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For Whom the Gaza Bell Tolls
Edmund Connelly
January 16, 2008
“The Israelis can kill whomever they want whenever they want.”
I sometimes think that it’s pointless for Americans to talk much about
recent events in Gaza because we know how it will play out — America will do
absolutely nothing to interfere with the ongoing massacre.
British journalist
Robert Fisk reminds us of the drill:
So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians.
Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in
another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in
"purity of arms." But why should we be surprised?
Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead — almost all civilians, most of them
children and women — in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700
Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana
massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children,
at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from
their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli
helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese
invasion, almost all of them civilians?
This time around, Israel shows not the slightest compunction about brazenly
massacring an imprisoned population in front of the world. But why should
they? They know no real opposition will arise from power centers anywhere on
earth. And they continue to have America — Republicans, Democrats, Christian
Zionists and almost everybody else — in their thrall. In large part, this is
due to what Israel
Shamir wrote with respect to Jewish financial mischief: ”The
rich Jews buy media so it will cover up their (and their brethren's)
misdeeds.”
James
Petras
also weighed in on Israel’s ongoing war against the Palestinians, writing,
“Israel’s sustained and comprehensive bombing campaign of every aspect of
governance, civic institutions and society is directed toward destroying
civilized life in Gaza.” Echoing Shamir, Petras noted that Israel’s attempt
to “purge Palestine of its Arab population” continues without apology
because “The Israeli totalitarian leaders knew with confidence that they
could act and they could kill with impunity, locally and before the entire
world, because of the influence of the US Zionist Power Configuration in and
over the US White House and Congress.”
Another voice that showed exasperation with Israel’s actions was that of
Taki
Theodoracopulos,
who wrote,
“Israel
can now safely be called the Bernie Madoff of countries, as it has lied to
the world about its intentions, stolen Palestinian lands continuously since
1948, and managed to do all this with American tax payer’s money.”
Perhaps no one, however, is more morally outraged than former Reagan
administration official Paul Craig Roberts, who wrote on
VDARE:
Caterpillar Tractor makes a special bulldozer for Israel that is designed to
knock down Palestinian homes and to uproot their orchards. In 2003 an
American protester,
Rachel Corrie,
stood in front of one of these Caterpillars and was run over and crushed.
Nothing happened. The Israelis can kill whomever they want whenever they
want.
They have been doing so for 60 years, and they show no sign of stopping.
Roberts continued, “While the rest of the world condemns Israel’s
inhumanity, the US Congress — I should say the US Knesset — rushed to
endorse the Israeli slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza.” How pervasive
was this endorsement? “The US Senate endorsed Israel’s massacre of
Palestinians with a vote of 100-0. The US House of Representatives voted
430-5 to endorse Israel’s massacre of Palestinians. . . .” (See
here for further details.)
Readers who have followed Roberts in the post-9-11 period know that he has
been a persistent critic of Israel’s influence over President Bush and the
Congress. He has not changed his position with respect to Gaza either: “The
US Congress was proud to show that it is Israel’s puppet even when it comes
to murdering women and children. The President of the United States was
proud to block effective action by the UN Security Council by ordering the
Secretary of State to abstain.”
Two days later, Roberts added to
his critique,
displaying how fully Bush is a puppet to an Israeli master:
"Early Friday morning the secretary of state was considering bringing the
cease-fire resolution to a UN [Security Council] vote and we didn’t want her
to vote for it," Olmert said.
"I said ‘get President Bush on the phone.’ They tried and told me he was in
the middle of a lecture in Philadelphia. I said ‘I’m not interested, I need
to speak to him now.’ He got down from the podium, went out and took the
phone call." [PM:
Rice left embarrassed in UN vote, By Yaakov Lappin ,
Jerusalem Post, January 12, 2009]
Roberts then turned to a friend’s comments to summarize this exchange:
"Let me see if I understand this," wrote a friend in response to news
reports that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert ordered President Bush from the
podium where he was giving a speech to receive Israel’s instructions about
how the United States had to vote on the UN resolution. "On September 11th,
President Bush is interrupted while reading a story to school children and
told the World Trade Center had been hit — and he went on reading. Now,
Olmert calls about a UN resolution when Bush is giving a speech and Bush
leaves the stage to take the call. There exists no greater example of a
master-servant relationship."
Aptly, Roberts concluded, “In his final press conference, President Bush,
deluded to the very end, said that the whole world respects America. In
fact, when the world looks at America, what it sees is an Israeli colony.”
And the behavior of America’s master is none too pleasant, as retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski recently made clear:
One needs only to look at the death toll (one-sided), the difference in military capacities between Israel and Gaza (shocking) and the kind of arsenals employed by both sides to determine what is happening. We’ve seen it on the elementary school playground, but this version is played out with incredible destructive force, no supervision, no brave friends, and no justice.
