CHRIS HEDGES: ISRAEL’S CULTURE OF DECEIT

OCTOBER 19TH, 2023

Source

Chris Hedges

Washington DC — (Scheerpost) — Israel was founded on lies. The lie that Palestinian land was largely unoccupied. The lie that 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes and villages during their ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias in 1948 because they were told to do so by Arab leaders. The lie that it was Arab armies that started the 1948 war that saw Israel seize 78 percent of historic Palestine. The lie that Israel faced annihilation in 1967, forcing it to invade and occupy the remaining 22 percent of Palestine, as well as land belonging to Egypt and Syria.

Israel is sustained by lies. The lie that Israel wants a just and equitable peace and will support a Palestinian state. The lie that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The lie that Israel is an “outpost of Western civilization in a sea of barbarism.” The lie that Israel respects the rule of law and human rights.

Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians are always greeted with lies. I heard them. I recorded them. I published them in my stories for The New York Times when I was the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief.

I covered war for two decades, including seven years in the Middle East. I learned quite a bit about the size and lethality of explosive devices. There is nothing in the arsenal of Hamas or Islamic Jihad that could have replicated the massive explosive power of the missile that killed an estimated 500 civilians in the al-Ahli Arab Christian Hospital in Gaza. Nothing. If Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) had these kinds of missiles, huge buildings in Israel would be rubble with hundreds of dead. They don’t.

The whistling sound, audible on the video moments before the explosion, appears to come from the high velocity of a missile. This sound gives it away. No Palestinian rocket makes this noise. And then there is the speed of the missile. Palestinian rockets are slow and lumbering, clearly visible as they arch in the sky and then tumble in free fall toward their targets. They do not strike with precision or travel at close to supersonic speed. They are incapable of killing hundreds of people.

The Israeli military dropped “roof knocking” rockets with no warheads on the hospital in the days leading up to the Oct. 17 strike, the familiar warning given by Israel to evacuate buildings, according to al-Ahli hospital officials. Hospital officials also said they had received calls from Israel saying “we warned you to evacuate twice.” Israel has demanded that all hospitals in northern Gaza be evacuated.

Following the strike on the hospital, Hananya Naftali, a “digital aide” to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza.” The post was quickly deleted.

Since the Oct. 7 incursion into Israel by Palestinian resistance fighters, which reportedly left some 1,300 Israelis dead, many of them civilians, and saw some 200 kidnapped as hostages and taken to Gaza, Israel has carried out 51 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza that have killed 15 healthcare workers and injured 27, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Out of 35 hospitals in Gaza, four are not functioning due to severe damage and targeting. Only eight of the 22 UNRWA primary healthcare centers are “partially functional,” the WHO says.

The brazenness of Israeli lies stunned those of us who reported from Gaza. It did not matter if we had seen the Israeli attack, including the shooting of unarmed Palestinians. It did not matter how many witnesses we interviewed. It did not matter what photographic and forensic evidence we obtained. Israel lied. Small lies. Big lies. Huge lies. These lies came reflexively and instantly from the Israeli military, Israeli politicians and Israeli media. They were amplified by Israel’s well-oiled propaganda machine and repeated with a cloying sincerity on international news outlets.

Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic regimes. It does not deform the truth, it inverts it. It paints a picture that is diametrically opposed to reality. Those of us who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories — required under the rules of American journalism — although we know they are untrue.

Israel has invented an Orwellian lexicon. Children killed by Israelis become children caught in crossfire. The bombing of residential districts, with dozens of dead and wounded, becomes a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory. The destruction of Palestinian homes becomes the demolition of the homes of terrorists.

The Big Lie — Große Lüge — feeds the two reactions Israel seeks to elicit — racism among its supporters and terror among its victims. The Big Lies fosters the myth of a clash of civilizations, a war between democracy, decency and honor on one side and Islamic terrorism, barbarism and medievalism on the other.

