John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JUSTIN RAIMONDO IN RUSSIA INSIDER

“All Aboard the Trump Peace Train! He’s Taking the Fight to the War Party

“He wants out of Korea, Germany, Syria – and NATO!”

“You have to be blind not to see that Trump wants to radically reduce the US presence overseas – and you’re part of the problem if you find that worrisome”

We could all wish Raimondo were right about Trump, but there is no evidence to support his assertions. None. Not a shred.

Raimondo sounds like one more tiresome Alt-right Trumpista from the Internet, full of admiration for an aggressive, loud-mouthed gas-bag.

My God, Raimondo takes at face value all Trump’s various assertions, yet we’ve seen, time and again, Trump caught outright lying, being factually wrong, bragging about nonsense, and just being ugly with his mouth.

His aggressive personality and thoughtless words have offended almost every Western leader.

Indeed, we’ve seen so much of that kind of speech, I think it fair to say it is the norm for this bizarre politician.

If you look at facts, instead of ideologically-based wishes, Raimondo is busy like some of the characters in Alice in Wonderland, “painting the roses red.”

There are alternate explanations for everything this writer regards as promising peace.

Trump in fact has an extremely aggressive personality, resembling a steam engine always in full throttle.

He has actually expanded the possibilities for war with his mad drives on trade and sanctions everywhere. Virtually all of them unnecessary and dangerous.

History shows clearly that such efforts as trade wars can start shooting wars. They can also assist in the launching of a depression, as they very much did in the Great Depression with America’s Smoot–Hawley Tariff, a measure that was very much in keeping with Trump’s thinking.

You don’t get a free ride to tell everyone else on the planet, “Do it my way, or it’s the highway.” There are consequences, real and quite unpleasant consequences, from that approach. Trade or any economic effort is a partnership, and partnerships require cooperation and good will.

That’s just on the economic front, but in other areas, the story is just as bleak.

Telling the CIA it can decide who dies in America’s industrial-scale extrajudicial killing program?

Giving the Pentagon more money than it knows how to spend?

Appointing a series of major officials who might well have served faithfully in Germany of the 1930s: Haley, Bolton, Pompeo, Haspel, and many others – just a series of nightmare appointments of pushy ideologues who do little apparent thinking.

Trump has now said a couple of times he’d like to invade Venezuela, a democratic country with no record of aggression. Hardly sounds like peace to me. Trump and the American establishment he so clearly represents dislike that country’s moderately socialistic economy, and the CIA has been hard at work for several years trying to destabilize it with everything from counterfeiting its currency and interfering in its markets to subsidizing undemocratic internal opposition groups, but these intensive efforts still are not succeeding because the government is popular and wins elections, so the great man of peace, Trump,speaks of invasion.

And Trump’s relationship with Netanyahu and Adelson is deeply dangerous.

Israel is one of the most aggressive and oppressive countries on earth, and so far under Trump it gets literally everything it wants. Its idea of peace is Orwell’s “boot in your face.”

It gives nothing, makes no compromises, and continues to treat millions under its control as Untermensch – all while working hard to expand its poisonous influence further afield.

There are its efforts in Syria, its efforts towards Iran, its efforts in East Jerusalem, its efforts in the West Bank, its drive to get Western governments to virtually ban all criticism, and its hostility to the United Nations and other important international organizations – all this, while openly committing genuine war crimes in Gaza and keeping itself free of criticism for the darkest possible acts.

Anyone who sees promise here has a problem, a serious problem. And this kind of thinking has become all too common in a country which sees enemies in every corner and under every bed and believes that if it can just be allowed to dominate the earth, everything will turn out fine.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY

 

Of course the Israeli Defense Minister prefers ISIS to Iran. Big surprise.

Israel has been a major secret collaborator in creating and supporting ISIS.

It is a tiresome game that has been going on.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey – both low-key allies of Israel now for some years – are not doing work of which Israel disapproves.

Ever notice how ISIS never attacks Israel or Israeli interests, just makes the odd vague threat to maintain its credibility as a radical outfit? Of course, it is the same for Saudi Arabia and its interests, the Saudis being a paymaster who is never threatened.

Israel has become a kind of genuine nightmare in the Middle East, contributing to instability and destruction and death in every direction.

