JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

He’s supposed to be running for President of the United States, a nation of more than 300 million people with plenty of problems.

So why is it that he goes to Israel to speak on matters which are of no concern to most Americans?

Indeed, why does virtually every candidate and elected Congressman take paid junkets to Israel, a nation of 7 million whose own problems are immense and whose interests mostly have nothing to do with those of the United States?

It’s certainly not the ex-pat vote because that amounts to a few hundred thousand people.

The answer of course is the relentless need for money by the American political machine.

These guys are going to burn through hundreds of millions of dollars in the next few months.

And the American Supreme Court has said that money is free speech.

Well, the single best organized and financed special interest there is is Israel and its American apologists.

When just one American billionaire can donate at least 18 million dollars to John McCain’s efforts to gain the nomination, as Sheldon Adelson very much did, it becomes clear that it is well worth while to make a trip or two, done a yarmulke at the Wall, and make outlandish speeches.

Mr Adelson among others was reported as intending to attend the campaign fund raiser in Israel.

This is the essence of government by and for special interests.
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What is always left unsaid in statements like Romney’s about supporting an Israeli strike on Iran?

Iran has the capability of striking back.

So after Israel bombs yet one more nation, and that nation turns its resources against Israel, as it will be entirely justified in doing after an unprovoked attack, what will Israel’s response be?

I think we all know that Netanyahu’s lying bluster and threats will immediately melt into special pleadings for help from the United States, and the United States will be dragged into yet another war.

It would be a war which serves not one genuine American interest, and, indeed, would do the opposite, alienating the hundreds of millions of people whose native region Western Asia is.

Making policy commitments with those kinds of consequences is beyond being stupid.

It may get him special-interest campaign contributions today while just giving the American people he is supposed to serve one more gigantic life- and money-wasting war.

That is how twisted American national politics have become.
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“Maybe its something to do with a fellow democracy in a part of the world that is ruthless and tyrannical…”

Oh please.

How is Israel a fellow democracy?

A democracy that insists on its being the “Jewish state”?

How is that different to an Islamic state?

What kind of democracy kills 400 children in Gaza, a giant refugee camp?

What kind of democracy drops a million cluster-bomblets on Southern Lebanon?

What kind of democracy keeps people under occupation for the best part of half a century?

What kind of democracy steals the homes and farms of those it occupies regularly?

What kind of democracy keeps thousands in prison with no proper legal proceedings?

What kind of democracy starts wars with every neighbor that it has?

What kind of democracy has systematic practices that some of the world’s best ethical minds have declared are apartheid?

What kind of democracy allows insane settlers to shoot people and cut down olive trees and take property with no penalties?

What kind of democracy doesn’t allow women to approach a national shrine from the same place as men?

What kind of democracy lets people exclude women from buses?

What kind of democracy makes atomic weapons deals with a rogue statel like apartheid South Africa?

What kind of democracy has secret agents running around assassinating people all the time?

What kind of democracy sends commandos to board a humanitarian ship in international waters and shoots a number of the unarmed people in the head?

The only past examples of “democracies” I can think of that are even close are the American Confederacy and the previous governments of South Africa and Rhodesia.
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“63% of Americans support Israel he is representing the will of the majority in supporting Israel.”

“It is hard for anti Israelis to understand democracy.”

As anyone familiar with statistics and polling knows it is always possible to get different answers to the same questions just by asking them in slightly different ways.

This matter came up in the Quebec referendum, and it is an age-old one for pollsters.

Example: “Do you think Romney is a resolute man?” as opposed to, “Do you think Romney a stubborn man?”

I guarantee different numbers to the two essentially-same questions.

Again, positive responses to broad open questions like “Do you support Israel?” are as meaningless as the question.

And quoting them, as you do, is dishonest.

Indeed, many respondents, afraid of being thought anti-Semitic by an unknown caller on the other end of the line, would be constrained to a positive response.

But if you ask the same question with some meat on the bones, you will certainly get a different answer.

For example, “Do you support Israel’s having illicit nuclear weapons?”

Or, “Do you support Israel’s shooting of 400 children in Gaza?”

Or even, “Do you support Israel if its policies take the United States into a costly war?”

And, no, it is not hard for critics of Israel to understand democracy.

Indeed, just the opposite is true.