George Orwell in his novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” called the Big Lie “doublethink”. Doublethink uses “logic against logic” and “repudiate[s] morality while laying claim to it.” The Big Lie abolishes nuances, ambiguities and contradictions that can plague conscience. It is designed to create cognitive dissonance. It permits no gray zones. The world is black and white, good and evil, righteous and unrighteous. The Big Lie allows believers to take comfort — a comfort they are desperately seeking — in their own moral superiority even as they abrogate all morality. It feeds, what Edward Bernays called, the “logic-proof compartment of dogmatic adherence.” All effective propaganda, Bernays writes, targets and builds upon these irrational “psychological habits.”

Israeli supporters thirst for these lies. They do not want to know the truth. The truth would force them to examine their racism, self-delusion and complicity in oppression, murder and genocide.

Most importantly, the Big Lie sends an ominous message to the Palestinians. The Big Lie states that Israel will wage a campaign of mass terror and genocide and never take responsibility for its crimes. The Big Lie obliterates the truth. It obliterates the dignity of human thought and human action. It obliterates facts. It obliterates history. It obliterates comprehension. It obliterates hope. It reduces all communication to the language of violence. When oppressors speak to the oppressed exclusively through indiscriminate violence, the oppressed answer through indiscriminate violence.

The cartoonist Joe Sacco and I watched Israeli soldiers taunt and shoot small boys in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza. We interviewed the boys and their parents afterwards in the hospital. In a few cases we attended their funerals. We had their names. We had the dates and locations of the shootings.

Israel’s response was to say that we were not in Gaza. We had made it up.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Defense Minister and Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokesperson immediately blamed the killing of the Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022, on Palestinian gunmen. Israel disseminated footage of a Palestinian fighter they said shot and killed the journalist, who was wearing a flak jacket and helmet marked “PRESS.”

Benny Gantz, who was at the time Defense Minister, stated that “no [Israeli] gunfire was directed at the journalist,” and that the Israeli army had “seen footage of indiscriminate shooting by Palestinian terrorists”.

This lie was peddled until video footage examined by B’Tselem, The Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, identified the location of the Palestinian gunman depicted in the video. The video, the human rights organization found, was taken in a different location from where Shireen was killed.

When Israel is caught lying, as it was with the murder of Shireen, it promises an investigation. But these investigations are a sham. Impartial investigations into the hundreds of killings by soldiers and Jewish settlers of Palestinians are rarely carried out. Perpetrators are almost never brought to trial or held accountable. The pattern of Israeli obfuscation is predictable. So is the collusion of nearly all of the corporate media along with Republican and Democratic politicians. U.S. politicians decried the murder of Shireen and dutifully repeated the old mantra, calling for a “thorough investigation” by the army that carried out the crime.

A few months later, Israel admitted that there was a “high possibility” that an Israeli soldier killed the journalist by accident, but by then the eruption of street protests and rage over the killing of the journalist was over and her murder largely forgotten.

By the time the conclusive proof comes out about the bombing of the hospital, it too will be a distant memory.

There is dramatic footage captured in September 2000 at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip — where I saw a nineteen-year-old boy shot and killed by an Israeli sniper — by France 2 TV, of a father trying to shield his traumatized 12-year-old son, Muhammad al-Durrah, from Israeli gunfire that ultimately killed him.

The killing of the boy resulted in the typical propaganda campaign by Israel. Israeli officials spent years lying about the killing, first blaming the Palestinians for the shooting, later suggesting that the scene was faked, and finally insisting the boy was still alive.

When an Israeli soldier, in 2003, murdered the 23-year-old student and American activist Rachel Corrie, by crushing her to death with a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the illegal demolition of a Palestinian doctor’s home, the Israeli army said it was an accident for which Corrie was responsible.

The Israeli military has killed “at least” 20 journalists since 2001, with no accountability, according to a 2023 report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.  “Immediately after a journalist is killed by security forces, Israeli officials often push out a counter narrative to media reporting,” the CPJ concluded. This includes blaming the deaths on “indiscriminate fire” by Palestinians or attempts to discredit those killed as “terrorists.”

