From unseen missiles yet to come with unlived years,
Where hopes and dreams dissolve into unforeseen fears
That falls like a funeral pall upon this child,
Who sits so quiet, so pensive, so mild
Beneath those crescent arms as they reach to shield
This innocent lost in this barren field.
What catastrophe is caught in this aged face,
What last years lost in silent disgrace,
What father is now absent from this scene,
What mother abandoned to a fate unseen?
How relive a life lost, what might have been?
How rekindle love in a world of sin?
How undo the infectious toxin of hate?
How understand the true terror of fate?
I share this tent of sorrow and of shame,
The darkness in the soul, the guilt and blame,
A seared image of suffering and pain–
The curse of Cain rises– once again.
~o0o~
William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His most recent book, The Plight of the Palestinians, was published this past summer by Macmillan. He can be reached at www.drwilliamacook.com or wcook@laverne.edu.
United States Congress has once again jumped to the fore as defender of the beleaguered state of Israel by writing a letter to the UNHRC
Let us present this case as objectively as we can… A few photos of Israeli use of white phosphorus will accompany this article if possible.
William A. Cook / STAFF WRITER
Thank God Judge Goldstone recanted his judgment on Israel and its IDF forces in the slaughter inflicted on Gaza during its Christmas invasion in 2008-2009; both are now innocent of wrongful intent to kill Palestinian civilians since the Israeli military courts investigated Goldstone’s allegations and determined he was wrong. Now the good Judge has found, with the military court, that the Israeli government, that refused to cooperate with the United Nations investigation, did not intentionally send its forces to kill and destroy but only to kill and destroy Gaza; that the civilians were killed is simply a sad consequence of war. How astute, how learned, how compassionate; how absurd, how facetious, how despicable.
Yet, good may come of this decision. Now Israel is free to declare its innocence before the International Court of Justice since it is Israel’s investigation that can be presented as its case, with the good Judge as co-defendant. After all, isn’t this exactly what the Israeli government has wanted from the start, a way to demonstrate to the world that its Army is the most moral on the planet, its government the most democratic, acting only to defend its people, its weaponry the most sophisticated state of the art precision ordinance available, and its actions always proportionate to the crimes it seeks to address? Knowing now what they did not know before Judge Goldstone recanted his report, the government of Israel has nothing to fear from the ICJ but the justice it so rightfully deserves. Certainly it makes no sense for Israel or the UN to do nothing now that the report has been brought into question. The world has castigated Israel because of the report, now it’s Israel’s turn to seek revenge and put before the world how righteous and how legal its actions have been. How fortunate this turn of events.
And how opportune a moment since our United States Congress has once again jumped to the fore as defender of the beleaguered state of Israel by writing a letter to the UNHRC that it should expunge the report from history since it is biased against the Jewish state and this would help make amends. (“Congressional initiatives targeting Goldstone report” April 11, 2011 JTA) But why expunge it? Israel, after all, knows it did no wrong; it has done its own investigation and declared its innocence. What an opportunity to show the world that it has been maligned, that it has obeyed all international laws relative to individual rights, that as an occupying force under Geneva Conventions and the Charter of the UN it has observed all requisite responsibilities toward the people of Gaza, and finally that it had rights to invade that the international community must recognize since it was only defending itself.
Let us present this case as objectively as we can by using the words in the Israeli Gaza Operation Investigations: the means used to investigate, the difficulties that impeded the investigation, their presentation of the investigation concerning white phosphorus, and the conclusions drawn by the Military Advocate General, oh, and the convictions leveled on those found guilty. We’ll follow that presentation with some eye witness accounts of the Gaza operation, the effect of white phosphorus and its legality, and the impact of DIME explosives on humans and the environment. A few photos of Israeli use of white phosphorus will accompany this article if possible.
Consider the facts as articulated by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs as it labeled Cast Lead as Hamas war against Israel.
Israeli soldier looks impatient as he watches over a load of bombs destined to be fired at Gaza[My apologies; I’m interjecting a subjective comment on Israel’s calling Operation Cast Lead “Hamas’ war against Israel.” In the 8 years preceding Cast Lead, Hamas or other resistance groups in Gaza, fired 6000 home made rockets at Israel, roughly 750 a year, or 62.5 per month or 2 per day. Twenty three people were killed. In that same period Israel killed more than 1000 Palestinian children and in Cast Lead killed an additional 352. A total of 1084 Israelis were killed between 2000 and 2008, but 6430 Palestinians were killed. Yet it was Hamas’ war against Israel. One final observation: Israel’s launch of one of its American supplied missiles that cost $300,000, a fraction of the 8.2 million per day we supply to Israel’s military, a precision state of the art weapon that hit a home where the IDF ordered people to go, in less than one minute killed 21 members of the Samouni family, nine of them children.] (figures from ifamericansknew.org and see this author’s article “Consider the Realities of Gaza,” Counterpunch, Jan. 5, 2009). Back to our sources and let the reader be judge.
Gaza Operation Investigations: An Update Jan 2010.
Israeli Defence Forces fire massive weapons of destruction toward the population of Gaza
1. Israel’s investigative system has multiple layers of review to ensure impartiality and independence. These include the Military Advocate General’s Corps (MAG), which determines whether to initiate criminal investigations and file charges against IDF soldiers. The Military Advocate General is legally independent from the military chain of command. Israel’s Attorney General provides civilian oversight, as any decision of the Military Advocate General on whether or not to investigate or indict may be subject to his review.
2. The Operation in Gaza: Factual and Legal Aspects, which addressed a range of factual and legal issues related to the Gaza Operation. The Operation in Gaza also set out the legal framework governing the use of force and the principles – including the principles of distinction and proportionality – that apply in such a conflict. It also described the IDF’s efforts to ensure compliance with these principles during the Gaza Operation and the modus operandi of Hamas, in particular its abuses of civilian protections that created such acute operational dilemmas.
3. Describing the application of these mechanisms to the Gaza Operation, the Paper notes that the IDF to date has launched investigations of 150 separate incidents arising from the Gaza Operation. A number of these were opened at the IDF’s own initiative. Others were opened in response to complaints and reports from Palestinian civilians, local and international non-governmental organisations, and U.N. and media reports.
Conclusions:
183. The Gaza Operation presented complex challenges to Israel and the IDF. While the need and obligation to respond effectively to the thousands of Hamas rockets and mortars that had terrorized Israeli civilians for years was clear and acute, the strategies adopted by Hamas, and in particular its systematic entrenchment in the heart of civilian areas, created profound operational dilemmas. [A second interruption if I may: consider the reality of the Palestinians’ plight; they can go nowhere, they cannot escape through the Israeli gates, they can not flee by car, rail, air, boat or on foot, and they are caged in a steel enclosed land area blocked on the west by Israeli gunboats. They have no army, no air force, no navy; but they were training police to help provide order inside this cage of chaos, and Israel began its operation by killing 50 of the graduating class on December 27, 2008.]
Palestinian doctors carry the bodies of children killed by an Israeli tank shell, to the morgue at Shifa hospital in Gaza (images: documents.blogspot.com)
184. These challenges did not end with the close of operations. A key element of respecting the Law of Armed Conflict is a commitment genuinely to review military operations after the fact, and thoroughly investigate allegations of unlawful activity. Fulfilling this commitment in the context of Gaza is demanding, and requires serious efforts to obtain evidence from battleground situations and to make arrangements to enable residents of Gaza to give their accounts. It also requires an awareness that, in complex combat situations, errors of judgment, even with tragic results, do not necessarily mean that violations of the Law of Armed Conflict have occurred. [Note that Israel refused to cooperate with the UNHRC investigation that became the Goldstone Report.]
187. Israel recognizes the importance of engaging in dialogue and sharing best practices on theconduct of investigative proceedings with other democratic states facingsimilar challenges and committed to upholding the rule of law.
Obviously this article cannot provide a complete rendering of the Israeli investigation and its conclusions regarding proper conduct under international law. However, one of the more telling concerns raised about the IDF was its use of white phosphorus. Here is the comment from the Israeli operation cast lead investigation on that subject. Section IV contains others.
IV. COMPLAINTS ALLEGING VIOLATIONS OF THE LAW OF ARMED CONFLICT DURING THE GAZA OPERATION
89. Israel is aware of concerns raised regarding the Gaza Operation. As discussed in detail in The Operation in Gaza, and as outlined above, the deliberate strategy of Hamas to blend in with the civilian population made it difficult for the IDF to achieve the objective of the Gaza Operation – reducing the threat of deliberate attacks against Israeli civilians – while also avoiding harm to Palestinian civilians. To be sure, the IDF undertook strenuous efforts to minimise such harm. It intensively trained its personnel on the requirements of the Law of Armed Conflict. It delayed, diverted, or refrained from attacks to spare civilian life. It provided numerous and varied types of concrete warnings before launching attacks.
88 Nevertheless, Israel’s efforts to comply with the Law of Armed Conflict do not lessen its regret for the loss of innocent lives and damage to civilian property.
93. The unique difficulties involved in the investigation of alleged violations of the Law of Armed Conflict in the battlefield should not be ignored. They include: the inability to secure the scene for forensic and physical evidence, either during a battle or after, when the territory is under enemy control; the possible destruction of evidence during fighting and the possible manipulation of the scene by the enemy; the need to recall reserve soldiers back for questioning; the difficulty of accurately identifying the location of an incident, when it is described in local and unofficial terms and slang; and the need to locate the adversary’s civilians as witnesses and overcome their natural suspicion and fear of reprisals by their authorities.
90(v) The use of weaponry containing phosphorous
117. This investigation dealt with the use of weapons containing phosphorous by IDF forces during the Gaza Operation. The investigation focused on the different types and number of weapons containing phosphorous used during the Operation, the purposes for which they were used, the applicable professional instructions and rules of engagement, and the extent of compliance with those instructions and rules. Some of the findings of the special command investigation are detailed in The Operation in Gaza.107
118. The Military Advocate General reviewed the entire record of the special command investigation. With respect to exploding munitions containing white phosphorous, the Military Advocate General concluded that the use of this weapon in the operation was consistent with Israel’s obligations under international law.
119. With respect to smoke projectiles, the Military Advocate General found that international law does not prohibit use of smoke projectiles containing phosphorous. Specifically, such projectiles are not “incendiary weapons,” within the meaning of the Protocol on 106 Id. ¶¶ 436-45. Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons,108 because they are not primarily designed to set fire or to burn. The Military Advocate General further determined that during the Gaza Operation, the IDF used such smoke projectiles for military purposes only, for instance to camouflage IDF armor forces from Hamas’s antitank units by creating smoke screens.
120. The Military Advocate General found no grounds to take disciplinary or other measures for the IDF’s use of weapons containing phosphorous, which involved no violation of the Law of Armed Conflict. Nevertheless, the Military Advocate General’s opinion did not address a number of specific complaints that were received after the investigation concluded and which are being investigated separately.(vi)
Palestinians were burned alive with illegal weapons during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.
Based on information from B’Tselem and Euromedrights.org, the determinations by the Israeli investigation resulted in the following charges: “In the over two years since Operation Cast Lead, Israel and the Palestinian side have failed to conduct genuine investigations, and where appropriate, prosecutions. To-date one Israeli soldier has served 7.5 months in jail for the theft of a credit card and two others have received three month suspended sentences for using a Palestinian child as a human shield. These three convictions, and the ongoing trial of a fourth soldier, have been the only concrete judicial outcomes of Israeli Operation Cast Lead investigations. It is noted that neither these indictments nor the sentences handed down for the human shield conviction reflect the gravity of the actual crimes committed. It appears that the majority of other investigative procedures have been closed without charge. All alleged international crimes must be subject to genuine investigation, and, if appropriate, those responsible must be prosecuted in accordance with the requirements of international law. In light of the domestic authorities’ failure to conduct such investigation, the International Criminal Court now constitutes the most appropriate forum, as recommended by the Human Rights Council on 25 March.(Euromedrights.org)
To date, no independent investigation apparatus, empowered also to investigate the responsibility of the political and military decision-makers, has been established. According to the report that the Foreign Ministry provided to the UN in July 2010, the Judge Advocate General’s office ordered 47 Military Police investigations with respect to Operation Cast Lead. B’Tselem is aware of 20 Military Police investigations of incidents in which a suspicion arose that soldiers in the field violated army regulations. Four soldiers have been prosecuted for three incidents that occurred during the operation. In the first case, a soldier was convicted of stealing a credit card and sentenced to seven and a half months’ imprisonment, a conditional sentence of seven and a half months, and demotion from sergeant to private. In the second case, indictments were filed against two soldiers alleging they used a nine-year-old child as a human shield, ordering him to open suspected booby-trapped bags. The two soldiers were convicted and sentenced to a three-month suspended jail sentence and demotion in rank from staff sergeant to private. In the third case, an indictment was filed against a soldier for killing an anonymous person and conduct unbecoming a soldier. In three other cases, disciplinary proceedings were instituted against six officers. B’Tselem is aware of at least six cases in which the Attorney General decided not to indict the soldiers. (B’Tselem).
Now let us return to the arguments for a UN investigation that can provide the people of the world with deliberations that place the Israeli Operation Cast Lead before an International Court of Justice.
Hiyam Noir, in Palestine Free Voice, January 13, 2009, reporting from Gaza observed “Blankets of white clouds covered the skies over Gaza, including the refuge camps in Khan Younis, Beit Lahia and Gaza City. On Saturday Israeli F16 warplanes launched attacks using phosphorus bombs on the Block 2 section inside the densely populated Jabalya Refuge Camp. Many residents of Jabalya escaped the area covering their faces, searching for a safe shelter in the home of relatives and friends in the neighboring Beit Lahia from the Israelis “Cast Lead Operation”. Gaza has always been the Israelis “testing ground” – from nerve agents used in Khan Younis in 2003, to Sonic Boom “phantom air raids”, and the use of DIME in the Israelis massacre called ” Operation Summer Rain” over Gaza year 2006.”
In that same article, Noir notes, The Human Rights Watch senior analyst Marc Garlasco said in an interview on France Chanel 4 TV that ..”Israeli artillery bursted fire of white phosphorous shells over Gaza City.”Garlasco said ..”I have been standing at the border for the last few days ,watching Israeli artillery firing white phosphorus shells into refugee camps”.
Press TV on 4 March 2011 reported that cancer cases in Gaza had increased by 30 per cent, and that there was a link between the occurrence of the disease and residence in areas that had been badly hit by Israeli bombing. Zekra Ajour from the Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights told the channel that Gaza had been a testing ground for illegal weapons.
In a separate article, Richard Lightbown argues that Israel’s use of white phosphorus and other toxic metals, and its suspected use of depleted uranium, in the war against the people of the Gaza Strip has put the whole of the Strip’s population and its environment – air, soil, groundwater and possibly seawater – at risk of serious long-term injury and contamination. He also observes that The goldstone report mentions phosphorus in paragraph 896: Medical staff reported to the mission how even working in the areas where the phosphorus had been used made them feel sick, their lips would swell and they would become extremely thirsty and nauseous.
The toxicity of phosphorus is also recorded in a report by New York medical staff:4
‘Oral ingestion of white phosphorus in humans has been demonstrated to result in pathologic changes to the liver and kidneys. The ingestion of a small quantity of white phosphorus can cause gastrointestinal complaints such as nausea, abdominal cramps, and vomiting. Individuals with a history of oral ingestion have been noted to pass phosphorus-laden stool (“smoking stool syndrome”). The accepted lethal dose is 1 mg/kg, although the ingestion of as little as 15 mg has resulted in death.’
Although an Israeli army spokesman told CNN on 7 January 2009, “I can tell you with certainty that white phosphorus is absolutely not being used.” the chemical had been used by Israeli forces since the beginning of the war.12 The Goldstone Report stated that Israeli sources later claimed their forces had stopped using white phosphorous on 7 January 2009 because of international concerns. This was also untrue as there is evidence that it had been used after that date. Goldstone declared the Israeli armed forces to have been “systematically reckless” in using white phosphorous in built-up areas (paragraphs 884, 886 and 890). Lightbown also discusses DIME: “Evidence of the use of depleted uranium against Gaza is tenuous and Goldstone merely recorded in paragraph 907 that it had received allegations which it had not further investigated. Much of this evidence came from Action des citoyens pour le désarmement nucléaire (ACDN: Citizens Action for Nuclear Disarmament). Their report of July 2009 hypothesizes that the GBU-39 bunker-buster bomb is packed with 75 kilogram of depleted uranium. (A UNEP report also ambiguously refers to bunker-buster bombs containing depleted uranium.) The US delivery of 1,000 of these bombs to Israel arrived in early December 2008 shortly before the start of the war. The GBU-39 is considered one of the world’s most precise bombs and Boeing, the manufacturer, claims that the bomb will penetrate three feet of steel-reinforced concrete. (UNEP suggests that it can penetrate reinforced concrete to depths ranging from 1.8 to over 6 metres.) Boeing’s patent on the weapon mentions depleted uranium.6
It is not known how many bunker-buster bombs were used against Gaza but it seems reasonable to assume that the number could run into hundreds. It is thought that they were used mostly in the Philadelphia corridor against the tunnels. Desmond Travers, the former Irish army officer who was a member of the Goldstone Commission, would only say that depleted uranium may have been used during the war, although he did agree that it would have been well suited for attacking the tunnels where maximum penetration would have been desired.7 He was also in agreement with ACDN that the use of below-ground targets would have considerably reduced the levels of aerosol uranium that was dispersed into the air.
In April 2009 Jean-François Fechino from ACDN was part of a four-person team which went to Gaza for the Arab Commission for Human Rights. Samples that the team brought back were analysed by a specialist laboratory which identified carcinogens: depleted uranium, caesium, asbestos dust, tungsten and aluminium oxide. Thorium oxide was also found, which is radioactive, as are depleted uranium and caesium. The analysis also identified phosphates and copper, along with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which are a health hazard, especially to children, asthmatics and elders.9
Depleted uranium burns at almost 1200 degrees Celsius. (TNT by comparison burns at 576 degrees Celsius.) 10 At this temperature the fire vaporizes any metals in the target which in combination with uranium are released into the air in aerosol form. After deposition the aerosols have the potential to contaminate groundwater. (The Gaza aquifer, which is the Strip’s only water source, is also connected to ground water supplies in Egypt, although water only flows into Gaza from Israel.11)
The Goldstone Commission was unable to confirm that DIME munitions were used by Israeli forces during Operation Cast Lead. Col Lane had told the commission in testimony that there was no actual proof. He then went on to testify that he had been given samples in Gaza which analysis in Dublin had shown to contain DIME materials consisting mostly of tungsten with traces of iron and sulphur. He was of the opinion that ordnance had been used that had some sort of DIME component. He also mentioned that he had read of unusual amputations, and that tungsten and cobalt would have this effect. Weaponry had been found with DIME components which was capable of amputation and there are Palestinian amputees, yet neither Col Lane nor the commission was prepared to say that DIME weapons had been used by Israeli forces.
DIME bombs cause a high proportion of amputations particularly of legs, while patients often suffered internal burns as well. The bombs consist of powdered tungsten alloy mixed with an explosive material inside a casing which disintegrates on explosion. The tungsten powder tears apart anything it hits including soft tissue and bone, causing very severe injuries. Tungsten alloy particles, described as “finely powdered micro-shrapnel”, are too small to be extracted from the victim’s body and are highly carcinogenic. (Goldstone, paragraphs 902-4)
The whole Gaza population and their environment, including generations yet to be conceived, have been put at risk of serious long-term injury from heavy metal pollution of the air, soil and groundwater (and possibly the seawater too), while the causal pollution is likely to cross state borders into Egypt and even into Israel. Reassurances of the legitimate and responsible use and the reduced lethality of weapons (an opinion in part shared by Col Lane) are callous and inadequate in the context of the dangerous reality that has resulted. Meanwhile, the impacts of Israel’s illegal assaults on Gaza remain ignored and its deeds uncensored by the wider international community.”
