John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ERIC STRIKER IN UNZ REVIEW

 

“Why Trump’s New Executive Order Matters

“Trump’s executive order is reported to do two things: first, reclassify criticism of Israel and Zionism as anti-Semitism, and two, categorize Jews as a non-white race. This will effectively turn expressing negative sentiments towards Israel on college campuses into a hate crime.”

 

https://www.unz.com/estriker/why-trumps-new-executive-order-matters/

 

The only good thing you can say about such a measure is that it reveals the weakness of the cause it is supposed to defend.

This shows no respect for the rights of others and the rule of law, just as is the case with other Israeli-inspired measures against free speech and peaceful boycott.

Of course, that is in keeping with Israel’s daily treatment of millions of Palestinians.

A strong and vital and fair society wants no such props.

An unfair one applauds them.

And, my God, defining “a race”? Who were the last folks to do that?

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS

 

“Turkey’s pledge to ‘take custody’ of ISIS prisoner camps called precarious by experts

“About 30 Canadian men, women and children are thought to be held in these camps”

 

This is just one more bit of peripheral noise about what’s going on in northeast Syria. No one, on any side, gives a damn about the mercenaries of ISIS.

What really concerns Washington is the failure of its plan to support the hiving off of the area as a Kurdish rump state, which is what the American troops there have been doing, training and supplying Syrian Kurds to fight against Syria’s government. The effort represented Israel’s consolation prize for the loss of the American-run proxy war intended to topple Syria.

Fighting ISIS has been the consistent cover story for this operation which involves American troops illegally in Syria doing things like building bases and supplying Syrian Kurds with weapons.

Not only was the effort a very nasty piece of business to be doing in someone else’s country, but a rather foolish one, considering the well-known attitude of Turkey’s Erdogan about having any Kurdish-run entities on Turkey’s border.

It represents just one more embarrassing mishap in the running of the American empire, whose affairs often are handled with the aplomb and dignity of the Keystone Cops.

 

AFTER WORD:

The real interests at work in northeastern Syria project are easily understood from various comments following Trump’s initial moving of some American troops, effectively allowing Turkey’s Erdogan to invade the region.

We had the Congress’s most vigilant defender of all the interests of Israel, Senator Lindsey Graham, blowing huge clouds of steam almost immediately, but of course speaking in disguised terms about concerns for “allied” Kurds.

Other members of Congress quickly chimed in, also with concerns for the Kurds and various suggested punitive measures to be brought against Turkey.

Trump did one of his typical clownish flip-flops by starting to talk about the need for maybe something stronger than sanctions against Turkey.

And this morning, Netanyahu, who of course should have nothing to say about what happens in northeastern Syria, made threats about Israel maybe assisting the “valiant Kurds.” Oh, sure, Israel as defender of valiant Kurds.

Then, we have stories like the one above, from CBC, suggesting concern for the Kurds’ ISIS prisoners coming under Turkey’s charge. About thirty are thought to be Canadians. The irony is almost overwhelming since Canada has only recently spoken against repatriating Canadian members of ISIS.

Something from Russia brings things together nicely.

There are two notorious Russian pranksters, Alexey Stolyarov and Vladimir Kuznetsov, very clever fellows who have a number of times pulled off the stunt of calling someone famous while pretending to be someone else famous and getting the person they call to answer sensitive and embarrassing questions, recording the answers.

I suspect they are with Russian security services, given all the special knowledge required to place such calls, and their efforts often provide real insight along with some laughs.

They called Lindsey Graham twice, pretending to be the Turkish Defense Minister, and they recorded him saying: “I told President Trump that Obama made a huge mistake in relying on the YPG Kurds. Everything I worried about has come true, and now we have to make sure Turkey is protected from this threat in Syria. I’m sympathetic to the YPG problem, and so is the president, quite frankly.”

Talk about hypocrisy, the man says the very opposite in confidence to his public words.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS

 

“Trump defends decision to pull U.S. troops back from Syrian-Turkish border

“Democratic and Republican lawmakers condemn decision, fear a Turkish offensive”

 

The only people who ever seriously fought the Jihadists in Syria are the Syrian Army, their Iranian allies, and their Russian allies.

America has many times used the excuse of Jihadists to stay somewhere in Syria where it doesn’t belong. It is not an ally of Syria and has never been given permission even to be there, let alone create military bases, train rebellious people, distribute weapons and supplies to them, and generally to encourage mayhem.

What it has really been doing in the Northeast is to assist the Syrian Kurds in opposing Syria’s government and encouraging the notion of a Syrian Kurd rump state. Anything to weaken Syria.

The amount of misinformation on the topic of Syria and its nasty war, a war deliberately created by outside interventions, is monumental, and with good reason since those responsible don’t want the world really to understand what has been going on. That is the way hybrid and proxy wars work.

The Syrian War was always about toppling a legitimate government by using proxy fighters. The proxies get plenty of publicity as “Jihadists” but they really are for the most part plain old recruited mercenaries playing theater parts. And of course, as with any army, the ordinary soldiers receive very little information about what it is all about. All of their pay and supplies has come from the informal coalition of Saudi Arabia and America and Israel and Britain and France and a Gulf State or two.

Every time an arms cache has been discovered by advancing Syrian forces, it contains weapons made in America or Israel or Bulgaria, a country from which the CIA often buys volume-discount weapons to send to interventions and coups.

The people in Washington who are upset by Trump’s move are using terms like “betrayal of allies.”

It’s ridiculous language if you know any history of the region, but most of the people using the words are themselves being dishonest, not telling people why they really want to assist the Kurds.