Israel blocks the work of independent human rights organizations into atrocities and war crimes it commits in Gaza and the West Bank. It refuses to cooperate with the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes in the Occupied Territories. It does not cooperate with the U.N. Human Rights Council and prohibits the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, from entering the country. Israel revoked the work permit for Omar Shakir, the Director of Human Rights Watch (Israel and Palestine), in 2018 and expelled him. In May 2018, Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy published a report calling on the European Union and European states to halt their direct and indirect financial support and funding to Palestinian and international human rights organizations that “have ties to terror and promote boycotts against Israel.”

After the bombing of the hospital, Israel first released a video that purported to show Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets which struck the hospital. The Israelis hastily removed the video when journalists noticed that time stamps showed the images were taken 40 minutes after the strike on the hospital.

Israeli propagandists — aware that Palestinian rockets have little explosive power — then claimed that Hamas stored munitions under the hospital. This caused the massive explosion, they said. But if this was true, it would mean there would be a secondary explosion. There was none. And now Israel has released what they say is a recording of two Hamas militants discussing the missile strike on the hospital. The militants ask each other, in a self-incriminating conversation that is too ridiculous to believe, if Hamas or PIJ carried out the strike. Please. How was Israel completely in the dark about an incursion by thousands of armed Palestinian militants from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7 and able to capture this incriminating conversation by two supposed militants?

“Israel has a whole unit of ‘mistaravim’, Israeli Jewish undercover agents trained to pose as Palestinians and secretly operate among Palestinians,” the reporter Jonathan Cook writes. “Israel produced a highly popular TV series about such people in Gaza called Fauda. You have to be beyond credulous to think that Israel couldn’t, and wouldn’t, rig up a call like this to fool us, just as it regularly fools Palestinians in Gaza.”

Israel has also long targeted medical facilities, ambulances and medics, as Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein points out. It bombed a Palestinian children’s hospital during the 1982 war in Lebanon, killing 60 people. It also carried out missile strikes on clearly marked Lebanese ambulances during the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon. It damaged or destroyed 29 ambulances and almost half of Gaza’s health facilities, including 15 hospitals, during the 2008-2009 assault on Gaza known as Operation Cast Lead. It routinely prohibited wounded Palestinians from being picked up by ambulances during this operation, often leaving them to die. During Operation Protective Edge, the 51-day assault on Gaza in 2014, Israel destroyed or damaged 17 hospitals and 56 primary healthcare centers and damaged or destroyed 45 ambulances.

You can see my interview, released today, with Professor Finkelstein about Gaza and Israel here.

Amnesty International, which investigated the Israeli attacks on three of these hospitals in 2014, dismissed the “evidence” for the attacks offered by Israel as false. “The image tweeted by the Israeli military does not match satellite images of the al-Wafa hospital and appears to depict a different location,” the report read.

Expose Israeli lies and you are attacked by Israel and its supporters as an anti-Semite and apologist for terrorists. You are banished from mainstream media. You are denied forums to speak about the issue and, as has happened to me, disinvited from university events.

It is an old game, one I have played as a reporter many, many times. I bear the scars of the lies spewed out by Israel and its lobby. Meanwhile, Israel continues its butchery, endorsed and even lauded by Western political leaders, including Joe Biden, who accompany the torrent of lies from Israel like a Wagnerian chorus.

Israeli Invention of National Symbols

25 Jun 2023

Source: Al Mayadeen English

The most well-known Israeli national symbol, Jerusalem, was not the City of David. In fact, it was built 3000 years before David’s birth, and was dedicated to the Canaanite god of dusk, Shalem. “Israel’s” other symbols were also, very similarly, simply appropriated.

