Foreign Policy Journal's Exclusive Interview: Testing the Limits Of Freedom Of Speech - Ernst Zundel Speaks Out

Friends:

Please, read this interview carefully, and in its entirety. It is vitally important — while it might not initially seem so, and regardless what you might have heard about Ernst Zundel, it has a LOT to do with 9/11.

But first, let me address the “Holocaust” component. One needs to understand the Zundel affair has nothing to do with Holocaust denial. Zundel — like millions of others around the world — simply seek clarity re the number “6 million” that were allegedly gassed by the Nazis (never mind the plethora of other inconsistencies in the “official” narrative that beg more plausible answers). Merely questioning this number (not denying it, mind you, just questioning it) will surely land you in prison in a few European countries.

On the other hand, let alone question, one may freely DENY all the other holocausts that have plagued this planet through eons and face no consequence other than being royally ignored.

Question: Other than perpetually churning out “holocaust” movies by the dozen through Hollywood (a strategy obviously designed to shape public opinion and gain sympathy for Israel), how has this globe-enveloping Zionist machine been able to criminalize this kind of academic inquiry? This machine is of such power that it was able to get Zundel arrested in the US; deported to Canada without due process; and then “officially” extradited to Germany to face a trial whose verdict was a fait accompli.

Zionists emphasize both the uniqueness and the destructiveness of “their” Holocaust in order to gain moral authority that grants social power. The definition of “holocaust” actually means ”complete destruction by fire”. In today’s lexicon it means “the intentional killing of a large number of Jews” (NB: only Jews; you may freely kill a billion others of any other race, but that wouldn’t be considered a “holocaust”).

There have been many holocausts throughout history: The killing of ethnic groups in Bosnia; the Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda; the Aborigines in Australia; the natives of North America; millions of Africans were killed while they were held as prisoners or slaves; the genocide in Guatemala; the Armenian holocaust... We have the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War; the Mongol horsemen of Genghis Khan were genocidal killers who were known to decimate entire nations leaving nothing but empty ruins and bones. You can question — indeed, deny --  any of these holocausts all you want; no problem. But dare question just the number “6 million” re ‘The Holocaust®™’ and you’ll end up in jail.

Truth does not fear investigation. So why criminalize the act of questioning? Incidentally I never gave any of this much thought — until I came to the firm realization (as did Zundel and millions of others) that 9/11 was primarily an Israeli job. Beware: Read on and it will become clear there is a lesson in this for us all -- 9/11 Truth will soon be lumped in with ‘holocaust denial’. That is a certainty. It is already happening. Please, read this article in its entirety; then, pass it on...

Testing the Limits Of Freedom Of Speech -
Ernst Zundel Speaks Out
Foreign Policy Journal's Exclusive Interview With One Of The World's Best-Known Political Prisoners

by  Kourosh  Ziabari/Foreign Policy Journal

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/

Ernst Zundel in a courtroom in Mannheim, Germany on November 8, 2005 (Michael Probst/AP)


Ernst Zundel is a German author and historian who has spent seven years of his life behind bars as a result of expressing his controversial viewpoints and opinions. He is a revisionist who has denied the Holocaust as described by most historians. He has been one of the most prominent political prisoners in Europe and has been jailed in three countries on two continents.

After his arrest in the U.S. in 2003, he was deported to Canada, where he was kept in prison as "a threat to the national security" for two years. After deportation to Germany in March 2005, he was convicted and sentenced in 2007 to five additional years of imprisonment on charges of holocaust denial. He was finally released on March 1, 2010.

This is the first interview Ernst Zundel has given since his release, published in the Foreign Policy Journal.

Firstly, I would like to extend my congratulations on your recent release. Were you ever mistreated or subject to any type of mental or physical punishment in breach of international conventions?
   
Ernst Zundel: My entire treatment these past seven years by those arresting me, trying and convicting me, and keeping me in prison has been in brutal breach of international conventions. I was arrested in broad daylight on American soil by officials of the U.S. government who acted as hit squads for a nefarious lobby. There was no arrest warrant. I was not read my rights. I was whisked away in handcuffs without being allowed to get my wallet, to call my attorney, to be allowed to make my case before an American Immigration Judge or even hug my wife goodbye.

I was incarcerated in six different prisons on two continents in three countries -- the USA, Canada, and Germany -- without relief of any kind. In effect, I have had 10 percent of my life stolen from me - and for what "crime"? For having "overstayed my U.S. visa"?

