John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE UNZ REVIEW

 

“The New Russian Government, A much-needed evolution but not a revolution”

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Response to a comment which referred to the Guardian newspaper as very “left wing”

The Guardian is a terrible newspaper nowadays.

But it is not accurate to describe it as “left wing,” not at all.

Using that description is playing the Guardian’s own game.

The newspaper uses a great deal of window dressing that makes it appear “leftish” and progressive, features and filler material about minorities and women and the unfortunate. I suppose it’s intended to connect with the newspaper’s historic past and to provide a kind of sugar coating for what it truly advocates.

The Guardian’s heart and soul are pretty close to Tory in spirit. That is revealed through its choice of news stories covered, the slant given the stories, its editorials, the various public figures given regular favorable publicity, and even its highly-controlled and restrictive comment policies. Liberals don’t censor. The Guardian does, heavily.

It virtually led the howling mob attacking Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, and it used some really underhanded techniques, like running little human-interest items about British Jews who were afraid and were going to leave Britain to take up residence somewhere else. It did this several times in the course of its campaign. Once, the person’s destination was even Germany. Of course, any Jewish person who had anything unpleasant to say about Corbyn was given space to say it.

The paper raised no objections to direct interference in British domestic politics by several Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu, who chimed in on Corbyn and anti-Semitism, and he was even mistaken in the facts he cited.

The Guardian is staunchly pro-Israel and pro-American empire, the two, of course, being tightly associated.

The Guardian has supported all of America’s bloody Neocon Wars and coups. It never raises any doubts or questions about matters like the externally-induced horrors in Syria. President Assad is always treated with disdain. Syria, in the Guardian’s manufactured reality, uses poison gas against its own people and deserves cruise missile attacks.

It has no problem with America’s torrent of invective and threats and sanctions against Iran, a country which has done in fact nothing wrong. It has no problem with severe war-like sanctions being used against tens of millions of innocent people to cause starvation and to deprive them of medications, vicious actions taken by the United States against Iran and Venezuela.

It despises Putin and Russia. It literally sometimes prints gutter-quality literature on those topics. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with those who insist Putin has virtually invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea. And of course, he or his henchmen shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine, even though the Prime Minister of Malaysia says that is not the case.

It has no problem with NATO, closely under American direction, running tanks up against the Russian border, sending risky, intrusive spy flights towards Russian airspace, doing armed cruises on the Black Sea, and carrying on with large-scale practice sea battles in the Baltic.

As far as The Guardian is concerned, the Salisbury Skripal Affair with Putin directly responsible for it – that indigestible mass of Theresa May accusations containing not a single proven fact – is a settled matter of history. It occasionally makes an effort to warm up the kettle, burning new bits flogged by security service outlets.

The Guardian played a sizable role in building up the public-relations image of that good friend of Netanyahu’s, the tyrant Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. He was to be a dynamic and progressive new force in the Middle East. It even used chirpy little features about a few upper-class women being allowed to drive now to emphasize his fine qualities between executions, kidnappings, and launching wars.

It has attacked and lied about Julian Assange, one of the truest heroes of our time and a great investigative reporter/editor. But you see, Assange’s work works against America’s appalling injustices, and that just isn’t allowed. And it worked against candidate Hillary Clinton, world’s leading purveyor of Russophobia, killer of Libyans and Syrians as Secretary of State, and a favorite of Guardian editors.

I could cite many examples of how dreadful the Guardian has become, but here is my favorite:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/05/21/john-chuckman-comment-absurd-lengths-to-which-our-press-goes-to-attack-russia-britains-guardian-holds-hate-russia-day-today-some-of-its-stuff-is-so-ham-fisted-it-reads-like-1959-

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

There are at least two reasons for this provocation by Turkey.

ISIS has been financing itself by stealing Syrian oil and selling it to Turkey at a discount.

Putin’s recent heavy bombardment of the trucks and facilities involved undoubtedly irritates Erdogan, and I believe his own son is involved in this whole operation.

The second reason for this is that it was meant to put a stop to a genuine anti-ISIS coalition.

When I say “genuine,” I mean one which actually targets the terrorists – as Russia is doing – and not one which targets Syria and effectively protects ISIS, which is the pattern of America’s efforts, the ones supported by a disingenuous David Cameron.

Turkey is the last country wanting a genuine coalition since it is a major supporter of ISIS. It uses those murderous thugs against both the Kurds Erdogan so hates and of course against the government of Syria, a reasonable government which opposes some of Erdogan’s fetid dreams of empire.

Of course, in any matter involving Erdogan, there is always the sheer fact of his mental instability as an explanatory variable. This man who built himself a grotesque, one thousand-room palace recently, makes contradictory statements on important matters every few days, and hates some groups like the Kurds with an intense white heat is a genuinely erratic and unstable man.