It is opposed to Iran only because Iran is potentially the Middle East’s big player, the role it covets for itself.

All Israel’s rubbish about Iran’s existential threat is just that, rubbish.

Iran has never threatened Israel, but Israel has busied itself with threatening Iran regularly and even assassinating Iranians.

Indeed, modern Iran has never started a war with anyone, while Israel has attacked every neighbor that it has, some many times.

Israel is able to play this ugly game only from behind American protection, a rather cowardly position like the proverbial calling someone names from behind your mother’s skirts.

By the way, Obama has for the most part catered to Israel’s unending and tiresome demands on many fronts, as has been the case for so many senior American politicians, Israel’s well-financed and coordinated lobby holding their public declarations of loyalty to ransom.

But in the one matter of not allowing war with Iran to be started, he has made himself the most hated American president in Israel’s brief history, while doing one of the only genuinely worthwhile things of his presidency.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

“…the state claims were murdered by Israeli spies.”

Claims?

Are you kidding?

Who else but Israel – whose leaders have a long record of killing innocent people and launching weekly rants about non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons – has a motive to do these murders?

Only Saudi Arabia, but that is virtually the same thing as saying Israel.

The absolute monarchy and the one-kind-of-people-only “democracy” work hand-in-glove now on regional policy, as they do on supporting cutthroats like ISIS.

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Comment in response to another:

Yours is the silly repetition of official slogans, but then I don’t doubt you are one of the thousands of Israelis paid so much a word by the government to fill discussion sites with such “truths.” The purest dishonesty, surely.

Israel is a democracy only and exactly in the sense that the American Confederacy and apartheid South Africa were democracies. After all, the select or privileged population voted in both those historical places. But no one else voted and no one else had any rights.

You cannot meaningfully call a place a democracy where half the people living under its government have no votes.

Besides, genuine democracies have Bills or Charters of Rights to prevent a majority from tyrannizing minorities. After all, even genuine democracies are capable of evil behavior. That’s why there are Bills and Charters of Rights. Israel has none, and it cannot ever have one, a meaningful one, so long as it holds to its ugly Netanyahu-Sharon form of existence – that is, a garrison state holding millions of unwilling prisoners and attacking every neighbor that it has.

Yours is pure Ministry of Truth nonsense about being surrounded by tyrannies.

We see clearly that the tyrannies are Israel’s best secret friends. Israel’s best secret partners in crime today are the tyrant now ruling in Egypt, the absolute Saudi Royal family, and ghastly Qatar. Israel loved Mubarak for thirty years, never mind the misery he inflicted upon Egyptians.

Israel loves having a Generalissimo in Egypt suppressing Egyptians, a Generalissimo quietly friendly to Israel to keep his American pay-offs. Israel hated the late elected government in Egypt simply because it knows that the people of Egypt do not agree with Israel’s suppression of Palestinians, its piracy on the high seas, and, in general, its self-assumed role of Decider of Affairs in the Middle East, with all the costs paid by its American imperial sponsor.

If you examine Israel’s behaviors – ignoring empty, insincere words and slogans  – Israel is the de facto tyrant of the region – threatening everyone, assassinating, attacking, and demanding this and that through its entire brief existence.

Even the Six Day War was carefully engineered to make the Arabs look like bad guys while the entire point was to steal all the property of others it yet holds: Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Golan Heights. It was the very height of hypocrisy and blubbering about poor David fighting off Goliath.

It doesn’t matter how many empty words you utter, in the end Israel’s current situation is untenable. The world will not in the long run allow you to keep all the properties of others you stole in that war.

Israel is a great puffed-up presence in the area, puffed up by countless subsidies and allowances from others. Even Israel’s many human rights crimes have been tolerated in view of guilt over what Germany did 70 years ago. But the realities are just too terrible now to keep suppressed. Millions as prisoners with no rights at all, and government after government attacks everyone they do not like. I do not detect an ounce of difference from the old South Africa, which, by the way was a great friend and trading partner of Israel’s too.

Even Israel’s own people will not want to go on long as the world’s greatest garrison state and, on per-capita basis, the world’s greatest suppressor of human rights. After all, even the most repressive systems like the Soviets or Apartheid South Africa always collapse in the end.