Certainly it makes good sense to have the Israeli investigation brought before the ICJ. What possible reason exists not to do this, from either the Israeli perspective or the UNHRC. The perspectives presented above demonstrate the necessity; truth requires it, justice demands it, and the dead cry out for it.
I would also note that the pictures that accompany or may accompany this article are from Dr. Arthur Billy’s Memorial to the People of Gaza available at You tube or as contained in an article titled “What does it profit a congressman to retain his office but suffer the loss of his soul?” A google search will give you access.
When that tsunami comes, it will come crashing through the years of Israeli injustice and defiance, not in a maelstrom of destroyed houses and debris, no longer silenced by fearful trepidation, no longer willing to submit to accusations of anti-Semitism, but infused with the spirit of human sensitivity and respect for the dignity of all humankind, it will bring the State of Israel before the International Courts that at last justice might prevail in Palestine.
It’s curious to consider how events in one part of the world offer images that reflect conditions in another part, as the devastation in Japan provides a glimpse into the eruptions spreading throughout the mid-east. The suddenness of the tsunami, caused by unanticipated fractures far below the surface of the ocean, sent a wall of water rushing over the landscape of Japan, a literal wall of cement flowing with debris as it cascaded over homes and buildings toppling them like dominoes until rivulets of the rushing water met in eddies creating whirlpools that sucked huge ships and buildings into a vortex and hence into the darkness below.
Just as suddenly, and just as unexpectedly, did the eruptions in Tunisia and Egypt take place causing a swelling that grew in size and force rushing swiftly into Libya, Bahrain, Yemin, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, each caught in its own eddies as the forces for freedom and human rights grew in intensity cascading against the dictatorial dominoes that had stood for decades, toppling one government after the other as the tsunami of the people leveled the land and moved its power ineluctably toward Bethlehem where those rights first saw the light.
The mid-east tsunami rushes from two directions, from Syria in the north and Morocco in the west, toward the state of Israel and the occupied territories of Palestine. The flow erupted from a revolution by the people against a Western imposed control, a veritable colonial complex of political tectonic plates, of dictatorial rule lasting four decades. That control solidified with the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli “Peace Agreement” that returned the Sinai to Egypt and guaranteed that Sadat and his Vice President, Hosni Mubarak, would maintain an Egyptian boycott of Arab interference with the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
American tax dollars bought this “peace” for the Israeli state as it provided Egypt with 2.8 billion a year, used to establish a military police to control the people, including “emergency” arrest and seizure, together with a United States oversight of the Egyptian army equipped with American state of the art ordinance bought with American tax dollars as part of the Peace Agreement from private corporations, a sweet deal indeed. A similar arrangement was made with Jordan providing Israel with two aligned borders where the illusion of peacefulness with neighbors could be displayed to the world. In reality, the desires of the Egyptian people and the desires of the Jordanian people, a majority of whom are Palestinian, were ignored. While an inner circle close to the dictators benefited, the people suffered in poverty, imminent arrest without charge, and the indignity associated with collaboration of Israeli brutality against fellow Arabs, their neighbors.
But the western controlled dominoes did not stop with Egypt and Jordan. Israeli occupation and seizure of Syria’s Golan Heights, its invasions of Lebanon, its destruction of Iraq’s nuclear plant, and its continued annexation and theft of Palestinian land until only ten percent was left in the West Bank, enabled by the absolute support of the United States, also enabled political powers in Lebanon and Syria and Iraq to impose their own will on populations lest they be destroyed by the united power of Israel and the United States. As that scenario played out, Gaddafi sued for peace with the west, abandoned his desire to have nuclear weapons, and signed lucrative oil and gas agreements with western nations. He did not, however, share his new found and secure wealth with his people. As western economic controls increased, the costs of goods rose steadily and wages sank followed by expanding unemployment. Add to this the U.S. invasion of Iraq, done as it turns out to support our western state in the mid-east, Israel, which placed a pall on the entire area as American imperialism opened its arsenal against Arab states in Iraq and Afghanistan. From the eyes of the Arab world, the crusade George W. Bush unleashed was indeed a crusade regardless of his retraction of the word.
What the people of the mid-east experience and what the American people are told do not mesh; liberating the Iraqi people resulted in 1.3 million Iraqis dead and a people in turmoil; Afghanistan continues to fall deeper and deeper into the ditch of devastation as the years wear on; distrust and dismay grow at American and Israeli interference in Lebanon and Mossad assassinations in Dubai; Israel’s devastating invasion of Lebanon in 2006; the imprisonment of the Palestinians in Gaza, the inhumane invasion of those people during Christmas in 2008/09, the attacks against humanitarian aid ships attempting to bring medical and foodstuffs to a besieged population proffer no understanding other than the reality of western imperialism fronted by the U.S. against people who have suffered inordinate emotional and psychological pain for decades all of it in one way or another attributable to western imperialist greed to sustain its “standard of living” to which it has unalienable rights, because after all it has “pureza de sangre,” offering as always the benefits of a superior race to those in need of imperialist grace.
These it seems to me are the underlying political tectonics that set off the tsunami that makes its way ineluctably toward Israel. And Israel knows it. It’s wondrous to watch the Israeli government swim through the currents of criticism with attendant expectations as it proffers the delights of democracy and freedom on behalf of the protestors in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya while it proclaims sub missa voice the need for stability and consistency if the peace is to be maintained. Hence the superior advisory voice of Tzipi Livni on the desirability to create a “democratic code” to which all aspiring nations would accede if they are to be admitted to the hallowed halls of westernized advanced nations. That little bit of tactical delay could thwart the possibility of the changes the protestors fight for.
Then, of course, there’s the strident voice of Netanyahu in his interview with Piers Morgan recently, who declares with absolute certainty that “The instability in the region is not a result of Israel and the Palestinians. That was never the cause of this instability.” Indeed the real cause rests with the Arabs themselves who “have failed to modernize.” He fails to mention that Israel has been content with their failures for forty years as long as their interests were secure behind the walls that Mubarak helped lock. Netanyahu, of course, proclaims Israel’s undying desire for peace and its constant attempts to achieve peace: “We want peace more than any other people. We pray for peace, yearn for peace, dream about peace.” All that prevents peace are the concessions that the Palestinians must make, comparable to those that Israel has made: “We recognize the rights of the Palestinians for a state of their own. Even though they’re sitting in part of our ancestral homeland, it’s very painful to do that…But they refuse to say that they recognize a Jewish state, a nation state for the Jewish people.”
Embedded in this statement, not stated, is the reality that exists. All the land remaining to Palestinians is 10% of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, a sliver of land 30 miles long and 7 miles wide, not accounting for the Israeli imprisonment wall and the land that abuts it on the Palestinian side, a literal no walk zone. Since the West Bank is carved into smaller pieces by the network of highways created for the Jewish settlers only (over 400,000 squatters living on stolen Palestinian land), there is no viable contiguous land mass that could function as a state much less connect the West Bank to Gaza. In blunt terms, Netanyahu’s statement is a sham; he is not recognizing a Palestinian state, he is, when the truth is known, asserting an impossibility, and that is why the Palestinians cannot accede to the Premier’s demands. The second item that is embedded in that statement is the claim that the Jews have legal rights to the land of Palestine even though it relinquished its control more than 1800 years ago having lost it to the Roman Empire. It would make more sense to return the land to the Turks since they owned it a hundred years ago as the Ottoman Empire. What does ancestral homeland mean? For whom? What body in contemporary times would determine ownership?
Having established the Palestinians responsible for failed peace negotiations, Netanyahu responds to Piers Morgan’s suggestion that there appears to be a growing anti-Semitism in Europe by placing the blame on Europe’s colonial past. The Europeans apparently have found colonialism destructive but see Israel as a leftover European type colonial power. “So for Europeans we are, I don’t know, we’re like Belgiums in the Congo, or the French in Alger, or the British in India. You know, strange interlopers in somebody else’s land. But in fact, we have been here for 4000 years. This is our ancestral homeland.” Unfortunately, that same land is the ancestral homeland of many other people who could dredge up documents that attest to that reality. A fictional narrative as the Bible has been shown to be, though authoritative to some people, is not a deed.
But the reason Netanyahu raises the issue of colonialism in Europe is not to agree that it is illegal now, but to point to America’s colonization of the land mass that became the United States. “Americans understand that instinctively (Palestine is Israel’s ancestral homeland) for America this (return and occupation) is not a colonial past. This is the Promised Land. America was the new promised land, we are the original Promised Land.” So instead of damning the early colonists that massacred thousands of Native Americans and stole their land, and subsequently, America under its Presidents ethnically cleansed the Natives of virtually all of their remaining land bundling them into small Bantustans called reservations, Netanyahu uses this American Holocaust, as David Standard called it in his researched volume of that name, to justify Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. How clever. Israelis are exonerated because they simply followed the precedent created by the United States. They are victims once again of anti-Semitism. Relative to this discussion, but tangential in a way, is another comment made by Netanyahu in his interview with Morgan, a comment that I have not seen mentioned in America’s press. When pressed by Morgan about the Iranian threat constantly broached by Israel and its U.S. supporters and what Israel intends to do about it, the repartee always returns to Iran as not only a threat to Israel, it is a threat to “Europe and the United States.” Morgan asks again, “What is the answer, Prime Minister?” Having successfully avoided saying that Israel would attack Iran to rid it of this danger, Netanyahu resorts to “I’m talking about a credible military action.” “Lead by who,” asks Morgan. “Lead preferably by the United States,” replies Netanyahu. “Could you contemplate some kind of land invasion,” asks Morgan. “Well, I think the United States has proven great effectiveness and I’m going to divulge a secret to you about their capabilities. They’re greater than ours.” So says the Prime Minister of Israel as he talks about using America’s military to take out the Iranian threat to Israel. Why not use American boys and girls to kill your enemy and save your own sons and daughters? Why not indeed. Mark the tone. It’s almost as though he is saying to this imported talk show host, “Why do you ask, Stupid, it’s so obvious.”
Ultimately, both the Obama administration and Netanyahu’s administration must face the truth, do they stand for the imposition of International Law as it is being used to defend humanitarian action against Libya or do they continue to defy the UN and the world community by imposing genocidal policies against the occupied people of Palestine? We’ve had it both ways in the past, but that was before the tsunami in the mid-east. We can’t have it both ways anymore and survive as a defender of freedom and human rights.
The real terrifying tsunami that looms off the Gaza coast and the white beaches of Tel Aviv comes in the form of International Law as the European Union, the Swiss government in particular, the nations in the southern Hemisphere, and all the nations of the General Assembly with the exception of the U.S., disappointed, dismayed, and distraught by the impunity that Israel has secured from its obedient Golem, the United States, in its defiance of the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Accords, and the 2005 “responsibility to protect” norm used by the Security Council in its action against Libya, rise in unison to confront Israeli injustice as the only nation in the mid east that willingly and arrogantly ignores the rights of the people under its control.
When that tsunami comes, it will come crashing through the years of Israeli injustice and defiance, not in a maelstrom of destroyed houses and debris, no longer silenced by fearful trepidation, no longer willing to submit to accusations of anti-Semitism, but infused with the spirit of human sensitivity and respect for the dignity of all humankind, it will bring the State of Israel before the International Courts that at last justice might prevail in Palestine.
William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His most recent book, The Plight of the Palestinians, was published this past summer by Macmillan. He can be reached at www.drwilliamacook.com or wcook@laverne.edu.
>Dr. William A. Cook Salem-News.com “Calls for democracy … stem from …an inner hunger for freedom.” – Tzipi Livni, Washington Post, 2/24/11
From a hill just outside the Gaza Strip, Israelis watch the air assaults on Gaza and dance in celebration of the attacks, 8 January 2009. (Newscom)
(LAVERNE, Calif.) – A beacon is a signal fire, a warning light to guide one out of darkness; as the former Foreign Affairs Minister for Israel noted in late February, “These are days of momentous change in the Middle East …”
Courageous thousands demand their rights as human beings, she intones, there is an inner hunger for freedom abroad in the land. But those courageous thousands have lit a fire that is a beacon for Israel, if it heeds it, a warning that it alone of all the states in the Middle East could be left defying the peoples’ demands for human rights and freedoms. Yet Livni, and Edward Koch last week, went to the media not to announce that Israel would alter its treatment of the Palestinians, they simply ignored the existence of the Palestinians; in the words of Edward Koch, “These uprisings clearly demonstrate that it is not the issue of Israel that is rocking the Arab world, but the presence of arbitrary and repressive regimes.” (Newsmax.com, 3/1/11).
How convenient. Israel alone stands immune from the repression and arbitrary policies of the abusive regimes that face the multitudes in the streets. Indeed, Livni charitably intones that “The values and experiences of the Jewish people demand that we embrace the promise of real democratic change, not merely express concern about uncertainties associated with it.”
Certainly in these uncertain times Israel can be a beacon to warn those who have an “inner hunger for freedom” that there are dues to pay before they can be granted such freedoms because “world leaders are required to shape events so that our collective aspirations, rather than our fears, become reality.”
Artwork by the amazing Artist Carlos Latuff, friend of Salem-News.com, in Rio de Janeiro
Translated, Livni on behalf of Israel takes on the mantle of a world leader who, together with other democratic nations like the U.S., must guide the nations of the world through these perilous waters of upheaval by designing a “democratic code” to ensure that new democracies adhere to the Israeli/United States dictates. How convenient and how duplicitous.
It’s obvious now that Israel and its Golem, the United States, have entered the lists of this new world order, thrust on them by forces they did not anticipate, created in the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, and Lebanon, with lances drawn and swords displayed. Their response remains, as always, military might exposed for the world to see bolstered by policies of delay and coercion seeded by fear of instability and uncertainty. They remain the only two powers capable of bringing stability to the region even if it must be done by establishing new dictators sympathetic to their interests.
To achieve their ends, the Israelis and the Obama administration have sent their legions around the world to control discussions of the impending changes and response to them. Two major thrusts emerge as guidelines for control: delay and denial. Delay takes the form of concern for the “inner hunger” that must be fed with care that the wolf at the door (read Muslim Brotherhood or al Qaeda) doesn’t devour the food (read freedoms), because not enough time was devoted to preparation for “real” democratic reforms.
“The free world has long recognized that democracy is about values before it is about voting,” says Livni silently passing over Israel’s destruction of its neighbors as it demonstrates to the world how “real” democracies operate by occupation and repression. As an example of values, Livni notes that “In Israel parties are ineligible to participate in elections if their platform embraces racist or anti-democratic doctrines.” Denial takes the form of omission: she failed to remark on Avigdor Leiberman’s comment, Head of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, an essential component of the present Netanyahu government, describing Arab members of the Knesset that meet with Hamas as “terror collaborators”, (and) called for their execution: “World War II ended with the Nuremburg Trials. The heads of the Nazi regime, along with their collaborators, were executed. I hope this will be the fate of the collaborators in [the Knesset].” (Wikipedia). So much for no racism or anti-democratic actions on the part of members of Israel’s government.
But it’s not only Livni and Koch in the newsrooms to promote delay.
Ha’aretz carried an article by Dr. Emily Landau and Dr. Carlo Masala that noted “…the West has forgotten how long the road to democratization can really be.” It can only happen when its population “embraces the concepts of tolerance and the protection of minority rights.” Here too, of course, the denial continues: they fail to mention Israel’s founding on May 14 of 1948, a simple declaration by the Zionist consultancy issued through the Jewish Agency that the Jews declared Israel as their state; not even the UNSC was involved as the Partition Plan composed by a committee of the UN never made it to that body.
That was not a long process unless one wants to use the terrorists of the clandestine Jewish Agency and its armies that went to war against the British Mandate government as preparation for a democracy. Nor did they mention Israel’s denial of minority rights as Occupiers of another people under International Law. Then there is the delay caused by the Palestinians who refuse to engage in peace talks, not because Israel refused to stop the building of settlements, even with Obama’s bribe as an inducement, but because they desire to thwart Israel’s “eagerness to return to the negotiating table” by going directly to the UN to force a vote on acceptance of a Palestinian State, what Joel Mowbray calls the “Palestinian Smoke Screen” reported in the Washington Times.
William A. Cook is Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California where he served for 13 years as Vice President for Academic Affairs before assuming his faculty position in 2001. Prior to coming to California, he served as a Dean of Faculty, Chair of Department of English and faculty member at institutions large and small, public and private in four eastern states. He is an activist and a writer for numerous Internet publications including Counterpunch, Salem-News.com, Pacific Free Press in British Columbia, Dissident Voice and Information Clearing House, serving as senior editor for MWC News out of Canada, and contributing editor at the Palestine Chronicle, the Atlantic Free Press in the Netherlands, and the World Prout Assembly, his polemics against the Bush administration and the atrocities caused by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert in Israel, now our 51st state, have been spread around the Internet world and translated into French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Italian. Cook also serves on the Board of the People’s Media Project, interviews on radio and TV in South Africa, Canada, Iran and the United States and contributed for five years yearly predictions to the Hong Kong Economic News. This volume follows his Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine and continues his scourge against the hypocrisy, deceit, and destructive policies that have characterized American mid-east policy and its destructive alliance with the Zionist forces that have turned Israel into an apartheid state determined to destroy the Palestinian people.
In addition to his polemics, he writes plays (The Unreasoning Mask, co-authored with his wife, D’Arcy, and The Agony of Colin Powell), satires (see “Advancing the Civilized State: Inch by Bloody Inch” in The Rape), and poetry (Psalms for the 21st Century). His most recent fictional work creates a morality tale based upon real life figures that haunt our lives, The Chronicles of Nefaria He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com..
The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction is a collection of voices from around the world that establishes in both theoretical and graphic terms the slow, methodical genocide taking place in Palestine beginning in the 1940s, as revealed in the Introduction. From Dr. Francis A. Boyle’s detailed legal case against the state of Israel, to Uri Avnery’s “Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing,” to Richard Falk’s “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” to Ilan Pappe’s “Genocide in Gaza,” these voices decry in startling, vivid, and forceful language the calculated atrocities taking place, the inhumane conditions inflicted on the people, and the silence that exists despite the crimes, nothing short of state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians.
Ultimately it comes back to Israel, a nation that defies the continuous cries from the United Nations to abide by international law, to heed the decisions of the International Court, to accept the efforts of the UN to investigate its actions so the rule of law can prevail, to see that force is not the way to peace in the mid-east, that subjugation of the people of Palestine rings from Lebanon to Algeria like a knell awakening the world to the suffering imposed on those shackled by the Eurocentric colonial mind of the 19th century.
By William A. Cook / My Catbird Seat
While the people of the mid-east rise in protest against their respective American supported dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, with the American-Israeli attempts to control Lebanon on the brink of chaos and collapse, and the “peace negotiations” between the Palestinians and the Israelis torpedoed by both Netanyahu and Abbas, the confusion at the State Department could be eased if it spent some time reviewing the United States’ prior efforts to control the people of the mid-east, especially in Iran. It’s one thing for the Secretary of State and the President to reiterate America’s purported policy on human rights and another to acknowledge the hypocrisy of it.
After all, our policy appears clear, “We have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and free of corruption; and the freedom to live as you choose. These are human rights, and we support them everywhere,” Mr. Gibbs said, speaking on behalf of the President. America supports human rights everywhere, with words … as our dutiful TV channels give Gibbs, Crowley, Clinton and Obama extensive time to demonstrate … but there are no words directed at the Palestinian people’s rights.
How strange to watch our CNN talking heads, especially the Israeli trained Wolf Blitzer, former editor of AIPAC’s in house “Near East Report,” stuttering before the cameras as he recalled the fall of the Shah of Iran, America’s staunch ally for 25 years, as a direct result of similar riots by Iranian civilians, and the resulting loss of America’s control in Iran. He failed to mention that our friend had subjugated the Iranian people beneath the boots of his SAVAK mercenaries that protected his elegant life style while the people suffered under his despotic regime. Then as now our Presidents spoke of America’s support of human rights neglecting to mention the CIA’s overthrow of the elected nationalist (1951) Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister.