The absence of an authentic Israeli national memory made it crucial for political Zionism to construct a convoluted web of deception by appropriating national symbols and imbuing alternative facts that have become ingrained in Western national discourse.

is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues for various national and international commentaries

Jamal Kanj

This is the third of a series of articles that will explore Zionist myths, artificial history, and made-up culture. For the first article: ‘Israeli’ Invention of Artificial Reality, for the second article: ‘Israel’: A ‘fairytale’ history

If a random group of highly educated individuals were asked who established the city of Jerusalem (Al-Quds), some might plead ignorance, but most would likely answer King David. After all, it’s ostensibly known as the City of David. 

This example demonstrates how unchallenged legends, originating from non-historical documents like religious texts, can shape the sophistical historical narratives. This article will delve into like major Zionist’s wonted myths that are accepted at face value in the West.

The organic development of nations relies on several factors: mainly national symbols that form an important part of the national memory, distinct cultural heritage, belonging, territory, values, customs, traditions, language, and social behaviors. These elements evolve gradually and are transmitted over generations, forming the foundation of nationhood.

However, the development of the “State of Israel” followed an unconventional path. The political Zionist movement took a reverse approach by occupying the territory, first, bypassing the natural process of generational development and appropriating various aspects of the local surface culture, including national symbols.

Israeli leaders often assert, for instance, that Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital for 3000 years. In the West, the veracity of such a claim is not questioned, either out of ignorance, religious accommodation, or outright fear of being accused of “anti-Semitism” for challenging Zionist narratives. This organized intimidation is the primary reason why critical thinking in the West often fails to challenge Israeli accounts. 

As a result, only a few are aware that the city of Jerusalem served as the capital of the original Palestinians for over 6000 years, long before it was occupied by Jewish tribes from Mesopotamia. Historical and archaeological evidence points to the Phoenician Canaanites, the ancestors of today’s Palestinians, as the first human settlement in Jerusalem in the 4th millennium BCE. The Jebusites, a Canaanite tribe, referred to the small town on the hill as “Urushalim.” The name is a portmanteau term blending the words “uru,” meaning “founded by,” and “shalem,” the Phoenician Canaanite god of dusk, hence, “Urushalim.”

Consequently, the most well-known Israeli national symbol, Jerusalem, was not the City of David. In fact, it was built 3000 years before David’s birth, and was dedicated to the Canaanite god of dusk, Shalem, not Avraham’s Elohim. “Israel” and Zionism adopted a variation from the Canaanite lexicon, calling the city “Yerushaláyim,” implying a Hebrew association with the original name. 

The Zionist appropriation of national symbols is so pervasive that I, too, once fell for this misconception, mistakenly believing that “Urushalim” had a Hebrew origin. I recall hearing a Christian priest in Lebanon refer to Jerusalem as “Urushalim,” instead of its Arabic name, “Al-Quds.” At the time, I failed to realize that the priest was using the original Canaanite name, reminding us that modern Zionists appropriated the name “Urushalim” when the city was occupied in the 10th century BC and again in the 20th century AD.

In addition to the historically forged claim of being the “eternal capital,” another iconic national symbol that has been falsely portrayed as exclusively “Jewish” is the six-pointed star in the Israeli flag. Contrary to popular belief, the hexagram in the Israeli flag is not solely a Jewish symbol. Prior to its association with Judaism in 17th-century Eastern Europe, the earliest Jewish usage of the symbol was inherited from medieval Arabic literature by Kabbalists for use in talismanic protective amulets. The symbol was also used in Christian churches as a decorative motif many centuries before its first known use in a Jewish synagogue… Israeli historian Shlomo Sand’s book, “The Invention of The Land of Israel,” explains that the Star of David is not an ancient Jewish symbol but has its origins in the Indian subcontinent, where it was extensively used by various religious and military cultures.

The two equilateral triangles can still be found today in the stunningly intricate mother-of-pearl inlay work featuring hexagrams as part of mosaic designs on walnut chairs, tables, and wooden boxes in present-day Syria. This exquisite art form dates back thousands of years in the city of Damascus, the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city.