It’s all a dirty business, and the only honest major player is Putin. Cameron, Obama, Erdogan, and Netanyahu are outright liars and supporters of terror. They are also guilty of supporting criminal invasion of a peaceful country. Hollande was with them but has been wavering.

The various words by American Defense Secretary Ash Carter over recent time sound just like something from Dr. Strangelove, full of dark threats and anger over America’s dirty plans being thwarted by Putin.

If what these people were doing in Syria was honorable and acceptable to public opinion, why do they keep lying and hiding what they are doing?

There is no doubt Turkey’s act was premeditated. If the plane was in Turkish airspace, it would have been only for seconds over the point of land which sticks down into Syria.

You do not shoot someone for that, especially when it is well known what they are doing.

The plane crashed 4 kilometers inside Syria.

And we have the surviving pilot saying there was no warning at all.

In the end, I very much believe Erdogan will regret this rash act. Already, Russia is building a no-fly zone in the area.

The missile cruiser Moskva is to be stationed in the area with instructions to attack threats.

Putin is also putting the S-400 anti-aircraft system, the world’s most formidable, at the Russian base.

Still further, fighters will accompany all bombers now.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

An organization, such as ISIS, can only rise out of nothing and literally change a region with a great deal of help.

It cannot be otherwise.

ISIS has been assisted, supplied, and, in some cases, trained by Western interests. We have had countless little revelations of these activities, although we never read about them in the corporate press.

ISIS was even supplied some while back by some of these interests with terrible things like small amounts of nerve gas to use on people so that the United States could blame Syrian forces. Acts just do not come any more cynical and evil than that.

ISIS serves the interest of assisting to bring down a legitimate state, Syria, a state, by the way, which attacks no one and which has never threatened legitimate American interests. They already served to eliminate a leader in Iraq, sending him running off in fear, whom the United States and Israel greatly disliked.

ISIS also serves to solidify the planned smashing of Iraq into mini-states. This was particularly clear in the case of the Kurds, who received great assistance in fighting ISIS, effectively defending their own part of the (former) country against those who now run other parts.

The public does not recognize what is happening because news coverage in our major corporate press is selective and always supports government policy, even black operations policy.

If the United States were serious about fighting ISIS, they could eliminate them in very short order, but they are not serious. They display only token efforts, and increasingly, the reality of these efforts is the destruction of Syrian lives and property – in effect, acting as air support for the terrorists.

Also, the United States appears gradually to be working its way towards direct intervention against the Syrian government, blubbering all along the way about the horrors of ISIS.

When ISIS has served its filthy purpose, maybe it will be seriously attacked. Who knows? But, for now, America’s attacks on ISIS are little more than show and perhaps curbing those who’ve exceeded their brief. After all, these terrorist groups – and there are several doing lots of killing in Syria – do contain some genuinely horrible people, even if they were assembled and assisted through American efforts. The American attacks really assist the terrorists in Syria by attacking Syrian infrastructure.

Turkey, with the blessings of the United States and Saudi Arabia, has given them shelter and border access to Syria, as well as arms shipments. Israel too is involved in surreptitious support, including hospital treatment for wounded fighters in the North and secret arms exports, as is the absolute monarchy of Qatar. And now that proud and fearless defender of American values, David Cameron, has joined the fray in the name of “fighting terror.” My, what a brave fellow he is.

The actual terror that is going on is the destruction of legitimate state, a beautiful and historic land. It is being carved into smaller entities, just as Iraq has been. This comes at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and the creation of millions of refugees, but the states secretly working on this dirty project only cry crocodile tears over all the deliberately-induced horror.

It’s just one part of a savage scheme to “give birth to a new Middle East,” as former Secretary of State Condi Rice expressed it. So far we have seen a million die in Iraq, aerial bombardment of Yemen, Libya torn apart and reduced to chaos, and Egypt’s fledgling democracy destroyed with a return of dictatorship.

Now, all of this destruction does make people like Mr. Netanyahu very happy, but for countless millions, and for a generation to come, human misery is the chief product of the effort.

Of course, it is this very scheme producing the flood of refugees to Europe, refugees the United States refuses even to help and David Cameron treats as rabble and scum.

The whole business is a psychopathic politician’s dream: inflict all the killing and destruction you wish while condemning the hired help and posing as someone horrified at what they have done. Compared to this, the stunts of Hitler’s Germany to cover its bloody trail – as when it dressed prisoners in Polish uniforms and shot them at the border, claiming they were Polish soldiers attacking Germany – seem amateurish.

The face of evil is no longer merely banal, it is slick and sophisticated and leering at all we hold as values.

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Israel plays this prisoner-release game every time the U.S. manages to push it, once again, into negotiations. I’m amazed people don’t yawn en masse at the announcements.