First, the Kurds are not allies. They do not even represent an organized state, although they always dream of creating one. They are scattered as a minority in many places of the region, almost like a large population of gypsies. Their fierce hope for a state makes it easy for someone like the United States to exploit them for undeclared purposes, as it has been doing now and has done previously.

Some people tried warning the Syrian Kurds about depending on the United States for help, but they wouldn’t listen. The region borders on Turkey, which has its own substantial and rebellious Kurdish population, and is simply never going to tolerate a Kurdish-run rump state on its border. It regards the idea as a serious security threat, given the aspirations of its own Kurds. So American notions have been at direct odds with Turkey’s interests from the start.

The United States has toyed with this notion about the Kurds in northeastern Syria as a kind of consolation prize for having lost the main war in Syria, the war using proxy forces to destroy the Syrian government. Hiving off an important segment of Syria, a place with crude oil reserves, would clearly hurt the country. Trying to reclaim it, even if eventually successful, would keep poor Syria in turmoil for years to come. Israel, unhappy about the main proxy war having been lost, was keen on the concept.

You do have to put the Syrian War into its proper context. It is part of the long series of Neocon Wars in the Middle East designed, more or less, to pave over everything anywhere near Israel. That’s what the meaningless term, “War on Terror,” going back to George Bush really was about. You cannot have a war on a method, clearly, but the term just managed to jumble things up enough for the public and to feature that witch-like incantation term, “terror,” so that America’s government would never have to account for what it was actually doing.

America had done a full-fledged traditional invasion of Iraq, complete with one pathetic ally to share the shame. It was a terribly bloody and destructive enterprise, and so for the other names on its list of countries in the Middle East to be paved over, it settled for proxy and hybrid efforts.

The invasion of Iraq was not only extremely costly, it produced waves of bad publicity and condemnation, something to be avoided when your public relations efforts focus on words like “democracy” and “freedom.” Proxy and hybrid hostilities allow you to put up smokescreens so that no one quite knows what you are doing. You can even blame other people.

Out of the immense destruction American bombing in half a dozen lands caused in a “War on Terror,” we did see, here and there, some few people seek reprisal and revenge against the very powerful who were abusing their power. Those few instances of “International Terror” served, almost like public relations stunts, to reinforce the government’s explanation of what all the killing was about.

The United States has betrayed the region’s Kurds before, going back to the days of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. American plotting got Iraq’s Kurds to rebel against Saddam, and they ended in a mass slaughter. Suggestions of American support vaporized.

Well, here we go again. Unless new steps are taken to avert it, Turkey is going to do the Syrian Kurds serious damage. This United States move serves also as an important gesture to Turkey about America respecting its interests. After all, America and Turkey have had a number of noisy, public disagreements recently.

No matter how difficult the United States sometimes finds accommodating Turkey’s Erdogan, in the end, it very much wants Turkey to remain in NATO. Its geographical location makes it almost a kind of capstone in NATO’s edifice.

It’s not clear how this will all turn out, but Israel, so immensely influential in Washington, is not happy with anything that could end in any degree of Syrian reunification.

The apocalyptic tone about Trump’s move used by Senator Lindsey Graham – one of the most tireless defenders in Washington of Israel’s narrow interests, so much so he frequently makes himself ridiculous – tells us all we need to know about Israel’s view. Israel does like, whenever possible, not to be heard commenting directly on American military decisions, so it uses proxies like Sen. Graham.

The Kurds, armed by America to fight against Syria, may be able to approach the Syrian government and invite them to take back the region, protecting them against the Turks. It is notable that Russian engineers just completed in record time a new military-style bridge crossing the Euphrates into NE Syria, one capable of supporting armored vehicles.

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN HIDEOUT NOW

 

“US counterintelligence officials reportedly say Israel probably planted surveillance devices near the White House; Israeli government issues strong denial”

 

Israel is well-known by American security agencies for the most aggressive spying that they face.

In the past I’ve read some almost laughable stories about their activities.

Such as one about an Israeli spy crawling through ductwork in a Washington office building to arrive at a point over someone’s desk where he could photograph documents.

So, I think it’s extremely likely Israel planted surveillance devices near the White House, as charged.

Denials from that country literally mean nothing.

Netanyahu is a pathological liar. We know that on the highest authority, from an open-mic incident between Presidents Sarkozy and Obama some years back. They agreed you could trust nothing the man said.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“Antisemitic beliefs spreading among evangelical Christians in America

“Why do we have pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ values, and we do not have more freedom to protect our faith?”

 

Evangelicals, despite Old Testament story connections, were not traditionally overly friendly towards Jews and Jewish interests.

Jews were not “saved,” and for a true Evangelical, that is the make-or-break criterion in judging all relationships.

Over and above that, there is the plain fact that American Jews in general were never particularly fond of Evangelicals, some Jews even being rather contemptuous.

I am aware of these things because I grew up in a neighborhood that had a substantial Jewish population. It had also a significant Evangelical population, especially people of Swedish origin, plus a very large Catholic population, people of Irish and Eastern European origins.

Recent connections between Evangelicals and Jews concerning Israel I think are not built with lasting bonds. However, that does not mean that changes in attitude may be accurately characterized as “anti-Semitic,” as your headline does.

We’ve lost all capacity for subtlety and nuance in contemporary society, and just not caring for someone or some interests in fact does not automatically connote hate or anti-anything, it only means a preference for those resembling yourself and sharing common interests.