Why should Blitzer express such concern? Why see danger lurking in the streets where the people of Tunisia and Egypt have gone to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with pseudo-democratic governments that hold rigged elections to ensure the continuation of their dictatorial rule propped up by American tax dollars so readily evident in the labels on the gas canisters (made in America) hurled at them by the police mercenaries who benefit from those same tax dollars? Perhaps because Blitzer knows, though he does not say it, that the Shah was the first mid-east dictator to recognize Israel, and with his loss Iran has become the number one “existential enemy” of that militaristic state. Perhaps he realizes that the “new” Iraq has an umbilical cord to Iran, that Afghanistan remains and will remain unfettered by America’s dictates, and that Syria continues to maintain meaningful control in Lebanon despite the efforts of the Israeli-American alliance to destabilize it. Perhaps he sees that the fall of Mubarak will mean that Egypt will no longer be a puppet of the Israeli state, and then perhaps Jordan will follow, and the dominoes will tumble one upon the next toward Israel leaving it standing naked before the world, delegitimized by the people of the mid-east dictating in their own way that tolerance of bought regimes is not the way to democracy and human rights.
Ultimately it comes back to Israel, a nation that defies the continuous cries from the United Nations to abide by international law, to heed the decisions of the International Court, to accept the efforts of the UN to investigate its actions so the rule of law can prevail, to see that force is not the way to peace in the mid-east, that subjugation of the people of Palestine rings from Lebanon to Algeria like a knell awakening the world to the suffering imposed on those shackled by the Eurocentric colonial mind of the 19th century.
The Obama administration has a chance to right this silent complicity that gives license to Israel to violently control the people of Palestine and perhaps thereby save the state of Israel from itself. Lebanon has brought forward to the United Nations Security Council a resolution that would force the council to address Israel’s illegal occupation and revert to Resolutions 181 and 242 that define the two states that should exist in Palestine. All Obama needs to do is abstain. That silent protest against AIPAC and the Neo-Cons would declare what no other President since WWII has been able to assert, that America’s policy on the prohibition of illegal settlements cannot be ignored and that America’s “…unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and free of corruption; and the freedom to live as you choose. These are human rights, and we support them everywhere,” remains the true foundation of America’s commitment to international law and human rights.
“I was broken in body, soul, and spirit…my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed…the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” – Frederick Douglass
– On the 4th of June in 2009, President Barack Hussein Obama stood strong before the world in the Levant and declared “Israel must live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society…we should choose the right path, not just the easy path… we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples…”
Today he is a humiliated, downtrodden, whipped slave of the Congress and its Overseer, Bibi Netanyahu, who wheels Resolution 1734 above his head like Overseer Covey held aloft his hickory slat as he drove it into Douglass’ head. Covey’s greatest asset was his ability to deceive, to creep up on his slaves stealthily, and lash his savage wrath on the shackled slaves. Yet he was but a lackey to the plantation owners that used his services to force recalcitrant slaves into submission, a paid torturer of men. Thus do our Congressmen, the likes of Howard Berman from California, cater to their owners that stuff their political coffers to ensure return on their investments. Berman, after all, is a Zionist first and a Democratic Representative second; his words, his proud patriotic protestation of his loyalty to Bibi’s regime and its supporters that drafted the resolution, AIPAC. What a difference a year makes!
Resolution 1734 demonstrates conclusively who governs U.S. policy regarding the Middle East, and it’s not the President, nor is it the U.S. Congress; it’s AIPAC, the foreign lobby of Israel that wrote the resolution and its stooge, Howard Berman, the professed Zionist working on behalf of Israel that engineered it to a unanimous vote. That resolution dictates how the President must act relative to any action taken by the nations of the United Nations as they may seek acceptance of a Palestinian State. Israel in fact, with 1734 in place and forced into practice, dictates how all nations can or cannot act concerning acceptance of a new state by controlling the U.S Congress. Consider this response to a recent interview with Ambassador Yoram Ettinger of Israel:
So you think it comes down to Congress offsetting pressure from the Obama administration? “Well, it comes down to Israel approaching Congress and leveraging its support because certainly we cannot count on the current White House. This is a White House that, from the beginning, has sent messages that it doesn’t want to confront the bad guys; they want to engage bad guys. They don’t want to follow unilateral action; they want to follow multilateral action. This administration views the UN as the quarterback of international relations, wants to be more European, succumbs to the whims of the State Department, and claims Islam has always been a part of the American story. All of this is not good for U.S.-Israel relations or for American interests. (Israel needs to free itself from the Oslo state of mind,” 12-19-2010)
Notice that nothing supersedes Israel’s needs: not U.S. policies that engage other nations, not deliberations beyond Israel and the U.S, not the concerns of the Palestinian people or the desires of the nations of the world to further the potential for peace in the mid-east by resolving the crisis that exists between Israel and Palestine. Multilateral talks are denigrated, recognition of the U.N. as a beneficial world body capable of decisive action is ridiculed, and the Europeans and the State department cast aside as proffering whimsical nonsense. All of this touted as “not good for American interests.”
What are America’s interests according to the good Ambassador?
“A Palestinian state would doom the existence of the pro-American Hashemite regime in Jordan (translated, the American paid for non-democratic pro-Israel regime), constitute a tailwind to the pro-Saddam elements in Iraq (elements that are no longer in power since our preemptive invasion resulted in a Shiite government supported by Iran and decidedly anti-Zionist), provide a foothold for the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans and Iranians (all competitors to Israeli policy against Palestinians and Arabs generally), and add another anti-American vote at the UN (but not anti-American if America were to abstain at the UNSC and let that body determine the acceptance of a Palestinian state).”
Clearly, what the Ambassador wants and what Berman wants are the same: Israeli policy will dominate regardless of the desires of the nations that constitute the United Nations. But what Israel wants does not include peace with Palestine, indeed it does not even include a viable land mass for a Palestinian state; it does provide walled off compounds where the Palestinians can live under the thumb and the boots of Israeli power. Yet what Israel wants is and has been destructive to America’s interests. Our “unconditional support” of Israel puts our military at risk since the preemptive strike Ettinger calls for by America against Iran would result in America’s troops being engaged, not Israel’s. “The entire Israeli effort has to be focused only on one option – and that is preemption, assuming America will not preempt. The Obama worldview does not lend itself to preemption.” Hence the need to control the Congress.
What can Obama do? It appears to me that he is in the death grip of AIPAC and its U.S. Knesset in much the same way that Douglass was grabbed by Covey and sent sprawling on the stable floor. Douglass had had enough; “I resolved to fight…I seized Covey hard by the throat; and, as I did so, I rose…He trembled like a leaf…He only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before…my long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place…the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.”
Perhaps Obama has no other choice. Perhaps a brilliant one term is enough if it results in this one defiant act, to let the world communities address what America has been unable to address since 1948, the establishment and recognition of the Palestinian people by a world frustrated by decades of inaction. Perhaps it’s time for America to get out from under the heal of a foreign nation that will go to any length to drain America of its wealth while it luxuriates in prosperity. Perhaps it’s time for Israel to put aside the sword and turn its attention to plowshares that it might live in peace and justice with its neighbors rather than dominate them with the military might they’ve acquired from their American hosts. Perhaps the biblical injunction is worth noting once again: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.”
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William A. Cook is Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California where he served for 13 years as Vice President for Academic Affairs before assuming his faculty position in 2001. Prior to coming to California, he served as a Dean of Faculty, Chair of Department of English and faculty member at institutions large and small, public and private in four eastern states. He is an activist and a writer for numerous Internet publications including Counterpunch, Salem-News.com, Pacific Free Press in British Columbia, Dissident Voice and Information Clearing House, serving as senior editor for MWC News out of Canada, and contributing editor at the Palestine Chronicle, the Atlantic Free Press in the Netherlands, and the World Prout Assembly, his polemics against the Bush administration and the atrocities caused by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert in Israel, now our 51st state, have been spread around the Internet world and translated into French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Italian. Cook also serves on the Board of the People’s Media Project, interviews on radio and TV in South Africa, Canada, Iran and the United States and contributed for five years yearly predictions to the Hong Kong Economic News. This volume follows his Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine and continues his scourge against the hypocrisy, deceit, and destructive policies that have characterized American mid-east policy and its destructive alliance with the Zionist forces that have turned Israel into an apartheid state determined to destroy the Palestinian people. .
In addition to his polemics, he writes plays (The Unreasoning Mask, co-authored with his wife, D’Arcy, and The Agony of Colin Powell), satires (see “Advancing the Civilized State: Inch by Bloody Inch” in The Rape), and poetry (Psalms for the 21st Century). His most recent fictional work creates a morality tale based upon real life figures that haunt our lives, The Chronicles of Nefaria He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com.
The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction is a collection of voices from around the world that establishes in both theoretical and graphic terms the slow, methodical genocide taking place in Palestine beginning in the 1940s, as revealed in the Introduction. From Dr. Francis A. Boyle’s detailed legal case against the state of Israel, to Uri Avnery’s “Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing,” to Richard Falk’s “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” to Ilan Pappe’s “Genocide in Gaza,” these voices decry in startling, vivid, and forceful language the calculated atrocities taking place, the inhumane conditions inflicted on the people, and the silence that exists despite the crimes, nothing short of state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians.
Twenty eight years ago, a scene of unspeakable horror rocked the rubble strewn alleys of Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut as vengeance vied with naked lust in a massive display of human malice illuminated for the IDF overseers of this massacre with flares that provided “an unobstructed and panoramic view” for Israeli Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon and his Chief of Staff, Rafael Eitan, as they watched from the seven story Kuwaiti embassy providing logistical support for their Phalangist allies as they “massacred for 36 to 48 hours” the hapless Palestinians imprisoned in the camps. “We were breathing death, inhaling the very putrescence of the bloated corpses around us. Jenkins immediately realized that the Israeli defence minister would have to bear some responsibility for this horror. “Sharon!’ he shouted. ‘That fucker Sharon! This is Deir Yassin all over again.’” (Fisk, Pity the Nation, 360). Outside of the Shatila camp, who remembers?
What American knows of the massacre? What government agency has investigated our involvement in it? What lives lost haunt the Israeli or American mind for the evil we have done against the innocent who died such ignominious deaths twenty eight years ago?
Would that we could hold conference with the dead, to sense the absolute black fear that grabbed the mother’s heart as her executioner grabbed her skirt to shred it before unleashing his uncontrollable lust into her trembling body, to feel the depth of anguish that spread throughout her being in these last moments of her life, to fear with her the absolute despair she felt as her murderer laughed and mocked her before thrusting his knife into her child yet unborn in her womb.
Would that we could share with those slaughtered during these days of anguish the pain and suffering they endured, hapless innocents offered by Sharon and his forces to their paid mercenaries as compensation for their loyalty to the invading armies of the Israeli nation.
Would that we could comprehend from their recounting how a man might find it in his being, in the root cellar of his soul, to inflict such wanton barbarity on a fellow being.
Would that we could understand how the chosen of G-d Almighty could unleash such hate on another people that they would allow a savage massacre of brothers and sisters to continue for three days yet proclaim to the world their innocence.
Would that there might be some civilized, rational means of grasping how such pathological destruction of fellow humans could be justified that America’s support for a nation capable of such barbarity might also be justified.
Chris Hedges claims that “only the vanquished know war”; but this was not war, it was a massacre, yet these vanquished souls could tell us what vengeance is, what hate is, what sick minds are capable of inflicting on others if we only had time with them to learn. It is the destroyed that know and it is the destroyed we fear; to forget is our means to mental salvation, otherwise we are doomed to live in the hell of our memory that must see and know injustice exists and rules in this world inflicted by those who claim they are civilized but know in their souls they are but brutish beasts.
What can be said of Shatila twenty eight years later? It is, after all, but an incident in the horrors of sixty years stretching from the middle of the 20th century into the second decade of the 21st. It is an icon of American and Israeli horror, a burial of thousands destroyed savagely and forgotten while a symphony of hypocrisy extolling our virtues buries the reality. Those who died never existed, their sons and daughters never existed, their dreams and aspirations never existed, the fruit of their loins never blossomed to feel the heat of the sun, the coolness of the water, the fruit of the tree of life. We the indifferent cannot accept their existence nor recognize it lest we accept as well our guilt in their deaths.
To return to Shatila is an act of retribution, an act that gives voice to the dead that suffered there, to accept responsibility for the horrors we allowed to happen there, to seek forgiveness of those who lost their lives there and cannot ever live those lives again nor see the sun rise or hear the baby’s cry or know the laughter of their children or weep at the loss of a mother or father … their voices have been silenced forever, yet they echo throughout the ages how vicious is the soul of humankind to remain silent and indifferent to their brothers and sisters in death.
William A. Cook is Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California.
His most recent book, The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction is now available at Macmillan publishing or through Amazon and other book sellers.
A confluence of news stories emerged this past week that, if related, shed an unusual light on the deteriorating crisis in the mid-east, most especially on Palestine and Iran. On June 27th, Ha’aretz made this observation about discussions at the G-8 meeting in Ontario: “World leaders ‘believe absolutely’ that Israel may decide to take military action against Iran to prevent the latter from acquiring nuclear weapons,” citing a statement made by Italy’s PM Silvio Berlusconi.
Indeed, he went on to say that “Israel will probably act preemptively.” So engaged were the representatives of the G-8 that they issued a statement “calling on Iran to ‘respect the rule of law’ and to ‘hold a transparent dialogue’ over its nuclear ambitions.” Their statement went on to say that Iran should show a ‘commitment to international law’.
On July 7th, Newsmax, in an article titled “Lieberman: US Prepared to Strike Iran to Stop Nuclear Weapons” states: “The United States may be forced to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities if diplomatic efforts and economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic fail, Sen. Joseph Lieberman said Wednesday after a meeting with Israeli officials in Jerusalem.”
On July 11th, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh told Press TV that “over a 100 countries in the general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency have condemned Israel for not cooperating with the IAEA. The Zionist regime has refused to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty and it is believed that the regime has about 200 nuclear warheads capable of being mounted on long-range missiles and a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.” How are these stories related? First, the G-8 “world leaders,” i.e. the richest 8 nations on the planet, believe that Israel could preemptively attack Iran causing undisclosed consequences to the interests of the world’s communities and economies. Press TV adds that 100 countries, not all obviously among the richest, condemn Israel’s refusal to cooperate with its neighbors in working with the IAEA to ensure a safe mid-east where no nation possesses nuclear weapons. And, finally, Senator Lieberman offers that the United States might join Israel as the military force that acts preemptively. The uniting factor in the three news items is the state of Israel and its principal supporter the United States.
Second, each cites the United Nations as a significant operative in how Israel’s potential action or that of the United States affects world events and, by implication the rightful authority in the community of nations for the consequences of the actions of these two states. Note that the “world leaders” call on Iran to “respect the rule of law,” “to hold a transparent dialogue,” and to show a “commitment to international law.” International law resides in the authority of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice as reflected in the Charter of the UN, the International Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions. Needless to say, the IAEA is an operative agent of the UN responsible for oversight of agreements related to nuclear weapons, including the non-proliferation agreement controlling such weaponry in the mid-east.
Third, despite the apparent recognition of the UN implied in these articles, the reality of what they intend versus what they state or imply suggests that Israel is not bound by a respect for the law, by the need for transparency regarding agreements or weapons, or by a commitment to international law. Only Iran is held up for condemnation as a threat to world peace and as a nation that defies UN policies and resolutions. Indeed, as Lieberman observes regarding the Iranian threat, “There is a broad consensus in Congress that military force can be used if necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.” This would suggest that it is not the UN that decides whether Iran is in conformance with the agreed upon policies of the member states of the United Nations, but the Congress of the US acting on behalf of its client state, Israel. Two major concerns arise out of these observations: neither Israel or the US is held to the same standards as all other member nations of the UN, and Israel and the US determine for the member states of the UN what will be the action they can take against either the US or Israel. These are distinct yet related observations. Because the US has veto power in the Security Council it can and it does negate any actions taken by the member states against Israel or the US. This is a structural problem inherent in the powers vested in five nations that have permanent status on the Security Council. Procedurally, there is little the majority of nations can do to prevent the US protection of the Israeli state.
Since the UNGA has acted in over 160 resolutions to condemn Israeli actions, attempting to bring it in line with the UN charter and declarations, and since the UNSC has acted approximately 30 times to force some compliance, it’s obvious that the world communities have found the state of Israel to be wanting in its adherence to UN policies and agreements. Therefore one might conclude that the UN has attempted to hold Israel to the same standards as other member states, but has been thwarted by the US veto power to enforce its policies and compliance.
For virtually all of the past six decades, Israel and the US have acted as one against the wishes of the UN membership as those actions relate to Palestine and more recently to Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Today, Israel wants Iran’s ‘nuclear ambitions’ curbed, ambitions it has determined exist despite IAEA investigations to the contrary or the reality that Iran has signed the non-proliferation treaty and Israel has not. But what Israel wants, the US will provide according to Lieberman, including preemptive strikes against a legitimate member of the UN that has done nothing aggressive against either the US or Israel. Israel on the other hand, during these same 60 years, has attacked Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine and continues to occupy portions of Lebanon, Syria and virtually all of Palestine. Curiously enough, during all this time, the United States has shamefacedly portrayed itself as the broker for peace in the mid-east. Nothing could be further from the truth. The US Congress and the Israeli Knesset are Siamese twins bound together by an umbilical cord of dependency through interlocking arteries of corporate and military budget lines that keep the complex alive while force feeding our representatives with blood money.
All of which brings us to this simple conclusion: Israel and the United States, the two states against peace in the mid-east, must be aborted from the decision process that determines peace in the mid-east. Consider the reality and not the illusion. Look through the eyes of the real victims not through the fractured lenses of the controlled media that fails to cover any perception but that offered by our Congress or the Israeli dominated international news. The mantra beats on—Israel has a right to defend itself and, therefore, must provide protective borders around the state of Israel. Hence it has a right to invade Lebanon to its north to ensure that no rocket, missile or person (terrorist) can enter Israel; it must blockade the sea on the west to ensure that nothing enters Israel (weapons or terrorist) from international waters; it must confiscate an eastern border from north to south to ensure that no weapons or terrorists enter Israel from Jordan despite having agreements with Jordan as a peaceful neighbor; and it must have a protective border with Egypt in the south despite having a like peaceful relationship with that nation.
Logic would suggest that Israel’s need for protection and, therefore, its need for these aggressive measures that results in stealing land from others, breaking international laws, and creating hostility throughout the region would apply to each of its neighbors. After all it is Israel that has weapons of mass destruction, though it does not reveal that reality transparently, has invaded its neighbors frequently over the years, and continues to occupy and oppress the peoples of Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. Consider what would happen should Iran or Syria or Jordan or Egypt move to strengthen their respective borders by applying the same tactics as Israel. Lebanon would invade northern Israel, Egypt would not cooperate with Israel in the south, Jordan would take Israel to the international court to object to its illegal acquisition of the richest agricultural land in Palestine given by Jordan to the Palestinians, and Syria would move to force Israel to comply with UN resolutions demanding that it return the Golan Heights.
Consider further the umbilical cord that ties the US to Israel and the 60 years of non-peace that has existed as each successive President and new Congress acts to bring a viable peace to the mid-east. It has not happened. Why not? Read Dr. Jeff Halper’s enlightening chapter in The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction, recently published by Macmillan. There the whole sordid history of intentional delays and deceits is laid bare for the world to see. The US does what Israel wants, as Lieberman so eloquently testifies. Unending war is good for the economy, at least for the elite that control it. The suffering of those destroyed by their wars is of no concern to them.
One need only consider the expansion of the American military throughout the nations in the mid-east and its placement of airbases and military installations that give it dominance throughout the region. Iran is literally surrounded by weapons of mass destruction, US weapons of mass destruction that coupled as they are with the desires of Israel to expand its borders to “greater Israel,” far beyond the boundaries provided by UN resolution 181 in November 1947, boundaries provided by an ancient g-d that served as real estate agent to Abraham, and the threat to Iran and all other mid-east nations glows like white phosphorous and is just as dangerous and life threatening. It is the US and Israel that are the ones acting out of concert with their neighbors and wreaking havoc on the world.