Another symbol that lacks inherent religious significance in history is the so-called “Western Wall.” The wall is not an internal structure and cannot be part of a building. Rather, it is an exterior embankment supporting higher ground (Haram el Sharif/ Noble Sanctuary) and an extension of the defensive exterior wall surrounding the Old City, which predates the Jewish presence in the city. The approximately 2.5-mile-long and 40-feet-high fortification wall was reconstructed between 1537 and 1541 under Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I.

Jews who assimilated within Palestinian culture but maintained their religious beliefs lived in Palestine, including Jerusalem, alongside their Muslim and Christian compatriots for centuries. Throughout history, before the advent of the Western Christian Messianic movement and the birth of political Zionism, there are no historical records indicating that the western fortification wall was used as a prayer site. The west side of the wall only became a religious attraction in the seventeenth century, driven by Christian religious devotees who wanted to hasten the return of the messiah.

In an attempt to validate their delusional fantasies, successive Israeli governments have conducted extensive excavations beneath the Noble Sanctuary for over sixty years. However, they have yet to produce any archeological evidence pointing to a religious Jewish site.

In more recent history, it is little-known that the melody of the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah,” originally belonged to the World Zionist movement’s anthem and was adapted from the famous tune “Vltava” (My Homeland) by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana.

The absence of an authentic Israeli national memory made it crucial for political Zionism to construct a convoluted web of deception by appropriating national symbols and imbuing alternative facts that have become ingrained in Western national discourse. By inculcating false narratives, legends, and fables into the mainstream, a new reality is shaped, or as Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels famously said, “A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”

The latter could possibly explain the mutual adulation between Donald Trump, and his Hebrew version, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues for various national and international commentaries

“The Victory of Syria over Global Terrorism Will Benefit Humanity”: Vanessa Beeley on Syria War

By Vanessa Beeley and Mark Taliano

Global Research, December 10, 2019

Mark Taliano: Why is the truth about Syria important?

Vanessa Beeley: It is important because in Syria the “humanitarian” hybrid war strategy of the Globalist powers in the so-called civilised “global north” is being exposed real time as Syria sweeps to a military victory against the heavily financed proxy invasion of their country, orchestrated by the US alliance that includes aligned Gulf States, Turkey and Israel. By pushing back against the dominant establishment narrative on Syria, we, as journalists and activists, are effectively defending international law which is being violated by our own rogue states. We are standing in solidarity with an unprecedented resistance against global terrorism which has also enabled the  formation of an axis of resistance that has turned the tide of neoconservative hegemony in the region. We are defending the right of the Syrian people to decide their own future without foreign meddling. The precedents being set by this externally imposed conflict and its outcome will define the future of global security for all Humanity – what more important principle is there to defend?

MT: Why are people trying to “de-platform” you? Who is trying to de-platform you?

VB: People – all aligned media, think tanks, UN agencies – are trying to de-platform me because diverging views, including those of the “disappeared” Syrian people, challenge and confront their fabricated narrative that has “manufactured consent” for the US Coalition criminal aggression against Syria for nine years. The revelations provided by many independent voices exposes the corruption and corrosion of established institutions that should be ensuring world peace and who are, instead, promoting, sponsoring and enabling world instability in order to provide resource scavenging opportunities for the plutocrats who reign over us. Freedom of speech, thought and expression is being eroded and this is the principle we should all be defending or we are ALL Julian Assange – tortured, oppressed by the pseudo “free world”.

MT: Should Canadians believe the White Helmets? Amnesty International? Human Rights Watch?

VB: Canadians should use international law as their yardstick to determine truth, the violators of international law are their own government which is a vassal state of the US and UK. The White Helmets, AI and HRW are all compromised organisations which are sponsored and were established by the same governments as part of their smart power complex – an integral and now crucial part of their hybrid war strategy which are established to infiltrate prey nation society, always on the side of the US Coalition foreign policy agenda – predominantly to ensure the vilification of the target government or leader in order to provide justification for proxy or direct military intervention or economic terrorism under the guise of sanctions.