That ipso-facto way of looking at things such as personal likes and preferences and describing them as hate is now regularly pushed at us in popular media and politics, but that fact alone certainly doesn’t make the claims accurate.

Recent past connections between Evangelicals and Jews at least in part reflect certain American Evangelical leaders and their personal relationships with Israel’s leadership and America’s Israel lobby. An Israeli leader like Netanyahu has actually sought out some these guys in the past to cultivate, and that clearly represents a pragmatic political connection having little to do with fundamental views or values.

Those Evangelical leaders, more ambitious political leaders and empire builders than truly religious leaders, I’m pretty sure never reflected what’s really in the average Evangelical’s heart on the matter.

And those leaders are getting old and some of them have died off, so over time you might expect a change in attitudes. I’m referring to men like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

Also, such leadership is subject to abrupt change, as we saw in the case of Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart. The preaching business is a fairly volatile one.

You can find, for example, Evangelical businessmen who do not like to do business with the “unsaved” of any description. And it’s the same for bonds of friendship. Parts of the American Jewish community, especially the orthodox, display the same kind of preferences.

In Israel, it is actually illegal to proselytize Jews for conversion, a law indicating a very deep separation in values between Evangelicals and Israelis. And it is well known that many parts of the American Jewish community, again especially conservatives, frown on marriage with non-Jews, a view that has often been expressed publicly.

Another factor at work here is that long enough exposure to the harsh realities of modern Israel might be enough to convince even some fervent believers that any relationship between it and the Israel of the Bible is pretty much wishful thinking. Certainly, we know there are American Jews who feel that very way.

I think the existing alliance with Israel’s interest has some parallels with the current alliance of some Evangelical leaders and Donald Trump. It is political in nature and largely synthetic. In some respects, almost unnatural.

Trump represents absolutely no fundamental Evangelical value. He is often foul-mouthed, dishonest, unfaithful, and he is, most certainly, “unsaved.” I am sure many ordinary Evangelicals are uncomfortable with a political relationship some of their politically ambitious leaders promote.

Any strength in the bond comes only from the sloshing overflow of American Patriotism into American Evangelism plus some attitudes like racism and xenophobia, both not impossible to find anywhere in America, including in American fundamentalism. But when so many other factors are wrong, I think the bond cannot not strong or enduring.

There is also the simple fact of a gradual decline in the number of traditional American fundamentalists. Evangelism is fading.

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN MIDDLE EAST MONITOR

 

“Jews are being used as human shields in the war of words over anti-Semitism”

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190726-jews-are-being-used-as-human-shields-in-the-war-of-words-over-anti-semitism/

 

In the photo at the top of this article, a woman holds a sign saying, “Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism.”

That should not even need saying. It is simply a truism. A platitude. Not much different in its analytical content than saying the sun will rise tomorrow.

But it does need saying. Very much so.

Why?

Because we have a vigorous and well-financed group claiming otherwise, and doing so incessantly.

The group has its own reasons for saying so, but those reasons have absolutely nothing to do with human rights or prejudice or fairness or even decency.

It is a well understood principle that when you make enough noise about anything, it has an effect.

It is accepted in advertising and in political propaganda, a branch of the same persuasive art as advertising, that “if you throw enough crap at the wall, some of it will stick.”

That unpleasant reality is just part of our human condition. Fanatical or unscrupulous people will always seek to exploit it. Always.

There is a close-to-exact historical parallel for this controversy of labelling people as anti-Semitic because they criticize Israel, one which I think clarifies things considerably.

Was criticizing the old Soviet Union evidence of hatred for Russians, what has today become known as Russophobia?

Of course, it was not.

There was a great deal to criticize about the Soviet Union, about the way it treated people, its own and others, about its readiness to use brute force to reinforce its position, about its respect for human rights and freedom.

And exactly the same is true today of Israel. Almost down to the last detail, just all on a smaller scale of millions rather than tens of millions.

Israel is a state, not a religion or an ethnicity, not a museum exhibit about events from another continent three-quarters of a century ago. It is a place where millions of people try to live their lives, try to have families, try to become educated, try to get ahead, try to build hopes for the future.

More than one kind of people. Millions of another kind of people.

And those millions are absolutely blunted in their basic human drives.

All states are capable of wrongdoing, of abusing others, of misuse of force, of ignoring human rights and even humanity. Such is the nature of states if viewed as tools for a purpose, as they frequently are.

Democracy or claims of democracy are no defense because a majority of people determined to be unfair can, in fact, prevail indefinitely.

Efforts are made in many democratic states to prevent an ill-intentioned “tyranny of a majority” with Bills or Charters of Rights, documents which define basic rights for all and with legal force to redress injustice through the courts.

But Israel has no such minority-protecting document, nor can it ever expect to have one, given the unusual nature of its founding principles.

If a majority of the residents in a state want to be unfair in some way, the state gives them the machinery to enforce the unfairness in perpetuity. This is precisely what we see in Israel.

It is nothing new. We’ve seen it in many historical examples, from the Soviet Union to Nationalist South Africa and to the old American Confederacy.

Those just happen to be examples of what contemporary Israel represents. I’m sure it is not comfortable to be told so, but who ever claimed that truth is always comfortable? Indeed, we know to a certainty that it often is not.

And right-minded people, people who love human liberty and justice, people who uphold classical Western liberal principles, must speak up in such situations, even though it automatically condemns them to be called names and insulted.

 

 

 

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“Jared Kushner’s Palestine ‘Peace’ Plan Is the Lie of the Century”

 

Hanan Ashrawi’s comment about the “peace plan” has it right.