So what’s to be done? Precedent suggests a possibility. In November of 1947 the UNGA passed Resolution 181 partitioning Mandate Palestine into two parts, one for an Israeli state and one for the Palestinians. Despite the procedural reality of the UN this resolution was acted upon without having been acted upon in the policy sector of the UN, the Security Council. This would suggest that the UNGA has the implied power to act without concurrent UNSC action and have its resolution approved by member states subsequently. Since Israel was the benefactor of this process, it could hardly object today if the UNGA were to pass a resolution that would establish a recommending body of members, exclusive of the US and Israel, to bring forth a resolution that would effectively force a just solution to the illegally dismantled partition plan passed in 1947.
Should such a body give priority to the resolutions passed by its members since 1948, it would recognize that Israel would have to collapse its territorial acquisitions by approximately 31% from its current illegal possession of 86% of the original Mandate land offered to them by resolution 181. This would then provide a viable contiguous Palestinian state. Alternatively, Israel could and the Palestinians could decide to live together in one state with equal citizenship for all. Should the majority of UNGA member states approve the resolution offered by their committee, a solution to the crisis might be in the offing. On the other hand, should the Israeli government reject this offer, it would find itself isolated from the world community and subject to whatever sanctions might be imposed by the UN.
Understandably, not all the resolutions since 1948 have been favorable to the Palestinians. They, too, would be subject to the decisions made by the new committee deciding the fate of the Israeli/Palestinian crisis. In simple terms, the UN would have effectively removed the peace process from the two states that are, as they state themselves, one and “unbreakable” in their desires and intents and, consequently uniquely unqualified to be the arbiters of the fate of the Palestinians or of other states in the mid-east. To accomplish this end, the people of the world must view the reality of the mid-east through the eyes of those suffering the destructive power inflicted on them by the United States and Israel.
Every principle on which the United States rests from the Declaration of Independence to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution cries out against the actions of the United States and Israel as they inflict a merciless set of attacks, invasions and wars on the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, and now, Turkey and Iran. That statement recognizes the power of the Israeli lobbies on behalf of its client state, Israel, as it is more than complicit in the enforced dominance of the US in the world. No one can witness the enormous control asserted by Israel over the US Congress where almost 400 representatives and 100 senators vote in unison to support Israel’s destruction of Lebanon, its invasion of Gaza and its murder of Turkish citizens without recognizing their control. The people of America are no longer in control of their government; it has become a client state of a foreign power.
It is time for America to demand that its government respect equality of life, not destroy it wantonly through mercenaries and drones, reject wars of deception perpetrated by purported friends of the nation by seeking reconciliation with those we’ve destroyed, and, finally, withdraw support from the rogue nation of Israel that has severed America from the community of nations making it vulnerable to those who would use America for their own ends, and become once again a nation of the people and for the people not a nation of elites who use the people by inducing fear and phobia to control.
Virtually all members of the UN understand this reality as the above news items testify. As it becomes more and more clear that Israel and its compliant US Congress care nothing for the rights of other nations as their promotion of aggressive action against Iran proclaims, a virtual mirror process that brought about the war against Iraq, the world communities must face the reality that the US cannot control Israel nor its own policies. Therefore, the UN must assert its responsibility for all its member states and resolve a conflict that has plagued the world for the past 60 years. It’s time illusion gives way to reality.
– William A. Cook is Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His most recent book, The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction is now available at Macmillan publishing or through Amazon and other book sellers.
When will the time come when justice is addressed for this outrage against humanity?
instablogsimages.com
(TRIPOLI) – This is the second in a series as I wait for the Boat Brigade to leave from Tripoli, an event that may or may not happen as politics and legalities intertwine. This is not intended to be news reportage, but rather a reaction to the broader issues revolving around the boat flotillas attempting to breech the siege of Gaza.
“It was the flies that told us. There were millions of them, their hum almost as eloquent as the smell. Big as bluebottles, they covered us, unaware at first of the difference between the living and the dead.” (Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation, 359)
This quote opens Robert Fisk’s account of his encounter with the massacre at the Chatila refugee camp in 1982, a massacre controlled by the invading Israeli army here in Beirut. This blatant act of horrific barbarity occurred roughly 30 years ago, half the time the state of Israel has been in existence, transforming the mid-east into a seething cauldron of internecine conflicts, smoldering hatred, and absolute vengeance.
As I walked the alleyways of Chatila yesterday, I could not help but reflect on the consequences of the mentality that justified it or the consequences caused by those devastated by it. As I wait here 30 years later to board a boat to defy the Israelis’ continuing occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people in Gaza, I cannot avoid the reality on the ground that Israel has created. As I wait, a march gathers around Lebanon from all the refugee camps, a march that will culminate at the Parliament buildings today at 4PM. Some 5000 are expected, organized by the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign to bring through legislation civil rights to the Palestinians living in Chatila and the other refugee camps, rights denied for over 62 years.
As I wait, days pass filled with uncertainty about the legislation that could give hope to parents for some economic relief from absolute poverty, hope to children for a future of promise, hope to Lebanese who would no longer have to live in the presence of justice denied. As I wait, days pass, not years, for the boat to leave Tripoli to go to Gaza, and I wait impatiently annoyed that matters have not been organized and problems resolved before more time passes.
Time. What is it after all? Didn’t the “eloquent hum” of the flies Fisk heard ring the death knell of innocents slaughtered by Israeli “trained militaries”?
We were breathing death, inhaling the very putrescence of the bloated corpses around us. Jenkins immediately realized that the Israeli defence minister would have to bear some responsibility for this horror. ‘Sharon!’ he shouted. ‘That fucker Sharon! This is Deir Yassin all over again. (360)
Time. How do we account for it? Why these mothers carved and slashed, babies cut from wombs? Why these yet unborn children? Why these girls raped so violently? Lives lived in time, unexplainable and unremembered. And those who lived throughout Shabra, how do they live now? What is time to those who have nothing, time only to sit through because there is no work; time as remorse to weep for those lost; time as agony and torment for children that will live without hope, without fulfillment, without a future. I saw them caught in the confines of dark alleys, sloshing through stagnant puddles, surrounded by stench, the new stench of decaying garbage, not the “eloquent smell” of death Fisk describes. Thousands upon thousands of refugees imprisoned in one square kilometer of space, an area surrounded by embassies, highways, high rises, warehouses, car dumps, abandoned buildings, decrepit skeletons of past splendor, the visible metaphor of human indifference and disdain.
They must have been armed by the Israelis. Their handiwork had already been watched—clearly observed—by the Israelis, by those same Israelis who were still watching us through their field-glasses. (364)
Has time stood still for the residents of Chatila? How could it not. Lacking means to move, lacking legitimacy elsewhere, lacking a homeland because foreigners have stolen it, lacking a nation—indeed, lacking a community of nations that shows a heartfelt concern for their own, the refugee is crucified to the streets and alleys of Chatila, stuffed into the cement bunkers that grow only in filth and decay as time passes, living daily the horrifying memory of this heinous slaughter, passing the grounds that had been piled with decaying bodies.
When does a killing become an outrage? When does an atrocity become a massacre? Thirty? A hundred? Three hundred? When is a massacre not a massacre? When the figures are too low? Or when the massacre is carried out by Israel’s friends rather than Israel’s enemies.
When will the time come when justice is addressed for this outrage against humanity? When will the world declare an end to Israel’s evil? How many times must we witness the wanton slaughter of the helpless justified by “right of self-defense” when the people killed have no defense and no rights because the United States stands alone as it justifies the evil before the world; defying International law and all agreements that have united the nations of the world under the banners of justice from the foundational documents of the United States—the International Declaration of Human Rights. How ironic, how pathetic.
Perhaps today the lives lived and lost in time—the ghosts of Shabra and Chatila—will image for us what must not be if our future is to exist and we are not to live as the residents of Chatila must live, frozen by the mindset of those who commit such slaughter, lacking conscience, lost to indifference, the very image of the human without a soul.
The eyes of these young men were all open. The youngest was only 12 or 13 years old. They were dressed in jeans and coloured shirts, the material absurdly tight over their flesh now that their bodies had begun to bloat in the heat. They had not been robbed. On one blackened wrist, a Swiss watch recorded the current time, the second hand still ticking round uselessly, expending the last energies of its dead owner. (361) Thus does time measure the mentality of men, a conscienceless recording of its darkest hours.
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William A. Cook is Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California where he served for 13 years as Vice President for Academic Affairs before assuming his faculty position in 2001. Prior to coming to California, he served as a Dean of Faculty, Chair of Department of English and faculty member at institutions large and small, public and private in four eastern states. He is an activist and a writer for numerous Internet publications including Counterpunch, Salem-News.com, Pacific Free Press in British Columbia, Dissident Voice and Information Clearing House, serving as senior editor for MWC News out of Canada, and contributing editor at the Palestine Chronicle, the Atlantic Free Press in the Netherlands, and the World Prout Assembly, his polemics against the Bush administration and the atrocities caused by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert in Israel, now our 51st state, have been spread around the Internet world and translated into French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Italian. Cook also serves on the Board of the People’s Media Project, interviews on radio and TV in South Africa, Canada, Iran and the United States and contributed for five years yearly predictions to the Hong Kong Economic News. This volume follows his Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine and continues his scourge against the hypocrisy, deceit, and destructive policies that have characterized American mid-east policy and its destructive alliance with the Zionist forces that have turned Israel into an apartheid state determined to destroy the Palestinian people. In addition to his polemics, he writes plays (The Unreasoning Mask, co-authored with his wife, D’Arcy, and The Agony of Colin Powell), satires (see “Advancing the Civilized State: Inch by Bloody Inch” in The Rape), and poetry (Psalms for the 21st Century). His most recent fictional work creates a morality tale based upon real life figures that haunt our lives, The Chronicles of Nefaria He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com..
The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction is a collection of voices from around the world that establishes in both theoretical and graphic terms the slow, methodical genocide taking place in Palestine beginning in the 1940s, as revealed in the Introduction. From Dr. Francis A. Boyle’s detailed legal case against the state of Israel, to Uri Avnery’s “Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing,” to Richard Falk’s “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” to Ilan Pappe’s “Genocide in Gaza,” these voices decry in startling, vivid, and forceful language the calculated atrocities taking place, the inhumane conditions inflicted on the people, and the silence that exists despite the crimes, nothing short of state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians.
Via:Atlantic Free Press. Based on classified documents from the Jewish Agency and its affiliated organizations seized by the British Mandate Police, materials that confirm that the Zionist controlled Jewish community intended to remove the Arab inhabitants of Palestine from their land and make the whole of Mandate Palestine a Jewish State, an intent that continues to the present day as the new book, The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction, available at Macmillan.com, demonstrates.
The Untold Story of the Zionist intent to turn Palestine into a Jewish State
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because Geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either … There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” (Moshe Dayan, Address to the Technion, Haifa, as quoted in Haaretz, 4-4-1969)
Thus began in November of 1947 what is euphemistically called the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the combined forces of the Jewish armies, the Haganah, the Stern, and the Irgun as they drove more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes leaving them destitute, homeless and abandoned without a country in what is now the largest refugee Diaspora in the world.
More truthfully, the plight of the Palestinians that began so ruthlessly in 1947, and is now called the Nakba, was an intentional, calculated campaign to force the Palestinian Arabs out of Palestine, a systematic genocide of a people as defined by the United Nations in its adoption of Genocide Convention, Article II. The United Kingdom had mandatory authority from the League of Nations to govern the Palestine area with the establishment of the Palestine Mandate in 1922. Prior to the official implementation of the Mandate in 1922, the British Government had enunciated a “declaration” concerning the desirability of His Majesty’s Government in the “establishment of a national home for the Jewish people,” called the Balfour Declaration. Command Paper 1922 from the Avalon Project at Yale Law School underlines this intent: “His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is no part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State.”
The View from Inside the Mandate
One of the curious ambiguities that surrounds the decade that preceded the declaration by the Jewish leaders in Palestine of the state of Israel is the dearth of information and perspective from the British Mandate forces governing Palestine between 1940 and May 15, 1948, the date of implementation of the partition resolution. Fortunately, Sir Richard C. Catling has left us a file that provides insight into conditions that prevailed in Jerusalem while he was Deputy Head of the Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Division in Jerusalem in 1944 and a year later Assistant Inspector General. Catling’s “TOP SECRET” file has lain untouched in the Rhodes House archives of the Bodleian Libraries of Oxford University until two years ago.
Two documents dominate the file with 62 appendices of evidence totaling close to 500 pages of materials. The first is a dispatch sent to the Secretary of State, dated 16th of October, 1941, by the High Commissioner of Palestine, Harold MacMichael, labeled “Most Secret”; the second, a Top Secret “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence,” prepared by the Criminal Investigation Department headquarters, The Palestine Police, Jerusalem, dated July 31st, 1947. [Sir Richard C. Catling, #145, Mss.Med. S20]1
What should be obvious now, with the materials preserved by Sir Richard C. Catling, is the truth about the creation of the state of Israel: acceptance of UN Resolution 181 by the Jewish Agency Provisional Government as the designated Jewish state was not done with intent to abide by the goal of the UN General Assembly, to provide a state for two peoples in the land of Palestine, but rather to use it as a means to gain eventual control of all the land and cleanse that land of its indigenous people to whatever extent possible. Put bluntly, as the chapters in Macmillan’s new book, The Plight of the Palestinians attests (to be released in June), the current government in Israel continues the practices of past Israeli governments: cleanse the land of its rightful inhabitants to make that land part of the Jewish state. This is what is termed in numerous chapters in this volume, “slow motion genocide.”
Jump Starting the State
Consider the events of April 9-11, 1948, the eradication of the citizens of the town of Deir Yassin, a month before the Agency declared the existence of the Israeli state and the implementation of the UN Resolution to partition. This massacre became then and remains the signature example of the intent of the Zionist Consultancy and its agents to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its non-Jewish inhabitants.2
During the six months between the adoption of UN Resolution 181 and in subsequent months, the new state of Israel launched a massive military incursion into territory designated by that same Resolution for the Palestinian people, creating in its wake “three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees,” the destruction of “hundreds of entire villages … not only depopulated but obliterated …and houses blown up or bulldozed.” Walid Khalidi’s massive study focuses on 418 villages, once the homes of Palestinians, 292 completely destroyed, 90 others “largely destroyed,” the remainder replaced by Jews called Israeli settlers.3
Perceiving the Reality
The “despatch” sent by MacMichael to the Secretary of State resulted from an investigation into the funding practices and use of those funds by various Jewish organizations.
The memorandum illustrates … the fact that the Mandatory is faced potentially with as grave a danger in Palestine from Jewish violence as it has ever faced from Arab violence, a danger infinitely less easy to meet by the methods of repression which have been employed against Arabs. In the first place, the Jews … have the moral and political support … of considerable sections of public opinion both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. … all the influence and political ability of the Zionists would be brought to bear to show that the Jews in Palestine were the victims of aggression, and that a substantial body of opinion abroad would be persuaded of the truth of the contention.4
Quite obviously, MacMichael understands that the Mandatory has little power at home over the zealous actions of the Zionists as they manipulate public and political opinion even as they expand their terrorism against the British Mandate government in Palestine. This is an untenable position to be in, responsible for government control and security of those under its authority, i.e. Palestinians as well as Jews, knowing that the Jews are set on driving the British out of Palestine, and knowing that the home government can offer little help.
To bolster his points, MacMichael offers the following:
… the Jews in Palestine are by no means untrained in the use of arms … large numbers have received training in the Palestine Police… or in His Majesty’s Forces. At the present time, in addition to approximately 10,000 Jews in His Majesty’s Forces, there are 5,800 in various units of the police force and 15,400 special policemen (31,000) … When to those men … are added the illicit ‘defence’ organizations of the Jews (Haganah alone had an estimated 60-70,000 men by 1945, see Mss, Med. S20 Appendix XXI), it will be evident that the Jewish people in arms would numerically and in calibre be a very formidable adversary.5
This is in 1941before the full deployment of Jewish terrorism against the legitimate Palestine government got under way.
MacMichael and Catling found themselves missing one of Catling’s primary supports for the waging of “irregular warfare” drawn from his image of the 3-legged stool that required the support of the people, the commander and his army and the government, an image, no doubt, from his childhood in Suffolk where his family were butchers and farmers. But the situation only got worse as the end of WWII loomed. The Haganah carried out anti-British military operations, including the kidnapping, killing and booby trapping of soldiers’ bodies, conducted against the Mandate Government while the home government remained silent under the pall of Israeli Zionist propaganda.6
But recording the acts of terrorism does not do justice to the conditions the Mandate government faced. MacMichael describes the reality of the forces aligned against the police in Palestine.
A second matter which deeply impressed me is the almost Nazi control exercised by the official Jewish organizations over the Jewish community, willy nilly, through the administration of funds from abroad, the issue of labor certificates in connection with the immigration quota…. The Royal Commission were, in my view, fundamentally at error in describing the Jewish community in Palestine as “intensely democratic”. … The Zionist organization, the whole social structure which it has created in Palestine, has the trappings but none of the essentials of democracy. The community is under the closed oligarchy of the Jewish official organizations which control Zionist policy and circumscribe the lives of the Jewish community in all directions…. The reality of power is in the Agency, with the Haganah, the illegal military organization, always in the background.7
And so the authorities in Palestine, the legal authorities, have no power to enforce measures that would curtail terrorism against their own police. “The use of force cannot be contemplated at present as any such action would have to be on a very large scale.” MacMichael understands that he can get no help from the Jewish community, even from those who find themselves at odds with the Agency’s methods or morality. The consequences to the individual Jew for disobedience is horrendous as the second document seized from the Zionists in 1947 attests.
Between Two Worlds
Nothing makes more obvious the meaning of the “Zionist Juggernaut” than Catling’s TOP SECRET “Memorandum of the Criminal Investigation Department” of July 31, 1947.
The purpose of this memorandum is to furnish documentary evidence of the extent to which the supreme Jewish national institutions in Palestine and their principal officials have been parties to acts of sedition, violence, incitement and other offences against the laws of Palestine….The bulk of the memorandum concerns the war and post war years… the memorandum will therefore concern itself solely with an attempt to establish the links between the supreme Jewish bodies and illegal activity…8
Catling’s memorandum begins with an understanding of the “intricate Jewish political, social and economic structure in Palestine.” A series of appendices chart these structures marking in passing that “…the Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937 understood ‘The Agency is obviously not a ‘governing body’; it can only advise and cooperate in a certain wide field.’ But allied as it is with the Vaad Leumi, and commanding the allegiance of the great majority of Jews in Palestine, it unquestionably exercises, both in Jerusalem and in London, a considerable influence on the conduct of government” [emphasis mine]. Catling’s frustration with the actual control of the Jews over British policy in Palestine glares through this document. “This powerful and efficient organization amounts, in fact, to a government existing side by side with the Mandatory Government…” (2-3) [emphasis mine].9
What Catling doesn’t state in that sentence, but what he demonstrates in the memorandum, is that the Jewish Agency and its affiliated organizations are at war with the UN authority in Palestine, the British Mandate Palestine Government. The appendices include detailed information on the personnel in interlocking Jewish organizations and the function of each. The memorandum goes further. It notes that the activities of the Jewish Agency through its controlled organizations send emissaries and instructors abroad “to stir up Zionist sentiments among the Jewish communities and displaced persons, to bring pressure to bear upon the Palestine problem, to organize illegal immigration and engage in espionage.” As a result of its investigations, the Department itemizes six areas of subversive activities undertaken by the Jewish Agency against the British Mandate Government:
Maintenance of a secret army and espionage system;
Smuggling, theft and manufacture of arms;
Illegal immigration;
Violence and civil disobedience;
Seditious and hostile propaganda;
Encroachment upon the civil rights of Jewish citizens.10
In short, the Zionist controlled Jewish Agency, the Yishuv, actively undermined the legal authority in Palestine even as it operated to undermine support for that government in Britain, placing UK forces in harms way as they attempted to fulfill their authorized responsibilities in Palestine. It also demonstrates the determination of the Agency’s leadership in undermining the very nation that gave it a means of establishing a “homeland” in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration. Needless to say, Catling and his CID forces recognized the impossible position this defiance placed them in and understood the deception and violent means used by the Zionists to ensure that their will and theirs alone would be fulfilled at any cost.