Do You Choose the Truth or War Propaganda? Your Choice Makes a Difference.

MT: When Syria wins this war, the world will be a safer place. Why?

VB: As I have explained above, the victory of Syria over global terrorism will benefit humanity. Syria has had a policy of containing these terrorist groups within Syrian borders in order to prevent the same fate befalling the EU, UK and US citizens with the inevitable return or flow of these radicalised extremist factions to those regions. Syria and her allies have adhered to international law both from a military and a diplomatic perspective, thus ensuring a stable future for mankind. Syria’s victory will ensure that history is written by the targeted nation – exposing the destructive hegemony of the US alliance in the region and globally.

MT: What should Canadians do to spread the truth about the war on Syria?

VB: Canadians must fight for freedom of speech and against the de-platforming of diverging views. They should join genuine anti-war movements and defend  the principles of international law which have been cynically abused and abandoned by the UK, US and France on the security council.

*

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Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist, photographer and associate editor at 21st Century Wire. Vanessa was a finalist for one of the most prestigious journalism awards – the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism – whose winners have included the likes of Robert Parry in 2017, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Nick Davies and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism team. Please support her work at her Patreon account. 

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

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Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Vanessa Beeley and Mark Taliano, Global Research, 2019

The Left is from Jerusalem

NOVEMBER 24, 2019 BY GILAD ATZMON

By Gilad Atzmon

We learned yesterday that Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion (“XR”) apologised after his comments about the Holocaust sparked outrage.

I was curious to find out what it was that Hallam said that led to such indignation. German Green politician Volker Beck accused Mr Hallam on Twitter of “bringing the climate movement into disrepute.” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the Nazi genocide was “uniquely inhumane” (can the German foreign minister provide a list of what he considers to have been  ‘humane’ genocides?). Ullstein, Hallam’s German publisher announced it had stopped publication of Hallam’s book on climate change and that it was disassociating itself from his comments.

Judging by the  scale of the histrionics I assumed that Hallam had broken every rule. He must have praised Hitler or perhaps justified or even denied the Holocaust all together.  Apparently, he said nothing at all like that. In an interview with Die Zeit, Hallam stated that the Holocaust was  “just another fuckery in human history.”  The “fact of the matter,” he said, “is, millions of people have been killed in vicious circumstances on a regular basis throughout history.”  He concluded by observing that genocides have occurred repeatedly over the past 500 years and “in fact, you might say it is like a regular event”.

At least on its face, his statements were factually correct, Hallam didn’t deny or diminish anyone’s suffering.  Quite the opposite, he expressed a universal disgust with all forms of oppression and hatred.

What was Hallam’s crime? Apparently, that he spoke both authentically and ethically, and ignored the fact that this form of discourse is extinct within contemporary ‘Left’  and progressive circles.

XR’s Annemarie Botzki tweeted: “We distance ourselves from Roger Hallam’s trivialising and relativising comments about the Holocaust.”  Hallam is being accused of ‘trivializing’ and ‘relativizing’ the holocaust simply by noting the clear and undeniable fact that history has witnessed more than one systematic destruction of one people by another.

The study of history benefits from a  comparative approach. Our scholarly understanding of the past expands when we can see, for instance, the equivalence between the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and the 1948 Palestinian Nakba. Our understanding of Zionism grows when we delve into the parallels between the national socialist aspirations of the early Labour Zionists and  those of German National Socialism that surfaced later. Yet, within the domain of the Holocaust religion such a scholarly comparative approach is regarded as the ultimate heresy. To examine the Holodomor, the Boer War, Stalin’s crimes, Neocon global atrocities, or Israeli War Crimes alongside the Holocaust is perceived by some as the ultimate profanity as it ‘relativises’ that which ‘must’ extend beyond history and reason, namely ‘The Holocaust.’