And the Jewish people in Canada, America, or Britain lead infinitely richer lives than the ordinary ones in Israel who must fight, pay huge prices, live in a controlled environment, swallow endless nonsense, and often cannot even afford a home.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

The photo of Netanyahu included with this piece is surely the very picture of evil.

A man who is at one and the same time a bellicose blowhard and a coward.

He’s determined to attack an innocent country, knowing full well the United States will have to go to his assistance when Iran responds, as it should.

And all for what?

So that Israel can keep stealing the homes and farms of others, killing anyone it doesn’t like, and starting any war it pleases.

I do believe that is the very definition of a rogue state.

We cannot have a peaceful world with psychopathic politicians like Netanyahu determining affairs.

And beware, Canada, with Netanyahu’s loyal retainer in office in Ottawa, we could well get dragged into it this time.
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“If this is a precursor to war, when many of the Israeli intelligence and military experts have denounced the folly of it, then we will know who to blame for the consequences.”

And knowing whom to blame changes precisely what?

We know Bush and Cheney were responsible for perhaps a million deaths.

But our knowing saved no one.

And here we go again.

It is well past time for all citizens of democratic countries to speak up about the ugly excesses of Israel.

Not even North Korea generates more threats and death and nastiness than Israel.

It will only stop when our governments pressure Israel instead of allowing themselves to always be pressured by Israel.

We could have peace tomorrow, were Israel willing.
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“We were right to stay out of Iraq, but we should support Democratic Israel in all ways possible.”

Democratic Israel?

Just where do you see that, except in their politicians’ speeches?

A country which steals the property of others weekly?

A country which constantly engages in extrajudicial murders?

A country which keeps thousands in prisons with no proper legal process?

A country which keeps 4.5 million people in apartheid bondage?

A country where citizenship, and the right to vote, are based on ethnic identity?

A country which has attacked every neighbor that it has, many twice?

If that’s what you call democracy, the world would be a far better place with fewer such democracies.
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“It is both interesting and revealing that under every article about Israel, no matter the content, the most popular comments are always the hateful ones.”

I think you have the cart before the horse, apart from several other errors in logic and coherence.

Could it just happen to be the case that every article about Israel is about some hateful act or threat?

I honestly cannot recall a single news story about something good Israel has done.

And for such an insignificant country – in size and in population – it manages to be in the news regularly.

People who have the courage to speak against pointless wars and human rights atrocities are only anti-barbarism.
______________________

“Yet, Israel, a tiny country on the other side of the globe seems to generate so much hate and condemnation especially considering that almost 21% of Israel’s population are Arabs”

Actually, it’s closer to 19%.

And just who are those Arabs?

The men and women who failed to run from Israeli terror in 1948 – the Irgun, The Lehi, the Stern Gang, and the ragtag Israeli army of the time whose ranks were full of foreigners.

Israel didn’t succeed in scaring them off, so what was it to do? Murder them? And there were advocates even for that.

As to their citizenship, you leave out far more than you tell.

Israel treats them in every regard as second-class. Many prominent Israelis speak publicly of expelling them sooner or later.

Their papers are marked to distinguish them from Jews.

They cannot enjoy many rights and privileges of Jewish Israelis.

Israel always insists on being recognized as “the Jewish nation.” Were that ever to become the case, what would happen to these non-Jewish, second-class citizens? I think we all know.

Some citizenship.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“Israel never ruled out attacking Iran while talks were taking place: defence minister”

This is news?

Israel never rules out attacking anyone it doesn’t like at any time.

It is simply the world’s great pint-sized bully.

Please see this brief and informative item clarifying, from a high Israeli source, the nonsense we see promoted about Iran’s supposed threat to Israel:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30317

Of course, those who follow world affairs will know there was never any substance to the big lie that Netanyahu repeats daily, but it’s nice to see that supported, if only by accident, by an Israeli source.
___________________________________

“Israel is like North Korea. A little, aggressive country where even girls have to serve as soldiers. They both have nuclear weapons, both are governed by extremists. The only difference is that there’s no North Korean lobby in Washington DC.”

That is a perfect comparison, although our governments constantly preach the opposite.

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“It seems there are a lot of Israeli apologists who spew ‘ANTI SEMITE’ every time somebody has the gall not to be sucked in by every Israeli press release.”

‘Anti-Semite’ coming from Israel or an intense Israeli apologist has today become almost a badge of honor.