However, the real power behind their efforts, what effectively held together the multiple strands of the web, was the use of extortion on all the Jewish people in Palestine, “…the extortion of money for unauthorized funds and self imposed taxes to further the illicit political ends of the national institutions” (42). Catling’s Memorandum provides evidence of how effective this consolidation of the web’s network operated including the systematic compilation of all wage earners, measures to be adopted in event of refusal to pay, publishing of names of those who failed to contribute, deductions from salary, sanctions on businesses, compulsory assessment, withholding of immigrants certificates, and Jewish Agency officials assessments. There follows the measures to be taken against shirkers including actions to be taken against anyone aiding a shirker. There is no need to go into the details of these imposed actions; the consequences amount to total ostracism of an individual from his/her community to kidnapping and disappearance. For those entering the military forces of the Jewish Agency, the Hagana, there is the Hagana Oath (XVI A 157).
I hereby declare that of my own free will and in free recognition I enter the Jewish defence organization of the Land of Israel, (Irgun Haganana Haivri Be’Eretz Israel).
I hearby swear to remain loyal all the days of my life to the defense organization, its laws and its tasks as defined in its basic regulations by the High Command.
I hearby swear to remain at the disposal of the defense organization all my life, to accept its discipline unconditionally and without limit, and at its call to enlist for active service at any time and in any place, to obey all its orders and to fulfill all its instructions.
I hearby swear to devote all my strength, and even to sacrifice my life, to defense and battle for my people and my Homeland, for the freedom of Israel and for the redemption of Zion.11
In one sense, these two methodologies of control, one imposed by fear, the second by moral obligation, make comprehensible the complete control the Zionists were able to achieve over a protracted period of time toward their distant goals. The fear imposed by extortion rests on its use in providing access to jobs, the protection offered by the “gangs” and Haganah forces, and the enforcement of the rules and regulations as itemized above.
The Haganah Oath goes deeper than fear. In effect, it declares that an individual has turned his/her conscience over to the High Command thus accepting what is right and what is wrong as determined by that authority regardless of local, state or international law, indeed, regardless of the morals, values and traditions of Judaism. This commitment is forever, to death. It is bolstered by a document issued to the Commander and Troops of the Haganah labeled “Security Instructions” that notes at the outset, “Remember, you are a member of an illegal military organization according to the Laws of the government, its existence, activity and membership of it is forbidden” The remainder of the document obligates the recruit to unconditional obedience, absolute silence, and the pragmatic and utilitarian virtues of deceit and lying.12
Selling the Soul
From the moment an individual takes the oath, they are committed to a life of secrecy and hence of disloyalty and betrayal to those they are most intimate with in their day to day life. Neither their actions nor their true identity is discernible to those with whom they interact regularly. This is a life that encapsulates the necessity of lies, deceit, coercion, extortion, and obedience to a group that dictates the actions one must pursue; freedom no longer exists, self-direction no longer exists, loyalty to others no longer exists, indeed, friendship with others is compromised or impossible, one becomes the subject of that group, a veritable slave to their desires and wills. The mindset that promotes such control allows for spying, for deception of friends, for ostracism in one’s own community for thinking differently, for imprisonment without due process, for torture, even for extrajudicial executions. It is a total commitment to a cause that supersedes all others determined and dictated by an oligarchy in silence and subject to no legitimate institution and to no one. Notes:
Catling, Sir Richard C. Personal Classified “Top Secret” files. Rhodes House Library Archives. #145. Mss. Medit. S 20 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) Appendices circa 475 pages of seized documents. Oxford: Bodleian Libraries.↩
Morris, Benny. (1999). Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. Knopf. 208.↩
Khalidi, Walid. (1992). All That Remains. Institute for Palestinian Studies: Washington, D.C. xv.↩
MacMichael, Harold. (1947). “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence” The Palestine Police, Jerusalem, 7-31-1947 in Catling file.↩
NOTE: On the 21st of June Haaretz published an article, “Lebanon allows Gaza-bound ship to sail to Cyprus.” Two ships may be involved, one with a contingent of Americans, approximately 10, another with a group of women including Nuns, the Miriam. This new effort at breaking the Israeli siege of Gaza follows the attack on the boats that sailed from Turkey where 9 people were killed by Israeli naval forces.
The exact date for the sailing has not been announced but expectations were high for this Saturday. The Council for National Interest in Washington, D.C. has been a major organizer for this venture. Dr. Cook joined the CNI contingent and is now in Lebanon. The timing of this event coincides with the publication of his The Plight of the Palestinians and the publication in Arabic of his The Chronicles of Nefaria printed in Amman, Jordan.
William A. Cook
Not five days ago I sat entranced as the LA Opera transformed the Chandler Center into a rapturous world of metaphor with its rendering of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, the first of the four operas of the Ring Cycle. On Sunday the 20th my wife and I fell further under the bewitching wonder of the metaphors that give substance to this world of unreality that probes the reality of ours. Today, the 22nd, I fled the imaginative brilliance of Wagner’s genius to immerse myself in the unimaginative brutality of this barbaric 21st century as the artist’s themes find fulfillment in this most advanced civilized world where our western world began, the geographic womb of Abraham’s unmerciful and malicious g-d who sought the destruction of his own creatures at the hands of His chosen few.
The brilliance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold rests in the absoluteness of its central theme: attainment of ultimate power and wealth requires abandonment of human love. Paradoxically, the truth of this theme abides in the nature of humans alone, humans who exist by virtue of fraternal and sisterly love, a love that rents asunder the laws of the state.
Sigmund and Sigelinda, offspring of Wotan, the all powerful god, and a mortal woman, give birth to the human race through their incestuous love. This union is the seed of human bondage, the lifeblood that binds all into a human family sustained by heartfelt compassion and love. It is this essential force that binds all that must be abandoned to attain power, to live without human sympathy, the natural element that makes all of us one family. Yet so powerful is the impulse to greed, so natural in the human beast, legends have evolved to describe it: the myth of the Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew, the Heart of Darkness to mention a few. Wagner’s earth glows through the gold that lights the depths of the Rhine giving beauty to the natural world. Rhine maidens find fulfillment and joy being in its presence. But the ugly dwarf, Albrecht, arrogant in his disdain for true love, caught in his self-hatred of his isolation, seeks to steal the gold to gain power over humans and forego love forever. Thus begins the betrayal of creation … theft of that which belongs to all to enrich self by whatever means necessary.
So as I left Los Angeles and its magnificent portrayal of Wagner’s images, I flew into them in Beirut and Shatila with Gaza as the culminating picture. Here indeed the metaphors of self-hate, aggrandizement and betrayal thrive. This spit of land sandwiched between Lebanon and Egypt, nothing more than rolling hills and valleys where the sun blisters the earth in summer and freezes the skin in winter’s winds, the graveyard of ancient kingdoms each covered in its time beneath the sands of time, has erupted once again into a land of destructive power by sheer force of superstitious beliefs and a manufactured ideology called Zionism.
Subjugation, humiliation, isolation, starvation and decimation have become the lifeblood of the Israeli state to demean and destroy those who have nothing, the ultimate power that exists by abandonment of human love. The siege of Gaza mirrors in large the siege of Rafah and Jenin years ago, test cases for absolute control without remorse or consequences, abandonment of human love. But what is that to me or anyone in Los Angeles enraptured by Wagner’s Rheingold?
Certainly a person must live the life of his or her awareness. To celebrate the achievement of the Los Angeles Ring Cycle amid the splendor of the Chandler Valhalla and know the hell that is the life of the Palestinians necessitates action if only a gesture of recognition against the enormous power that subdues them, some flicker of human concern for the 60 years of suffering, isolation, and indifference. What arguments can the Zionists make that can override the horrors of their slow and methodical destruction of the Palestinian people?
Such were my thoughts as I flew to Beirut and Gaza. There is something deeper than politics with its machinations and duplicities, something deeper than borders and the justifications for defending arbitrary lines that have been annexed by stealth and power, something deeper than ethnicities that depend on hair color and skin tones to give license to racism and bigotry, something deeper than religions that thrive on pomp and ritual to sustain the impossible beliefs that distinguish them from this known world, something deeper, richer, fulfilling, substantive and glorious in knowing that respect for all, recognition of the value of all, and acceptance of the dignity of all, sharing the wonders of the world’s natural beauty with all, indeed, sharing the wealth of its harvest with all, enriches all and gives meaning to the sacredness of all. Must we fulfill the truth of Wagner’s metaphor after five thousand years of human civilization? Must we betray our birthright for rings of gold?
William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of la Verne in southern California. His most recent book, The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction has just been released by Palgrave Macmillan and is available at Macmillan or Amazon etc. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com.
A Tale of Lies, Deceit, and Terrorism(Based on classified documents from the Jewish Agency and its affiliated organizations seized by the British Mandate Police, materials that confirm that the Zionist controlled Jewish community intended to remove the Arab inhabitants of Palestine from their land and make the whole of Mandate Palestine a Jewish State, an intent that continues to the present day as the new book, The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction, available at Macmillan.com, demonstrates.)
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because Geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either … There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” (Moshe Dayan, Address to the Technion, Haifa, as quoted in Haaretz, 4-4-1969) Thus began in November of 1947 what is euphemistically called the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the combined forces of the Jewish armies, the Haganah, the Stern, and the Irgun as they drove more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes leaving them destitute, homeless and abandoned without a country in what is now the largest refugee Diaspora in the world.
More truthfully, the plight of the Palestinians that began so ruthlessly in 1947, and is now called the Nakba, was an intentional, calculated campaign to force the Palestinian Arabs out of Palestine, a systematic genocide of a people as defined by the United Nations in its adoption of Genocide Convention, Article II.
The United Kingdom had mandatory authority from the League of Nations to govern the Palestine area with the establishment of the Palestine Mandate in 1922. Prior to the official implementation of the Mandate in 1922, the British Government had enunciated a “declaration” concerning the desirability of His Majesty’s Government in the “establishment of a national home for the Jewish people,” called the Balfour Declaration. Command Paper 1922 from the Avalon Project at Yale Law School underlines this intent: “His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is no part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State.”
The View from Inside the Mandate One of the curious ambiguities that surrounds the decade that preceded the declaration by the Jewish leaders in Palestine of the state of Israel is the dearth of information and perspective from the British Mandate forces governing Palestine between 1940 and May 15, 1948, the date of implementation of the partition resolution. Fortunately, Sir Richard C. Catling has left us a file that provides insight into conditions that prevailed in Jerusalem while he was Deputy Head of the Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Division in Jerusalem in 1944 and a year later Assistant Inspector General. Catling’s “TOP SECRET” file has lain untouched in the Rhodes House archives of the Bodleian Libraries of Oxford University until two years ago.
Two documents dominate the file with 62 appendices of evidence totaling close to 500 pages of materials. The first is a dispatch sent to the Secretary of State, dated 16th of October, 1941, by the High Commissioner of Palestine, Harold MacMichael, labeled “Most Secret”; the second, a Top Secret “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence,” prepared by the Criminal Investigation Department headquarters, The Palestine Police, Jerusalem, dated July 31st, 1947. [Sir Richard C. Catling, #145, Mss.Med. S20] 1
What should be obvious now, with the materials preserved by Sir Richard C. Catling, is the truth about the creation of the state of Israel: acceptance of UN Resolution 181 by the Jewish Agency Provisional Government as the designated Jewish state was not done with intent to abide by the goal of the UN General Assembly, to provide a state for two peoples in the land of Palestine, but rather to use it as a means to gain eventual control of all the land and cleanse that land of its indigenous people to whatever extent possible. Put bluntly, as the chapters in Macmillan’s new book, The Plight of the Palestinians attests (to be released in June), the current government in Israel continues the practices of past Israeli governments: cleanse the land of its rightful inhabitants to make that land part of the Jewish state. This is what is termed in numerous chapters in this volume, “slow motion genocide.”
Jump Starting the State
Consider the events of April 9-11, 1948, the eradication of the citizens of the town of Deir Yassin, a month before the Agency declared the existence of the Israeli state and the implementation of the UN Resolution to partition. This massacre became then and remains the signature example of the intent of the Zionist Consultancy and its agents to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its non-Jewish inhabitants. 2
During the six months between the adoption of UN Resolution 181 and in subsequent months, the new state of Israel launched a massive military incursion into territory designated by that same Resolution for the Palestinian people, creating in its wake “three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees,” the destruction of “hundreds of entire villages … not only depopulated but obliterated …and houses blown up or bulldozed.” Walid Khalidi’s massive study focuses on 418 villages, once the homes of Palestinians, 292 completely destroyed, 90 others “largely destroyed,” the remainder replaced by Jews called Israeli settlers. 3
Perceiving the Reality The “despatch” sent by MacMichael to the Secretary of State resulted from an investigation into the funding practices and use of those funds by various Jewish organizations.
The memorandum illustrates … the fact that the Mandatory is faced potentially with as grave a danger in Palestine from Jewish violence as it has ever faced from Arab violence, a danger infinitely less easy to meet by the methods of repression which have been employed against Arabs. In the first place, the Jews … have the moral and political support … of considerable sections of public opinion both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. … all the influence and political ability of the Zionists would be brought to bear to show that the Jews in Palestine were the victims of aggression, and that a substantial body of opinion abroad would be persuaded of the truth of the contention. 4
Quite obviously, MacMichael understands that the Mandatory has little power at home over the zealous actions of the Zionists as they manipulate public and political opinion even as they expand their terrorism against the British Mandate government in Palestine. This is an untenable position to be in, responsible for government control and security of those under its authority, i.e. Palestinians as well as Jews, knowing that the Jews are set on driving the British out of Palestine, and knowing that the home government can offer little help.
To bolster his points, MacMichael offers the following:
… the Jews in Palestine are by no means untrained in the use of arms … large numbers have received training in the Palestine Police… or in His Majesty’s Forces. At the present time, in addition to approximately 10,000 Jews in His Majesty’s Forces, there are 5,800 in various units of the police force and 15,400 special policemen (31,000) … When to those men … are added the illicit ‘defence’ organizations of the Jews (Haganah alone had an estimated 60-70,000 men by 1945, see Mss, Med. S20 Appendix XXI), it will be evident that the Jewish people in arms would numerically and in calibre be a very formidable adversary. 5
This is in 1941before the full deployment of Jewish terrorism against the legitimate Palestine government got under way.
MacMichael and Catling found themselves missing one of Catling’s primary supports for the waging of “irregular warfare” drawn from his image of the 3-legged stool that required the support of the people, the commander and his army and the government, an image, no doubt, from his childhood in Suffolk where his family were butchers and farmers. But the situation only got worse as the end of WWII loomed. The Haganah carried out anti-British military operations, including the kidnapping, killing and booby trapping of soldiers’ bodies, conducted against the Mandate Government while the home government remained silent under the pall of Israeli Zionist propaganda. 6
But recording the acts of terrorism does not do justice to the conditions the Mandate government faced. MacMichael describes the reality of the forces aligned against the police in Palestine.
A second matter which deeply impressed me is the almost Nazi control exercised by the official Jewish organizations over the Jewish community, willy nilly, through the administration of funds from abroad, the issue of labor certificates in connection with the immigration quota…. The Royal Commission were, in my view, fundamentally at error in describing the Jewish community in Palestine as “intensely democratic”. … The Zionist organization, the whole social structure which it has created in Palestine, has the trappings but none of the essentials of democracy. The community is under the closed oligarchy of the Jewish official organizations which control Zionist policy and circumscribe the lives of the Jewish community in all directions…. The reality of power is in the Agency, with the Haganah, the illegal military organization, always in the background. 7
And so the authorities in Palestine, the legal authorities, have no power to enforce measures that would curtail terrorism against their own police. “The use of force cannot be contemplated at present as any such action would have to be on a very large scale.” MacMichael understands that he can get no help from the Jewish community, even from those who find themselves at odds with the Agency’s methods or morality. The consequences to the individual Jew for disobedience is horrendous as the second document seized from the Zionists in 1947 attests.
Between Two Worlds
Nothing makes more obvious the meaning of the “Zionist Juggernaut” than Catling’s TOP SECRET “Memorandum of the Criminal Investigation Department” of July 31, 1947.
The purpose of this memorandum is to furnish documentary evidence of the extent to which the supreme Jewish national institutions in Palestine and their principal officials have been parties to acts of sedition, violence, incitement and other offences against the laws of Palestine….The bulk of the memorandum concerns the war and post war years… the memorandum will therefore concern itself solely with an attempt to establish the links between the supreme Jewish bodies and illegal activity… 8
Catling’s memorandum begins with an understanding of the “intricate Jewish political, social and economic structure in Palestine.” A series of appendices chart these structures marking in passing that “…the Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937 understood ‘The Agency is obviously not a ‘governing body’; it can only advise and cooperate in a certain wide field.’ But allied as it is with the Vaad Leumi, and commanding the allegiance of the great majority of Jews in Palestine, it unquestionably exercises, both in Jerusalem and in London, a considerable influence on the conduct of government” [emphasis mine]. Catling’s frustration with the actual control of the Jews over British policy in Palestine glares through this document. “This powerful and efficient organization amounts, in fact, to a government existing side by side with the Mandatory Government…” (2-3) [emphasis mine]. 9
What Catling doesn’t state in that sentence, but what he demonstrates in the memorandum, is that the Jewish Agency and its affiliated organizations are at war with the UN authority in Palestine, the British Mandate Palestine Government. The appendices include detailed information on the personnel in interlocking Jewish organizations and the function of each. The memorandum goes further. It notes that the activities of the Jewish Agency through its controlled organizations send emissaries and instructors abroad “to stir up Zionist sentiments among the Jewish communities and displaced persons, to bring pressure to bear upon the Palestine problem, to organize illegal immigration and engage in espionage.” As a result of its investigations, the Department itemizes six areas of subversive activities undertaken by the Jewish Agency against the British Mandate Government:
1. Maintenance of a secret army and espionage system; 2. Smuggling, theft and manufacture of arms; 3. Illegal immigration; 4. Violence and civil disobedience; 5. Seditious and hostile propaganda; 6. Encroachment upon the civil rights of Jewish citizens. 10
In short, the Zionist controlled Jewish Agency, the Yishuv, actively undermined the legal authority in Palestine even as it operated to undermine support for that government in Britain, placing UK forces in harms way as they attempted to fulfill their authorized responsibilities in Palestine. It also demonstrates the determination of the Agency’s leadership in undermining the very nation that gave it a means of establishing a “homeland” in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration. Needless to say, Catling and his CID forces recognized the impossible position this defiance placed them in and understood the deception and violent means used by the Zionists to ensure that their will and theirs alone would be fulfilled at any cost.
However, the real power behind their efforts, what effectively held together the multiple strands of the web, was the use of extortion on all the Jewish people in Palestine, “…the extortion of money for unauthorized funds and self imposed taxes to further the illicit political ends of the national institutions” (42). Catling’s Memorandum provides evidence of how effective this consolidation of the web’s network operated including the systematic compilation of all wage earners, measures to be adopted in event of refusal to pay, publishing of names of those who failed to contribute, deductions from salary, sanctions on businesses, compulsory assessment, withholding of immigrants certificates, and Jewish Agency officials assessments.
There follows the measures to be taken against shirkers including actions to be taken against anyone aiding a shirker. There is no need to go into the details of these imposed actions; the consequences amount to total ostracism of an individual from his/her community to kidnapping and disappearance.
For those entering the military forces of the Jewish Agency, the Hagana, there is the Hagana Oath (XVI A 157).
I hereby declare that of my own free will and in free recognition I enter the Jewish defence organization of the Land of Israel, (Irgun Haganana Haivri Be’Eretz Israel).
I hearby swear to remain loyal all the days of my life to the defense organization, its laws and its tasks as defined in its basic regulations by the High Command.