Throughout my imprisonment, basic human rights principles were trampled underfoot repeatedly and with impunity. The worst prisons were the Canadian detention centers at Thorold, Ontario and at Toronto West, where I was held for two long years in isolation cells, ice-cold in the winter, no shoes or socks allowed. The electric light in these cells, bright enough to be able to read, was kept on 24 hours a day. Through a glass slot in the door I was checked every 20 minutes, and my activities were meticulously noted by the guards: one sheet for every day. No dignity, no privacy. My toothbrush was kept in a plastic bin in a hall. I was not allowed to speak to other prisoners.

Bed sheets were changed only after three months. No pillows. No chairs. When I wrote to my wife or to my attorneys, I had to sit on a makeshift pile of my court transcripts. No radio, no television, not even an electrical outlet to sharpen my pencils. No ball point pens, only pencil stubs, cut in half with a saw. No spoons, forks, or knives were permitted; only a white plastic spoon with a fork called a "spork" that had to be returned every time at the end of the meal. With very few exceptions when furtive guards showed me some kindness away from the surveillance cameras, I was treated as though I was the worst of criminals. That's Canada for you, where I have lived and worked without a criminal record for more than 40 years.

It was somewhat better, but not much, in the United States. In Germany, it was quite a bit better in terms of the basic necessities, but personal mail was routinely withheld  1,700 letters for up to five years  even after I forced a court to order that it be given to me. My so-called trial in Mannheim was a political show trial in the Stalinist mode in that my guilt was a foregone conclusion. I requested that exculpatory exhibits be allowed as validation for what I believed and had written and said. No meaningful defense was allowed. I could not put on record any forensic evidence, any historical documents, or even expert witnesses, That very request to be allowed to offer evidence was held to be a new offense of criminal behavior and could have resulted in new criminal charges  as were, in fact, lodged against my lawyers during that very trial who tried to overcome these restrictions.


Along with the rest of EU members, Germany regularly criticizes other countries for violations of free speech and human rights. However, your case demonstrated the emptiness of such claims within Europe. What's your take on that? Is Europe really a utopia of liberty and freedom of speech?  

Zundel:  Most European countries have only selected free speech for officially approved and sanctioned views on history. Almost all EU countries have laws in place that restrict freedom of speech under the guise of one fig leaf or other, such as the prevention of racist or neo-Nazi activities. The state decides selectively who is and what is racist. These laws are hypocritical, in Germany's case superseding even their own Basic Law.

Dissidents are allowed very little opportunity to be read or heard in the mainstream corporate media channels of the West. The control mechanisms of the press are many, often subtle but widely understood and obeyed  fear of loss of jobs, diminished circulation, the withholding of government advertisements etc. There is no longer unrestricted freedom in any Western country, not even in the U.S. with its wonderful Constitution and Amendments such as the Bill of Rights.

Allow me here to point out to your readers the outline of a censorship practice known by its neutral term "rendition", but more honestly defined as political kidnappings to force the silencing of dissident speech or alternate thoughts. Renditions in the West are ever more frequently practiced not only against alleged "terrorist suspects" but against ordinary political activists and writers whose viewpoints are frowned upon by such outfits as AIPAC and similar Zionist lobby and interest groups, B'nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress etc.

In order to spell out what I can only describe to you in broad strokes, I'd like to briefly shed light on the period preceding my arrest in the U.S. and Canada, the conniving and the similarity in other cases like mine, where an innocuous or alleged infraction is used as a fig leaf to silence a political opponent.    

Viet Dinh, a Georgetown University law professor and director of their Asian Law and Policy Studies Program who helped craft the Patriot Act, put it succinctly, as reported in an American publication called Wired that deals with freedom of speech on the net. That interview reads:    

Wired News: An estimated 5,000 people have been subjected to detention since 9/11. Of those, only five -- three noncitizens and two citizens -- were charged with terrorism-related crimes and one was convicted. How do we justify such broad-sweeping legislation that has resulted in very few terrorist-related convictions? 

Dinh: I've heard the 5,000 number. The official numbers released from the Department of Justice indicate approximately 500 persons have been charged with immigration violations and have been deported who have been of interest to the 9/11 investigation. It may well be that a number of citizens were not charged with terrorism-related crimes, but they need not be. Where the department has suspected people of terrorism, it will prosecute those persons for other violations of law, rather than wait for a terrorist conspiracy to fully develop and risk the potential that that conspiracy will be missed and thereby sacrificing innocent American lives in the process.   

This is exactly what happened to me. The initial reason given was an alleged immigration infraction  namely a "visa overstay". I was no terrorist; I was a dissident writer. My political detractors knew perfectly well that I was in America legally, awaiting adjustment of status due to my marriage to an American citizen. I was in Immigration Adjustment of Status proceedings, meticulously following all the prerequisite steps. I was living openly in a rural area in Tennessee and was listed by address in the local telephone book. The U.S. government had given me a Social Security number, a work permit, a document that allowed me to leave the country and return unmolested. I had undergone and passed an FBI check and a health clearance. The only last step missing was a personal interview by an immigration official to ascertain a valid marriage to my American citizen wife.