Israel’s apologists seem blind to the traditional meanings of democracy when it comes to any discussion of Israel.

We went through centuries of oppression to get to the Enlightenment and to the institutionalizing of democratic and human values.

Today’s Israel simply represents a giant step backward.

Indeed, I would add that it is the worst tyrannies who have always been Israel’s secret friends: Mubarak in Egypt, the kings of Saudi Arabia, and the past government of South Africa.

Birds of a feather…

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY HEIDI BLAKE IN THE TELEGRAPH

What a blind piece of writing.

The only “rogue” state in the Middle East is Israel.

Israel has about 150 nuclear warheads, several delivery systems, and a working factory for fissionable material which no one is even allowed to visit.

The same Israel which keeps thousands in jail illegally, attacks every neighbor that it has, relentlessly keeps taking the land of others in an elaborate system of slow-motion ethnic-cleansing, and practices a brutal apartheid.

Now, there is indeed a genuine threat to world peace.

Instead of dealing head-on with a genuine threat to the world, Israel’s illicit nuclear weapons, this article stirs up nonsense about boogeymen, a truly irresponsible game.

What the article actually does is serve Israel’s narrow interests, removing the focus from the world’s outstanding nuclear rogue state, Israel, a state which has supported no international laws or treaties or regulations in building its terror weapons, has stolen, bribed and killed to get its weapons. It is moreover a country which has wheeled-and-dealed in nuclear weapons technology with another rogue state in the past, South Africa.

Israel’s shadow falls on everything for a thousand miles around, and it has a withering effect on the whole region.

Israel has a direct effect on the nature of government in the region. It does not want democracies to emerge, because it is comfortable with autocrats like Mubarak who do not challenge its interests.

It never once tries to respect its neighbors, never once honestly seeks peace, and blubbers on and on about Islamists and terror and its being the region’s only democracy.

What kind of democracy is it that behaves this way? It’s a rather good thing there are no other democracies of this kind.
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From another reader:

“Israel, an island of liberal democracy on the forefront of a wild Muslim-Arab world”

Sorry, that is arrogant, unthinking, and uninformed.

Israel is by no measure a “liberal democracy.”

There is no Bill or Charter of Rights, nor can there ever be one in a state based on ethic/religious identity.

And minorities of many descriptions are treated unfairly and badly in Israel.

And you cannot have a Jewish democracy anymore than you can have an Islamic democracy or a Hindu democracy. Once you place limits on who has access in a democracy, you no longer are speaking of genuine democracy.

I just love that comic-book stuff about a “wild Muslim-Arab world,” a 21st century version of “the yellow peril.”

You could not cite a more stunning example of pure prejudice.

Unfortunately, it represents the attitude Israel works very hard to foster in the world, always hoping to so prejudice everyone’s thinking that Israel can do just as it pleases.

Well, we’ve seen – especially in the last decade – what Israel does when it does as it pleases. Cluster bombs on civilians, four hundred children killed, piracy on the high seas, a cruel blockade to starve people out, a continued brutal occupation, refusal to talk to anyone but a pathetic figure like Abbas who doesn’t even properly hold office, passing the most prejudiced and unfair laws, assassinating anyone who disagrees, refusing even to talk to a cleanly-elected government, torture, seizing the property of others, and practices which people of unqualified credentials to speak have called apartheid – Jimmy Carter, Bishop Tutu, and Nelson Mendella.

And we all know what Lord Acton said about power and absolute power.
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From another reader:

‘”Israel has about 150 nuclear warheads…”
‘Really?
‘If you have accurate data, information and not speculation, why don’t you share it with the rest of humanity…??’

Glad to share, but sorry you are not yourself better informed.

Jimmy Carter gave us that number a year or so ago.

Need I remind you that Carter was President of the United States, is a nuclear engineer, and was a commander of an American ballistic-missile submarine?

He is well connected with international leaders and intelligence sources, and many say he has the highest I.Q. of any president in the last century.

He doesn’t say things he doesn’t know.

Of course, actual pictures of some of Israel’s facilities and even a mold for fissionable material were published in the Sunday Times a few decades ago.

The man responsible for those pictures – an Israeli nuclear technician – was drugged and kidnapped by Israeli agents and spent many years in prison. He still lives under strict limits and threats.