JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN RUSSIA TODAY

Civilized is not the point.

The United States mouths stuff about human rights and democracy while assassinating, stealing, and abusing people.

Monumental hypocrisy is the point.

The fact must be thrown into America’s face when it makes spurious claims.

The CIA Torture Gulag – of which Guantanamo is only part – is gross hypocrisy, all of it carefully kept offshore, as though that fact kept the spirit of the Constitution.

The U.S. has in truth been a bloody monster for half a century: 3 million killed in its Vietnam Holocaust; a million in Cambodia owing to its destabilizing; a million in Iraq; and more.

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.