We had been notified in writing that this interview could take as long as three years, and that no status report would be given. We were patiently waiting for that last step, a routine interview with an immigration official. Our immigration attorney had requested such an interview in writing  twice! Under oath, he testified that he had written those letters. These letters have mysteriously disappeared from our immigration file. When I was arrested, it was claimed that I had negligently "missed a hearing" which gave them grounds for an arrest due to a visa overstay. In other words, a simple bureaucratic loophole was found or fabricated that has cost me seven years of my life.

What happened to me in the context of a deliberate state policy of deception has also happened to others. Similar ruses via false accusations were used in cases like Germar Rudolf, likefwise married to an American citizen, El Masri of Germany, Maher Arar of Canada, Gerd Honsik of Spain, Siegfried Verbeke of Belgium, David Irving, and now Bishop Williamson of England, to name only a few individuals who were caught between the grind stones of a criminal policy possible only under the Patriot Act in the U.S. and similar legal instruments in other countries. Embedded in that background of a widespread covert policy and practice to force political conformity, my case makes eminent sense. We are no longer dealing with an aberration. These extrajudicial renditions give 9/11 and the Patriot Act a new light as a global policy instrument of brutal censorship of unpopular thinkers and writers.

The thrust of a prestigious publication such as yours would normally deal with the policies of foreign governments, renditions, kidnappings, and incarcerations not only of foreign enemies but, as in the case of Vanunu, an Israeli-born- and-raised atomic scientist. He was no neo-Nazi, no racist, no Holocaust Denier, yet he was relentlessly pursued by the Mossad and ultimately kidnapped and jailed for 18 years.

The patterns of the breaking of international law and conventions, the use of false identities, and the brazen practice of breaking and entering by spy and intelligence agencies, etc.  these criminal activities are daily in the news. This sets the stage and makes my case a logical progression of an old, established policy, with this one difference: we are no longer talking about hunting and kidnapping alleged "Nazi war criminals" like Eichmann or stone-throwing Palestinians or even "Arab terrorists", but instead the targeting of writers and other political dissidents in Western countries calling themselves "democracies".

My story does not even end there. In my case, my "Holocaust Denier" profile was convenient, but passé. It was not even, as is so commonly and falsely claimed, "Denial of the Holocaust" or even more bizarre, my "visa overstay"! I was told what actually happened by a friend of ours with high-level UN connections. In his own words: "It was the Blue Booklet that did it! That's when it was decided at the very highest level to take you out for good!"

Here is what happened, briefly: In the early months post-9/11 my wife, an avid Internetter, discovered a compelling research document entitled Stranger than Fiction: An Independent Investigation of 9/11 and the War on Terrorism by Anonymous, 11-11-2. She gave it to me over breakfast. I read it, found it interesting, and ran a few copies off on my printer for people on my mailing list. I did not write that lavishly footnoted paper. I did not research it. I merely copied it. Somebody must have concluded that I, with my background of thorough forensic investigations in other areas, showed more than ordinary interest in 9/11 as a potential political false flag common in intelligence agency operations!

During my trial in Mannheim, ostensibly for "Holocaust Denial", portions of my monthly newsletter, where I mentioned this booklet and the 9/11 topic, were referenced by the prosecution as criminal offenses. Only after it became clear that I welcomed the opportunity to have my attorneys present forensic evidence of a potential 9/11 cover-up were those portions of the accusation against me hastily dropped, and my trial became a "Holocaust Denial" show trial in the traditional Stalinist mode, " accuse wildly but don't allow a defense!"

As we later found out through various freedom of information requests in various countries, there was in place for years a deliberate, convoluted plan to arrest and detain me under false pretenses so as to take me out and put me behind bars.

I mention this only as an overarching, logical example as to how diabolically clever my political opponents are in using the accusation of "Holocaust Denial" and persecution of Holocaust Revisionists as arrows in their arsenal of weaponry to shore up, consolidate, and protect their deceptively acquired power and influence.


What's the reality behind Holocaust? Didn't it happen at all? What about people such as Elie Wiesel, Thomas Blatt, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski and Leopold Engleitner who are Holocaust survivors and describe their own accounts of those painful days, when they personally witnessed the heart-rending demise of their parents in concentration camps and bone-crushing machines. How should we resolve these contradictions?   