In summary form, she said: Lift the siege, quit stealing our resources, allow Palestinians freedom of movement and control of their borders and airspace and waters, and then watch them build a vibrant, prosperous economy as a free people.

And never to be forgotten are Kushner’s earlier words about Palestinians not being ready to govern themselves.

He displayed a totally colonial attitude, resembling something from the heyday of 19^th century imperialism. Arrogant and patronizing.

But, in a sense, Kushner’s ugly words were fitting, too, because, in so many ways, Israel is a colony of the United States, a very special one with extraordinary privileges, but still a colony.

Floated by huge subsidies to serve as America’s pied-a-terre in the Middle East.

And the locals are not really welcome, except when serving as low-cost household help.

_____________________________

Response to a comment about how creepy Kushner looks:

Jared Kushner is indeed a rather creepy type, cold, generally unsmiling.

And definitely effete-looking. Almost elfin in some photos.

But what other kind of person could be married to Ivanka?

She’s a character right out of Dostoevsky, a madwoman who has no sense of her own madness, and she just keeps imposing it on others as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

A woman with the abilities and attitudes of a small store clerk who believes she should be listened to by some of the world’s leading intellectual and political figures and frequently butts-in on their deliberations just to tell them so.

And someone who looks in a mirror every few minutes because there is no one else she so admires.

That last being a quality very much shared with her disturbed and disturbing father.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“The Israeli Lobby Is the Deep State”

 

There is definitely some truth in the title.

At the least, the Israel lobby is a component of the American Deep State, working closely, intimately, with its other components, including the Senate, the Pentagon, CIA, and the State Department.

The Neocons, for example, are entrenched in major Washington departments and agencies, very much including the State Department and the Defense Department, and they are influential in policy. In Trump’s government, Neocons fill several cabinet posts, important ones.

(For those who do not know the term “Neocon,” it is short for Neoconservative and represents a small but influential American political movement with one of its main articles of faith being that the United States should not be shy about using military might to get what it wants in the world. They have openly advocated for various wars. The movement’s connection to Israel is in the fact that that article of faith works to Israel’s advantage in getting what it wants and in the fact that most of the prominent members of the movement are American Jews who keep Israel high in their considerations.)

It is all hard to sort out because Israel’s situation is complex and ambiguous, deliberately so. It is indeed a de facto Middle East colony of the United States, a very special kind of colony, one permitted the appearance and most of the activity of an independent state.

And Israel’s lobby is multifaceted. It certainly includes far more than just AIPAC, which is the main formal avenue for influencing political leaders and distributing campaign funds. There are a number of wealthy individuals, multi-billionaires, who make Israel a chief concern and make extremely large campaign donations as well as providing other services. There are literally lists of private organizations and foundations who work to influence opinions. And there are the chief members of America’s press and broadcasting, all of whom are dedicated to Israel’s welfare and never challenge its excesses.

Hollywood, too, does a lot of work to shape public opinion, even sometimes working directly for Israel, as with its annual big bash dinner to collect millions of dollars for the Israeli Army. It did a lot to support the White Helmets of Syria, who function, under the cover of being an NGO, as a propaganda film-making and advocacy group for Western bombing there. Recently, the luxurious gift bags given to all nominees at the Oscar Awards included a free five-star trip to Israel.

The entire Israel lobby in the United States is literally a kind of multi-corporate venture, quite a large one. It is able to bring pressures from many directions. President Truman, when he was being lobbied to recognize self-declared Israel in 1948, felt under the most intense, almost headache-inducing pressure. He told us so in his writing. Well, since then, the Israel lobby has done nothing but grow in sophistication and size. Now, after each national election, for example, there is a program of paid trips to Israel for all freshmen Congressmen, ostensibly friendly holidays but actually carefully planned information and influence and assessment sessions. Woe betide the new Congressman who turns down the invite or asks the wrong questions on the trip.

America defends even Israel’s worst bloody work because America’s establishment is literally embedded with Israel’s interests.

I admire young Omar’s courage, and I note she usually has a sweet smile on her face.

This is a sincere and kindly critic, but a critic indeed.

And that’s something you are not allowed to be in modern America. If you take the position of critic, you will pay a price, as Representative Ilhan Omar very much is being made to pay.

Her future sources of campaign funding will be hurt, as the Israel Lobby will go after any significant ones she has with suggestions of economic consequences for their businesses. Her mainline press coverage will be very unfriendly. She will be called “anti-Semitic” constantly. And any future opponent in her district will get some seriously focused support, not just in funds but in technical and expert support and in good press.

That is just the way it works. No lobby is better organized or more determined to get at its opponents. We’ve had various cases in the past of critical Congressmen being literally bulldozed. So, I hope her constituency connections are strong and resistant to pressure.

After all, America just fought a good fifteen years of the destructive Neocon Wars, mainly to remake the face of the Middle East for Israel’s benefit. It spent countless billions in a vast effort trying to turn Israel’s blood-soaked neighborhood into something resembling a smiling Ozzie and Harriet suburb of the 1950s.

About two million people have been killed in this “crusade” and millions of hopeless refugees created, refugees afterwards ignored and disparaged in America.

Week after week, Washington just ignores Israeli soldiers cowardly kneeling behind a fence while ambushing civilians, shooting children, women, journalists, and medics as well as others just demonstrating for some rights.

It ignores, too, what is clearly the world’s largest existing concentration camp, a place called Gaza, where people have deliberately been kept in misery for over half a century.