For Jewish institutions, Holocaust:  ‘Relativisation,’ ‘Trivialization’ and ‘Universalization’ are the ‘ultimate crimes’ as they tend to prevent the crystallization of the Holocaust as a unique chapter in human history. The attempt is made by these institutions to prevent  the application of language that is ‘specific to the holocaust’ to events that are unrelated to it or to Jewish suffering in general.

We are stumbling upon two core elements at the heart of the Holocaust religion.  One is, of course, the primacy of Jewish suffering. The other is the Orwellian attempt to dominate language, terminology, vocabulary and expressions by restricting the usage of certain words so the words themselves serve Jewish identitarian causes.

The great Israeli thinker Yeshayahu Leibowitz noticed as early as the 1970s that the Holocaust was morphing from an event in history into a dogmatic religion. It was he who coined the notion “Holocaust religion.” Leibowitz perceived that, although Jews believe in many different things, Judaism, Bolshevism, Human Rights, Zionism and Anti Zionism: all Jews believe in the Holocaust.  A decade later in 1987, Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir expanded on this shift in Jewish consciousness and identification. In his paper On Sanctifying the Holocaust: An Anti-Theological Treatise, Ophir admitted that “a religious consciousness built around the Holocaust may become the central aspect of a new religion.”

Ophir listed the four commandments of the new religion:

 1. “Thou shalt have no other holocaust.” 

2. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or likeness.”

3. “Thou shalt not take the name in vain.” 

4. “Remember the day of the Holocaust to keep it holy, in memory of the destruction of the Jews of Europe.” 

Ophir’s commandments illuminate these two Judeo Centric core elements of the Holocaust religion. The primacy of Jewish Suffering (1, 2 and 4) and strict lingual restrictions (1,2 &3).

Orwell’s insights into left authoritarianism that made 1984 into a prophetic masterpiece together with Ophir’s thoughts  provide us with the intellectual framework to understand both the Jewish and the Left’s attitude toward the Holocaust. The Left that, at least in the past, attempted to unite us in the name of a universal ethos is now at the forefront of the battle against each of its own core values: the ethical, the universal (equality) and, most important, freedom.

Noticeably, not a single Left politician or thinker stood up for Hallam and his expression of a genuine humanist and universalist outlook. This is tragic but not surprising. It can easily be explained by the concepts of ‘Athens’ and ‘Jerusalem.’  If Athens is the birthplace of philosophy and Jerusalem is the home for Torah and Mitzvoth, then Athens teaches us how to think while Jerusalem produces a set of directives as, for example,  what ‘not to say.’ The Left’s call that was born of an Athenian instinct that was both dialectical and universal has generally been reduced into a Jerusalemite set of ‘commandments’ that are totally removed from truthfulness, authenticity or human nature.

It is this Jerusalemite authoritarian mode that is quintessential to contemporary Left politics and explains why Corbyn’s Labour has expelled its best members for truthful speech. Why is it that Corbyn himself never stood for Ken Livingstone and others who were telling the truth? This systematic failure of Left politics may explain why the promised revolution never materialized.   It also explains why Hallam was stabbed in the back by his allies for telling the truth.

Truth is from Athens but the Left is from Jerusalem.

We Are All Liars

By Theirry Meyssan
Source

Propaganda is a means of spreading ideas, whether they be true or false. But lying to ourselves is nothing other than refusing to admit our faults, attempting to convince ourselves that we are perfect – running away.

Turkey illustrates the paroxysm of this attitude. It persists in denying that it tried to get rid of the non-Muslim minorities, in several waves, during the space of a generation, from 1894 to 1923. The Israëlis are not too bad at this themselves, pretending that they created their state in order to offer a dignified life to the Jews who survived extermination by the Nazis, when in fact Woodrow Wilson agreed to found the state in 1917, and that today in their home land, more than 50,000 escapees from the death camps live miserably below the poverty line. But the Western powers are the only ones to build consensus on their lies, claiming them to be revealed truths.

