John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE FROM CONSORTIUM NEWS RADIO

 

“A USS Liberty survivor who was arrested by Israel this month trying to break the Gaza blockade joins Episode 2 of Consortium News Radio. 

“Joe Meadors was a signalman on the USS Liberty surveillance ship on June 8, 1967 when Israel attacked, killing 34 U.S. sailors and injuring 173 more.”

 

Yes, it was a very cowardly business, just as so many violent activities of Israel are – e.g., platoons of soldiers with sniper rifles shooting from behind a fence at unarmed civilians as though they were in a big-game hunt.

The most interesting missing information about Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty is Lyndon Johnson’s role.

Was he secretly complicit? He was a very devious person and had no problem causing the deaths of vast numbers, as in Vietnam.

And he was a man with a violent temper and an immense ego, so his behavior afterward in staying quiet, not doing anything against Israel, and in calling off response when the attack was reported is a great mystery.

One can imagine motives for Israel even without Johnson’s complicity.

There was the atrocity of Israel’s machine-gunning large numbers of Egyptian prisoners of war in the Sinai which was done because Israel was in a rush to turn north for conquests there and didn’t want the “burden” of prisoners. An electronic observer ship would record it all.

There was the matter of Dayan turning his armor north, too. American authorities had told Israel not to do this, but they did it anyway. Of course, an electronic observer would notify American authorities and record the activity.

There has been speculation around Israel’s blackmailing Johnson to shut up, perhaps over his behavior in the Kennedy assassination. I don’t know, but that is entirely plausible given the nature of the two actors.

There has also been speculation of a dirty deal Johnson may have arranged ahead with Israel. You sink my ship for me, and I’ll blame Egypt and send in the Air Force.

Possible, but there are reasons to doubt it. What would the motive be? I don’t buy it without some evidence.

We have evidence around Israel’s possible motives in Sinai and heading North. We also can easily buy some kind of blackmail to shut Johnson up, Israel having done such things many times.

It is all a mystery as big as the Kennedy assassination, but it rarely gets that kind of attention. We generally only hear of a determined sneak attack, killing many Americans, by a supposedly friendly state which said “Sorry, our mistake,” afterward. And of the wall of silence which immediately was created.

Of course, it wasn’t a mistake. The ship was well marked. A lead pilot flew over first and saw Americans, and he is said to have radioed back to re-confirm orders (if so, the pilots hadn’t been told whom they were attacking). But the attack went ahead.

Whatever way you interpret it, the main players come out even dirtier than considering only the attack.

As a last note, the Six Day War was a planned affair by Israel. Provocations were used against several Arab states, Israel certain it could easily defeat them. President de Gaulle, among other notable figures, understood this and commented disapprovingly on it.

Israel was grabbing “Greater Israel” without telling anyone in a lightning war of aggression.

General Dayan, Israel’s darling of the war, said a number of times that it would be necessary to make the Palestinians miserable so they would leave.

Well, Israel has certainly worked hard towards that goal, but the brave Palestinians remain, largely peacefully resisting occupation.

Of course, there were UN Resolutions demanding Israel return to its borders, but they have always just been ignored, and the United States has always gone along with the occupation and its countless injustices.

The entire business, from beginning to end, represents complete lawlessness on Israel’s part.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

Well, how nice to find Ms Clinton has caught up with the world’s people.

Despite what their governments may say under various kinds of pressures, most people in the world know Israel’s policy of settlements is not legitimate. Indeed, it is outright theft, besides breaking international agreements on occupations.

It is disheartening to see the way Obama – starting with a fresh mandate, a good mind, and the knowledge that there can be no peace without real pressure on Israel – has given in to the relentless efforts of the Israel Lobby.

There seems to be no hope for a rational and humane settlement. Israel just carries on with apartheid and a gradual, relentless ethnic-cleansing while it stands in contempt of dozens of UN resolutions, any one of which could have been used as a reason for UN military intervention.

And we are to simply pretend it is not happening and never criticize Israel for fear of being called anti-Semitic.

A true nightmare for human rights and freedom.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Obama’s speech was an extraordinarily sensitive one. Americans and others are used to hearing only clap-trap on this topic.

He actually said something, and what he said is correct.

But I have to say where is any evidence that sensitivity or truth carry any weight in American politics? And that is especially true in all matters touching on the Middle East.

America’s Right Wing has already attacked Obama’s words, as has the mob of professional apologists for Israel’s bloody excesses.

But even the great mass of Americans who take little interest in world affairs and know only the mantra lines the mainline press repeats endlessly.

Doing anything that at all conflicts with those lines earns you some hard looks.

Israel’s supporters in America will use this to their benefit to prevent a genuine settlement in the Middle East, something we have every reason to believe Israel does not want.

After all, the constant, go-nowhere “peace process” serves simply to gain the decades of time for much of the rest of Palestine to be absorbed without its unwanted residents, for D-9 bulldozers to continue flattening homes and olive groves centuries old on the most specious of excuses.

Israel just ignores all agreements and documentation going into its modern re-creation from the Sykes-Picot Agreement to the Balfour Declaration and the UN maps for partition. All of them saw two states, somewhat equal in extent.

Ignored too are the UN Resolutions concerning the aftermath of the Six Day War.

Indeed, there is every reason to believe Israel engineered the Six Day War knowing full well it could handily win and make a great new land grab. We have the testimony of important historical figures on this matter, including President de Gaulle.

It was the same kind of dark-ops project as so many others, including the vicious attack on the USS Liberty in an effort to drag the U.S. into that war. The U.S. kept a massive silence over the attack on one of its ships, allowing the feeble excuse of a mistake to stand, a ridiculous claim in view of the facts the ship was extremely well marked and the attack lasted two hours.

Just as Israel’s illicit nuclear arsenal is ignored regularly in all the noise about North Korea or Iran. Ignored too was Israel’s help in proliferation by helping apartheid South Africa to briefly become a nuclear power.

The most damaging spy in American history, Jonathon Pollard, remains in prison, but there is a constant flow of intense pressure to release him.

Israeli spies were on to the perpetrators of 9/11, but the several spy groups – a phony moving company and a bunch of “art students” – were arrested afterward and sent home with no public statements about what it was that they had been doing.

If all these many events have not altered American public opinion and Israel’s place of unwarranted privilege in Washington, how will Obama ever succeeed?

I find it difficult to believe that Obama can turn around the momentum that has continued decade after decade, a momentum of slow-motion ethnic-cleansing in Palestine and America’s subsidizing the state doing it.