Each time they play the game, mainline news media give Israel endless positive coverage, as though something significant or hopeful were happening.

But Israel holds many thousands of Palestinians in prisons, including some very young people and people guilty of no crime, so the release of a couple of dozen is virtually meaningless.

And since these particular prisoners are ones convicted of crimes but nearing the end of long sentences, a slightly early release is truly meaningless: it is what happens in the prison system of every Western nation.

The amount of publicity garnered by this paltry act – day after day in all the big-name papers – couldn’t be bought for a billion dollars.

So why do we hear endlessly about nothing as though it were something?

It is only one more stark proof of the inordinate influence of Israel and its apologists have over our sources of information.

These “peace talks” will go nowhere, just as countless others in the past have gone nowhere.

Why is that?

The obvious harsh truth is that Israel does not want, and never has wanted, peace as anyone outside Israel understands it.

Israel wants more land, minus its undesirable Arabic people, and it has had a long, slow process of ethnic-cleansing going on for decades. Just look at the announcement of still more settlements in the West Bank and the ugly manipulations underway in East Jerusalem to separate people from property they’ve owned for centuries. None of it anything less than legalized theft of the property of others who are forced to live under Israeli rule with absolutely no rights.

There is a fundamental truth to human history, and that is that tyranny and abuse ultimately fail. They succeed for a while – the Soviet Union had a run of ninety years – but it is impossible to maintain such a repressive regime indefinitely.

Here is Israel going through the motions yet again of negotiating, only this time it negotiates with an unelected Palestinian, Abbas, the U.S. has propped up in office because of his compliant nature, one moreover who does not even pretend to rule the Palestinians of Gaza.

Peace will come only when the U.S. gets tough with Israel and stops subsidizing and protecting its brutality, and I suspect that will never happen.

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Note that a new law has been proposed in Israel. This law would allow Israel to seize the property of all “non-resident” Palestinians who own land in East Jerusalem (Arabic in population for centuries), Palestinians who happen to have their primary residence in the West Bank or Gaza.

It is the equivalent of the state of Florida proposing a law to seize all the condos and vacation properties of people who live in the other forty-nine states. It is actually worse than that because Israel as illegal occupier has no right in international law to legislate such matters over the heads of Palestinians.

Apart from the bitter irony of such a law – after all, Jews are supposed to have left what was Israel two thousand years ago, and you cannot get more “absentee” than that – it is extremely difficult to understand how property-worshipping Americans can stomach such rigged legislation.

Of course, the American mainline press carries virtually no mention of the proposal.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

What possibly is the value of an apology from an inveterate liar?

We do have, after all, the public words of the presidents of two major countries that Netanyahu is exactly that, an inveterate liar.

It only took a couple of years plus immense outside pressure to have him even offer this poor excuse for an apology.

And I’ll bet a great many pirates, killers, and thieves wish they could get off by muttering a few cheap words.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

While Chretien’s observation is already shared by most citizens genuinely concerned with international affairs, his testimony still is welcome.

Chretien is one of our most respected former prime ministers, a man who is admired by a number of world statesmen as an ethical statesman and a remarkable politician.

The grotesque and clownish stunts of Peter Kent, Maxime Bernier, John Baird, Helena Guergis, Peter MacKay, Rahim Jaffer, and the bloodless, narrow ideology of their leader do not go unnoticed in the world.

There is an inherent lack of commitment by this government to openness, honest communication, genuine democratic principles, and balanced human rights.

Everything from cheap stunts like pernicious robo-calls, ceaseless negative advertising, ugly outbursts, and blatant catering to special interests reduces our stature.

There is also – and quite in conflict with the historic role of Conservative Parties in Canada – a marked spirit of following America’s lead in almost all matters of international consequence – almost a visibly servile posture.

Informed people in countries around the world – politicians, members of international organizations, and private citizens – note these things and their goodwill towards our country must inevitably be reduced.

And this has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with core traditional conservative principles.

It is strictly a reflection of the ugly ideological bent of this government.

A bent demonstrated in everything from contempt for Parliament, contempt for important international forums and organizations, unbalanced and almost viciously partisan statements on the Middle East, and its cheap way of expressing itself on many solemn occasions, such as the recent death of the widely-liked President of Venezuela.
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“Talking to other leftists and anti-american socialists is obviously going to get the desired result of Canada being disliked. I fully expect nothing being done by our current governemnt to be gain acceptance with the worldwide pro terrorist socialist alliance. Nothing to read here….and to think a criminal thug like Chretien should be given any further respectability is beyond me.”

You are too uninformed to comment with any meaning.

A number of prominent world leaders have in the past made public statements of admiration for Chretien.

