Israel: Our Expensive Pit Bull

Although President Clinton's legacy to President Bush was a budget surplus, Bush destroyed this with massive war spending, leaving President Obama a budget deficit. Now we have a "tea-party" movement understandably concerned about our nation's fiscal security. While this movement vociferously opposes domestic spending on issues like health care, it seems to have an enormous blind spot concerning costly unnecessary wars.

Meanwhile, on 1/24/10, Osama bin Laden once again released an audiotape explaining why we are under attack and how to end this anti-American terrorism. He said, "America will never dream of security unless we have it in reality in Palestine." "God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue." "It is not fair that Americans should live in peace as long as our brothers in Gaza live in the worst conditions."

The billions we give in foreign aid to Israel each year are minuscule compared to Israel's overall cost. Historically, due to our support of Israel's illegal brutal occupations, we have suffered major losses, such as the Arab oil embargo in the 70's, terrorist attacks on our embassies abroad, etc, leading up to the two attacks on the World Trade Center. Following 9/11, Israel's cost has escalated as we have tried to emulate Fortress Israel and become Fortress America. Costs of our security industrial complex keep skyrocketing along with the costs of our military industrial complex.

Rather than addressing the legitimate grievances of the Muslim world, especially the plight of the Palestinians, we morphed into Israel and began invading and occupying Muslim lands, bombing civilians, and thus inspiring more anti-American terrorism. The long-term cost of the unnecessary Iraq War, for instance, which we were lied into by the Zionists who fixed the intelligence, has been estimated by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, to be $3 trillion. Our war costs have all been borrowed, largely from foreigners such as China. Long-term costs include paying interest on this debt, long-term health care for wounded vets, increased costs of military recruiting, replacing damaged and destroyed equipment, etc. This is why the real figure is much higher than the publicized one.

As we are now a clone of Israel, our actions have served to spread al Qaeda around the world, resulting in even more military spending. We now have the cost of our bombings in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and doubtless many more to come. In our bombing raids we inevitably kill civilians, thus creating more "terrorists," ie those who vow revenge. Add to this our so-called "nation-building" costs. Of course it is impossible to really build a nation in the midst of civil wars caused by our invasions and occupations. The chaos thus produced makes a country ripe for crime, such as the drug trade, kidnappings, etc, in particular, and corruption in general, all increasing our cost of "nation-building." And we must add to this the cost of paying off people, like the Taliban, to fight for us rather than to fight for the other side. On a more macro level, we must pay off entire states, such as Pakistan, to fight on our side.

Bin Laden applauded the Christmas Day would-be plane bomber, vowed there will be more, and now we must add to our security costs the cost of such things as body scanners at airports. And let's not forget the cost of the expected new cancer cases in passengers resulting from the radiation from these body scanners. It is time to rein in this expensive pit bull and push hard for Middle East peace.

The Israel Lobby's Devious Myths

In their determination to steal all of Palestine, the Israel Lobby has created and propagated numerous myths, such as the lie that there are really no Palestinian people. In fact the Lobby falsely claims that Palestine was an empty wasteland when Zionists were immigrating there in the late 19th-20th century.

Palestine has historically been described as the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Ancient Palestine was known as the land of Canaan and had been inhabited for thousands of years before the Hebrew invasion of around 1200 BC. Genetic evidence shows that today's Palestinian Arabs descend from a population that lived in this area from these earliest prehistoric times predating the Hebrew conquest. Indeed, as noted by the late Columbia University Professor Edward W. Said, "Palestine is the birthplace of urban life" with towns still inhabited after up to 9000 years. (Said, Blaming the Victim)

Situated at the crossroads of many cultures, Palestine has had many rulers. Following the Hebrew invasion, the land has been ruled by Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, etc. By 1516 Palestine was a province in the Ottoman Empire known for its beauty and fertility. By 1853, there were about 500,000 people living in Palestine, almost all Arabs except for 20,000 Jews. The Palestinian Arabs lived in small villages with olive groves and farms producing wheat, corn, barley, sesame, cotton, etc. (Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine) Thus is another myth shattered, namely that the Arabs in Palestine were nomads who moved there to get jobs from Jewish immigrants. It is these olive groves, centuries old, which the Jewish settlers still today keep uprooting.

The "father of Zionism" Theodor Herzl, in advocating Jewish immigration to Palestine, inspired the rabbis of Vienna to send a fact-finding mission there in the late 18th century. Their two rabbis cabled back from Palestine, "The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man." (Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall) In other words, the land of Palestine was beautiful but already occupied by Arabs.