Criticize the world’s most aggressive and downright dishonest government, and you are, ipso facto, an anti-Semite.

Criticize a government which will not seek honest peace and daily steals what it wants from others and kills those it doesn’t like, and you are the criminal.

It is pure cloudcuckooland.

Such abuse of language can only change the meaning of what used to be a valid meaningful word.

It is much like hearing an angry, poorly behaved child in a store screaming at its parent for not buying what it wants.

If Israel is to be a state like any other state, then it is subject to the same criticisms as any other state.

If it is not a state like any other state, then what is it?

Were all of the world’s 200 or so countries to adopt a pattern of behavior resembling Israel’s, the world would resemble a massive war between ant colonies, just a ball of unthinking, biting, fighting bodies.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“Almost all the top comments here have unnecessary and ANTI-SEMITIC language.”

People who criticize Israel are not, ipso facto, anti-Semitic.

Nor are the people who apologize for Israel’s bloody excesses necessarily qualified to judge the motives of others who do not accept such behavior: fanatics in any realm of human activity are never people qualified to sit in judgement.

It is an insult to logic and intelligence to have this slur repeated, over and over, yet in every forum of public opinion concerning Israel, we have this name-calling repeated.

It is ad hominem attack which itself reflects clear prejudice and often just plain hatefulness.

If Israel is to be a state like any other state, it is subject to the same criticisms as any other state, full stop.

And today Israel, as a state, breaks almost every international norm and treaty and convention you care to name.

People who care about such things are not to be put off by gratuitous insults.

There are huge issues at stake in Israel’s behaviors and in its demands, and since Israel and her supporters demand of people in Canada, the United States, and Europe, never tire of seeking assistance and support, surely the people of these countries have the right and obligation to speak about very troubling matters.

Israel extra-judicially kills at will regularly. If you want to support that, fine, but there is no argument against the ugly fact.

Israel steals the homes and farms of others regularly. Again, if you want to support that, fine, but it is practice violating every norm of a free society and indeed of a free enterprise economy operating under laws.

Israel keeps millions in oppressive bondage with no genuine rights or application of just laws. You are free to support that, but others are right to observe it is a throwback to societies we all believed were things of the past.

Israel attacks every neighbor that it has, over and over, and it demands military action against countries like Iran who have made no threats. You are free to support that, but others are just as free – in our society at least – to say that the invasion of Iraq, which the U.S. conducted on Israel’s behalf, was a terrible war crime, responsible for deaths of a million souls, and repeating it in Iran is simply unthinkable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“Imagine a country invading the hypothetical countries of Greenland and Alaska and then saying they wanted to attack Canada because it has nuclear capability. What would you expect our leadership to do? Obey the aggressors and accept their demands we lay down on our backs?”

Indeed.

And further, Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers.

Where did the notion come from that only certain countries are entitled to nuclear weapons in perpetuity? Countries who are somehow appointed gods on earth?

Why was Israel ever allowed to develop nuclear weapons, breaking every rule in the book? And why is it allowed to keep them, always lying and dissembling but always ready to threaten?

Israel has certainly created enough division and destruction in the world just using its conventional weapons, which, by the way, it has used illegally numberless times, American supplied weapons supposedly being under strict contract for use only in genuine defense?

Israel’s record in the matter of nuclear arms is ghastly: it cynically helped apartheid South Africa develop nuclear weapons in exchange for strategic materials, offering the worst example of proliferation in the nuclear age.
I’m sure the various governments of the world all knew about it. Only the people were kept in the dark.

Further, Iran has never started a war in its modern history, unlike Israel who has attacked just about everyone within reach, twice-over, and screams every day about the need to attack Iran.

So far as any thoughtful and informed person can tell, Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, but if indeed it is, so what?

The balance of terror kept the peace in Europe for half a century, and an Iran with such weapons would provide exactly the same needed balance against an aggressive and always-demanding Israel.

Perhaps that is the only route to peace, not Israel’s bizarre idea of peace, but genuine peace.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Israel is pushing hard now for one reason, and it is the same reason why they have Obama and Clinton looking like Neanderthals over the worthy agency, UNESCO.

Obama is extremely vulnerable going into the next election, and he needs all the campaign funds and good press he can get.

It is a nightmare situation in which we have a tiny state with extreme views and never-ending belligerent demands literally push around the world’s super-power.