No one but Mr. Netanyahu – a genuine thug who has committed murder, piracy, and theft – expresses admiration for Harper.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Well, we should be grateful for small blessings.

This time we only had piracy on the high seas instead of piracy with slaughter of innocents.

I have no idea how Israel’s defenders and apologists think they are defending something worthwhile.

Israel is a savage state, and almost all of our troubles in the Middle East trace back to its savagery.
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A writer below has pointed out a Salon article on Israel’s detailed planning of just enough calories to prevent those in Gaza from dying, and he wonders if it’s true.

Yes, indeed, Salon actually is rather late in pointing out what was known a long time ago.

Remember, in the early stages of the illegal blockade of a million and a half people how even chocolate bars were seized and not allowed in?

People scratched their heads about why that should be so.

The reason was simply the nazi-like calorie count.

It is not widely understood – you must read many news sources and interpolate – but after Israel’s bloody attack on the convoy of Turkish-origin ships, killing about ten unarmed people in cold blood and seizing everyone’s personal effects, the United States quietly pressured Israel to allow a higher amount of calories in.

That’s just one of the reasons Netanyahu so hates Obama that he’s interfering in an American election with personal ads in places like Florida. He’s committing an illegal act in doing so, but what American politician dare call him on it?

These facts are just the bare suggestion of the dirty stuff that goes on in Israel’s brutal campaign to rid itself of remaining Palestinians and take their land.

No person who loves freedom and human rights can do anything but condemn Israel’s ghastly behavior.

But at the national level in the United States, no one dares say a word, the political campaign-fund and media-treatment consequences being too great for America’s cowardly politicians.

And, by the way, Harper is carefully moving Canada, with each passing day, towards the same ugly destination: a place where Israel’s interests appear equal or even superior to our national interests because of campaign funding and its power to make elections.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Muscularity?

Is that what you call the killing of thousands of innocent people – often women and children – by buzz-cut thugs at the controls of computer games with real missiles?

Is that what you call having “kill lists” of American citizens?

Is that what you call the horrors secretly initiated in Syria?

Or the fact that the CIA’s torture gulag was never dealt with?

Well, muscularity has definitely been the image sought by some governments. Posters of Mussolini typically featured that quality.

For Canadians and most of the rest of the world, it really does not matter which of these sociopaths is elected.

Romney has always been an unattractive, nasty-minded figure, and Obama has thrown off virtually every quality that made him once attractive and a source of hope.

The only issue that makes any difference for the future of world affairs between these two is their degree of subservience to Israel.

Romney literally grovels to the madmen now running Israel.

Obama, while not setting the standards of toughness towards Israel required for genuine peace, has at least not quite grovelled.

And he has so earned the hatred of Netanyahu that that lunatic is busy interfering in an American election with ads made for Florida, a criminal act by the way under American law.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

He’s a known liar.

He regularly behaves like a madman.

He regularly rants about attacking an innocent nation.

His own country long ago did what he is misrepresenting Iran as doing, and still doesn’t admit it.

He himself has ordered numerous murders and assassinations.

He regularly validates the outright theft of the homes and farms of others.

In any court, on any charge, in any land, this man’s testimony would be valued at zero.
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A word on Netanyahu’s kindergarten bomb graphic.

You would think that a man representing a country which actually has an illicit nuclear arsenal could do a better job of representing a bomb than this road-runner-and-coyote display.

The man really has no shame.
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“All you need to know about the likelihood of a peaceful resolution between Palestine and Israel can be found by reading the Hamas charter.”

Nonsense.

The Charter is words, and old words.

People who are desperate and lacking in means often say things reflecting their state.

Do you think that in the Old South slaves talked affectionately about their masters?

What about Israel’s actual deeds?

Murder.

Theft.

Lying.

War.
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“It is obvious President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a crazyman.”

No it is not obvious. Not in the least.

He’s not the one ranting and foaming at the mouth and insulting American statesmen and interfering in an American Presidential election and demanding war whose consequences no one knows.

Ahmadinejad is an exceptionally intelligent man, having a PhD in Engineering and being a fairly successful man in a country bigger than France.

Out press is so full of re-written press releases from the American State Department and Israeli interests that he is pretty consistently represented as unbalanced.

There is not one shred of evidence for saying that.

Even his oft-repeated statement about Israel’s future, repeated over and over by the kind of pro-Israeli hacks always attracted to a story like this, misrepresents what he said in his native tongue.

What he actually said was pretty much the same thing a secret CIA study said, Israel is not likely to last terribly much longer, and its end in its present form will not be from war.

He has never threatened Israel, and he does not hate Jewish people.

He does hate Israel’s abuse of its power and its abuse of 4.5 million people, and he resents – along with countless millions of others – America’s constant interference in the region and its validating Israel’s repeated criminal acts.
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Think: Colin Powell, Colin Powell, Colin Powell.