And Washington, that intense defender of private property everywhere, just ignores the vicious thefts and attacks of “settlers” and Israel’s own government in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Just imagine the reaction were a poor and deprived group of American blacks to behave the same way in the suburbs of a city, say, Chicago or Detroit?

The National Guard would be sent in immediately to shoot those taking or destroying property, something they have indeed done a number of times in the past during racial riots.

And Washington, which regards itself as a great defender of democracy, at least in its speeches, simply ignores, decade after decade, the fact that Israel’s government holds millions under its control who do not want to be under its control. It holds them without rights of any kind, without votes, and without enjoying the basic Western principle of rule of law.

It’s all beyond appalling, and then American officials go on and on with charges and accusations against a decent leader like President Maduro of Venezuela.

_____________________

Response to a comment saying almost half the bills passed in Congress this year mention Israel:

How about a State of the Union speech featuring Israeli interests? Bizarre.

George Washington, who started the practice of the State of the Union Speech, in his Farewell Address to the Nation, warned against “foreign entanglements,” and Israel is about as great an entanglement as you could come up with.

Trump has been Israel’s greatest willing helper.

Willing, that is, in return for the kind of support Omar will not receive, for the kind of support she is being harshly criticized for openly discussing. He literally can expect tens of millions of dollars for his 2020 campaign in return for such lawless acts as moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN GOV’TSLAVES

 

“US media’s silent complicity in Israeli massacre in Gaza”

____________________________

Response to a comment saying Israel was the Jewish homeland and Palestinians don’t belong there:

Your comment is really uninformed and straight from a script.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Ashkenazi, the people who run modern Israel and the people who provided most of the early Zionist movement, in fact are a Germanic people whose native language is Yiddish, a dialect of German.

As a people, DNA tests show they arose no more than a thousand years ago.

They have no relationship, except sharing their religious beliefs, with the Biblical Hebrews. The Hebrew language was perpetuated by distant Jewish religious schools in exactly the way Arabic is perpetuated in distant Muslim religious schools. Muslims believe they should read Koran in its original, if possible. Jews believe the same thing about Torah.

If anyone qualifies as what remains of the ancient Hebrews of two thousand years ago, it is the Palestinians themselves.

The Romans never removed the Hebrews from their province despite rebellion. It was not the Roman practice in its conquests to do so, and the Romans, really good record-keepers, left no record of the Hebrews being sent packing. It would have been a pretty big operation, and it would have caused ripples and disturbance all over the Empire, but there is absolutely no record.

After all, Jewish people embrace many myths and stories with little basis other than tradition, just as all religious groups do. There is no record of Jews as slaves in Egypt. Not a single word or artifact. The name Moses is indeed said to be from the Egyptian. There is no record of King David. And of course, there is no record of Jonah or Lot’s Wife or a hundred other matters.

The entire Askenazi story of Jews wandering the world after expulsion from the Holy Land is just that, a story.

It ties them into the Hebrews they mimic, but it just has no basis in fact, anymore than all those earlier Hebrew stories have.

The Ashkenazi, a Central and Eastern European people, were undoubtedly converted to Judaism by Hebrews long ago who saw the blazing success of Christianity in its evangelism – Christianity having started as one of many Jewish sects and splinter groups going back to the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls – and for a while, the Hebrews seem to have copied the Christians’ evangelical efforts in hopes of having their always fairly small community grow.

That is almost certainly how we ended up with small groups of Jews in a number of scattered places, including even Africa.

Even were it true that today’s Jews were the descendants of the ancient Hebrews – and it emphatically is untrue – what possible and reasonable claim to Palestine would they have after two thousand years of supposed absence.

Surely, no more than the Greeks would have claiming part of Turkey for having won the Trojan War three thousand years ago, as described in Homer’s Iliad. And there are countless other examples of ancient events – wars and movements of peoples – which, if admitted into ways of settling modern boundaries and affairs, would turn the world into chaos, just as the Middle East has been turned into chaos by Israel.

This would all be laughable, basing land claims and rights in the 21^st century on questionable events from one group’s ancient holy book, were it not so tragic.

You claim what is not yours, and you claim it based on 2500-year old religious texts saying some “God” gave it to you. What a promising standard for 21st century arrangements.

The silliness only goes unchallenged because many in the West feel guilty over the Holocaust and are more than happy to see yet a different party, the poor Palestinians, be provided as sacrificial lambs to angry Jewish people. The whole modern re-creation of Israel is precisely about that and little more.

The Holocaust – used as a way to justify modern Israel and to defend its many brutal excesses – occurred on another continent, Europe, and it involved one set of German people abusing another set of Germanic people, the Ashkenazi. The Palestinians, in Western Asia, had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

But they were in a very weak and vulnerable position owing to European colonialism, so they were made to pay.

Just imagine an arrogant government official in Britain vaguely promising – and the Balfour declaration’s wording is indeed vague – a Jewish homeland to some Zionists whose help was needed by Britain in WWI, a homeland which was already the home of other people, although of course the British ruled it as part of their long efforts to keep a passage to India, the Crown Jewel of their Empire.

The declaration has no basis in proper law, was entirely arbitrary and self-serving, and yet that little note is kept in Israel today in a glass display case as though it were the American Declaration of Independence.

No, the Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust, yet it is the Palestinians who were made to pay a great price, and they are paying still. Generations of occupation and abuse, countless attacks and debasements and assassinations, deprivation of all the norms of civilized life. No rights, no citizenship, no freedom of movement.

The leaders of today’s Israel seem to have learned only one thing from their grandparents’ terrible abuse at the hands of the Nazis, and that is how to copy them in many of their horrible behaviors to get what you want.