Although they play a role, American fundamentalist Christian notions about Israel are really not what determine this poisonous relationship.

It is America’s campaign-finance system that does, and also, to some extent, the concentration of media in so few hands.

The United States’ government is so bamboozled by Israel that it will do close to anything if Israel demands it loudly enough.

Kill an American citizen with impunity? Israel has done so on many occasions from the attack on the USS Liberty to the piracy on the high seas of a humanitarian convoy.

Use American high-tech weapons, supplied in great abundance at knock-down prices, while totally ignoring the strict provisions about use only for self-defense contracted into their supply? It has done so on countless occasions.

Ignore America and the world’s strict regime governing nuclear weapons? And doing so even while pointing the finger at another state, demanding that it be attacked although innocent of the very behaviour of which we know Israel is grossly guilty?

Ignore America and the world’s strict regime governing the proliferation of nuclear materials and weapons? Israel got off with complete impunity for assisting the apartheid regime in South Africa to develop nuclear weapons.

Start a secretly-engineered war of aggression, the 1967 War, in which you quickly seize the lands of millions of others – lands which you feel you are entitled from a 2500-year old collection of religious mysticism – and reduce the entire populations to an apartheid regime in which you strip them of all rights and proceed gradually to steal their homes?

Have the name of the most damaging, treacherous spy in American history, Jonathon Pollard, honored in Israel as a national hero?

Patiently endure an endless stream of demands that Pollard be released, the latest to which it has been reported Obama was almost ready to agree, completely to the opposition of almost all high-ranking military and intelligence officers, this last being the only real barrier against the lunatic idea?

The very fact Pollard was not executed in the first place, his treachery being far more damaging than that of most of the spies the United did execute?

Having Israel’s argumentative and demanding and unpleasant Prime Minister with virtually open access to the Oval Office?

Having the United States fight proxy wars for Israel, the only genuine explanation for the horrors of the Iraq invasion?

Giving Israel unfettered access to American markets and technology, often in direct conflict with the interests of American companies?

There seems to be almost no limit to Israel’s impossible demands of America.

Now the thug, Netanyahu, wants war with Iran. Israel keeps blustering that it will itself attack Iran – using, of course, the very American weapons whose use for aggressive war is contractually forbidden. But Iran is not helpless, and Israel knows, that even if it does have the capacity to attack a thousand miles away that there will be serious (and deserved) consequences.

So Israel wants a get-out-of-jail-free card from the United States if it does prove itself to have the capacity for a first strike, and, if it does not have that capacity, it again wants the United States to do its killing.

We have here a black comedy of, pound-for-pound, the world’s most belligerent and lawless little country demanding an attack on a country which has attacked no one in its entire modern history. And it makes this irrational demand of the world’s super-power, whose current weak and pathetic president might just prove inclined to grant the evil wish.

God help the world of our children with the deadly legacy of a genuine Frankenstein monster now driving its maker.
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FROM A READER:

“Iran for 36 years has been taunting the Jewish State with “wiping it off the map”.. Constant anti semitism and hatred.. Now Israel will raise its mighty hand and nuke tipped Sam 44’s and lob one down the throat of the Beast! Happy Hunting!”

An incredibly ill-informed and violent comment.

Iran has not once threatened Israel, not once.

It does not even possess the means to do so seriously.

And every source of genuine intelligence tells us Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons.

The only support for your nonsense view was the current President of Iran’s mistranslated and endlessly repeated words.

What he actually said was no different to the CIA’s assessment of Israel’s future: Israel cannot maintain its current fantasy situation in the part of the world where it is located, in a sea of Arabs.

It will eventually meld with Palestinians and others into a single Middle Eastern state, with many of its non-Middle Eastern citizens, dual-passport Americans and Europeans, returning home.

Your comment serves only the purpose of exhibiting for all to see what irrationality and violence are at work in Israel’s demands.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“Attack on Israeli embassy in Cairo a ‘severe injury to the fabric of peace’: Netanyahu”

Netanyahu does have a penchant for comedy, dark comedy, although I am pretty sure he is not the least aware of it.

Fabric of peace?

Where does he see that in the region?

I see only Israel trying to starve out the poor people of Gaza and willing to shoot anyone who even tries to help them with their needs.