I hearby swear to remain at the disposal of the defense organization all my life, to accept its discipline unconditionally and without limit, and at its call to enlist for active service at any time and in any place, to obey all its orders and to fulfill all its instructions.
I hearby swear to devote all my strength, and even to sacrifice my life, to defense and battle for my people and my Homeland, for the freedom of Israel and for the redemption of Zion. 11
In one sense, these two methodologies of control, one imposed by fear, the second by moral obligation, make comprehensible the complete control the Zionists were able to achieve over a protracted period of time toward their distant goals. The fear imposed by extortion rests on its use in providing access to jobs, the protection offered by the “gangs” and Haganah forces, and the enforcement of the rules and regulations as itemized above.
The Haganah Oath goes deeper than fear. In effect, it declares that an individual has turned his/her conscience over to the High Command thus accepting what is right and what is wrong as determined by that authority regardless of local, state or international law, indeed, regardless of the morals, values and traditions of Judaism. This commitment is forever, to death. It is bolstered by a document issued to the Commander and Troops of the Haganah labeled “Security Instructions” that notes at the outset, “Remember, you are a member of an illegal military organization according to the Laws of the government, its existence, activity and membership of it is forbidden” The remainder of the document obligates the recruit to unconditional obedience, absolute silence, and the pragmatic and utilitarian virtues of deceit and lying. 12
Selling the Soul
From the moment an individual takes the oath, they are committed to a life of secrecy and hence of disloyalty and betrayal to those they are most intimate with in their day to day life. Neither their actions nor their true identity is discernible to those with whom they interact regularly. This is a life that encapsulates the necessity of lies, deceit, coercion, extortion, and obedience to a group that dictates the actions one must pursue; freedom no longer exists, self-direction no longer exists, loyalty to others no longer exists, indeed, friendship with others is compromised or impossible, one becomes the subject of that group, a veritable slave to their desires and wills. The mindset that promotes such control allows for spying, for deception of friends, for ostracism in one’s own community for thinking differently, for imprisonment without due process, for torture, even for extrajudicial executions. It is a total commitment to a cause that supersedes all others determined and dictated by an oligarchy in silence and subject to no legitimate institution and to no one.
William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His works include Psalms for the 21st Century, Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella, and coming in June from Macmillan, The Plight of the Palestinians. Articles by Cook appear in Counterpunch, the Palestine Chronicle, MWC News, Pacific Free Press, Atlantic Free Press, Dissident Voice and Countercurrents among others. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu and http://www.drwilliamacook.com/.
Notes
1- Catling, Sir Richard C. Personal Classified “Top Secret” files. Rhodes House Library Archives. #145. Mss. Medit. S 20 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) Appendices circa 475 pages of seized documents. Oxford: Bodleian Libraries. 2- Morris, Benny. (1999). Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. Knopf. 208. 3- Khalidi, Walid. (1992). All That Remains. Institute for Palestinian Studies: Washington, D.C. xv. 4- MacMichael, Harold. (1947). “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence” The Palestine Police, Jerusalem, 7-31-1947 in Catling file. 5- MacMichael. “dispatch.” 1. 6- Ibid., “Despatch.” 2. 7- Ibid., “Despatch.” 2. 8- Catling. “Memorandum.” 1-2. 9- Ibid., “Memorandum.” 2-3. 10- Ibid. “Memorandum.” 5. 11- Ibid., Appendix, XVIA, 157. 12- Ibid., Appendix, XXVIII, 219.
The Exodus Of Jaffa’s Residents Via Boats, May-1948.
The Untold Story of the Zionist intent to turn Palestine into a Jewish State
(Based on classified documents from the Jewish Agency and its affiliated organizations seized by the British Mandate Police, materials that confirm that the Zionist controlled Jewish community intended to remove the Arab inhabitants of Palestine from their land and make the whole of Mandate Palestine a Jewish State, an intent that continues to the present day as the new book, The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction, available at Macmillan.com, demonstrates.)
A Tale of Lies, Deceit, and Terrorism: the Birth of Israel
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because Geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either … There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” (Moshe Dayan, Address to the Technion, Haifa, as quoted in Haaretz, 4-4-1969) Thus began in November of 1947 what is euphemistically called the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the combined forces of the Jewish armies, the Haganah, the Stern, and the Irgun as they drove more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes leaving them destitute, homeless and abandoned without a country in what is now the largest refugee Diaspora in the world. More truthfully, the plight of the Palestinians that began so ruthlessly in 1947, and is now called the Nakba, was an intentional, calculated campaign to force the Palestinian Arabs out of Palestine, a systematic genocide of a people as defined by the United Nations in its adoption of Genocide Convention, Article II. The United Kingdom had mandatory authority from the League of Nations to govern the Palestine area with the establishment of the Palestine Mandate in 1922. Prior to the official implementation of the Mandate in 1922, the British Government had enunciated a “declaration” concerning the desirability of His Majesty’s Government in the “establishment of a national home for the Jewish people,” called the Balfour Declaration. Command Paper 1922 from the Avalon Project at Yale Law School underlines this intent: “His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is no part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State.” ******************** The View from Inside the Mandate One of the curious ambiguities that surrounds the decade that preceded the declaration by the Jewish leaders in Palestine of the state of Israel is the dearth of information and perspective from the British Mandate forces governing Palestine between 1940 and May 15, 1948, the date of implementation of the partition resolution. Fortunately, Sir Richard C. Catling has left us a file that provides insight into conditions that prevailed in Jerusalem while he was Deputy Head of the Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Division in Jerusalem in 1944 and a year later Assistant Inspector General. Catling’s “TOP SECRET” file has lain untouched in the Rhodes House archives of the Bodleian Libraries of Oxford University until two years ago. Two documents dominate the file with 62 appendices of evidence totaling close to 500 pages of materials. The first is a dispatch sent to the Secretary of State, dated 16th of October, 1941, by the High Commissioner of Palestine, Harold MacMichael, labeled “Most Secret”; the second, aTop Secret “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence,” prepared by the Criminal Investigation Department headquarters, The Palestine Police, Jerusalem, dated July 31st, 1947. [Sir Richard C. Catling, #145, Mss.Med. S20][1] What should be obvious now, with the materials preserved by Sir Richard C. Catling, is the truth about the creation of the state of Israel: acceptance of UN Resolution 181 by the Jewish Agency Provisional Government as the designated Jewish state was not done with intent to abide by the goal of the UN General Assembly, to provide a state for two peoples in the land of Palestine, but rather to use it as a means to gain eventual control of all the land and cleanse that land of its indigenous people to whatever extent possible. Put bluntly, as the chapters in Macmillan’s new book, The Plight of the Palestinians attests (to be released in June), the current government in Israel continues the practices of past Israeli governments: cleanse the land of its rightful inhabitants to make that land part of the Jewish state. This is what is termed in numerous chapters in this volume, “slow motion genocide.” Jump Starting the State Consider the events of April 9-11, 1948, the eradication of the citizens of the town of Deir Yassin, a month before the Agency declared the existence of the Israeli state and the implementation of the UN Resolution to partition. This massacre became then and remains the signature example of the intent of the Zionist Consultancy and its agents to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its non-Jewish inhabitants.[2] During the six months between the adoption of UN Resolution 181 and in subsequent months, the new state of Israel launched a massive military incursion into territory designated by that same Resolution for the Palestinian people, creating in its wake “three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees,” the destruction of “hundreds of entire villages … not only depopulated but obliterated …and houses blown up or bulldozed.” Walid Khalidi’s massive study focuses on 418 villages, once the homes of Palestinians, 292 completely destroyed, 90 others “largely destroyed,” the remainder replaced by Jews called Israeli settlers.[3] Perceiving the Reality The “despatch” sent by MacMichael to the Secretary of State resulted from an investigation into the funding practices and use of those funds by various Jewish organizations. The memorandum illustrates … the fact that the Mandatory is faced potentially with as grave a danger in Palestine from Jewish violence as it has ever faced from Arab violence, a danger infinitely less easy to meet by the methods of repression which have been employed against Arabs. In the first place, the Jews … have the moral and political support … of considerable sections of public opinion both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. … all the influence and political ability of the Zionists would be brought to bear to show that the Jews in Palestine were the victims of aggression, and that a substantial body of opinion abroad would be persuaded of the truth of the contention.[4] Quite obviously, MacMichael understands that the Mandatory has little power at home over the zealous actions of the Zionists as they manipulate public and political opinion even as they expand their terrorism against the British Mandate government in Palestine. This is an untenable position to be in, responsible for government control and security of those under its authority, i.e. Palestinians as well as Jews, knowing that the Jews are set on driving the British out of Palestine, and knowing that the home government can offer little help. To bolster his points, MacMichael offers the following: … the Jews in Palestine are by no means untrained in the use of arms … large numbers have received training in the Palestine Police… or in His Majesty’s Forces. At the present time, in addition to approximately 10,000 Jews in His Majesty’s Forces, there are 5,800 in various units of the police force and 15,400 special policemen (31,000) … When to those men … are added the illicit ‘defence’ organizations of the Jews (Haganah alone had an estimated 60-70,000 men by 1945, see Mss, Med. S20 Appendix XXI), it will be evident that the Jewish people in arms would numerically and in calibre be a very formidable adversary.[5] This is in 1941before the full deployment of Jewish terrorism against the legitimate Palestine government got under way. MacMichael and Catling found themselves missing one of Catling’s primary supports for the waging of “irregular warfare” drawn from his image of the 3-legged stool that required the support of the people, the commander and his army and the government, an image, no doubt, from his childhood in Suffolk where his family were butchers and farmers. But the situation only got worse as the end of WWII loomed. The Haganah carried out anti-British military operations, including the kidnapping, killing and booby trapping of soldiers’ bodies, conducted against the Mandate Government while the home government remained silent under the pall of Israeli Zionist propaganda.[6] But recording the acts of terrorism does not do justice to the conditions the Mandate government faced. MacMichael describes the reality of the forces aligned against the police in Palestine. A second matter which deeply impressed me is the almost Nazi control exercised by the official Jewish organizations over the Jewish community, willy nilly, through the administration of funds from abroad, the issue of labor certificates in connection with the immigration quota…. The Royal Commission were, in my view, fundamentally at error in describing the Jewish community in Palestine as “intensely democratic”. … The Zionist organization, the whole social structure which it has created in Palestine, has the trappings but none of the essentials of democracy. The community is under the closed oligarchy of the Jewish official organizations which control Zionist policy and circumscribe the lives of the Jewish community in all directions…. The reality of power is in the Agency, with the Haganah, the illegal military organization, always in the background.[7] And so the authorities in Palestine, the legal authorities, have no power to enforce measures that would curtail terrorism against their own police. “The use of force cannot be contemplated at present as any such action would have to be on a very large scale.” MacMichael understands that he can get no help from the Jewish community, even from those who find themselves at odds with the Agency’s methods or morality. The consequences to the individual Jew for disobedience is horrendous as the second document seized from the Zionists in 1947 attests. Between Two Worlds Nothing makes more obvious the meaning of the “Zionist Juggernaut” than Catling’s TOP SECRET “Memorandum of the Criminal Investigation Department” of July 31, 1947. The purpose of this memorandum is to furnish documentary evidence of the extent to which the supreme Jewish national institutions in Palestine and their principal officials have been parties to acts of sedition, violence, incitement and other offences against the laws of Palestine….The bulk of the memorandum concerns the war and post war years… the memorandum will therefore concern itself solely with an attempt to establish the links between the supreme Jewish bodies and illegal activity…[8] Catling’s memorandum begins with an understanding of the “intricate Jewish political, social and economic structure in Palestine.” A series of appendices chart these structures marking in passing that “…the Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937 understood ‘The Agency is obviously not a ‘governing body’; it can only advise and cooperate in a certain wide field.’ But allied as it is with the Vaad Leumi, and commanding the allegiance of the great majority of Jews in Palestine, it unquestionably exercises, both in Jerusalem and in London, a considerable influence on the conduct of government” [emphasis mine]. Catling’s frustration with the actual control of the Jews over British policy in Palestine glares through this document. “This powerful and efficient organization amounts, in fact, to a government existing side by side with the Mandatory Government…” (2-3) [emphasis mine].[9] What Catling doesn’t state in that sentence, but what he demonstrates in the memorandum, is that the Jewish Agency and its affiliated organizations are at war with the UN authority in Palestine, the British Mandate Palestine Government. The appendices include detailed information on the personnel in interlocking Jewish organizations and the function of each. The memorandum goes further. It notes that the activities of the Jewish Agency through its controlled organizations send emissaries and instructors abroad “to stir up Zionist sentiments among the Jewish communities and displaced persons, to bring pressure to bear upon the Palestine problem, to organize illegal immigration and engage in espionage.” As a result of its investigations, the Department itemizes six areas of subversive activities undertaken by the Jewish Agency against the British Mandate Government:
Maintenance of a secret army and espionage system;
Smuggling, theft and manufacture of arms;
Illegal immigration;
Violence and civil disobedience;
Seditious and hostile propaganda;
Encroachment upon the civil rights of Jewish citizens.[10]
In short, the Zionist controlled Jewish Agency, the Yishuv, actively undermined the legal authority in Palestine even as it operated to undermine support for that government in Britain, placing UK forces in harms way as they attempted to fulfill their authorized responsibilities in Palestine. It also demonstrates the determination of the Agency’s leadership in undermining the very nation that gave it a means of establishing a “homeland” in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration. Needless to say, Catling and his CID forces recognized the impossible position this defiance placed them in and understood the deception and violent means used by the Zionists to ensure that their will and theirs alone would be fulfilled at any cost. However, the real power behind their efforts, what effectively held together the multiple strands of the web, was the use of extortion on all the Jewish people in Palestine, “…the extortion of money for unauthorized funds and self imposed taxes to further the illicit political ends of the national institutions” (42). Catling’s Memorandum provides evidence of how effective this consolidation of the web’s network operated including the systematic compilation of all wage earners, measures to be adopted in event of refusal to pay, publishing of names of those who failed to contribute, deductions from salary, sanctions on businesses, compulsory assessment, withholding of immigrants certificates, and Jewish Agency officials assessments. There follows the measures to be taken against shirkers including actions to be taken against anyone aiding a shirker. There is no need to go into the details of these imposed actions; the consequences amount to total ostracism of an individual from his/her community to kidnapping and disappearance. For those entering the military forces of the Jewish Agency, the Hagana, there is the Hagana Oath (XVI A 157). I hereby declare that of my own free will and in free recognition I enter the Jewish defence organization of the Land of Israel, (Irgun Haganana Haivri Be’Eretz Israel). I hearby swear to remain loyal all the days of my life to the defense organization, its laws and its tasks as defined in its basic regulations by the High Command. I hearby swear to remain at the disposal of the defense organization all my life, to accept its discipline unconditionally and without limit, and at its call to enlist for active service at any time and in any place, to obey all its orders and to fulfill all its instructions. I hearby swear to devote all my strength, and even to sacrifice my life, to defense and battle for my people and my Homeland, for the freedom of Israel and for the redemption of Zion.[11] In one sense, these two methodologies of control, one imposed by fear, the second by moral obligation, make comprehensible the complete control the Zionists were able to achieve over a protracted period of time toward their distant goals. The fear imposed by extortion rests on its use in providing access to jobs, the protection offered by the “gangs” and Haganah forces, and the enforcement of the rules and regulations as itemized above. The Haganah Oath goes deeper than fear. In effect, it declares that an individual has turned his/her conscience over to the High Command thus accepting what is right and what is wrong as determined by that authority regardless of local, state or international law, indeed, regardless of the morals, values and traditions of Judaism. This commitment is forever, to death. It is bolstered by a document issued to the Commander and Troops of the Haganah labeled “Security Instructions” that notes at the outset, “Remember, you are a member of an illegal military organization according to the Laws of the government, its existence, activity and membership of it is forbidden” The remainder of the document obligates the recruit to unconditional obedience, absolute silence, and the pragmatic and utilitarian virtues of deceit and lying.[12] Selling the Soul From the moment an individual takes the oath, they are committed to a life of secrecy and hence of disloyalty and betrayal to those they are most intimate with in their day to day life. Neither their actions nor their true identity is discernible to those with whom they interact regularly. This is a life that encapsulates the necessity of lies, deceit, coercion, extortion, and obedience to a group that dictates the actions one must pursue; freedom no longer exists, self-direction no longer exists, loyalty to others no longer exists, indeed, friendship with others is compromised or impossible, one becomes the subject of that group, a veritable slave to their desires and wills. The mindset that promotes such control allows for spying, for deception of friends, for ostracism in one’s own community for thinking differently, for imprisonment without due process, for torture, even for extrajudicial executions. It is a total commitment to a cause that supersedes all others determined and dictated by an oligarchy in silence and subject to no legitimate institution and to no one.
[1] Catling, Sir Richard C. Personal Classified “Top Secret” files. Rhodes House Library Archives. #145. Mss. Medit. S 20 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) Appendices circa 475 pages of seized documents. Oxford: Bodleian Libraries. [2] Morris, Benny. (1999). Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. Knopf. 208. [3] Khalidi, Walid. (1992). All That Remains. Institute for Palestinian Studies: Washington, D.C. xv. [4] MacMichael, Harold. (1947). “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence” The Palestine Police, Jerusalem, 7-31-1947 in Catling file. [5] MacMichael. “dispatch.” 1. [6] Ibid., “Despatch.” 2. [7] Ibid., “Despatch.” 2. [8] Catling. “Memorandum.” 1-2. [9] Ibid., “Memorandum.” 2-3. [10] Ibid. “Memorandum.” 5. [11] Ibid., Appendix, XVIA, 157. [12] Ibid., Appendix, XXVIII, 219.
William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His works include Psalms for the 21st Century, Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella, and coming in June from Macmillan, The Plight of the Palestinians.
Articles by Cook appear in Counterpunch, the Palestine Chronicle, MWC News, Pacific Free Press, Atlantic Free Press, Dissident Voice and Countercurrents among others.
As Israel attempts today to gloss over the reality of its birth 62 years ago with a sweeping public relations campaign extolling the miraculous “resurrection” of ancient Zion in contemporary times, a new nation seeking only peace with its neighbors, it might be enlightening and valuable to examine the truth.
On May 14, 1948 President Harry S. Truman received a letter from the Jewish Agency for Palestine announcing the impending proclamation of the independent republic of Israel.1 That date marks not only the beginning of the State of Israel but, sub missa voce, the assumption by the State of Israel of the calculated, systematic and determined ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of the land of Palestine that had been the business of “The Consultancy” and its agents before May 14, as identified by Dr. Ilan Pappe in his monumental The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.2
The letter notes that the republic has been established within “frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947, and that a provisional government has been charged to assume the rights and duties of government for preserving law and order within the boundaries of Israel, for defending the state against external aggression, and for discharging the obligations of Israel to the other nations of the world in accordance with international law.” The letter was signed by Eliahu Epstein, Agent, Provisional Government of Israel.
The letter is notable not for what it announces, but for what it does not reveal. Truth requires revelation of all the facts, not concealment by omission of that which would prejudice an understanding.
During the six months between the adoption of UN Resolution 181 and the date of this letter, and in subsequent months, the prospective state of Israel launched a massive military incursion into territory designated by that same Resolution for the Palestinian people, creating in its wake “three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees,” the destruction of “hundreds of entire villages … not only depopulated but obliterated …and houses blown up or bulldozed.”3 Khalidi’s massive study focuses on 418 villages, once the homes of Palestinians, 292 completely destroyed, 90 others “largely destroyed,” the remainder re-inhabited by Jews called Israeli settlers.
In blunt terms, the Jewish Agency for Palestine lied to the American President that it had established a provisional government that “has been charged to assume the rights and duties … for preserving law and order within the boundaries of Israel … and for discharging the obligations of Israel to the other nations of the world in accordance with international law.”