Gaza, to any unbiased eye, is just a vast concentration camp, one allowed to endure for more than half a century in misery.

But everyone in the West is intimidated against saying so, intimated by the constantly-repeated slur of “anti-Semitism” and by the power of the United States, a world bully today behind whose skirts Israel hides.

Of course, the United States is happy with the situation. It did not have to take all those Jewish refugees it very much had shown that it did not want, having turned boatloads away before the killing of the Holocaust was started. And given today’s arrogant and hyper-aggressive world-imperial United States, Israel provides it a handy colony and pied-a-terre in the Middle East.

It’s all a pretty inglorious chapter in modern history.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

And a well-earned attack it is.

Abuse and contempt for a people only can go so far before the people respond.

Unless, that is, you are a country like Israel with a demonstrated capacity to slaughter those you abuse.
______________________________

“JOHN CHUCKMAN and many other fools, are mistaking the handful of backsliding, non practicing, moderate ‘muslims’ that they think they know, for the real thing.

“What makes them think that such pseudo ‘muslims’ speak for Islam?”

It doesn’t get more fanatical and ignorant than that comment.

You cannot summarily characterize more than a billion people.

It is precisely the mindset you display that allowed certain people in the late 1930s and the 1940s to do what they did to whole groups in Europe.

Precisely.

Just as it is precisely Mr. Netanyahu’s demands and violence and irrationality that closely parallel those of the German leader in the Munich Crisis.

Just examine your own beliefs by doing a thought experiment.

If the Muslim people are as awful and hopeless as you believe, why did the Zionist leaders want to found Israel in the middle of them?

Surely that renders the leaders stark-raving mad?

And why have several million Europeans and Americans and others gone there to claim Israeli citizenship?

Seems a wholly irrational, almost suicidal act if Muslims are as you and several other mad barkers here claim.
______________________________________

“His real name is John Phuckedupman”

As soon as people start writing nasty adolescent things like this man, you know their quality of intellect and ethics, in an instant.

By the way, he does such things using a pseudonym.

A genuine coward.

Like Netanyahu.

Like the creator of the film.

Pathetic.
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“I have a proposition for all you lefties who hate jews and love islam. After you marry your boyfriend in the spring, why not spend your honeymoon in the Middle East? I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to have visitors who despise jews as much as they do.”

“Lefties” do not hate Jews.

“Lefties” do not love Islam.

“Lefties” just happen to care about truth and reason and ethics.

Qualities you clearly are missing.

And qualities you in fact hate them for.
___________________________________

Again, if you hate Muslims as much as some people commenting here, it clearly is the most irrational act in the contemporary world to found a state and live surrounded by a couple of hundred million of the people you hate.

Kind of like a believing member of the Klu Klux Klan buying a house in the center of Detroit or on the South Side of Chicago.

Not brave, just irrational.

As far as ancestral homeland, well the world of 2,000 years ago has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the world today.

Nor should it have.

Otherwise, Rome would still rule Palestine. Greece would rule Turkey owing to the Trojan War.

So many states ruled Palestine if you go back several thousand years that you could say Egypt should rule it today or Lebanon (the Phoenicians) or Iran (Persia), and on and on.

By the way, an idea of long speculation – the actual origin of Ashkanazi European Jews – has now been demonstrated scientifically through extensive DNA sampling by researchers at Johns-Hopkins University.

Their origin is not the Hebrew people of Biblical lore but the Kazahr people who live in the Caucasus one thousand years ago.

The idea has long been a source of speculation – there are many subtle but not definitive non-DNA bits of evidence – and some of the Zionist founders were well aware of it.

Now it is demonstrated.

Ancestral claim to Palestine?

Pretty clearly not.

And there is also the idea, with a growing body of evidence, that it is the Palestinians themselves who are the descendants of the ancient Hebrews.

The Romans never followed the practice of scattering a whole people out of a homeland they conquered. They would kill leaders and stubborn opponents, but those willing to accept the relatively mild yoke of Rome were always left to be.

Rome even tolerated all religious practices in their conquered lands, so long as the people were not opposed to Rome.

Of course centuries and centuries of history changed the religious identity of these descendants of the Hebrews, as it did so many others in many parts of the ancient world.
____________________________________________________

“you think these countries are the only ones with negative influences in that cess pool you should add a few of those european countries to your list, espeacially france and england.’

No, of course not.

Abuse has occurred throughout human history.

Organized Christianity’s history of abuse and horrors is largely behind us, but it was an immense and complex history of horrors.

But these are the people today before our eyes as it were – a world of television, cell phones, and the Internet.

And I sympathize with the little guy, the victim, always.

And I really tire of the flood of prejudiced and ignorant statements about a whole people.

For those who want a tale of Christianity’s history of bloodshed, see:

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/of-war-islam-and-israel/

JOHN CHUCKMAN

A SERIES OF RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Why on earth would anyone think John Baird knows what he is talking about?

Apart from the fact that Mr. Baird has proven himself in public numerous times a dishonest and patronizing and unethical politician, Canada in fact has no equivalent of MI6 or the CIA, so we have absolutely no information sources of our own (CSIS being limited to domestic efforts).

Baird is merely echoing the words of Israeli and American sources, both of which not only have their own special interests for what they say but are proved liars in countless instances.

We have the blunt testimony, made public through error, from the presidents of France and the United States as to what a complete liar Mr. Netanyahu is, an unprecedented and unimpeachable testimony into secret affairs.