Zundel:  I will not answer this question. I would risk five more years in jail if I answered these questions honestly and truthfully. However, in the age of the Internet, others less known than I am find ways to simplify a painful, multifaceted problem, as the cartoon [Prevent Holocaust, Bomb Iran by Carlos Latuff] makes plain.


Many people of other countries have come to the categorical conclusion that the Western world is a beacon of liberty and unrestricted freedom of speech. But it sometimes seems that the reality is something else, and that people can be easily prosecuted merely for publishing views that are disliked. The booklet you published, Did Six Million Really Die?, is an example. What do you think?   

Zundel:  Here is just one more example of what I already outlined above: We have faxes and other documents that prove on official embassy letterhead that the much vaunted and propagandized U.S. Judiciary has run interference for these kidnappers and renditioners via behind-the-scenes ex parte communication, thus engaging in a cover-up and whitewash worse than the ones practiced by those the U.S. government always blames for human rights violations in their hypocritical press campaigns, like against China in Tibet, Lukashenko in Belarus, Putin in Moscow and, of course, Iran during the recent so-called Green Revolution.


Many Zionist websites have introduced you as a white supremacist. Is that a fair characterization?
  
Zundel:  This claim is a convenient character assassination technique. I have never been a white supremacist and have stated so for decades, publicly, in countless interviews, newsletters, speeches, broadcasts, etc. It is my opponents' modus operandi to broad-brush complex issues by politically expedient demonization.


You're opposed to the regime of Israel because of its discriminatory and atrocious approach against the nation of Palestine. You consider yourself a pacifist who advocates stability and peace; aren't these beliefs incompatible with your viewpoint regarding Hitler, who is internationally considered to be a notorious dictator and relentless killer? How can your peace-seeking stance come together with your approval of Hitler?   

Zundel:  I cannot answer this question due to legal restraints. An honest and complete answer would land me in jail as a re-offender very quickly. Implicit in your question is the toxic image of me that my detractors would like you to have. To be called a Nazi is worse than being called a leper. For decades I have been on the receiving end of just such a targeted character assassination campaign. I have been jailed many times not for advocating an ideology but for expressing a dissident, alternative viewpoint on many topics, including Adolf Hitler's role in history. Revisionism is not an ideology. It is merely a scientific method of re-examining historical events and of trying to understand the movers and shakers who made history a footnote to their personalities.

Let me answer your question this way: I have always abhorred any kind of violence in the pursuit of political goals. By anyone! Politically, I was and am a pacifist, much in the Gandhi style. I advocate a sober, neutral look at history, including the period known as the Third Reich. The peoples of the world, regardless of what system of government they live under, owe it to themselves to emancipate themselves of the simplistic images of propaganda and deceit posing as history.


On May 1995, your Toronto residence was the target of an arson attack which resulted in $400,000 worth of damage. A few days later, some of your extremist opponents were caught trying to break into your property. Again a few days later, you received a parcel bomb which the Toronto police detonated. Have you ever tried to lodge a complaint against them? Have they ever been lawfully sentenced?   

Zundel:  This is the flip side of some of the questions above. While I have never advocated or engaged in violence, egregious acts of violence have been repeatedly practiced on me, of which the political kidnapping in 2003 was merely the latest. As to the fire and the bomb, no, nothing was ever resolved. The police apprehended the bomb builders and senders, but the charges laid were stayed. There seems to have been no political will at the highest levels of the Canadian government. There was no political coin to be garnered by prosecuting Jewish arsonists, who even confessed to the deed.


Do you differentiate between the Zionists and Jews as the followers of a divine, monotheistic religion?   

Zundel:  Yes, the two are totally different. Some Orthodox Jews who are united against Zionism, such as the Neturei Karta, believe that also. They know the godfathers of Communism and Zionism followed identical policies. The guiding spirit behind the two systems is the same. Neturei Karta rabbis attended the 2006 Teheran Conference sponsored by your President in an attempt to distance themselves from what they consider to be a dangerous atheist clique in the pursuit of illegal politics of conquest of which they want no part.

The mainstream corporate media, while having already vilified you, remained silent about your release. What do you think about this? Are you going to continue your ideological path or would you prefer to keep a low profile and forget about the intellectual activities?   

Zundel:  Ironically, that was exactly what I intended to do when I moved to Tennessee and married Ingrid; keeping a low profile and turning to private endeavors such as my love for art and music. I felt that my revisionist outreach was finished, concluded to my inner satisfaction. Let others read both sides and then judge for themselves. All the arguments, all the information needed on the Holocaust is out there, on the Internet, in tens of thousands of websites, all for the taking. How often do you have to dig up an archeological site to find yet one more bone, yet one more implicating shard? My wife likes to say that you don't have to eat a camel to know what a cutlet tastes like. I was quite ready to retire and satisfy my creative needs and desires. I could leave the political mopping-up activities for others to complete. But could my political opponents bring themselves, as rational people might have, to likewise call it quits? No; that is simply not in their nature.

