Last edited by Kingstonian (2010-06-27 06:36:49)

On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act.  This legislation requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide.

To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined.  What is the definition?  Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews. 

Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House.
As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.   

It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.

It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel Lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the AIPAC-written resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza that were endorsed by 100 per cent  of the US Senate and 99 per cent  of the House of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel for its barbarity. 

It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.   

It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews in the media, finance, and foreign policy.

In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned. 

Given the hubris of the US government, which leads Washington to apply US law to every country and organization, what will happen to the International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the various human rights organizations that have demanded investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population?  Will they all be arrested for the hate crime of “excessive” criticism of Israel?

This is a serious question. 

A recent UN report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the United Nations premises in Gaza.  The Israeli government has responded by charging that the UN report is “tendentious, patently biased,”  which puts the UN report into the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel sentiment.

Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis.  These acts are clearly war crimes.   

It was the Israeli press that published the pictures of the Israeli soldiers’ T-shirts that  indicate that the willful murder of women and children is now the culture of the Israeli army.  The T-shirts are horrific expressions of barbarity.  For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, “One shot, two kills.”  These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is one of extermination.

It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli peace groups.  For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even praised.

Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper?  Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-semitic act”?

Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel.  These Americans will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror.  They will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts about Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding and abetting terrorists.

A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel.  American university professors have fallen victim to the well organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel.  Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Catholic university because of the power of the Israel Lobby.  Now the Israel Lobby is after University of California  (at Santa Barbara,) professor Wiliam Robinson.  Robinson’s crime:  his course on global affairs included some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice (sic) Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying.  The Israel Lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges.  Yet, Larry Franklin, the DOD official accused of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7 months in prison.

The absurdity is extraordinary.  The two Israeli agents are not guilty of receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to them!  If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving secrets to a spy?

Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American rather than Israeli interests.  It eliminates  any prospect of Americans escaping from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda. 

To keep American minds captive, the Lobby is working to ban as anti-semitic any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel.  It is permissible to criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-semitic to criticize Israel, and anti-semitism will soon be a universal hate-crime in the Western world.

Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust.  It is a crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6 million Jews were murdered.   

Why is the Holocaust  a subject that is off limits to examination? How could a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and anti-semitics?  Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by thought control.   

Imprisoning people for doubts is the antithesis of modernity. 

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05072009.html

The holocaust has now become an enormous 'shakedown racket' to quote Finkelstein. It is used to silence criticism of Israel. Reparations funds go to organisations like Weisenthal's rather than the actual camp survivors.

I have been to Auschwitz. Numbers claimed to have died have been quietly been reduced to a quarter of the original number. I was interested in Kolbe but there was nothing in English telling his story. Any investigation of the original Auschwitz history is routinely dismissed as holocaust 'denial'. Soap and lampshade claims have been dropped but human hair from inmates is still claimed to be intended for stuffing furniture. Yeah right.

He, he, he, he, sorry, I missed that. I thought you were having a go.

Fortunately, I had some Kazak guests and couldn't justify watching the over paid amateurs making a fool of themselves. I actually said, most Brits are into the Formula 1 before fitball.

I have a few minutes waiting for my small adventure to pull up. Sometimes world issues can only be brought into focus by small stories.
I was working on call for my Volvo mechanic, a jew from Manchester in a garage shared with a cockney from London. A volvo pulls in with  a sort of mechanical epileptic seizure. The cockney's mechanic, a bald pothead hippie raced up to the driver's window thinking commission. His body language all but recoiled like cooking bacon and he mumbled " This one is yours, NOT ours."
So, I walk over as a Chabbad Rebi gets out. I said " Shalom Rebi, I'm Chris  and work for Barry." Rebi looks a little quizzical at me while describing the problem. I'm fixing the problem, a broken clamp  on the air mass meter. I held up the .50 cent part and said 'trafe.' Rebi asks me my background and ancestry. I explain  my matrinlinear side had irish jews. "And you know this for sure?" I replied " oh yes, my cousins are jewish PIRA in Belfast and I have a living grand aunt in Fairfax ( big jewish neighborhood in L.A.)
Volvo is now running and he asks the cost? I told him Barry didn't have a mezzuza on the door for nothing, no charge. Rebi asks me if I would pray with him? I put on the yarmulka, wrap my left arm and we start reading together. Hippie is freaking out,turning his radio station of classical 60s rock up full volume, mexicans in the next door body shop are looking at us wierd and my boss pulls in with another client's car, his body language obviously hiding a very unkosher lunch, shocked look on his face. I thought it was this 3 penny opera. The radio had just reported a shooting at a nearby jewish day care center by a white supremist.
To add to the scene, a trendy lefty High school history teacher, lace curtain irish american with his VW van festooned with Erin go Bra kitsch pulls in. He avoided me because I would speak the gaelic and he couldn't understand a word. This ass announces somebody 'hit back' againt Israel and he heard it was a palestinian and he got two kikes as he first notices the rebi, my boss with his huge neckchain and star ,and finally me. I was transferring a object from my car's boot to the rebi's; a M1 carbine paratrooper. Lace curtain goes so pale he actually looked irish. "Oh don't worry laddy ( he was twice my age) I'm orthodox too- orthodox christian." Rebi gives me another suprised look and tells my boss "We orthodox, we got to stick together."
This was on a sunshine filled California day in a state with a multicultural makeup few places can match.
I have a mix of feelings and opinions ( opinions are not the truth) about the Middle east.
But never try to tell me there isn't anti semitism.

Last edited by ckav (2010-06-27 11:49:22)

And another thing about the Holocaust, nowadays you never hear the end of it.

What was once a footnote has now eclipsed Remembrance Sunday.

Twenty million Russians died in WW2 but you do not hear constant talk and movies about them, which is rather strange as but for them an Allied victory would never have been achieved

Last edited by Kingstonian (2010-06-27 11:51:12)