with what ever the Israeli government has on the plate. It makes them feel like they are one team. They can talk of the liberation of Afghanistan and assure you that the Palestinians are not ready for the same kind of liberties. Occupation is good if it has the Yiddish certificate of approval.
These Yiddish supremacists don’t just stage elaborate deceptions to market Israel. After all, every major American Jewish organization has embraced Sharon without reservation and the mass media titans have obliged their ‘brothers in the faith’ by completely covering up Sabra and Shatila and Qibya and the ongoing carnage in the West Bank and Gaza. Self-proclaimed ‘liberal’ Jews are as scarce as precious rubies when it comes to Palestinian human rights. Torture is OK. Collective punishment is fine by them. Indiscriminate killing by the state is not a problem. On CNN, on the pages of the New York Times and The Washington Post, their record is clear. It is an abundant record that they can never walk away from. It is an archive that will astonish future historians. All this talk about freedom of the press. How did it come to this? Who were the players who associated America with repression to please the government of a foreign state? Worst of all, were they willing to scape goat other Americans? When things went bad, were they actually content to pin the blame on Arab-Americans, who had zero influence on our foreign policy? Yeah, I can just hear the Sixty Minutes crowd at CBS sending a team down to investigate the ‘Dearborn’ Arabs for ‘signs of disloyalty to America’.
You know, if I was in charge of Sixty Minutes, I would have spent the last 10 weeks, every episode, every segment, investigating the loyalty of Israel Firsters. I would have had segments on how they have a choke hold on the media, how they intimidate their non-Yiddish colleagues in going along for the sake of their careers. How they buy politicians. How they can round up the signatures of 89 Senators to send a message to Bush that he better not lean on Israel. There would be a Segment on the fact that there are no African-American or Hispanic Senators and ten Yiddish Senators. I could do a couple of episodes just on the New York Times and its well-documented history of being a virtual public relations firm for Israel. How about a whole segment on how the entire leadership of the American-Jewish community endorsed the election of Ariel Sharon? How many segments did Sixty Minutes do on Waldhiem? They can just borrow a tape form the BBC on Sabra and Shatila. That would save some money and spare them the shock of ‘discovering’ Ariel Sharon’s war record. How about an episode on Marc Rich and how Israeli politicians influenced his pardon? Maybe CBS can do some investigative journalism on how the whole State Department was handed over to an ethnic lobby. During the Clinton Administration, Secretary of State Maddeline Albright was Jewish, only she didn’t know it. Secretary of Defense Wiliam Cohen was Jewish, only he converted to being an Episcopalian. Dennis Ross, the Mediator, was a pro-Israeli lobbyist before he joined the administration. Today, he is back working for the Lobby. Martin Indyk, the ambassador to Israel, is Jewish. He used to be the head of AIPAC. Holbrooke, the Clinton ambassador to the United Nations was Jewish. As was Kurtzer, the ambassador to Egypt. As was James Rubin, the State Department Spokesman. And they all duly made appearances to voice the ‘Clinton Administration’s on shows where they were intensively questioned by Wolf Blitzer, Larry King and Jeff Greenfield. Now, if I missed somebody, it was not intentional. Ok, during her Senate campaign, Hillary Clinton made a claim to being part Jewish. I thought we had anti-monopoly laws in America.
One of the current propaganda lines used by the Israel Firsters at CNN, FOX and The New York Times is that at the root of America’s troubles is the ‘mindless incitement of the Arab press and the fact that the Middle East is refusing modernity.’ So, forget about the daily Israeli abuses against the Palestinians, the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia and the sanctions against Iraq. The not so subliminal message is that Arabs and Muslims are just crazy folk, easily incited for no good reason, born to die as suicide bombers in a mindless Jihad. The disturbing truth is that the foreign policy of the Israeli Lobby eventually becomes the foreign policy of the United States, thanks to a Senate and Congress that can be persuaded with generous campaign donations. They persuaded Alexander Haig and Reagan to give a green light to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Over half of our foreign aid money is distributed according to priorities set by the Israel Firsters. The presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia was a deliberate provocation designed to humiliate Arabs and Muslims and create permanent points of friction between Americans and the people of the Middle East. The lobby always has the same advice for the American government “Use brutal force against the Arabs, don’t take any measures to spread democracy in the region, Ignore human rights in the Middle East, think only of oil and Israel and don’t worry about any kind of reaction”.
So, what happens when things go wrong and Bin Ladens pop out of the miserable stew? Well, the Lobby can’t take responsibility for that. They always have a story. At this stage of the game, they also have many Senators as accomplices in the mis-management of our national security.
But we need to place some place? How about a community of mostly recently arrived immigrants? Make them the fall guys. Lobby? What Lobby? Israeli repression? Sharon a war criminal? We have an American garrison in Saudi Arabia that some Wahabis call an occupation army? People are blaming America for the effects of the sanctions on Iraq? The new President of the United States is aghast that Clinton didn’t leave him a note about the state of mind of the ‘Arab Street’? CNN and the New York Times as ‘ethnic tools of domination’? Sulzberger in leather with a black whip in his hand? Thomas Friedman foaming at the mouth? Say it isn’t so? American Jews, of all people, a highly educated wealthy media savvy constituency organized to support the repression of a people who have endured exile, dispossession and brutal military occupation? No kidding? You mean this has been going on for thirty-four years? Can that be? Read a bit of Gideon Levy’s work and be certain that the boys at the New York Times and CNN know everything about the Israeli occupation. They just don’t think Americans ought to know about it. Can’t trust the goys with that kind of information. Next thing you now, they start talking conspiracy.
Mr. Ahmed Amr is Editor of NileMedia.com in Seattle and a regular contributor to Media Monitors Network (MMN).