And remember that after the Bush administration was finally over, Powell much regretted what he had to do at the UN.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

This is crap.

The Bulgarian Foreign Minister has already explained what they know and what they don’t know in their investigations.

And they certainly do not know this.

But then what would you expect from an outfit like NYP Intelligence, literally a contradiction in terms?

And whenever any source agrees with Mr. Netanyahu, you should immediately be on the alert for fraud.

We have the inadvertently recorded testimony of two major world leaders, the presidents of France and America, that Netanyahu is the most hopeless liar with whom they have to deal.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Stark warning?

Tony Blair, mass murderer and liar, walks freely about, scooping up bags of money from special interests.

George Bush, mass murderer and liar and extraordinary ignoramus, sits peacefully on his porch, swilling beer.

Dick Cheney, mass murderer and vile abuser of his office, shoots his ugly mouth off regularly.

Nothing has happened to mass murderer Donald Rumsfeld.

Benjamin Netanyahu continues bullying and threatening, stealing and murdering.

Ehud Olmert, murderer of 400 children among other accomplishments, is retired in comfort.

Ariel Sharon, who spent a lifetime killing people and launching unwarranted wars, was only felled by natural causes.

Henry Kissinger, a war criminal as great as any tried at Nuremberg, still lurks in the shadows whispering advice to the influential.

The totality of those gentlemen’s handiwork makes Charles Taylor look a piker at murder.

I don’t see Taylor’s trial as anything more than the powers-that-be getting an old enemy.

 

 

 

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.
_______________________________________

“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.
__________________________________________

“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

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.
__________________________________

“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.
__________________________________

“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
____________________________________________

“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.
__________________________________

“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 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

“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.

________________________________________

“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.

______________________________________

“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.

________________________________________

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 RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Did you ever hear of a tyrant bully apologizing for anything?

It does not happen.

The one exonerating circumstance behind Netanyahu’s bluster is this: if Israel were once to begin apologizing for its brutal acts and savage attacks on people, that’s all it would be doing day and night, apologizing.

By the way, things in general are looking pretty bad for the Netanyahu gang.

Huge rallies in Israel, comparable in size to the “Arab Spring” rallies go on with millions of ordinary Israelis totally fed up with the economy and the national priorities.

Israel is a very unpleasant place to live for ordinary people with prices making many things beyond the reach.

When you buy a modest home in Israel you can spend all your spare money for every day of your life trying to pay it off and not succeed.

But good old Netanyahu pays no attention to these complaints: he’s too busy threatening and bullying everyone within a thousand miles of Israel’s borders, whatever those are.

At the same time, the Palestinians at long last are applying to the UN General Assembly for acceptance of statehood, as is their right.

Netanyahu’s gang of thug-politicians is feverishly working on how they will respond: they definitely plan something very unpleasant for the Palestinians.

Israel’s main source of immense subsidy, the United States, has actually threatened to cut down its treaty-determined contributions to the UN if the vote goes for the Palestinians.

Talk about desperate measures and the influence of the Israel Lobby.
_________________________________________

‘I would love to meet this “name withheld” their posts sure are popular. I have to say I am rather surprised by the amount of censorship the Globe and Mail has enforcing. So much for free speech.’

I don’t like censorship either.

But I must say that the Globe is as liberal and fair as it gets in the mainline press on this issue.

They do leave most comments, even quite tough ones and even ones that are quite ignorant.

If you really want to see censorship, go check out comments on the Toronto Star.

They do not remove a few comments, they simply never allow them up, and do so in large numbers.

They also offer only a cramped, word-limited format.

I used also to comment in Murdoch’s Times of London. Now, there again is serious censorship.

I’m sure more than half the comments submitted are never posted, and the ones that are posted are edited down. It’s a bad joke.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

The Palestinians are making plans for unprecedented violence to begin following their United Nations application for statehood?

Avigdor Lieberman is a sick extremist, almost certainly a man suffering from mental illness.

But his idiotic words, time and again, reveal for all the world to see the kind of thinking that genuinely motivates Israel’s government in its brutal behavior, and it sure isn’t the stuff of Netanyahu’s fantasyland speech before Congress.

Israel’s behavior just becomes more and more threatening and irrational as time goes on.

Right now, this small country keeps threatening war with Iran, as well as ceaselessly pushing the United States in that direction.

It has long supported an attack on Syria to overthrow that government.

It is threatening the border of Lebanon with regular incursions of fighter planes and troops, and it is threatening to seize offshore property of Lebanon.

High-ranking people in Israel have spoken of re-taking the Sinai so that the new Egypt cannot interfere with subsidized natural gas sales arranged by Mubarak with American support.

It is into its fourth year of an illegal and brutal blockade of Gaza.