As you point out so cogently, a powerful vilification campaign is still going full blast. It keeps my name in the media for people to decide for themselves who I am. Upon my release, my wife has collected thousands and thousands of letters from readers, only three of which were negative! Not a bad record, of the millions of dollars spent and millions of words dispersed in an attempt to paint me as as a devil with horns.

Let me ask you  would your prestigious publication have cared to interview me if you thought that I deserved the label of 'Evil Incarnate'?   

When will Israel attack the USA – again?

US military veteran Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders. He looks at how the dual loyalists at the heart of the US government – Israel’s stooges in the Congress and elsewhere in the US government – are preparing to hoodwink the American public into another war on Israel’s behalf and against the interests of the United States...

When will Israel attack the USA – again?

By Jeff Gates
www.redress.cc/americas/jgates20100430#bio

“In rationalizing the war in Iraq, who deceived us? Who had the means, motive and opportunity? Are our minds again being prepared to wage yet another war that is not in our interest? Are we again being subjected to a seductive psy-ops as a prelude to war, awaiting only the emotional catalyst of another mass murder?”

Israel has long been waging war on the US by way of deception. To date, its operatives have worked from the shadows, hoping not to be detected. Their duplicity typically includes the displacement of facts with what the American public can be deceived to believe.

Thus, the need to create a widely held belief around Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi ties to Al-Qaeda, Iraqi meetings in Prague, Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories and Iraq’s purchase of uranium from Niger. Though all five “facts” were false, only the last claim was conceded as phony prior to inducing our invasion of Iraq.

There lies our national security challenge as the groundwork is being laid for another 911.

The same fact-displacing modus operandi is again at work. In the parlance of national security analysts, psy-ops specialists are “preparing the mind” to accept another generally accepted truth at odds with the facts. This time the objective is Iran. Or Pakistan.

"In the parlance of national security analysts, psy-ops specialists are 'preparing the mind' to accept another generally accepted truth at odds with the facts. This time the objective is Iran. Or Pakistan."

Except that this time national security is shining a bright light in the shadows where such operations are launched.



The displacement process

As a reasoning species, we depend on rationality to stay alive and thrive. That’s why the displacement of facts requires preparation. First, the public’s shared field of consciousness is flooded with thoughts and impressions to ease the displacement process.

A decade before the thematic Clash of Civilizations was used as a rationale to invade a nation that played no role in 911, Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington published this thesis in Foreign Affairs, a publication widely read by opinion-makers. The Clash premise first appeared in the writings of Bernard Lewis, a Jewish-Zionist academic at Princeton.

By the time Huntington’s book with that title appeared in 1996, 100 organizations were prepared to promote it. As that process gained momentum, the Cold War consensus was replaced by a new generally accepted truth: the Global War on Terrorism. The widespread embrace of that theme was catalyzed in September 2001 by a mass murder on US soil.

Such a seamless segue from one generally accepted truth to another requires both mental preparation and an emotionally wrenching event. In combination, those two influences create an ideal framework for explaining to ourselves what we now know was a pre-staged storyline. A myth need not be true; it need only be plausible – and only temporarily so.

Prompted by false intelligence fixed around a predetermined goal, The Clash emerged as the latest generally accepted truth. With the rebranding of Saddam Hussein, a former US ally, as a plausible Evil Doer, the stage was set. As the war began, the term “Islamo-fascist” crept into the rhetoric to reinforce the theme that a new enemy had emerged – by consensus.

Anyone not outraged at this mental and emotional manipulation is ill informed about the common source of this ongoing deceit. In the information age, this is how wars are catalyzed. And how treason is committed in plain sight and, to date, with legal impunity.



The next provocation

With chilling consistency, the myth makers responsible for this latest corruption of US intelligence have proven adept at inducing serial conflicts that hollowed out our economy, damaged our credibility and undermined our faith in our own government.

There was no Gulf of Tonkin incident, the rationale that took us to war in Vietnam. Israel was not endangered in 1967 when it began the Six-Day war. Phony intelligence rationalized a massive land grab guaranteed to provoke antagonisms that undermined our security.

In rationalizing the war in Iraq, who deceived us? Who had the means, motive and opportunity? Are our minds again being prepared to wage yet another war that is not in our interest? Are we again being subjected to a seductive psy-ops as a prelude to war, awaiting only the emotional catalyst of another mass murder?