Israel endlessly plots to gain advantage and position throughout the Middle East. Its plots have nothing to with genuine security but with a desire to sit as arbiter of all affairs within a thousand miles of its borders (whatever those are).

Only the other day the United States quietly cancelled a large joint military exercise with Israel, having become quite fearful that Israel would exploit it for engaging the United States in war with Iran.

Top level American military and intelligence men expressed their deep concerns to Obama that Israel’s series of black operations in Iran, including the assassinations of several scientists were aimed at triggering just such an event.

It would not be the first time for Israel: both the Six Day War and the two-hour attempt to sink the American electronic spy ship USS Liberty in 1967 were black operations, the second intended both to blind the United States as to what was happening in the war and as an effort to draw the United States into it.

And you cannot get much blacker than Israel’s now-known sharing of nuclear technology with apartheid South Africa.

Baird serves Harper’s interests as a faithful junk-yard dog, and we all know Harper has bent over backwards to express views on Israel and Israel’s interests which have no basis in Canada’s traditional foreign policy.

Harper is motivated in at least two ways in this dark effort: one, he is a fundamentalist Christian full of biblical nonsense about Israel and the end of time from the nightmare lunacy of the Book of Revelations.

And two, Harper is miming American Republicans in being totally solicitous of all things Israeli because it brings in a steady flow of campaign donations, and we know Harper has as a goal for personal achievement to destroy and replace the Liberal Party, with campaign financing games being a major tool towards the goal.

Baird only demonstrates he is one more shabby new-Conservative politician ready to put short-term goals of party political success ahead of Canada’s genuine long-term interests, which absolutely do not include ugly business like starting another Iraq-style war with Iran, a country guilty of nothing, and perhaps convulsing the world into a major crisis.
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“I recently watched a documentary about the rise of Adolph Hitler. Seeing all those cheering, delighted ‘fans’ at every event as he gave his speeches made me wonder what kind of people could applaud that sort of bile and hate. Reading the comments in the Globe, though, I can easily see we still have that same sort around today in Canada. I think half the regular comment posters here would cheer another Hitler if he promised to rid the world of Jews.”

The comment is ignorant beyond telling.

I have studied the rise of Hitler in serious and scholarly books. The rise of such people provides important historical lessons needed to protect democratic and human values.

Most Germans never wanted Hitler.

Despite the most strenuous efforts, he was never able to get a bit more than 37% of the vote.

Hitler took over in an elaborate coup d’état after having been appointed as Chancellor by President Hindenburg, an old man desperate for peace in the streets and a man who previously was quite contemptuous of Hitler.

And most Germans never wanted war, but they were trapped by a vicious and ruthless government. Just read the works of the great American journalist of Hitler’s time, William L. Shirer. He was there, and he was an intelligent and perceptive witness to events.

It is not just a coincidence that the popular vote for Harper is close in percentage (39.6%) to that of Hitler’s highest achievement: every society has malcontents, ideologues and savages as part of its fabric, just as a certain percentage of every human population is mentally unbalanced.

And when people – politicians or ordinary people making grossly dishonest comments – tell lies, over and over, louder and louder, we should all be acutely aware we have entered a danger zone in human affairs.

Baird has nothing but prejudice and no genuine information whatsoever to support his yelling and chest-beating.

How would we distinguish that mode of behavior from a small-time Joseph Goebbels type?

We cannot.
__________________________________________

“A very good reply by Mr. Baird.

“The difference between Iran and other dangerous countries like Pakistan is that Iran actively funds, trains and directs terrorist organizations that target the likes of Israel and the US and now Saudi Arabia. Iran is also very bellicose about annihilating Israel or the Zionist regime like they call it (as if there is a difference?) and this is before anyone was talking about attacking Iran.

“In the end, people here who ignore the facts at all costs will never be convinced until a bomb falls on their head.”

It ain’t our heads on which bombs will fall.

It’s 70 million completely innocent Iranians.

Just as the Iraq invasion – again, a product of Israel’s tireless efforts on a very weak American president – killed hundreds of thousands of innocents and destroyed a society for a generation.

It is only the genuine ideologues and haters pushing for extreme measures against Iran.

And surely we all know by now where policy driven by ideologues and haters takes us.

A one-way trip to nowhere.

And note what colossally dangerous prejudice the person making the comment displays: “other dangerous countries like Pakistan.”

Goebbels couldn’t have said it better.
_________________________________

“The only threat a nuclear armed Iran poses is to the American ability to invade them.

“End of story.”

A brutal truth, but only a partial truth.

No country would ever use nuclear weapons in that fashion, because it would be national suicide.

And that is also precisely why the ideologues and haters who promote Israel’s twisted views do not understand reality.

We know Israel has at least 150 nuclear weapons because former President Carter told us that a couple of years ago.

The truth is that even were Iran developing nuclear weapons – and it is decidedly not doing so – all that would result is the kind of stand-off we had in Europe for decades.

And that stand-off kept the peace.

Israel does not fear Iran with nuclear weapons per se. It fears the rising influence of Iran in the region, an influence which in part stems from America’s stupid invasion of Iraq, another insane project advocated by Israel.

Israel unquestionably wants the same kind of virtually absolute authority in its region that America enjoys in the world at large.

The word for that is simple: it’s imperialism.

So here we have, once again, imperialistic and grossly selfish motives posing as desperate security fears and humanistic concerns.

It simply ain’t so.
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“a rapid[sic] left-wing Jew” liza writes in describing Mr. Gerald Caplan.

Again, Goebbels could not have said it better.