The Agency’s deception made no reference either to the President or the international community that it had created the “Catastrophe,” or as the Palestinians termed it, the Nakba, the days of infamy that created what has become the largest Diaspora of refugees in the world and a time of remembrance for those killed in a series of massacres, estimated at 24 by Benny Morris, Israel’s preeminent Historian of that period. Indeed, the Agency had acted against international law in invading Palestinian land as designated by the very Resolution that had given them the right to a state of Israel even as it lied without remorse to the international community that it would live in accordance with their laws.
This letter, coupled with an earlier one to the President, dated May 10, 1948, will serve as a microcosm of political deceit characteristic of the Zionist led forces that controlled the nascent state of Israel. This second letter from The Nation Associates, notified the President that
Tomorrow morning the Washington Post will carry, in the form of a full-age (sic) advertisement, the text of an open letter to you requesting the implementation of the November 29 resolution on Palestine…I have been requested to send you the enclosed text of this open letter by the signators …It is our hope that in the week which remains before the end of the British Mandate, action will be taken by you to insure the recognition of the Jewish state as a means of maintaining the prestige of this country, the authority of the United Nations, and peace in the Middle East.4
The Nation Associates supported the establishment of the State of Israel and used its publishing arm to further that goal. The “Open Letter” referred to above argued against the moves by “the British and our own State Department” to “sabotage” the partition resolution despite the President’s determined effort to support Israel. Indeed, the Associates went so far as to publish “The British Record on Partition” published in The Nation, America’s Leading Liberal Weekly, on May 8, 1948 detailing their selected reading of “British Military Intelligence Sources.” This document was simultaneously submitted to the Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The Open letter published in the Washington Post amounted to a synopsis of this larger document including its primary argument that “there was no reason why the Jewish state could not be set up (if the Arabs resisted partition) and the Arab area turned over to the Trusteeship Council.” Note that this argument is being made even as the Jewish Agency and its affiliates have driven hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and villages and massacred untold thousands in the area designated for the Palestinians recommended to be turned over to the Trusteeship Council.
The open letter cited an amendment to the resolution inserted by Truman’s representative, Herschel Johnson, “the Security Council should determine as a threat to peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 29 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution.” Yet no mention is made here of the invasion by the Jewish forces of the towns and villages in the area designated for the Palestinians. Rather, the Associates allege that it is the British Mandate government that has supported the Arab League against Israel since 1945, “under the direction of Foreign Minister Bevin, {who} (has) resisted every American proposal for a decent settlement of the Palestinian question.” “This was true,” the letter continues, “in 1946 when he refused to accept the proposal of the Anglo-American Committee and your own, for the admission into Palestine of 100,000 Jews.” What is left unsaid by the Associates is the British promise to the Arabs in the Balfour Declaration that they would maintain a strict ratio of Jews entering Palestine to the indigenous population, the second of the Balfour Declaration promises never referenced as the companion piece to the establishment of a home for the Jews in Palestine.5
So now we see the strategy of the Zionists as they manipulate the President: (a) advance publication of a major document detailing British subterfuge in eroding the possibility of establishing a Jewish state sent to the United Nations, thereby placing blame for the deterioration of conditions in Palestine on the British; (b) a subsequent letter to the President informing him that a public “open letter” will be published in the Washington Post detailing subversion of the Jewish people, placing him in the unenviable position of not aiding the “victims” of this subversion or carrying through with recognition of the Jewish state “as a means of maintaining the prestige of this country”; (c) and, finally, another letter, this from the Jewish Agency for Palestine, on the 14th, seeking his recognition by “welcoming Israel into the community of nations” with no reference to the breaching of international law by the very Agency seeking his support.
Control and manipulation of the events coming out of Palestine has been and continues to be the modus operandi of the Zionist leaders of the state of Israel. The above letters to President Truman offer insight into this manipulation. Moreover, Truman was acting on behalf of the American people in recognizing the State of Israel on the 15th of May 1948. What the American people knew was the suffering of the Jews under Hitler and the apparent logic of the United Nations partition plan to provide a state for the two peoples residing in Palestine. What they did not know was the Zionist entity that had different goals and the will to deceive the citizens of America to achieve them. But the American people were not alone in being deceived. More importantly is the deception kept from the British people about these “disappeared years,” as Robert Fisk terms them. What’s missing is the perspective of the Palestinians and the British Mandate government. The United Kingdom had mandatory authority from the League of Nations to govern the area with the establishment of the Palestine Mandate in 1922, an action that imposed a western colonial and national mindset on an area familiar with tribal and imperial authority. Prior to the official implementation of the Mandate, the British Government had enunciated a “declaration” concerning the desirability of His Majesty’s Government in the “establishment of a national home for the Jewish people,” called the Balfour Declaration.
Discussions that resulted in the final text of the Balfour Declaration clarify the intention of its wording. The use of “national home” was used intentionally instead of “state.” Additionally, the first draft of the declaration referred to the principle “that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people. ”
In the final text, the word that was replaced with in to avoid committing all of Palestine to the Jews only.6
Between 1939 and 1947, the mandate Government found it more and more difficult to maintain its position as the responsible governing force servicing the Arab population and the growing Jewish population, determining by 1947 that these two populations could not coexist. As a result, the British Government placed the resolution of the problem in the hands of the United Nations. That in turn resulted in a partition plan of the land of Palestine, proposed in November of 1947 to the General Assembly, to be implemented in May of 1948, sixty two years ago this May.
British authority in Palestine continued under the United Nations until the implementation of the Partition Plan in May 1948. Consequently, the mandate government had to abide by the Charter of the UN and its Conventions. Ironically, as the Zionist forces, estimated by the Jewish Agency personnel in documents seized by the Mandate Police at 20 to 60 thousand (see top secret file of Sir Richard C. Catling, The Plight of the Palestinians) , continued their massacres of Palestinians into 1948, the UN debated the adoption of a Convention defining “genocide” based on Nuremberg principles, a definition approved that same year. In 1944 the term “genocide” appeared in Raphael Lemkin’s Axis Rule in Occupied Europe created out of the conditions that allowed for the Nazi action against those suffering in their concentration camps. Therefore once the State of Israel was created by the Jewish leaders of the area by declaration May 14, 1948, and, subsequently, was recognized for membership in the UN in 1949, it was expected to abide by the UN Conventions. The United Nations does not appropriate to itself the authority to create states. The United Nations only authorizes itself to recognize states for membership, states that are formed or proclaimed by the people of said state.7
What should be obvious now, after the carefully researched and scholarly work of Dr. Ilan Pappe in his Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and the equally well-researched work of Dr. Benny Morris in his Righteous Victims, both based on recently released evidence from the Israeli archives and those of the Israel Defense Forces Archives, complemented now with the materials preserved by Sir Richard C. Catling, to be made available in The Plight of the Palestinians from Palgrave Macmillan in June, is the truth about the creation of the state of Israel: acceptance of UN Resolution 181 by the Jewish Agency Provisional Government as the designated Jewish state was not done with intent to abide by the goal of the UN General Assembly, to provide a state for two peoples in the land of Palestine, but rather to use it as a means of subterfuge to gain eventual control of all the land and cleanse that land of its indigenous people to whatever extent possible. Put bluntly, what was true then is true today; the current government in Israel continues the practices of past Israeli governments, cleanse the land of its rightful inhabitants to make that land part of the Jewish state. This is what is termed, “slow motion genocide,” not, one would hope, a civilized policy to be extolled either by the Israelis or the international community.
Eptstein, Eliahu. (1948). Agent, Provisional Government of Israel. Letter to President Harry S. Truman. May 14, 1948. Filed August 22, 1949. Truman Library. 12/15/2008. [↩]
Pappe, Ilan. (2006). The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld: Oxford. [↩]
Khalidi, Walid. All That Remains. Institute for Palestinian Studies: Washington, D.C. xv. [↩]
Kirchwey, Freda. (1948). President, The Nation Associates. Letter to President Harry S. Truman. May 10, 1948. Filed May 11, 1948. Truman Library. [↩]
Prior, Michael. (1999) Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry. London: Rutledge. [↩]
Stein, Leonard. (1961). The Balfour Declaration. New York: Simon and Shuster, 470. [↩]
By William A. Cook Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine. . . . His Majesty’s Government regard any such expectation as impracticable and have no such aim in view. Nor have they at any time contemplated . . . the disappearance or the subordination of the Arabic population, language or culture in Palestine. They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the (Balfour) Declaration referred to, do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded IN PALESTINE. . . . His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State. (Command Paper 1922, from the Avalon Project at Yale Law School, 1996–2000), www.avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1039.asp. The above statement was approved by the Council of the League of Nations, thus establishing the legal charge for the British Mandate government. Together with the Sir Richard C. Catling papers, held in a Top Secret file in the Rhodes House Archives at Oxford University, to be released later this spring from Macmillan in the Introduction of The Plight of the Palestinians, this declaration recorded by the Avalon Project graphically demonstrates how the Zionist-controlled forces within the Jewish community defied the legally established authorities in Palestine. This defiance continues to the present day. Today’s “spat” between friends, as reflected in the hassle between Obama and Netanyahu, forces reconsideration of America’s support of the defiant Israeli government, not because the halting of the settlements is the crucial issue but because America’s President has lost face, America’s reputation around the world has plummeted, and the dangerous position our military face as a result of Israel’s belligerence threatens the United States’ security as General Petraeus testified before Congress earlier this month. It is becoming manifestly clear to everyone that the United States cannot be the broker for peace in the mid-east, but it can be a participant or consultant to an appropriately designed United Nations Policy Committee created to complete the “partition plan” established in Resolution 181 in November of 1947. Because Israel controls our Congress, the President is essentially powerless to confront the forces that maneuver behind the scenes to thwart any U.S. government, Republican or Democrat, from moving toward a just and balanced resolution of the Israel/Palestinian conflict. That means the President must move to hand back to the UN the responsibility to right the wrong done to the Palestinian people, putting before the world communities their organization as the means to achieve this end. Israel would have to accept rule by law or continue its defiance isolating itself not only in the mid-east, but in the world of nations. If justice becomes the beacon that guides the UN toward peace, it would have to begin at Resolution 181, the partition of Palestine. Assumptions were made at that point, assumptions that had both positive and negative effects. A moral determination was made that the Jews deserved a homeland as a consequence of the horrific slaughter that had decimated their people. The world accepted a moral responsibility to right that atrocity; in so doing, they assumed, perhaps unwittingly, that they could grant to the Jews a portion of another people’s land. That assumption, however, was not shared by the natives of that area. Yet the reality remains that the division and its assumptions became the basis for the existence of an Israeli and a Palestinian state. Justice demands that Israel and the United Nations address the enormous inequities that exist in Palestine. There is no justice if the division of the land remains 86 percent to 14 percent when both populations are of approximately equal size, especially if the right of return is acted upon according to international law. There is no justice if Israel remains the controlling power over a faux state that cannot manage its own affairs and control its own destiny. There is no justice if Israel does not compensate those from whom they have stolen land and return to Palestine the natural resources it has commandeered. There is no justice if a reconfiguration of the land is not achieved so that both peoples can move freely from one sector of their country to another. There is no justice if the separation wall continues to imprison the Palestinians with its constant reminder that Israelis defied international law to impose their own and made visible the unacceptable attitude that one people has a right to psychologically and physically isolate others from communication with their neighbors or the world, a collective punishment that denies the very humanity of the people. There is no justice if the status quo remains the day-to-day reality of the Palestinians, because that way is a slow, torturous route to sickness, psychological torture, deprivation, starvation, and death; it is the Israeli government’s heinous action of a slow genocide acted out on the world stage as the European Union, the Asian nations, and America look on indifferently. There is no justice if the United States blocks the UN Security Council from enforcing the means to bring about justice in Palestine, an action that may require the UN to stand against the United States or lose its credibility as an international body that protects the weak as well as the strong. And, conversely, there is no justice if the Palestinians do not accept the people of Israel to live in peace and security, in separate states or in one, so that all may thrive and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Four score and eight years ago, a not unusual span of life for a man or woman, the British government, His majesty’s government “viewed with favor the establishment in Palestine of a home for the Jewish people,” declaring, as the Avalon Project notes, that the whole of Palestine would not be turned into a Jewish state. Yet, a handful of Zionist Ashkenazi Jews from Europe took control of the growing Jewish immigrant community through the 1930s and 1940s, (recorded in morbid and frightening detail by Ilan Pappe in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006), and clandestinely worked against the British Mandate government in their own “war of terror” to undermine the King’s intent that supported the existence of a “home” for the Jews, not the creation of a Jewish nation on the land of the Palestinians. Today the United States, having devoted its wealth in the billions of dollars and its military personnel to this country, supporting in the process a deception of enormous magnitude with tragic consequences for the Palestinian people and the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, finds itself, as its generals now attest, suffering the consequences of that deceit as its actions in the mid-east, executed on behalf of Israel, become the seeds of violence that can destroy the country. How unfortunate that the sympathy of Europeans and Americans for the plight of the Jews at the end of WWII, indeed of the community of nations that compose the United Nations when they offered them a home in Palestine through Resolution 181, should have been turned by deceit and propaganda into an apartheid state that has ruthlessly subjugated the indigenous population as they appropriated their land and imprisoned them behind concrete walls and electrified chain link fences making impossible a normal life. How unfortunate that Americans have devoted so much of their wealth to a nation that had no intention of complying with the British government in 1940 or the United Nations Partition Plan to provide for both peoples, but rather to claim that they were the victims of those who wanted to destroy them and drive them into the sea. How unfortunate for the indigenous people that they were driven into the sea as the armies in the tens of thousands of Jews swarmed down upon their villages and wiped them off the map. How unfortunate that United States Congressmen and women have become the pawns of a power that threatens their political will if they disobey the dictates of AIPAC regardless of the consequences to American soldiers and American security. Consider what might have been. What if the immigrant Jews had arrived in Palestine and the British created Jewish Agency had cooperated with the Mandate Police rather than clandestinely worked against it, to fashion a “Home” for the Jews living side by side with the Palestinians who owned all but 6% of the Mandate land governed by Britain. Consider how things might now be with a Jewish population unencumbered with the fanatical sects from Russia that drive the apartheid demands that corrode the very core of Judaism with their sick understanding of their historical right to a land because they are G-d’s chosen and goyim are subhuman. Consider the richness of that land in mind and soul had these people worked together to fashion a state that would be a doorway for the west to the east and not the source of vengeance and violence that it has become. What if rule by law had prevailed and not rule by defiance. William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His works include Psalms for the 21st Century, Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella, and coming in June from Macmillan, The Plight of the Palestinians. Articles by Cook appear in Counterpunch, the Palestine Chronicle, MWC News, Pacific Free Press, Atlantic Free Press, Dissident Voice and Countercurrents among others. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu and www.drwilliamacook.com.
by Willliam A Cook – sent by author – 5 December 2009 Ben Gurion “…realized that the holy book could be made into a secular national text, serve as a central repository of ancient collective imagery, help forge the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants into a unified people, and tie the younger generation to the land.” (Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, 108)
Of what possible significance has Sand’s comment today as America watches in utter disbelief and dismay the demise of the President of Change and Hope into an obsequious and obedient Golem of Israel, subservient to Netanyahu and Lieberman? The great Golem of Prague in the 16th century, a mythological creature created of mud by incantations of the ancient Rabbi Loew to protect the walled ghetto of the Jews, lived without a soul but at the service of the Rabbi. So now, we watch in disbelief Obama bow before the scorn of Bibi and Avigdor as they mock the great agent of change, the bringer of peace to the world, and the savior of America from the ravages of Bush.
The answer lies in a study of mythistory and deception. Mythistory is the creation of historical fact out of ancient stories placing the accuracies of these stories before the evidence of scientific investigation or epistemological study. In 1936, Yitzhak Baer published Galut (exile) stating conclusively, “The Jewish revival of the present day is in its essence not determined by the national movements of Europe; it harks back to the ancient national consciousness of the Jews, which existed before the history of Europe and is the original sacred model for all the national ideas of Europe.” For Baer, the Biblical myth that told of the giving of the land of Palestine to the chosen people gave them proprietary claim to it; indeed, Jewish history “was to be studied in isolation from the history of the gentiles, because the principles, tools, concepts and time frame of these studies were completely different” (Sand 102).
Ben Gurion ignored scientific evidence when it faulted the story of the Bible that recounted “the promise of the Land of Canaan to the seed of Abraham and Sarah.” A necessity, since Ben Gurion was not of that seed, as Shlomo Sand’s evidence demonstrates. Ben Gurion would not allow any external source to challenge the biblical author’s “divine” source. Not even the logic of Thomas Paine, who noted that Abraham’s visit with God in the bush, should it have happened in fact, could determine the existence of that promise since it was a revelation to Moses alone and only hearsay to those who followed him. But Ben Gurion’s efforts prevailed throughout Israel as the Bible became the national textbook and “the creation of a common ‘ethnic’ origin for the religious communities scattered throughout the world, and (a means to) self-persuasion in the claiming of proprietary rights over the country” (Sand 111).
Unfortunately for Ben Gurion’s protestation to the contrary, archeological and scientific evidence demonstrates that the genocide at Canaan never occurred, the Exodus never happened and the kingdoms of David and Solomon were and are but myths. One need only read The BibleUnearthed by Finkelstein and Silberman and The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives by Thompson, and the latest work by Dr. Sand among many to understand the reality. Unfortunately for the Palestinians and for the people of the mid-east, Ben Gurion’s lies and deceptions have insulated Israel from censure for stealing the land of Palestine from its rightful indigenous population. As Sand puts it, “The book (Bible) was transferred from the shelf of theological tracts to the history section, and adherents of Jewish nationalism began to read it as if it were reliable testimony to processes and events” (127).
On May 14th of 1948, President Harry S. Truman received a letter from the Jewish Agency in Mandate Palestine seeking his support, indeed his recognition, of the newly declared State of Israel. In that letter the Jewish Agency declared in no uncertain terms that their government of the new state would bring peace to the area since it would abide by and uphold the United Nations Partition Plan that provided for two states in Palestine, one for the Palestinians and one for the Jews. What the letter did not say was that Jewish forces had been invading and destroying Palestinian villages and towns for the preceding months, most notably, and only a month before the letter, the village of Deir Yassin where a brutal massacre had been inflicted on its inhabitants. The consequence of this deception was the eradication and razing of 418 towns and villages by the combined Jewish forces, the ethnic cleansing of approximately 750,000 natives to refugee camps and to neighboring lands, and the annexation of their lands and homes to the new Israeli state. Yet another form of mythistory created by deception. All of which brings us to Ben Gurion’s “forging” of the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants into a unified people by means of a Mafia-like control over the masses of Jews brought to Palestine before 1947. The absoluteness of this control as established in documents seized by the Mandate Police and kept by Sir Richard Catling in the Rhodes House Archives at Oxford, included forced taxation to support the military arm of the Agency, the violence used to control “laggards,” the availability of jobs once in Palestine, the network of Zionists in Europe and England to maintain control of desirable immigrants versus undesirable, as well as the control of politicians to enable the Zionist terror against the Mandate forces to continue unhindered, the means of communication within the Jewish community and of all external communication about the Jewish community especially in England and America, and the education of all youth followed by forced enlistment in the Jewish armed forces. Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine corroborates the documents secured by Catling.
Today that ethnic cleansing continues because the Mafia-like controls imposed on the Jews immigrating to Palestine in those early years still exists through the almost total control of the people of Israel by the Israeli military and by the Zionist government’s control of the United States Congress through the coercion of the Jewish lobbies as noted by Mearsheimer and Walt as evidenced in the Congress’ acquiescence to the dictates of AIPAC. One need only look at the most recent capitulation to Israel’s demands by our Congress as it lobbied against the Goldstone Report.