The mental threads have been laid. For example, in March 2005, author Jerome Corsi published Atomic Iran, urging that either the US or Israel kill the “mad mullahs” of Iran.

In July 2006, Corsi released Minuteman. Citing the president’s “failed immigration policy”, this Israeli asset claimed that Iran-supported terrorists are “invading from Mexico” to stage another 911. “We have definitive proof that we have Hezbollah – the terrorist group that Israel is fighting today – sleeper cells that are here.”

This prepare-the-minds publication appeared two weeks after Israel invaded Lebanon to combat “Hezbollah terrorists”. Where was the book launched? If you answered Ground Zero, the 911 site in Manhattan, you understand how psy-ops experts deploy the power of association to displace facts with fictions.

Such “associative” duplicity can only succeed in plain sight. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer broadcasts from “The Situation Room” with its White House-associative branding. What “the most trusted name in news” fails to tell you is that Blitzer worked 17 years for The Jerusalem Post and authored a sympathetic book on Israeli master spy Jonathan Pollard.



Treason in plain sight

The mental preparation is well advanced. The missing ingredient is another mass murder. Strongly-provoked emotions are critical when staging psy-ops designed to displace facts with what “the mark” can be deceived to believe. Plus, of course, it helps to muster some evidence that plausibly links the attack to Iran or Pakistan. That will suffice.

Or perhaps not. This time around, those who took an oath to defend this nation from all enemies – both foreign and domestic – may well have better tools to do their job.

There is but one possible source able to sustain such operations with impunity inside the US. Only one nation has the requisite intelligence capabilities to operate from within our government in plain sight yet non-transparently.

As yet, few dare speak its name. Instead, four-fifths of those in “our” Congress recently proclaimed themselves loyal to a foreign nation and insisted that our commander-in-chief maintain an “unbreakable bond” with what the facts confirm is an enemy within.

Will the US again be attacked? If so, will we focus our forces on the real enemy? Our veterans’ community is 27 million strong. Let your voice be heard. Our nation is at stake.

“Protecting Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing”—Deceptively Called “Protecting Israel’s Security”

“Protecting Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing”—Deceptively Called “Protecting Israel’s Security”

[Z Magazine, May 2010]

Edward S. Herman

It is one of the standard clichés of the U.S. political establishment that our policy toward Israel and the Palestinians is dominated by our desire to “protect Israel’s security.” Of course the need to protect our own “national security” is the excuse and cover for the gigantic U.S. military budget, the network of  military bases across the globe, support of an expanding NATO, and the steady stream of wars—all of them at quite a distance from the United States itself. The word “security” provides a protective linus blanket that obscures the reality of  positive and expansionist objectives. As with “Hoover’s law” [J. Edgar Hoover]--that the fewer the number of  Communists the greater the Communist threat--so with National Security: the greater the U.S. military budget and outreach, the greater the fear of overlooking “threats” that might seem unworthy of the attention of  a superpower. The United States even attacked Grenada, the nutmeg capital of the world, in the interest of National Security.

But while the word has the ring of virtue that regularly paralyses any establishment opposition, it is economic and political power that dominates in clearing the ground for the investment in the “protection of  security,” whether of  this country or Israel.  Here, the power of  the military-industrial-complex and its close allies in the political, financial, media and academic communities have normalized gigantic and growing budgets and continuous warfare. In the case of  Israel, the power of the pro-Israel Lobby; the inter-penetration of  U.S. and Israeli business, finance, weapons development, and military and strategic planning; and the cultivation of and pressure on the media and politicians, have given Israeli leaders extraordinary power over U.S. policies that bear on their interests. They are a tail that can wag the big (and “security”-bloated) dog, although a flea jumping from the tail onto the dog’s body and giving it a nip might cause it to bark angrily and scratch.

One hugely underrated feature of the drumbeat of  U.S. political leaders, and those of  the EU, in stressing the urgency of  protecting Israel’s security, is its blatant racism. U.S. officials repeat day-after-day that our “solidarity” with Israel is an “unshakeable bond,” that there is no “space” between us and Israel on the issues, and that we have an “absolute commitment to Israel’s security” (Hillary Clinton). A large fraction of  congress and the Senate appear regularly at AIPAC annual meetings to virtually pledge allegiance to the State of Israel, and Vice President Joseph Biden has publicly declared himself “a Zionist,” with Israel “the center of my work as a United States  Senator and now as vice president of the United States.”