It has alienated Turkey with its piracy and refusal to apologize for the murder of unarmed humanitarians.

Mr Lieberman himself is well known for – or should I say infamous for – his views on running Arabs out of Israel.

Israel continues to steal the property of Palestinians in the West Bank and in Jerusalem, only just recently having announced a development of 900 homes in East (Arab) Jerusalem, 900 homes on property stolen in broad daylight.

The world is reeling from the effects of Islamophobia, constantly promoted by Israel’s apologists, and America is bombing people in half a dozen West Asian and North African locations.

Meanwhile, the United States which cannot pay its bills continues to subsidize on a vast scale this small nation which is disturbing a good deal of the planet.

_______________________

“Their policy of always blaming Israel while giving the intolerant religion of killers for allah [sic]a pass as victims is why we are at a dead end.”

Always giving Muslims a pass?

Always blaming Israel?

This is precisely the kind of sick, distorted view that explains the situation we are in.

The mainline press in the West constantly gives Israel good press, excessively so.

Israel never felt, as it should have, the force of the world’s disapproval for its savageries in Gaza and Southern Lebanon and on the high seas.

As for Muslims getting a pass, it is impossible to understand how anyone not as delusional as Avigdor Lieberman could make that statement.

Our press is filled with columnists who constantly speak for Israel. The list is a long one, but we have the likes of Thomas Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Jeff Jacoby, Margaret Wente, and many, many others giving us reading material which might well have been written by Israel’s Ministry of Truth.

And the world’s most important newspaper, The New York Times, has a highly biased view towards Israel in everything that it writes. As does Rupert Murdoch’s The Times of London.

American television networks never report one tough thing about Israel. The effective censorship is astounding.

For example, right now in Israel, demonstrations on a giant scale – hundreds of thousands out of a small population – have taken place day after day. These demonstrations are by Israelis who are sick of the way the economy and politics of Israel operate.

They are just as real and just as significant as what went on in Egypt, but you will not see them featured all over our newspapers and televisions as were all the “Arab Spring” demonstrations and revolts.

That is absolutely voluntary censorship on Israel’s behalf.

And we have America’s huge Christian fundamentalist community constantly supporting every wrongful act of Israel with words and political pressure and money, even if they do so for their own weird mystical reasons.

Yet Israel’s apologists, like the writer of this comment, can make absolutely outlandish claims, and generally they are not called on them.

You don’t get solutions to ugly problems by not even admitting the truth, by pretending on fantasy concepts.

I am reminded of the United States’ decade of mass murder in Vietnam, and there always being “a light at the end of the tunnel.”

This writer and Avigdor Lieberman remind me of the old fairy tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes in which the Emperor paraded naked in the streets but no one dared call it to his attention.

That is precisely the situation of Israel, pretending to talk about peace, pretending to being a normal state, while constantly assassinating, attacking, torturing, and stealing the property of others.

________________________

“The core cause of the Arab Israeli conflict, local and regional, has nothing to do with “Jerusalem”, “settlements”, “borders”, “refugees”, “security” or “water”….”

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

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.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

Netanyahu is beyond reaching by criticism or speeches, being one of the worst in a long series of prime ministers ready to do almost anything to achieve Israel’s unspoken goal: getting rid of all Palestinians and taking all their homes and farms.

There can be no defense of such unethical and brutal behavior, although a large number of Israel’s apologists keep trying. After all, the United States went to war when the Serbs were doing much the same kinds of things.

I fear Israel is going to confront the world with a true crisis in the next decade or so, as it drives out the 1.5 million people from Gaza and the several million from the West Bank, and it would do this with no compensation for taking people’s property or disrupting their lives.

The blockade of Gaza is nothing but a brutal attempt to drive the people out under the pretense that Israel can’t live with “terrorists.” Gaza has always been a nightmare for Israel’s leaders: 1.5 million refugees huddled in a small enclave inside Israel’s claimed territory.

There is little hope to preventing a disaster it seems to me simply because the United States is the only force on earth that can demand reason from Israel, and the lobby for Israel has the members of Congress caught in a web of sophisticated campaign-financing techniques and the threat of unpleasant, noisy opposition at each election.

When President Truman was pondering the question of whether the United States should immediately recognize the state of Israel then emerging from a wave of terror by outfits like Stern and Irgun, frightening Palestinians into a mass exodus from their homes, he is said to have remarked that the lobbying efforts coming at him were like nothing he had ever experienced, overwhelming.

And he faced an election as an underdog candidate, so campaign funds were critical, and that’s how Israel gained recognition.

And nothing has changed: Obama just signed an agreement for $30 billion in American assistance over ten years, yet Israel is neither a poor country nor is it seriously under threat from anyone. That’s more aid than anyone anywhere receives, even people in far greater need. That is only possible under the influence of an extremely tough lobby at home.