I see Israel ready to attack every neighbor that it has, from buzzing jets over Lebanon to creating provocations with Syria and to shooting five Egyptian policemen only doing their duty in Sinai when Israeli soldiers crossed the border with no permission and with a dark purpose.

Of course, a day does not go by that Israel does not threaten to attack, or harangue the United States to attack, Iran, a nation generally living at peace with its neighbors.

Netanyahu has never so much as lifted a finger in his entire nasty career in the name of genuine peace.

And it does seem anymore that where Israel is there can be no peace.

The people of Egypt are only expressing legitimate frustrations with this regional bully who worked hard behind the scenes to keep them perpetually under the thumb of a U.S.-sponsored tyrant.

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“I would think israel security firing off a few rounds through their skulls would disperse them real quick…”

Now there’s a fine comment, something of which to be proud.

That is, if you are a bully or a psychopath.

The person commenting only succeeds in revealing the genuine attitudes of the Israeli government.

Here are a few interesting facts for readers to consider in light of this savage comment – they are taken from Israeli journalist Amira Hass in her book about Gaza:

Physicians for Human Rights, during the five years of the intifada, a Palestinian child under the age of six was shot in the head every two weeks. According to United Nations Relief records, nearly 1,100 people treated at its clinics during the first four years had been shot in the head, with about 15% of that number being women. During the four years, over sixty thousand Gazans were shot, severely beaten , or tear-gassed.

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“canadians are morons.

“….

“canadians are morons.”

Gee, now there’s an enlightened way to address people and to make your point.

Again the writer reveals, undoubtedly without realizing it, why there is such terrible problems in the region.

There’s a government, armed to the teeth and utterly ruthless, which regularly speaks this way.

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A reader says the last time he checked Israel was an independent nation.

Israel an independent nation?

Since when?

It is the most heavily subsidized place on earth, by far.

It receives about $500 per year per Jewish citizen from the United States, and it has done so for decades.

But that is only the beginning.

There are periodic loan guarantees of tens of billions.

There is constant access at the highest level for this nation with the population of Ecuador, something virtually no other country, even far more important ones, has.

It has a plum free-trade agreement – indeed, with sending its subsidized crops to the U.S. Israel’s agriculture would disappear. It was a gift to Israel because it has no tangible benefits for Americans at all.

The opportunity cost of water Israel squanders on tomatoes and clementines to export is unbelievably high because it is the cost of desalination-plant water. It sends subsidized produce to the United States under free trade, produce the United States doesn’t even need.

Israel receives billions worth of intelligence and defense cooperation every year from the United States, something few other countries receive.

The two billion dollars a year going to Egypt is a bribe paid on Israel’s part paid by Americans since the Camp David Agreements.

Israel receives heavily below cost natural gas from Egypt, the result of U.S. pressure on Mubarak. Everyone knows this is scandalous, and the U.S. has offered to pay a subsidy to top up the price.

Israel also receives billions from the Jewish communities of America and Europe, and it receives important business intelligence and connections.

The great privilege granted to American Israelis to be dual citizens means they move back and forth regularly, all the while sharing business and other intelligence.

Israel’s farms and cities and water supply were all taken with absolutely no payment or reparations from other people. That is the biggest subsidy ever received, the very substance of the nation.

And it is not satisfied with what happened in 1948, it keeps stealing the property of others regularly, refusing to live in peace because it still wants more.

Israel has received tens of billions in reparations from Germany – wholly appropriate in view of the past but still a subsidy.

The list is even longer than this, but I think the point is clear: Israel is in no sense of the word an independent nation.

It is in truth a gigantic international welfare case.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL‘This regime has taken so many lives. There’s got to be a time when it stops’

Ms. Wente appears now to have exhausted her rational mental faculties in the relentless drive to create propaganda supporting Israel’s military and the Pentagon.

The United States, I remind readers, has killed about a million people in Iraq, unknown tens of thousands in Afghanistan, and three million in Vietnam, and those numbers don’t count all the smaller murderous efforts like Somalia, Pakistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, and its loving support for Israel’s bloody predations against largely defenseless people.

In the total of all these places, the United States has created millions of refugees and countless cripples.

It has overthrown legitimate governments all over the world, including democratic ones in Chile, Iran, and Guatamala.

But somehow, Ms. Wente assures us, Iran is so terrible?