Following the recent tiff  between Obama and Netanyahu, AIPAC got over three-quarters of  the U.S. congress to sign a letter calling for an end to public criticism of  Israel and a “reinforcement” of  the alliance based on “common values,” etc., the wording of the letter closely following one sent out by AIPAC.  Is a Zionist and Israel-centered commitment, the deference to AIPAC, and the various pledges of allegiance to Israel consistent with the oath of office to the United States taken by these political leaders? General David Petraeus has recently and embarrassingly claimed that the commitment to Israel has damaged U.S. national security interests: “This conflict foments anti-American sentiment due to a perception of U.S. favoritism to Israel.”  This would imply possible prosecutable behavior on the part of  Biden and the other pledgees to Israeli interests, although needless to say this is not likely to materialize in legal action.

But the racist element in the pledges is also notorious. Palestinian “security” is unmentioned by these Israel-solidarity pledgees and activists, although the Israelis have long been brutalizing the Palestinians, taking their land and water by force, and although it is crystal clear that it is the Palestinians who need security protection here and now, as they have for decades. Palestinians are implicitly an unpeople, an untermenschen, who can be mistreated virtually without limit or penalty to the victimizers. Visiting South Africans have for years been claiming that the Israelis’apartheid system imposed on the Palestinians is worse than that under the departed apartheid regime in South Africa, and a number of Israelis have said the same thing. But this has made no impression on the West, whose leaders continue to claim their devotion to Israeli security in a manner they could not display openly in dealing with the old South Africa--there the Western establishment, while quietly protecting the apartheid state, had to do this without claiming a dedication to protecting the apartheid state’s “security.” Their racism was revealed mainly in their policies and political alignments, such as supporting South Africa in Angola and Namibia, cooperating with it in intelligence and “counter-terror” programs, and protecting it as much as possible against sanctions and condemnation.

With Israel, the West is actively engaged in supporting a state that violates the Fourth Geneva Convention on a daily and multiyear basis, ignores International Court (and international community) opinion on matters like the wall, continuously takes land and water from Palestinians and gives it to Jewish settlers, and freely attacks across borders in wars and assassination programs. In the recent  exchanges over the Israeli government’s announcement of  the planned construction of 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem, the attention in the Western mainstream media was on the insult to the visiting Joseph Biden (and President Obama), and the possible resultant setback to “proximity talks.” There was little or no mention of the fact that all of these units were for Jews---that while the ouster of Palestinians in East Jerusalem  has been a long-standing process, as Gideon Levy points out, “we must not forget that this huge building project in Jerusalem is for Jews only; not one Palestinian neighborhood has been built in 43 years of occupation. Should that not be called apartheid?”

Levy adds, “Even the new magic and foolish solution of the greatest master of words, President Shimon Peres, has persuaded no one: Israel, the president now tells his guests from abroad, has the right to build in ‘Jewish neighborhoods.’ And how, Mr. President, did they become Jewish, all of them on Palestinian land, if not by massive, illegal settlement, just like in Ariel, Ma'aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion, which are now within the ‘consensus’ we invented for ourselves? Consensus? Only in Israel. And to a great extent this consensus, too, has been fabricated.” (“Netanyahu did one thing right in the Jerusalem debacle,” Haaretz, March 21, 20l0).

The racist premise of Israeli policy is normalized in the enlightened West, helped along by claims about a “peace process,” “proximity talks,” and “negotiations” that have to be restarted with the aid of the “honest broker.” This is all straight out of  Orwell, or perhaps Kafka. There is no real peace process, or negotiations, because Israeli leaders do not want a settlement or borders, which would interfere with their steady displacement of  the untermenschen and colonization of the West Bank. This has been obvious to anyone who doesn’t wear self-imposed blinders, in the continuous Israeli stalling and alleged inability to find a partner, and it is clear from Israeli self-interest in stealing and dispossessing, which is much easier in occupied lands than it would be with settled borders. It is also sometimes even acknowledged by Israeli leaders, as in the statement by Sharon adviser Dov Weisglas: “The significance of Sharon’s [Gaza evacuation] plan is the freezing of the peace process…The Disengagement Plan actually supplies the formaldehyde into which all other [peace] plans can be put” (Ari Shavit, “The Big Freeze,” Haaretz, October 8, 2004).

Thomas Friedman says that peace for Israelis has recently become a “hobby” rather than a “necessity.” They find they can live happily without peace, and they are disillusioned by “The collapse of the Oslo peace process combined with the unilateral Israeli pullouts from Lebanon and Gaza—which were followed not by peace but by rocket attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas on Israel—decimating Israel’s peace camp and the political parties aligned with it” (“Hobby Or Necessity?,” NYT, March 28, 2010). For Friedman Israel had a right to be in Lebanon and Gaza—it had aggression and occupation rights—so its exits were generous and peace-minded; not, in the former case based on non-viability and the latter a “formaldehye” to “freeze” the peace process. That the continued Israeli raids, killings, imprisonments, dispossession process and blockade of Gaza might have produced rockets is not admissible. That peace-making was formerly a necessity for Israel, but somehow not obtainable, presumably because of  Palestinian intransigence and “terrorism,” is ethnic cleansing apologetics at the level of sick-comedy.