So despite well justified criticism from America’s administration as the Vice-president recovers from the grotesque public insult of Israel’s announcing new settlements in East Jerusalem to coincide with his trip, it is almost impossible America will start enforcing fairness on Israel.

And so a truly ugly world crisis seems unavoidable not too far in the future.

______________________

“Mr Chuckman knows, Gaza is under the control of Hamas, a fundamentalist organization openly dedicated to anti-Semitic principles and to the destruction of Israel. Its goal is simply to cast out the infidels and impose Sharia law over all of Palestine.”

Just more of the countless repetitions of mindless, going-in-circles arguments.

First, Hamas is not a terrorist organization, except by Israeli declaration. Its history was overwhelmingly as a humanitarian organization.

It was actually secretly supported earlier by Israel’s secret service, in an effort to create competition for Fatah, so it cannot have been viewed as much of a threat.

When Hamas became a political party, it ran a clean election and was honestly elected. Most of its senior leaders are professional-type people, not terrorists. Hamas for the Palestinians represented the hope for clean government after the endless corruption of Fatah.

Anyway, no matter what you might imagine Hamas to be, one is supposed to talk to one’s opponents for peace. Just because I have neighbors with whom I don’t agree doesn’t give me the right to attack them, attempt to starve them out, imprison them, or murder them, but Israel claims this insane right.

Israel has never ever talked with a legitimate government. As we all know from history – Nixon and China for example – often extreme foes are better able to make peace.

Anyway, all Israel did for years was treat Arafat as though he were a clod of dirt, and many suspect Israel finally assassinated him with poison, something they’ve done many times to others.

If you want peace, you talk, you compromise, and you do not even need American assistance to do so.

If you don’t want peace – indeed, if you want to make those with whom you disagree disappear and you want to seize their property – you do just as Israel does year after year.

It truly is that simple.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

This does seem a tremendous waste of time.

Israel clearly has its own agenda, and that agenda does not include what any fair-minded person calls peace.

How can you have “peace” while you continue daily to steal the farms and homes and water of those with whom you are supposed to be making peace?

Of course, there’s also Israel’s re-creation of South African apartheid in all its unrelenting fury, treating millions as less than equal humans.

And what additionally do we have in Gaza?

A brutal blockade stopping assistance to a people who have done nothing other than elect a government Israel doesn’t like, and that act of war (for so blockades are considered in international diplomacy) comes after a savage attack, killing hundreds and hundreds of civilians, including a great many children.

Israel insists it is a victim, but the claim is ridiculous on the face of it.

Israel is unrelentingly aggressive, and demonstrates no guiding principles of democracy and human rights towards others.

That ugly Israeli stance can only change if the United States finally shows some courage and stops sending a gigantic annual subsidy to a state that takes its money and then sneers back that it will do exactly as it pleases.

And, considering Israel’s supporters’ fine-tuned art of constantly lobbying Congress with targeted contributions, what does any realistic person believe are the chances of that?

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

“Softens his stance” is inaccurate.

Obama has backed Netanyahu into something of a corner. Those who want genuine peace have always believed it can only come when the U.S. makes demands of Israel for all the immense subsidies it has poured into that state and all the unpleasant risk it has assumed in doing so.

Netanyahu’s response is to say, “Okay, I’ll mouth your phrases, but I’ll make them meaningless.”

It’s a nasty game various governments of Israel have played a long time. The decades-long “peace process” has been only a way to gain time to absorb more Palestinian homes and farms and water minus the Palestinians. It really is a ploy which covers what may fairly be characterized as slow-motion ethnic-cleansing.

Netanyahu’s conditions are ridiculous to any fair-minded person.

First, you cannot speak of negotiation when you set a precondition like recognizing Israel.

Withholding recognition is one of the only bargaining chips the poor Palestinians have: it is a perfectly ordinary tactic in international affairs.

You cannot tell Palestinians they must give it up before negotiations.

Or rather, you can tell them that, but it amounts merely to another way of saying you don’t accept a two-state solution, another way of buying time to grind away at the poor Palestinians and what little they have.

Besides, how do you recognize Israel when its borders change almost weekly? Where is Israel?

It certainly is not the Israel of the various 20th century agreements underlying Israel’s birth, all documents showing two roughly equal states. Nor is it the Israel of the Green Line.

Perhaps most important, how do you recognize Israel as “the Jewish state” when nearly 20% of its population is not Jewish?

It is an absurd demand, and deliberately meant to be absurd.

To all fair-minded thinkers, the genuine barrier to peace just could not be clearer.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

Netanyahu isn’t determined to go slowly, he is completely against a Palestinian state.

He has made this clear many, many times.