Why should we care that Ben Gurion’s deception became the fodder of the Jews brought to Palestine during the Mandate period? The answer is clear enough. The Zionists controlled all Jews entering Palestine as noted above including the molding of their minds to a religion that was a lie and rights to land that did not exist. That same mythistory was conveyed to the west in numerous books based on interpretations of the Bible as historically accurate renderings of a race of people that do not exist as a race but who believe in truths dependent on hearsay, the mythological flight of a people from Egypt and their wandering in the desert for forty years, an exodus that never happened, the conquering of the Canaanites that did not occur, and the existence of ancient kingdoms for which there is no evidence. Indoctrinated with those beliefs, the Jews under Ben Gurion’s oligarchy believed that they were coming home to a land they had an historical right to regardless of the reality that it was inhabited by others for centuries. That belief allowed for no acceptance of others as neighbors on a land for believers alone, a strange definition of a democracy.
The horror of this deception cuts two ways: the innocent Jews fleeing Nazi Europe were commandeered for the Zionist cause which used their faith for both political and economic ends and the sympathetic allies of the west, conscious of the devastation wrought on the Jewish people by the Nazi regime and feeling guilt for allowing it to happen became innocent accomplices of those willing to manipulate truth to gain power, land, armaments, and wealth. As a result of this baptism in deceit, the Jewish state now grapples with hordes of fanatical “settlers” that firmly believe they have a right not only to the land of Palestine but to the killing of Palestinians because they live on the land given only to the Jews by G-d Himself. Even more horribly, the United States and the United Kingdom have been seized by the Zionist forces through the manipulations of the lobbies that control our representatives thus providing the means to sustain the brutality of the Israeli States’ subjugation of the indigenous people of Palestine against the will of the citizens of these alleged democratic countries.
And this brings us to the Wall that has been built around Barak Obama. Obama is a captive of the Zionist forces that control America’s representatives, its corporations and its mass communications. No one disputes the intent of the American people when they elected Obama as President. He was the man to bring change—to end the wars, to bring health care to all Americans, to fight for the environment, to expand educational opportunities for all—all promises that require the support of the Congress. Yet despite his overwhelming victory at the polls, he is a virtual lame duck President. Why?
Early in his Presidency, Obama made overtures to the Arab world and to Russia and the European Union asserting that America was no longer the pre-eminent world power that thirsted for world domination. His Cairo speech appeared to open a dialogue that suggested the possibility for peace through a return to the Saudi Prince’s Plan based on the 1967 UN resolution, a plan that provided full recognition of the State of Israel by all Arab nations. Almost immediately, Israel reacted, questioning his faithfulness to the Jewish State. From that time to this, Obama’s mid-east policies have towed the line even though he has had to bow before the likes of Netanyahu and Lieberman. Why?
The answer is simple enough. With the Congress controlled by AIPAC and its affiliates, Obama can do nothing requiring Congress’ action if he opposes or even seems to oppose what the Zionists’ dictate. Perhaps the most blatant decision by the Obama administration that confirms this perspective is the decision to object to the Goldstone Report that condemns Israel for crimes against humanity, crimes identified and confirmed by B’Tselem in Jerusalem, the Jewish states’ Human Rights organization, the International Red Cross, and Amnesty International.
Now we know what Obama must have known these past few months, that the United Nations Human Rights Council has proposed a Resolution on “The Human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” This resolution endorses unqualifiedly the “recommendations contained in the report, and calls upon all concerned parties including UN bodies, to ensure their immediate implementation in accordance with their respective mandates.” But the Obama administration and our Congress has opposed what the world understands to be a valid and true account of the brutal actions of the Zionist government of Israel.
There is a wall around this President, a wall he did not know existed when he made his famous speech in Berlin when still a candidate; a wall he did not know he could not tear down even if he became President; a wall that has been built by powers that control America not by the people of America; a wall that uses fear as its mortar, bigotry and racism as its buttress, coercion as its cement, and money as its allurement to maintain control. It is a wall created out of myth twisted into history, taught repetitively as truth till it becomes truth, deceptively designed to drag this once free nation into the depths of darkness and despair that allow the few to control the multitude and in the process to enslave the minds that would be repulsed by what they support if they knew the truth behind the myths.
William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. He serves as a Senior Editor at MWC News and the Palestine Chronicle. His writings appear in numerous Internet publications. His latest books include Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine and The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella. Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy appeared in 2006. http://www.drwilliamacook.com
“After so many years of setting the tone, bribing UK politicians and controlling the BBC they (Zionists) are used to being untouchable.” (Gilad Atzmon, “Britain Must de-Zionist Itself Immediately,” Nov. 17, 2009, MWC News). This week the British people listened to the Daily Mall’s Peter Oborne present, on Channel 4, his devastating account of the Jewish lobby’s control of their government. Now we know that virtually all the principal politicians in the UK of both parties, like their brothers across the lake in our House and Senate, take “contributions” from the Israeli lobby machine ensuring that the Anglo-American mid-east policies follow the dictates of the Israeli government. Gilad Atzmon responded to this report in his article “Britain must de-Zionise itself immediately,” noting that this control has been in place for so many years the lobby feels “untouchable.” How many years are “many” one might ask? In 1941, the High Commissioner of Palestine, Harold MacMichael, Senior Palestine Mandate officer for the British Mandate forces in Palestine, sent the following “Top Secret” “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence” to the Secretary of State, dated October 16th, a report prepared by The Palestine Police, Criminal Investigation Department: The memorandum illustrates—indeed, brings into full limelight—the fact that the Mandatory is faced potentially with as grave a danger in Palestine from Jewish violence as it ever faced from Arab violence, a danger infinitely less easy to meet by the methods of repression which have been employed against Arabs. In the first place, the Jews … have the moral and political support … of considerable sections of public opinion both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America … all the influence and political ability of the Zionists would be brought to bear to show that the Jews in Palestine were the victims of aggression, and that a substantial body of opinion abroad would be persuaded of the truth of the contention. Quite obviously, MacMichael understands that the Mandatory has little power at home over the zealous actions of the Zionists as they manipulate public and political opinion even as they expand their terrorism against the British Mandate government in Palestine. This is an untenable position to be in, responsible for government control and security of those under its authority, i.e. Palestinians as well as Jews, and knowing that the Jews are set on driving the British out of Palestine, and knowing that the home government can offer little help. The Zionists and their “gangs,” a euphemism for well equipped and well trained military forces, launched a full scale terrorist rebellion against the British by robbing banks, indiscriminate killing of British police, and the assassination of British minister-resident Lord Moyne in 1944. By the end of World War II things got even worse: “The Haganah carried out anti-British military operations—liberation of interned immigrants from the Atlit camp; the bombing of the country’s railroad network; sabotage raids on radar installations and bases of the British police mobile force; sabotage of British vessels … and the destruction of all road and railroad bridges on the borders.” All of this terrorism was conducted against the Mandate Government while the home government remained silent under the pall of Israeli Zionist propaganda (Meir Pa’il, “From Hashomer to the Israel Defense Forces: Armed Jewish Defense in Palestine,” World War II). www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/source/History/resist.htm. But recording the acts of terrorism does not do justice to the conditions the Mandate government faced. MacMichael describes the reality of the forces aligned against the police in Palestine. A second matter which deeply impressed me is the almost Nazi control exercised by the official Jewish organizations over the Jewish community, willy nilly, through the administration of funds from abroad, the issue of labor certificates in connection with the immigration quota, the forced contributions to funds and the power of the Histadruth. … The community is under the closed oligarchy of the Jewish official organizations which control Zionist policy and circumscribe the lives of the Jewish community in all directions… Perhaps one of the most frightening observations MacMichael makes comes at the very end of his dispatch: “As matters now stand it seems to me inevitable that the Zionist Juggernaut which has been created with such intensity of zeal for a Jewish national state will be the cause of very serious trouble in the Near East.” Prophetic words indeed. The memorandum provided by the Palestine Police Department includes approximately 50 0 pages of seized documents from the Jewish Agency and related organizations. These documents reveal the intention of the Zionists that controlled operations in Palestine as they worked to force into existence a Jewish State. “We regard it as our duty to caution you against any attempt to decide on an anti-Zionist solution … We regard it as a duty to utter another warning. Do not postpone the political solution for ten years … The Jews are a nation. The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. The Jewish State will be established. It is better that it should be established with your help and for your benefit, than against you” (The Jewish Resistance Movement, March 25th, 1946, Rhodes House Archives). The Mandate Criminal Investigation Department was headed by Richard Catling. Catling’s memorandum begins with an understanding of the “intricate Jewish political, social and economic structure in Palestine.” A series of appendices chart these structures marking in passing that “… the Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937 understood ‘The Agency (Jewish) is obviously not a governing body; it can only advise and cooperate in a certain wide field.’ But allied as it is with the Vaad Leumi, and commanding the allegiance of the great majority of the Jews in Palestine, it unquestionably exercises, both in Jerusalem and in London, a considerable influence on the conduct of government.” Catling’s frustration with the actual control of the Jews over British policy in Palestine glares through this document: “This powerful and efficient organization amounts in fact, to a government existing side by side with the Mandatory Government…” The Zionist controlled Jewish Agency actively undermined the legal authority in Palestine even as it operated to undermine support for that government in Britain, placing UK forces in harms way as they attempted to fulfill their authorized responsibilities in Palestine. It also demonstrates the determination of the Agency’s leadership in undermining the very nation that gave it a means of establishing a “homeland” in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration. The wording of that declaration is rarely presented in its full form: “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” The declaration did not intend to establish a Jewish State. Indeed, the wording, “national home,” was used intentionally instead of “state.” Additionally, the first draft referred to the principle ‘that Palestine should be’ reconstituted ‘as the national home of the Jewish people.’ In the final text, the word ‘that’ was replaced with ‘in’ to avoid committing all of Palestine to the Jews only. Now perhaps we can answer the question, “How many years has the British government been under the control of the Zionist influence?” Three score and ten, the biblical age. Perhaps it’s time that Britain is reborn, free from the shackles that bind it to this corrupt power that flouts international law, wantonly commits crimes against humanity, and in brazen arrogance tells the Nations United to shove its demands to comply with the civilized communities of the world. (Note: Sir Richard C. Catling’s files have been released to this writer by the chief Archivist of the Rhodes House Library of the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University. Some of the material presented above comes from the “Introduction” of a yet to be published book due out this coming spring.) William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and serves as editor and writer for multiple Internet publications. His published books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine, and The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella. www.drwilliamacook.com.
Predictably, the United States Senate and House of Representatives voted to support Israel’s carnage in Gaza thereby handing the new President yet one more war to contend with, one unhappily more dangerous to America than those in Iraq or Afghanistan. That may seem to be, on its face, a strange thing to say unless one understands that we are in Iraq fighting for Israel and, with this vote, our Congress has indebted itself to the Israeli forces that govern the United States (as Ariel Sharon said long ago), forces that will use endangerment of Israel as leverage to attack Iran and Syria, countries already in their military sites since 1992.
Our Senate’s indebtedness is unanimous; while 20 in the House abstained and five voted against the resolution, all the rest voted to support. The reasons offered: Israel has a right to defend itself even though we do not know where Israel is: that is, Israel has yet to define its borders and remove itself from occupied territories; and the rockets fired over the last 8 years must stop, even though Israel, with one shell in Gaza, killed 43 at the UN school, twice the number killed by rockets in 8 years. But logic, international law and international opinion, and fundamental moral law cannot sway our Congress; money can and does. Obama may have a Senate majority and a Democratically controlled House of Representatives, but he cannot respond to the desires of the American people for change – no more wars – nor to the United community of nations that have voted with their feet against the actions of the Israeli government in open and defiant dissent against their governments in London, Ireland, Scotland, Europe and through out the Arab world including Jordan and Egypt. Our Representatives represent Israeli wishes and policies not those of the American people; the people voted overwhelmingly for change not the continued support of Israel represented by these votes or the appointments made by Obama as advisors.
Ironically our “only democratic ally” in the mid-east, as constantly reiterated by our mainstream media and talking heads, has locked the media out of Gaza in order to isolate truth to its Public Relations campaign begun the day it invaded Gaza three weeks ago. Consequently, Americans receive their news from those that decided to break international law and their own responsibilities as an occupying force under the Geneva conventions. No truth, no morality, only raw force serves this Zionist nation beholden only to itself and those it owns, including our Congress. Yet the news gets out. The people of Gaza transmit the truth by phone cameras and a handful of Al Jazeera journalists that report from the killing fields. These pictures inundate the Internet and even a European press on occasion.
Contrast the reality of the coverage with that provided to Americans. In Sderot, the little town used by Israel to portray its misery, devastation, and ultimate demise at the hands of the “terrorists,” the citizens have taken to the hillside overlooking Gaza — binoculars, sunglasses and beach chairs in tow — to watch the rain of Israeli terror by air, sea and land on an imprisoned people. (Shashank Bengali, “Israelis, sipping Pepsi, watch bombardment of Gaza town,” 1/5/2009, McClatchy). Are they in danger? Perhaps, although they do have bomb shelters and warning sirens, something that the people of Gaza do not have. And as I have noted elsewhere (in Counterpunch, 1/5/2009), they have been bombarded on average with 2 rockets per day for 8 years. Twenty three have died over these 8 years, an unsupportable number killed by meaningless use of force. Nonetheless, this has become the rationale for Israel’s current killing that now approaches 1000 half of whom are children. Disproportionate? Not to our Representatives.
Now consider what we are not shown, an image that the western media finds “pornographic,” “irresponsible journalism,” “too graphic,” “too emotional” for public consumption; yet the rest of the world sees these images, hundreds and hundreds of them. This alone should give our representatives pause to reflect on how their subservience to the barbaric behavior of Zionist Israel plays out in the world that is not controlled by American corporations or complicit congressmen. You can go to www.al-ayyam.ps/znews/site/pdfs/7-1-2009/p01.pdf. There you will see the head of a little girl looking forlornly though vacant eyes, mouth still open, completely buried from the neck down in rubble from her crushed home; indeed, too graphic, too emotional to contemplate, just another unnamed casualty of war where death happens … unfortunately, and “we’re sorry.” This appeared in multimedia, a Norwegian site, where you can also hear Sven Egil Omdel, the Director, explain why he decided to publish the photo even though it is against policy: “It is (the publication) a conscious provocation and we have two reasons for it: Israel keep (sic) all western journalists away from the war in Gaza. … The most important reason for us to show this face, is that the Arab world sees pictures like these from Gaza every day. Not a single still, but hours and hours of TV images of hospital floors full of small, dead bodies. Four year olds, two year olds, seven year olds, newly borns – These pictures represent the war in Gaza for millions of muslims – and we wonder why the hatred against Israel and the west grows? (translation)” This now is Obama’s war whether he wants it or not including the 3000 tons of ordnance being shipped now to Israel by the United States to supplement what they are currently using in Gaza.
Americans must understand the timing of this “war” that is not a war but a slaughter of caged people that have no where to hide, no where to go and even then, when following IDF orders, find themselves in a building targeted for destruction, their destruction. Deceit governs; racism motivates; hatred compels and greed for others’ land is the bed rock of action.
Why now? For two years, during the election campaign for the US Presidency, Israel imposed a siege on Gaza, a calculated act of slow, insidious decimation of the people planned in 2004 (www.infoimagination.org) to ultimately compel the Palestinian people to submit to Israeli dominance, without a state, without an army, without freedom of ingress and egress, unclassified and wholly dependent on Israel. Included in that strategy was the need to complete “Securing the Realm,” the document drawn up by our faithful Neo-Con “servants” that drove the policies of Bush’s administration and called for regime change in Syria and Iran in addition to Iraq. During the political campaign, while press coverage crowded out virtually all other news, the Zionist forces destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza, began the locking down of gates and the slow but methodical destruction of Gaza’s economy. Simultaneously they sought, but failed to get in time, Bush’s approval of attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites. Now, as the days of the Bush reign of terror ends, they are desperate to force Obama into a continuation of absolute and unquestioned support of Israeli policies in the mid-east. With the Congress in hand, with the vote made public in America and its continued commitment made known to the world, they believe that hey have locked Obama in a prison not unlike that surrounding Gaza.
What now? Reflection on the past few years, since 2005 to present, especially in the United States, makes possible this observation: the people of the United States and the people of Israel no longer see eye to eye on matters of mutual concern and, indeed, have already expressed that reality in fact. What do I mean? Beginning with the Downing Street memo and the disclosures of Richard Clark and Ambassador Wilson, the ability of the main stream press to hide the truth from the American people could no longer hold. As 2005 evolved, more and more disclosures unraveled the lies protected by the “fair and balanced reporting” of the corporate owned and controlled media. Fair and balanced was neither fair to truth nor balanced. To put two items on a scale, one for, one against, does not present truth or a balanced report. It simply shows two different perspectives, one for and one against. But as facts and documents became available to the American people, items available over the prior years on various Internet publications, the American people reacted by throwing out Bush supporters in the 2006 and 2008 elections and Bush support eroded into the mid-twenties.
They wanted “change” promised from the start by Senator Obama and mimicked eventually by most of the other contenders to the throne. Change meant getting out of Iraq immediately and return to a government that had a concern for America, including less absolute and blind support for Israel. The vast majority of the American people do not accept the disproportionate and cruel invasion of Gaza by Israel. As more and more pictures and videos become available on the Internet, especially the recurring images of savagery on You Tube, the American people are traumatized by the horror, especially the uncountable number of deaths of children. Our representative government does not represent the American electorate; it represents only scared politicians who depend on AIPAC money, men and women who fear for their political seats regardless of what their constituents believe and want.
By contrast Israeli citizens are faced with an election that has all three contenders fighting to convince the electorate that he/she is the one that will inflict more force to subjugate the Palestinians to Israeli will. The focus of this campaign resonates around the war monger Benjamin Netanyahu; both Livni and Barak must demonstrate that they are better leaders to take Israel against the Palestinians, the Syrians and the Iranians. Israel’s future is one of continued war which means in turn continued American billions to sustain their ambitions against their perceived enemies. They do not talk of “talk” with neighbors, only unending war against those that oppose the Jews. One does not speak of Israel as a state or government when “victimhood” is needed to induce unyielding support for the Israeli governments need to acquire more land and control the regimes of its neighbors, one must turn to the bias against Jews that is world wide and endemic. Sympathy cannot be rung from criticism of a government’s policies.
Horribly, the invasion of Gaza can be viewed quite accurately as a campaign war where Livni and Barak have made evident to the electorate that they will use force to ensure Israel’s right to dominate the area regardless of international pressure and opinion, international law or international justice. They know they can do this because they have control of the American Congress and administration including the veto power of the United States in the Security Council. World opinion means nothing. The Israeli electorate, with modest exception, does not want change.
Ultimately, it’s AIPAC’s will against the American citizens’ expressed desires as they voted for this man of change. Who will win? Will the blatant exposure of Israeli violence and mercilessness, in pictures and videos, turn the tide? Can Israeli hacking of Internet sites like that done to The Palestine Chronicle and the attempted erasure of sites that contain the pictures and videos described above stop the flow of sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza and quell the building animosity that has arisen world-wide against the cruelty employed by Israel in its savage destruction of Gaza?
Will Obama turn to diplomacy, as he preached when a candidate and, thus doing, fulfill the truth enunciated by Phillip, “Become more human, and humans will love you”? Will he turn to negotiations with those engaged in these brutalities, to stem the violence? Will he recognize the impossible absence of the democratically elected Hamas government from deliberations with Israel over Gaza? How absurd. Will he reconsider the bribery that Bush employed to keep Egypt and Jordan in collusion with Israel despite the agony the people of Egypt and Jordan experience as they watch their people die in Gaza? Will he seek justice by returning to the resolutions of the UN that demand Israel return to the borders of 1948 or 1967, to leave the occupied lands of Palestine including East Jerusalem, to recognize the right of return of the refugees, to realize that Palestinians have a right to their state just as Israel has a right to its, something recognized by Hamas though never recognized as true by our main stream press. (Guardian, 1/12/2006 and Ynet, 1/30/2006). Will Obama seek peace that America might be free of its entanglement with a rogue state that blindly leads America into the darkness of unending conflict and death? Will he demand of Israel that its support from America depends of its recognition that it can only survive if it lives in harmony with its neighbors not out of fear but out of brotherhood? Will he suggest that the Israelis consider a diametrically opposite road to peace, one that understands “People will love you if you become more human”?
Uprooted Palestinian
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 