Iran, which has started no wars in its entire modern history?

Iran, which while a theocracy (just like Israel) is a relatively open place where one may visit and a great deal of information flows (compared to many other societies on earth)?

Iran, compared to the 3 million annual cases of genital mutilation of women in Africa?

Iran, compared to the routine rape of girls by their fathers and other elders in Africa?

Iran, compare to the bride-burning in India?

Iran, compared to the hideous treatment of millions of widows, including young girls who had been married off for profit to old men who die, in India?

Iran, compared to occupied Afghanistan where a majority of women still wear the burka?

The world is filled with cruelties, and Iran is one of lesser parties to them, but Israel wants Iran attacked, so Ms. Wente does her duty churning out more unbalanced rubbish.
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One further thought.

And just whose holy book is it which commands the stoning of unfaithful women?

Israel doesn’t stone women, but the Ultra Orthodox there often attack women they regard as “loose.”

There have been cases in recent years of prostitutes having been burned alive in homes mysteriously set alight.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY GIDEON RACHMAN IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

“Either way, Israel doesn’t necessarily need Saudi airspace as it has other capabilities”

Do Israel and its apologists ever learn anything?

I think not, because it is the nature of ideologues and extremists virtually to be unable to alter their dark obsessions.

The threat to attack Iran is dangerous, destabilizing, and truly reflects unbalanced thinking.

It only confirms the world’s growing view of Israel as out of control and acting outside all the laws of nations.

First, Iran is in a position to do some very unpleasant things in retaliation for an attack. This is not an impotent little country, possessing as it does some pretty sophisticated missiles and armaments, and it sits on one of the world’s most important arteries of commerce.

Second, it is extremely doubtful for many reasons that Israel has the capacity to carry out its threats.

Only this morning, the Saudis characterized The Times‘ report on use of Saudi airspace as flatly wrong and against national policies. The deception work of Mossad?

Third, Israel, despite its twenty four hour-a-day garrison-state status, has many vulnerabilities, being a small geographical area loaded with possible targets.

Iran does not need nuclear weapons to successfully target places like the Dimona nuclear facility, Israel’s illicit nuclear weapons factory. Or Israeli power plants.

Iran is perfectly able to send not puny homemade rockets with firecracker tips – the dreaded Qassams which provided Israel’s shabby excuse for killing 400 children and a thousand others.

[see:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NtgXlrcvXZA/SWfEpYDqzwI/AAAAAAAAZm0/v8qp2yKvyVo/s1600-h/ROCKET+qassam37.jpg ]

No, Iran’s arsenal includes missiles like Shahab-3.

[see:
http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/man/militarysumfolder/shahab-3.html ]

Iran also has capable anti-ship missiles, as Hezbollah demonstrated by nearly sinking an Israeli military ship during Israel’s atrocity in Southern Lebanon.

Fourth, the knowledge for nuclear operations does not go away. They are classic examples of the genie and the bottle.

Fifth, even were a strike possible for Israel, the chance of destroying all of the existing protected and distributed facilities with effect is remote.

Sixth, Iran would certainly set about on its own Manhattan Project after any strike, a priority national program. Indeed, it is quite possible Iran is not working towards nuclear weapons now, but after any strike, it would set them at the highest priority, and they do have the human and material resources to do so.

Seventh, the entire world would react to Israel’s hypocrisy. Only today we have another story in The Guardian about Israel’s proliferation activities with apartheid South Africa.

[see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/03/south-africa-nuclear-trigger-israel ]

These stories and indeed South Africa’s recent publication of papers concerning its secret dealing with Israel on nuclear weapons reflect changing attitudes towards Israel, for they would previously have been suppressed as Israel tried hard to do.

Israel is an illicit nuclear power – having lied, cheated, and stolen its way to getting there – and it is no longer possible to hide that fact. In the current IAEA talks, Israel as a subject is insisted upon despite the pathetic efforts of the U.S. to suppress the subject.

You can live outside rule of law for a while, as Israel clearly demonstrates, but you cannot sustain an indefinite position of hypocrisy and threat and deception towards much of the world. Even Ghadaffi learned you eventually have to come in from the cold.

The only sensible approach to preventing proliferation in the Middle East is to make the region a nuclear-free zone, and that very much includes Israel.