- Thank Odin for email. If not for this wonder of technology,
I would have no idea what the "other side" thinks of my blog
and articles. For instance, consider the following email, received after
my article "Blackjack with Iran" appeared two weeks ago on the
Counterpunch site. This email languished in my inbox for days-buried, as
usual, by an avalanche of email and uninvited spam-and I only read this
morning:
-
- **I take issue with the entirety of your ill-informed
article (Blackjack with Iran). Your opinions are clearly based on your
contempt for Israelis and self-loathing disdain for Americans. What happened
in your sad childhood? Were you were bullied in school? Did the Jewish
girl turn you down for the prom? Did you envy Epstein's house?
-
- As usual, it is all about the Israelis and any criticism
of Israel stems from anti-Semitism, probably as a result of mistreatment
at the hands of Jews or a burning envy of them from early childhood on.
Of course, this is simply emotional nonsense, quite aside from the issues
I addressed in the article. I find it interesting, however, that criticism
of U.S. foreign policy is deemed "self-loathing disdain for Americans,"
a sort of new take on the archetypal of the self-hating Jew, that is to
say any Jew who doesn't like what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians.
-
- **Your paranoid article is crammed with more lies than
even the Mullahs can muster. The Iranians themselves will not deny the
existence of their own Manhattan project--they don't blame the whole outrage
on doctored Israeli photos as you do. How silly.
-
- Of course, in order to lie, one has to know the facts
and distort them, as Bush did with the "intelligence" on Saddam's
hallucinated weapons of mass destruction that crossed his desk. I merely
speculated that the Israelis had contrived photos purporting to show the
evil mullahs at work on nukes. I do not know this for a fact.
-
- However, as history demonstrates, the Israelis are masters
at contriving not only fake "intelligence" (consider Israel's
part in "developing a false picture of Saddam Hussein's weapons of
mass destruction capability," as admitted by retired Brigadier General
Shlomo Brom), but also contrived situations, for instance the now well-known
Lavon Affair, a bungled terrorist event directed against targets in Egypt-most
notably, the United States Information Services Libraries in Cairo-and
blamed on Arabs. Remarkably, this botched attack was recently "celebrated"
in Israel and three of the surviving Egyptian Jews who carried out the
bomb attacks in Cairo and Alexandria in the 1954 "received letters
of thanks from Israeli President Moshe Katsav who also handed similar letters
to the families of the six other culprits," according to Magda El-Ghitany
of the Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram.
-
- Unfortunately, there is nothing "silly" about
this brazen attempt to honor terrorists, but then Israel has a nasty habit
of honoring its terrorists. According to Clovis Maksoud, the former Arab
League ambassador to the United Nations, "the Israeli government supports
museums that honor assassins and terrorists-including one located on a
street named for a terrorist (Avraham Stern)," as Jason Vest writes
for the Village Voice. So beloved is the mass murdering Stern, Israel issued
a stamp with his likeness. It is odd Israel would do this because, as Wikipedia
notes, "Stern attempted to make an agreement with the German Nazi
authorities, offering to 'actively take part in the war on Germany's side'
in return for 'the establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national
and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich'. Another
attempt to contact the Germans was made in late 1941, but there is no record
of a German response in either case." Of course, it makes perfect
sense that Stern would be a hero in Israel since he was an adherent of
the Revisionist Zionist movement founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the spiritual
godfather of the Likudites.
-
- **You state that Israel will not unilaterally attack
Iran due to the population imbalance? Pacifists like you should really
not dabble in military matters. The Israeli Air Force alone could destroy
much of Iran, with or without nukes. Population is as irrelevant as it
was when Israel was attacked by the Egyptians and Syrians or when Israel
attacked the Osirak reactor project in Iraq (which you no doubt denounce
as an invasion of Iraqi sovereignty). I am sure you would have also denounced
the invasion of Normandy and the bombing of Dresden because that's the
kind of fool that you are.
-
- Serious medication is required for this person, who shall
remain anonymous (unlike many unethical scallywags on the right, I never
post names or email addresses of the people who send hate email my way).
It would seem, for this person, nuking Iran is not only doable, it is hunky
dory, an actual foreign policy initiative. As for comparing this possibility
to the invasion Normandy, again I believe this poor hateful and deluded
soul needs a spot of medication, possibly thorazine. As for Dresden yeah,
well, I have on numerous occasions denounced the firebombing of Dresden,
an egregious war crime resulting in the murder of 140,000 innocent civilians.
-
- **Finally, your assertion that the Israelis are "pathologically
racist" to think that someone would want to attack them is laughable.
Do you remember 1948? How about 1973? The Gulf War?
-
- Here's what I "remember" about 1948: the Zionists
expelled 80 percent of the indigenous population (750,000 Palestinians),
in other words they ethnically cleansed three quarters of a million people.
"Chief among the Zionist leadership's regrets in the aftermath of
the 1948 war was its failure to conquer the whole of Palestine," writes
Norman G. Finkelstein, a professor of political theory at DePaul University
in Chicago. "Come 1967, Israel exploited the 'revolutionary times'
of the June war to finish the job. The landmark Fourth Geneva Convention,
ratified in 1949, for the first time 'unequivocally prohibited deportation'
of civilians under occupation (Articles 49, 147). Accordingly Israel moved
after the June war to impose the second of its two options mentioned above-apartheid."