Nevertheless, against the desire of the Arabs living in Palestine, Jewish immigration exploded so that by 1947, the Jewish population was one third of the total and Jews owned 6-7% of the land. The Arabs opposed giving up half of Palestine as a Jewish State to compensate for the Nazi Holocaust, (why should Palestinians be punished for something the Germans did?), but they had no say in the UN decision. The myth that Arabs left Palestine of their own accord at that time has been also shown to be a lie. The Zionists had crafted a plan using terrorism to drive them out, so as to steal their land and create a Jewish state. (Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) This process continues to this day. (See previous blogs "Sandniggers" 11/16/08, "Is Israel a Racist State?" 12/24/08, "Lest We Forget: Jewish Terrorism 1/29/09, and "Religious Genocide' 5/4/09).

Another myth is that the Arabs started the 1967 war, whereas it was Israel who attacked first. Clearly this war was designed to expand Israel's territory as shown by the fact that settlements keep expanding. Still another myth is the so-called "generous offer" turned down by Palestinian President Arafat at Camp David in 2000. This offer was unacceptable to the entire Arab/Muslim world as it was not in accordance with international law and UN Security Council Resolutions. The blatantly biased pro-Israel US negotiating team at Camp David, led by Dennis Ross, doomed it to failure. We should have been even-handed. (Clayton E. Swisher The Truth About Camp David) (See previous blogs "The Myth of the Generous Offer" 5/13/07, and "A US Peace Plan" 9/29/09)

The truth is that it is the Arab/Muslim World which has long had a fair just peace plan on the table, endorsed in 2002 by Yassir Arafat as well as Saddam Hussein and virtually the rest of the world except for Israel and the US. If this had been accepted then, we would not be going bankrupt fighting all these unnecessary wars.

The Arrogance of the Israel Lobby

Israel Lobby neocon Senator Joe Lieberman praised the film "Inglourious Basterds", in which Jews try to surpass Nazis in the carrying out of atrocities, relishing the burning of people to death, carving swastikas into the foreheads of live victims, scalping them, etc. (Newsweek 8/24-31/09) Lieberman pronounced this "cathartic." (Newsweek 11/23/09) Similarly, Israeli warmongers enjoy the suffering of the Palestinian people resulting from Israel's Nazi-like occupation. (See previous blog "Israelis Idea of a Fun Time" 1/16/09)

In recently boasting about the Zionists' great "success", Israel Lobby neocon David Brooks does not include the inconvenient fact that Israel has "made the desert bloom," as they say, by stealing Palestinian land and water resources. (The New York Times 1/12/10) The one-sided media presentation we suffer from here, due to the stranglehold of the Israel lobby, was experienced by the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 29,2009. Erdogan was participating in a panel discussion of Gaza moderated by David Ignatius of the Israel lobby-dominated Washington Post. (In true Washington Post neocon fashion, Ignatius had cheered us into the unnecessary war with Iraq, writing on 2/25/03 that "The Iraq War is just and defensible.")

In this one-hour forum in Davos, Ignatius allotted 25 minutes to Israel's president Shimon Peres, more than twice that allowed for the other three panelists. After Peres filibustered about how wonderful Israel's slaughter in Gaza was, Erdogan attempted to respond but was cut off after one minute by Ignatius. Erdogan managed to say, "You killed people. And I think that is wrong. The 6th Commandment: Thou shall not kill. We are talking about killing." (The Wall Street Journal 1/30/09) "I remember the children who died on the beaches. I remember two former prime ministers who said they were happy when they were able to enter Palestine in tanks." (AP 1/30/09) He told Peres, "The high tone of your voice has to do with a guilty conscience." "When it comes to killing, you know how to kill" "And so Davos is over from me from now on." The New York Times (1/30/09) "I don't think I'll come back to Davos because you don't let me speak." (The Wall Street Journal 1/30/09).

Erdogan left the stage and, needless to say, returned home to a hero's welcome. Despite the Israel Lobby's attempt at positive PR, their atrocities are universally loathed.

In their overriding compulsion for domination and humiliation of others, Israelis recently summoned Turkish Ambassador Ahmet Oguz Celikkol to a media dressing-down designed to force Turkey to cancel a Turkish TV program. The popular drama, "Valley of the Wolves," features actions of Israeli intelligence agents. Without informing Celikkol that the cameras would be rolling, Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister, greeted Celikkol without a handshake and made him sit down on a very low sofa. Across from Cellikol, Ayalon was perched on a high chair with a coffee table in between bearing the Israeli flag. (No coffee was served.)