There is also no “honest broker” in this fraudulent “peace process”--honest brokering is  inconsistent with complete “solidarity” and a “central commitment” to one side. Given the imbalance of power between Israel and  Palestine, a settlement would require the exercise of U.S. power contrary to the desires of  the Israeli leadership, incompatible with a close alliance and the absence of  any “space” between Israel and the United States. In fact, solidarity is displayed by the pretence that a peace process is meaningful without serious pressure on the more powerful party—this pretence, along with arms supply and diplomatic protection of anything Israel does, is a critical feature of what must be regarded as a joint Israeli-U.S. program of  long-term dispossession of  the Palestinians.

This racist process is also normalized by distorting history. One important line of historical misrepresentation is the alleged dominance of Palestinian terrorism and violence and Israel as merely responding to this terrorism. In reality, the primary violence is Israeli dispossession, which has taken Palestinian land and water for decades, under U.S. and other enlightened states’ protection. Over the years the Palestinians have resisted, mainly peaceably, sometimes by violence, but with very much higher casualty rates suffered by the poorly armed Palestinians (over 20-1 prior to the second intifada, when the rate dropped to 3 or 4 to 1—rising to 100 to 1 in the Gaza war). The Israelis have needed a certain level of  Palestinian violence to justify their continuous encroachments on Palestinian land, and the kindly enlightened West has allowed these encroachments and dispossession as part of a response to “terrorism.” The Israelis have also needed to fend off any negotiated settlement of borders with a hypothetical Palestinian state, so that a “peace process” has never been allowed to result in peace. But once again the generous enlightened states have played the peace process game, without putting the slightest pressure on Israel to actually settle, thus giving it the cover for continued dispossession and ethnic cleansing.

So this is applied racism by Israel and the West. It turns on its head the newly claimed Western devotion to both “humanitarian intervention” and “right to protect.” Its interventions steadily support Israeli state violence against a civilian population that the West struggles to further disarm, but who desperately need protection. This is also a beautiful case of  ethnic cleansing, being carried out systematically and openly. One may recall Western indignation at ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, where this invidious notion could be applied--with great bias and fact-bending--to a Western target (the Serbs), and where it was used to justify a violent international (mainly U.S.) response to protect the victims. But in the case of Israeli ethnic cleansing, in an open and very clear case, carried out by the fifth largest army in the world against a virtually unarmed different ethnic group, the West continues to support  the cleansing process, even gives it active aid.

This also means that protecting Israel’s “security” is  a first class propaganda lie—the United States and West are protecting Israel’s ethnic cleansing operations. Insofar as Israel has any security threat at all, this is a result of its refusal to stop its ethnic cleansing and make peace with the Palestinians and its other neighbors. It is well-known that the Arab states have offered Israel a comprehensive settlement and peace plan that entailed Israel’s giving up its post-1967 land seizures in exchange for full recognition and a peace settlement. The Israelis have rejected this and continue their ethnic cleansing march.

Will the new turns in the U.S.-Israeli relationship marked by the Netanyahu slap in Biden’s face during the Biden visit to Israel, the Petreaus suggestion that Israel’s policies damage U.S. interests, the allegedly unfriendly exchange between Netanyahu and Obama, and new U.S. demands on Israel, alter the long-standing U.S. support of  the ethnic cleansing process?  This writer is doubtful: the structural conditions are unchanged; the power of the Lobby is still great; the Israeli polity is further to the right and settler interests and power are strong; and the room for maneuver in producing negotiations that would yield a viable Palestinian state is small.

The U.S. and Israeli political establishment both agree that Iran is a huge menace. The recent Hoyer-Cantor-AIPAC-based letter calling for more ethnic cleansing solidarity stresses that “Above all, we must remain focused on the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear weapons program to Middle East peace and stability.” With Obama, Clinton, Hoyer and Cantor all agreeing on the seriousness of the  Iran threat, and looking for a means of resolving the tiff, and Israelis possibly seeing this as a moment to “Leverage the Crisis” (Steven Goldberg, in Y Net, April 1, 2010), could it be that a determined Obama can achieve another success by getting Israel to agree to freeze settlements and negotiate with its favored Palestinians in exchange for a war against Iran?