-
- It should be noted that by May 1948 Zionist forces had
already invaded and occupied large parts of the land which had been allocated
to the Palestinians by the UN Partition Plan, well before the "war"
of 1948. "The evidence that the Zionist colonizers started the 1948
war comes from Zionist sources. The History of the Palmach (a Zionist pre-state
militia), which was released in portions in the 1950s (and in full in 1972),
details the efforts made to attack the Palestinians and secure more territory
than was allotted to the Jewish state by the UN partition plan (Kibbutz
Menchad Archive, Palmach Archive, Efal, Israel)," writes Ahmad Nimer.
"Israeli historians have also refuted the claim that the Arabs started
the 1948 war. Benny Morris uncovered a June 30, 1948, report from the Israeli
Defense Force Intelligence Branch which shows that it was Zionist policy
to attack to expel the Palestinians." In fact, the so-called Arab
invasion was a defensive attempt to hold on to the areas allotted by the
Partition Plan for the Palestinian state.
-
- As for the 1973 "war," this was a response
on the part of Egypt and Syria after Washington and Tel Aviv ignored overtures
by the two Arab states to negotiate the return of land stolen by Israel
in earlier "wars." As early as 1956, Israel had planned to grab
the Sinai. As for the Golan Heights (actually the Syrian Heights), Israel
engaged in continual border provocations (violating a July 20, 1949 agreement
between the Zionist state and Syria) right up to the eve of the 1967 "war."
In the wake of this "war," neighboring Arabs were angered by
the fact Israel routinely expelled Egyptians, Syrians, and Palestinians
while installing Jewish settlers in their thousands. By 1973 nearly 100
settlements had been established and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
had been displaced, expelled, imprisoned or deported. On 6 October 1973
the Egyptian and Syrian armies attacked Israeli positions in the Sinai
and on the Golan Heights in an attempt to liberate their territory occupied
by Israel. The Secretary-General of the Arab League explained the Arab
action thus: "In a final analysis, Arab action is justifiable, moral
and valid under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. There
is no aggression, no attempt to acquire new territories. But to restore
and liberate all the occupied territories is a duty for all able self-respecting
peoples" (Sunday Times, 14 October 1973).
-
- As for the so-called "Gulf War," consider the
following explanation by Mark Zepezauer, from his book, The CIA's Greatest
Hits:
-
- The Gulf War further destabilized the region and made
Kuwait more dependent on us. US oil companies can now exert more control
over oil prices (and thus boost their profits). The US military got an
excuse to build more bases in the region (which Saudi Arabia, for one,
didn't want) and the war also helped justify the "need" to continue
exorbitant levels of military spending. Finally, it sent a message to Third
World leaders about what they could expect if they dared to step out of
line.
-
- **Your simple, isolationist views went out with Pearl
Harbour (which I am sure you attribute to anti-Japanese propagandists)
and 9-11 (which the Republicans manufactured).
-
- Actually, if documents held formerly in bomb-proof vaults
(a naval storage vault in Crane, Indiana) over the last 60 years are any
indication (these documents were, under FOIA directive, eventually moved
to the National Archives in Washington, D.C, in 1994), the United States
had broken the Japanese code early on and knew an invasion of Pearl Harbor
was imminent. Of course, this is hardly news, simply one example of a long
record of government deception. Howard Zinn writes: "If more people
knew something about the history of government deception, of the lies that
were told getting us into the Mexican War, the lies that were told getting
us into the Spanish-American War, the lies that were told getting us into
the war in the Philippines, the lies that were told getting us into World
War I, the lies that were told again and again in Vietnam, the lies on
the eve of the Gulf War, they would have questions about what they are
hearing from the government and the media to justify [Bush II's] war."
-
- As for nine eleven fact of the matter is we have no idea
who "manufactured" it (and I agree, it was manufactured), although
we have a good idea who benefited (as in cui bono)-and it sure the hell
wasn't those alleged Saudi hijackers (seven who are still alive), Osama
bin Laden, or the Taliban (or the Afghan people, who were bombed mercilessly).
Considering nobody in Washington is serious about an impartial investigation
of nine eleven, chances are we will never know who "manufactured"
the attacks. As I have written elsewhere, though, I consider it an absurdity
the attacks were hatched and launched by cave-dwelling Muslims in Afghanistan.
-
- **You will never amount to anything, because you write
out of hate as opposed to fact and reason. Stick to photography, ass-fucker.
-
- Nice finale, wouldn't you say? But then, of course, this
is exactly the sort of response I expect from right-wingers and rabid apologists
for Zionism, especially the new crop, many of them former Maoists (like
Horowitz) and assorted disillusioned commies and political malcontents.
I almost pine for the days of polite and more or less benign John Birchers,
guys like Pat Buchanan who are loony right-wingers without all the overt
hatred, venom and expletives (this is the second reference to buggery I've
read in a 24 hour period from a maniacal right-winger). I guess, though,
this email is innocuous enough, considering a few months ago a guy wanted
to take a baseball bat to my head. Others simply want to send me to Iran
to be tortured by mullahs (or thrown to the myhtical Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi),
one guy even offered to buy a one-way ticket to some dismal third world
country. It appears the worst are unrepentant Zionists, such as Steve Plaut,
who excel at viciousness, as does the anti-Muslim nark Debbie Schlussel,
who takes special pride in dissing the dead.
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