Ayalon then addressed the cameras in Hebrew (which Celikkol does not speak) and "explained to local TV stations that the humiliation was intentional." (AP 1/14/10) Ayalon said, "The important thing is that people see that he's low and we're high and that there is no [Turkish] flag here." Ayalon refused the videographer's request that Ayalon shake Celikkol's hand.

Ayalon's insulting stunt received such world-wide criticism that he was forced to apologize. The important thing is that power, accomplishments, and money can not buy world popularity.

Israel's Clone

By becoming Israel's clone, we have magnified the hatred aimed at us as Israel's supporter. Our Israel-inspired invasions, occupations, civilian bombings, and destabilisation of Muslim countries appear endless. War-mongering neocon Senator Joe Lieberman says Yemen "will be tomorrow's war." And is Iran this evening's war? Lieberman's appetite for war is as insatiable as his fellow Zionists' appetite for Palestinian land.

Of course, our approach has of necessity aimed at more subtlety, since foreign governments we have bribed with foreign aid are deathly afraid of their public which hates our guts. In Pakistan we are (correctly) blamed for destabilizing the country and forbidden from sending in US troops. Yemen similarly opposes US troops (AP 1/6/10). We thus must be content with CIA drone bombing in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc, where our extrajudicial assassination of civilians is precisely what Israel has been doing for decades. Israel is more than happy to share the resulting hatred and revenge attacks.

An AP report (1/6/10) states, "A number of women, children, and other civilians were killed" in a December 17, 2009 bombing in Yemen", and media reports that the US was involved are painful to the government. The Yemeni government "was infuriated" in 2002 when it was made public that US cruise missiles had been used there. Similarly, Jordan has been worried as its collusion with the CIA has been widely publicized due to the recent suicide terrorist bombing of the CIA base in Afghanistan. Needless to say, destabilizing Muslim countries is what Israel loves most.

Israel: Cancer of the World

Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni cleric who inspired both the Fort Hood shooter and the would-be Christmas Day plane bomber, refers to Israel as the "Cancer of the World." Israel's atrocities and war crimes perpetrated on the Palestinian Arabs have long produced a backlash against Israel's supporter, the U.S. Both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, and his nephew Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, (whose mother is Palestinian), point to our mindless support of Israel's brutal occupations as their motivation. The Fort Hood terrorist, Major Nidal Hasan, is of Palestinian origin, as was Humam al-Balawi, the Jordanian triple agent who blew up the CIA agents in Afghanistan.

Al-Balawi had featured the Gaza and Israeli/Palestinian conflict on his jihadi Web site (The New York Times 1/10/10). He had worked in a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Zarqa, Jordan, where "thousands of Palestinians live in poverty", and he was outraged at Israeli brutality against the Palestinians (Yahoo News 1/9/10). Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the assassinated Palestinian leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was also from Zarqa.

The Zionist-owned and dominated American news media of course never dwell on the Israel connection. They spin the news so as to concentrate on blaming security deficits rather than blaming our misguided foreign policy which supports Israeli atrocities and inspires terrorism around the globe. Americans are kept in the dark as we are urged to fight unnecessary war after unnecessary war, thus bankrupting our country and murdering our youth.

Our "Intelligence" Services

Addressing the nation on January 5, 2010, President Obama declared, " But make no mistake. We will close Guantanamo Prison, which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al Qaeda. In fact, that was the explicit rationale for the formation of Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula."

It is a hopeful sign that at last the administration may be taking into consideration the legitimate grievances of the Arab/Muslim world. Since presumably the purpose of our various intelligence services is to keep us safe, clearly it is important to gather information about why we are targeted by terrorists. And acting on such information is of utmost importance, even, and maybe especially, to intelligence operatives themselves.

For instance, on December 30, 2009, 7 CIA members were blown up in Afghanistan by a Jordanian triple agent whom they trusted enough not to bother to search. As noted in The New York Times, 1/5/10, "The United States, and the CIA in particular, are deeply unpopular in Jordan, where at least half the population is of Palestinian origin and where Washington's support for Israel is roundly condemned." Likewise, the BBC World News reported 1/5/10 that "on the street [in Jordan] there is broad support for attacks against American CIA officials."

As broadcast on CNN's Fareed Zakaria Global Public Square 1/3/10, Kishore Mahbubani, renowned author and scholar, Dean of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, stated that "the key issue" is pushing for a two-state, Israel/Palestine solution. Such action "immediately lowers the barometer of anger in the Islamic world." Now that is "intelligence" which is indeed intelligent.