Not only is incredible destructive force in view for the whole world, a
bizarre Israeli response to the slaughter has surfaced: It is the
"ultimate
spectator sport," in
the words of a London Times reporter.
As a
front-page article in the Wall Street Journal also described,
from hilltops overlooking Gaza, Israelis would come with lawn chairs and
picnics lunches to watch the one-sided death circus that is Gaza.
Levinson took quotes from observers: "I've never watched a war before," one
said. Meanwhile, a group of Israeli police officers took turns snapping
pictures of one another with smoking Gaza as a backdrop. "I want to feel a
part of the war," was one comment.
“On another hilltop overlooking Gaza,” Levinson continued, “Sandra Koubi, a
43-year-old philosophy student, says seeing the violence up close ‘is a kind
of catharsis for me, to get rid of all the anxiety we have inside us after
years of rocket fire’ from Hamas.”
Perhaps most pointedly comes the testimony of one
Jocelyn Znaty, “a stout 60-year-old nurse for Magen David Adom, the Israeli
counterpart of the Red Cross,” who could “hardly contain her glee at the
site of exploding mortars below in Gaza.” "Look at that," she shouts,
clapping her hands as four artillery rounds pound the territory in quick
succession. "Bravo! Bravo!" . . .
I am sorry, but I am happy."
Pavel Wolberg/European Pressphoto Agency
Orthodox Jews watched smoke rise over the northern Gaza Strip Tuesday.
Roberts, like Taki and others, put much of the blame for such a spectacle
clearly on the shoulders of the American public. “What is happening to the
Palestinians herded into the Gaza Ghetto is happening because of American
money and weapons. It is just as much an attack by the United States as an
attack by Israel. The US government is complicit in the war crimes.”
Repeating charges he has made consistently for years, Roberts laments the
fact that
"’Our’ president was a puppet for a cabal led by Dick Cheney and a handful
of Jewish neoconservatives, who took control of the Pentagon, the State
Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, and ‘Homeland Security.’
From these power positions, the neocon cabal used lies and deception to
invade Afghanistan and Iraq, pointless wars that have cost Americans $3
trillion, while millions of Americans lose their jobs, their pensions, and
their access to health care.”
While Roberts et al. may be right that each and every American taxpayer
bears some responsibility for the carnage in Gaza, the fact is that most
Americans are tired of violence in the far-away Middle East. Besides, the
economy is in the tank, the NFL playoffs are in progress, and the kids have
to go back to school. Everyday life takes priority for most Americans.
Unfortunately, such short-sightedness will not do, for the pitiful denizens
of Gaza are not the last targets of the Israeli army or the worldwide
network of Diaspora Jews. The dispossession of the Palestinians since 1948
is but a dress rehearsal for more ambitious dispossessions of non-Jews
throughout the world.
Do I exaggerate? I believe that we have to take
Israel Shamir seriously when he writes in
Cabbala of Power.
“Palestine is not the ultimate goal of the Jews; the world is. Palestine is
just the place for the world state headquarters.”
Shamir has made a fascinating study of the two thousand-year struggle
between Jews and non-Jews, particularly Christians.
His arguments are far too subtle to summarize here, so interested
parties should consult the above-mentioned book as well as his more recent
work,
Masters of Discourse.
I will simply cherry pick some of his more striking ideas.
Shamir — an immigrant from Russia to Israel — holds a low opinion of his
fellow Jews in the Holy Land.
“Israelis are the riffraff of World Jewry, sent to conquer the land for the
NWO HQ.” This process is revealed in a parable of the "Messiah's Donkey"
often used by religious Jews. This is a story in which disposable secular
Jews (the donkey) are used by religious Jews to attain religious, messianic
goals. “In plain words, spirit always wins over matter; the way of the
Messiah of Spirit is to use the Donkey of Matter.”
“The Jews” — Shamir makes a distinction between organized Jewry and
individual Jews — “intend to turn Jerusalem into the supreme capital of the
world, and its rebuilt temple into the focal point of the Spirit on Earth.”
Should they succeed, unspeakable despair will follow. “Christianity will
die, the spirit will depart from the nations in our part of the world, and
our present dubious democracy will be supplanted by a vast theocratic state.
. . . De-spiritualized and uprooted, homeless and lonely, yesterday’s
Masters of the World [non-Jews] will become slaves in all but name.”
Shamir sees a two-pronged approach to this quest for world domination,
Zionism and Mammonite Liberalism. “While Zionism establishes the basis for
the NWO HQ, the Mammonite Liberalism establishes the world-wide slavery.
Jabotinsky and Soros are doing different tasks for one system; the Iron Wall
and the Open Society are just different names for the same thing.”
Shamir’s analysis is eerily close to the
Dispossessed
Majority thesis of Wilmot Robertson, albeit cloaked in theological
garb. Robertson described how in the 1960s and 70s white American Christians
“had become a people of little or no account in their own country.” This was
not an accident.
In my next column, I will expand on this argument.
Permanent link: http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Connelly-Gaza.html