The Normandy landings

We are presently celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings. According to the almost unanimous Press, it was here that the Allies launched the liberation of Europe from the Nazi occupation.

Yet we know this is untrue.

The landings were not the work of the Allies, but almost exclusively that of the British Empire and the US Expeditionary Force.

It was not aimed at « liberating Europe », but at « marching on Berlin», in order to grab those shreds of the Third Reich which could still be poached from the victorious Soviet armies.

The invasion was not welcomed with joy by the French, but on the contrary, with horror.

Robert Jospin (father of ex-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin) denounced, on the front page of his newspaper, the Anglo-Saxon importation of war into France. The French buried their 20,000 dead, killed by Anglo-Saxon bombings, which were only intended as a diversion. An immense demonstration gathered in Lyon around the « head of state », ex-Maréchal Philippe Petain, to refuse Anglo-Saxon domination. And never, absolutely never, did the head of La France Libre, General Charles De Gaulle, accept to participate in any commemoration of this sinister invasion.

Normandy landing. Omaha beach

History is more complicated than a Western movie. There are no « good guys » or « bad guys », but men who attempt to save their own with as much humanity as possible. At best, we were able to dodge the drivel of Tony Blair who, during the commemorations of the 60th anniversary, provoked the anger of the British Press by pretending in his speech that the United Kingdom had entered the war to save Jews from the « Shoah » — but not to save the gypsies from the same massacre. The destruction of the European Jews did not begin until after the Wansee Conference in 1942.

The Tiananmen massacre

We celebrate the painful anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. We read continually that the cruel Chinese Imperial régime massacred thousands of its own citizens who were peaceably gathered in Beijing’s main square, only because they were asking for a little freedom.

Yet we know this is untrue.

The sit-in on Tiananmen Square was not that of the Chinese among themselves, but an attempted coup d’état by partisans of ex-Premier Minister Zhao Ziyang.

Dozens of soldiers were lynched or burned alive on the Square by « peaceful demonstrators », and hundreds of military vehicles were destroyed, before any intervention by Den Xiaoping’s soldiers was implemented against them.

Chinese troops and tanks gather in Beijing, one day after the end of a “pro-democracy” color revolution on Tiananmen Square, June 5, 1989

The US specialists of the « colour revolutions », including Gene Sharp, were present on the Square to organise Zhao Ziyang’s men.

The European Union

We have just voted to nominate our deputies in the European Parliament. For weeks now, we have been bombarded by slogans assuring us that « Europe means peace and prosperity », and that the European Union is the pinnacle of the European dream.

Yet we know this is untrue.

Europe is a continent – reaching « from Brest to Vladivostok », according to Charles De Gaulle’s phrase – and it is a culture of openness and cooperation, unlike the European Union, which is no more than an anti-Russian administration which continues the march on Berlin in the wake of the Normandy landings.

The European Union is not peace in Cyprus, but cowardice in face of the Turkish military occupation. It is not prosperity, but economic stagnation, while the rest of the world develops with increasing rapidity.

The European Union has nothing to do with the European dream that existed between the two world wars. Our ancestors harboured the ambition of uniting the political régimes which served the general interest – the Republics, in the etymological sense of the word, in conformity with the European culture, whether they were situated on the continent or elsewhere. Aristide Briand therefore spoke in favour of Argentina (a country of European culture in Latin America), but not the United Kingdom (a class-based society).

Et cetera, etc…

We stumble on like the blind

We have to distinguish truth from falsehood. We can be pleased that Hitlerism failed, but without necessarily believing that the Anglo-Saxons saved us. We can denounce the brutality of Den Xiaoping without necessarily denying that in this bloody fashion he saved his country from the return of colonialism. We can celebrate the fact that we were not dominated by the Soviet Union without necessarily boasting about being vassals of the Anglo-Saxons.

We continually lie to ourselves in order to mask our cowardice and our crimes. And then we feign surprise that we are unable to solve human problems.