How does anyone, not mentally unbalanced or viciously hating, write such ugly things?

Were anyone other than an apologist for Israel to utter such hate-speech, he or she would be attacked savagely.

But it’s okay when you promote war and destruction on behalf of Imperial Israel.
__________________________________________

“It really is time for people to wake up. This is real.

“Remember 9/11.”

Ah, the ultimate stupidity has been uttered: “Remember 9/11.”

9/11 was a crime committed by 19 unstable men, each of whom paid for it with his life.

But that didn’t stop the arm-pumping, belly-over-belt crowd from murdering in blind rage at least half a million people having nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with it.

Gee, I’m glad we have writers like this to remind us of stupid human beings can be.

We’re chimpanzees with bigger brains, just big enough to cause horrific destruction.
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“Perhaps Mr. Baird and his colleagues will take the time to educate themselves”

When what you are after is propaganda and appeals to humanity’s worst instincts, you don’t educate yourself.

Why let education stand in the way of rage and irrationality?

It’s so much more fun to stomp up and down like Mr. Baird does, the very picture of an angry child, albeit a terribly ugly one.

http://chuckmancartoons.blogspot.com/2010/06/canadas-john-baird-does-lunch.html
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“Gerald Klu Klux Kaplan has the IQ of pond scum and it is to this paper’s eternal shame that it publishes his ignorant and hateful delusions. Since when does the globe publish racists like him? If Mr. Klu Klux Kaplan hates the jooz so much, maybe he should write for Stormfront or something.”

Sorry, but apart from the misspellings, isn’t it people like you who hurl ugly names, instead of cogent arguments, who demonstrate low IQs?

Although in truth, IQ has nothing to do with it.

Goebbels was a highly intelligent and educated man, but he was a hater and a believer in ugly fantasy.

And just so, this writer.
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“Baird and his staff write well, but they cannot hide their ethically indefensible support for Israel’s politics of repression, aggression, and religious superiority. I worry far more about Israel and the US than I do about Iran.”

They don’t want to hide it.

They make a very clear and public appeal to the supporters of Israel’s bloody excesses.

It’s precisely the scenario we see with America’s Republicans, all racing to outdo each other in excessive and nasty statements about whatever it is that Israel does not like.

How can anyone argue that such people are serving the national interest?
__________________________________

“For those whose comments are full of anti Islamic stuff, are you aware that a proportion of the Palestinian population that was driven out after WW II was Christian?”

I’m glad you remind us of that truth.

Hanan Ashwari, for example, an able politician and academic, is Christian.

And so are tens of thousands of Palestinians.

By the way, it is illegal in Israel for Christians to preach conversion as they do in Canada or the United States every day.

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MICHAEL BELL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

A message for Israel?

Yes, but far more importantly, the incident provides a message for the rest of the world.
When have we ever had such stunning first-hand evidence of Israel’s inappropriate access to the President of the United States?

Obama, leader of the free world and a man with the immense burdens of a country of more than 300 million people, has to give time, “every day,” to the the querulous leader of a country of 7 million people, about one-third of the population of Madagascar or one-half the population of Ecuador?

I’d bet Obama hears far less frequently from the governor of California, a vitally important part of his own country and a state with nearly five times the population of Israel.

This is the mouse that roared indeed.

And there can be only one reason why the president must give this huge portion of his precious time to the leader of almost exactly 1/1000th of the world’s people: the Lobby for Israel and the political need to keep them happy, that is if you expect the campaign contributions and favorable press it can deliver going into an election.

Any informed and critical-minded person knows there will only be peace in Israel’s region when the United States stops extending unheard-of privileges to this belligerent and demanding state puts genuine pressure on it to settle fairly.

You will never see peace if you must pick up the phone every day to speak politely and attentively to the likes of Netanyahu.

Netanyahu and most of his predecessors – killers and terrorists like Begin or Olmert or Sharon – do not want peace as almost anyone on earth understands the word. They have always wanted more land – that’s what the 1967 War was really about – and they want the land without its people. How on earth do you ever get peace out of that? You don’t.

So American pressure becomes essential, but America’s debased system of campaign financing – which sees people in high office scrabbling for money throughout their terms of office – makes it impossible to apply that pressure without serious political damage.

But when more people understand how bizarre the relationship between Israel and the United States truly is perhaps there will be a re-balancing of political forces.

Either that or we all must wait the two decades the CIA estimates have given the current state of Israel, enduring all the brutality and misery entailed, before all the dual-passport holders from America and Europe tire of the mess they’ve made and go home, leaving the true residents, both Jewish and Palestinian, to work out the details of single state, the only long-term settlement which can possibly succeed.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAILWhy?Who needs a column to explain the obvious?

Israel hurled a studied insult at the Vice President of the United States on a visit, and expects everyone just to smile.

Unbelievable.

Israel wants it both ways in everything.

Recently a government leader from Brazil was on a visit, and he did not wish to visit a certain monument to a controversial Zionist.

The Israeli government went out of its way to treat his action as an insult.

As far as the U. S. goes, Israel is happy to receive countless blessings – from security agreements and intelligence sharing to the world’s richest haul of foreign aid – yet when the U. S. treats any of Israel’s high-handed behavior for what it is, the U. S. government is the bad guy.

Ridiculous.

And why is the American Secretary of State calling the leader of an insignificant country of 7 million (less than 6 million if you discount the Arabs Israel has every intention of eventually expelling) to explain her remarks? It, of course, should be the leader of the insignificant country calling her to apologize.

And people say it is the Arabs who behave irrationally.