Indeed, from Netanyahu’s past statements, it seems very clear he has contempt for Palestinians, an attitude not uncommon in Israel.

If you want peace, you embrace it. Full stop.

If you want what Netanyahu wants, you behave as he does.

What does he want?

The rest of the Palestinian territory without the people.

Going slowly in this way is properly called slow-motion ethnic cleansing.

___________

“What you have in the Holy Land is a clash of ethnic nationalisms infused with religious ideas.”

I do not think that is accurate.

The Jews – at least the non-European ones – and the Palestinians are closely related people, indeed it is an Israeli scholar who recently told us that the Palestinians are pretty much the remains of the ancient Israelis left after the Roman conquest.

As far as religion, Israel is one of the most secular societies on earth. Only the ultra-orthodox segment gives it any religious color.

___________

“There will be peace when your friends in the Arab and Muslim world agree to recognize Israel’s right to exist.”

The writer above may be sincere in believing that, but Israel is completely disingenuous when it repeats this tired bromide over and over.

One of the few negotiating levers Palestinians have ever had is withholding recognition. Israel otherwise holds about all the power levers.

Any person who reads the world’s news should know the artificiality of that notion.

It is common practice among states to withhold recognition as a negotiating position. The United States has done it many, many times.

The US waited decades to recognize the Soviet Union.

It has gone the best part of half a century without recognizing Cuba’s government.

Further, how do you recognize a state with no clearly defined borders?

One, moreover, intent on expanding its de facto borders?

Further still, the formulation Israel always insists on is recognizing Israel as the Jewish state. What about the million and a half Arabs who supposedly hold citizenship?

Asking people to certify you as a Jewish state is exactly akin to asking people to certify you as a Muslim state or any other “ism” you care to name.

The above points make clear just how complex the Israeli/Palestinian matter is, and there are many other matters of international law involved.

It is anything but a simple fight between religions.

_____________

“…the two state concept is as much a contributor to peace as was the splitting on Korea into north and south…”

That is wrong and poorly informed.

The entire history of the creation of the state of Israel, going back to agreements with the British government through the UN mandate, assumed and mapped out two states.

It is only since Israel became a reality that the two-state concept has virtually disappeared.

The Six Day War itself, and we have the testimony of some very important historical figures including President de Gaulle, that Israel contrived with deliberate provocations and black-ops to get the Arab states to attack, knowing full well that with its serious advantage of front-line US weapons it would easily win.

Israel knew it could count on the US too. Indeed, with the USS Liberty incident – the deliberate two hour attack on a well-marked American spy ship in the Mediterranean – Israel tried to pull the US in from the beginning.

We see the result. More than forty years later, occupation continues along with a constant bureaucratic pressure to remove Arabs, take land, bulldoze homes and olive groves.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY LIAM FOX IN THE TELEGRAPH

This makes no sense.

In a democracy, in the final analysis, you must put responsibility with the people voting and supporting its institutions.

Otherwise, all the talk of the merits of democracy is rubbish.

The people pretty much get the goverment they deserve in any democratic state.

What people fail to realize is that democracies are not automatically decent forms of government. A majority with bad intentions can indefinitely impose its will.

Only a bill or charter of rights offers some protection against such majority abuse, but Israel does not have one, nor is it likely that it ever will with religious definitions governing many aspects of its society.

It truly does not matter much who is elected in Israel.

The choice of a woman who worked with Olmert is hardly promising. He is surely a war criminal by any reasonable, meaningful definition.

Olmert launched a savage bout of killing just so his party could have election bona fides.

As to Lieberman, he is quite rightly characterized as a fascist. Were this any place but Israel, the world’s press would be saying just that.

Netanyahu has a long record of inflammatory statements and corrosively negative attitudes. He is a dark, unpleasant figure, altogether.

More than once, he has openly expressed contempt for Arabs.

It is generally put that Israel has moved to the right, but I rather think it is more accurate to say that Israel has moved into darkness.

I don’t know how it could be more clear that Israelis do not want a just peace.

Oh, yes, if asked about peace in general in polls, they say yes, but peace in general is a meaningless abstraction. Genuine peace has to be qualified by all the small print.

I wonder how many readers are aware that while Olmert was killing maybe 400 children in Gaza, there was heavy activity in the West Bank seizing more of other people’s land?

Recent revelations through Google maps demonstrate the intensity of Israel’s continuing efforts to seize land through informal settlements.

Other revelations through government papers demonstrate clearly the government’s quiet collusion in such illegal and unethical efforts.

We will have peace if Israel is prepared to return to its 1967 borders, but there is not the least indication that that is likely or even possible.

But peace isn’t just borders, it is treating your neighbors with respect and decency, but we see no sign of this from Israel, and it is Israel that holds all the cards.