- President Jimmy Carter was demonized for pointing out
in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, that there are actually two
sides to the Israeli Palestinian issue. Distinguished American scholars,
such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have suffered the same fate
for documenting the excessive influence the Israel Lobby has on US foreign
policy.
-
- Americans would be astonished at the criticisms in the
Israeli press of the Israeli government's policies toward the Palestinians
and Arabs generally. In Israel facts are still part of the discussion.
If the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, could replace Fox "News,"
CNN, New York Times and Washington Post, Americans would know the truth
about US and Israeli policies in the MIddle East and their likely consequences.
-
- On September 1, Haaretz reported that Rabbi Eric Yoffie,
the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, which represents 900 Congregations
and 1.5 million Jews, "accused American media, politicians and religious
groups of demonizing Islam" and turning Muslims into "satanic
figures."
-
- Rabbi Yoffie is certainly correct. In America there is
only one side to the issue. An entire industry has been created that is
devoted to demonizing Islam. Books abound that misrepresent Islam as the
greatest possible threat to Western Civilization and seek to instill fear
and hatred of Muslims in Americans. For example, Norman Podhoretz proclaims
"World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism." Daniel
Pipes shrieks that "Militant Islam Reaches America." Lee Harris
warns of "The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West."
-
- Think tanks have well-funded Middle East programs, the
purpose of which is to spread Islamophobia. Fear and loathing pour out
of the Middle East Forum and the American Enterprise Institute.
-
- In the US it is acceptable, even obligatory in many circles,
to hate Muslims and to support violence against them. Pipes has been described
as a "leading anti-Muslim hate propagandist." He is on record
advocating the use of violence alone as the solution to the Muslim problem.
This won him the endorsement of the Christian Coalition, AIPAC, and the
Zionist Organization of America for appointment to the board of the United
States Institute of Peace. President George Bush used a recess appointment
to appoint this man of violence to the Institute of Peace.
-
- Pipes advocates that the Muslims be beaten into submission
by force, the view that has guided the Bush administration.To brainwashed
and propagandized Americans, Pipes appointment made perfect sense.
-
- Podhoretz believes that Islam has no right to exist,
because it is opposed to Israeli territorial expansion, and that America
must deracinate Islam, which means to tear Islam up by the roots.
-
- While neoconservatives, Christian Zionists, and the Bush
administration embrace unbridled violence against Muslims, Lee Harris
warns that America is much too tolerant and reasonable to be able to defend
itself against Muslim fanaticism. America's "governing philosophy
based on reason, tolerance, consensus and deliberation cannot defend itself
against a [Muslim] strategy of ruthless violence."
-
- Islamophobia overflows with such absurdities and contradictions.
Harris tells us that the Enlightenment overcame fanatical thinking in
the West, leaving the West unfamiliar with fanaticism and helpless to
confront it. Harris, who fancies himself an authority on fanaticism, is
deaf, dumb, and blind to Communism and National Socialism and is completely
ignorant of the fact that neoconservative fanatics are the direct heirs
of the Jacobins of the French Revolution, itself a fanatical product of
the Enlightenment.
-
- If Americans did rely on reason, tolerance and deliberation,
they might free their minds of shrill propaganda long enough to consider
the "Muslim threat." Muslims are disunited. Their disunity makes
them a threat to one another, not to the West.
-
- In Iraq most of the fighting and violence is between
Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs and between Sunnis and Kurds. If Iraqis were unified,
most of the violence, instead of a small part of it, would be directed
against the American troops, and the remnants of a US defeated army would
have been withdrawn by now. However much Iraqis might hate the American
invader and occupier, they do not hate him enough to unite and to drive
him out. They had rather kill one another.
-
- Iran, the current focus of demonization, is not Arab.
Iranians are the ancient race of Persians. Indeed, Iran would do itself
a favor if it changed its name back to Persia. For eight years (1980-1988)
the Iranians and Iraqis were locked in catastrophic war with horrendous
casualties on both sides. Despite its military exhaustion, Iraq was considered
a "threat" by the American Superpower and was bombed and embargoed
for the decade of the 1990s, one consequence of which was 500,000 deaths
of Iraqi children.
-
- Not content with the complete crippling of Iraq by the
Clinton administration, the Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003 and
has been dealing more death and destruction to Iraq ever since.
-
- Palestine has been under Israeli occupation for decades.
Israel has simply stolen most of Palestine, and the remaining Palestinian
enclaves are ghettos policed by the Israeli army.
-
- The rulers of Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates are Sunni
Arabs. They are more afraid of Shi'ite Arabs than of Israelis. Egypt,
Jordan, and Pakistan are ruled by bought-and-paid-for American puppets.
The Turkish military is also in the American pocket and suppresses any
Islamist influence in the civilian government.
-
- Afghanistan is a disunited country of tribal peoples,
each holding sway in their area. The Taliban were attempting to unify
Afghanistan, and the Bush administration's fear that the Taliban might
succeed was the reason for the US invasion of Afghanistan. The US allied
with the defeated Northern Alliance, in part a remnant of the old Soviet
puppet government, and turned Afghanistan back over to warlords.
-
- When the facts are considered--Muslim disunity and the
absence of modern technology, navies, and strategic reach--the Bush/Cheney/neoconservative/Zionist
propaganda that "we must fight them over there before they come over
here" is such a transparent hoax that it is astounding that so many
Americans have fallen for it.
-
- To the extent that there is any Muslim threat, it is
one created by the US and Israel. Israel has no diplomacy toward Muslims
and relies on violence and coercion. The US has interfered in the internal
affairs of Muslim countries during the entire post World War II period.
The US overthrew an elected government in Iran and installed the Shah.
The US backed Saddam Hussein in his aggression against Iran. The US has
kept in power rulers it could control and has pandered to the desires
of Israeli governments. If America is hated, America created the hate
by its arrogant and dismissive treatment of the Muslim Middle East.
-
- There is no such thing as Islamofascism. This is a coined
propaganda word used to inflame the ignorant. There is no factual basis
for the hatred that neoconservative Islamophobes instill in Americans.
God did not tell America to destroy the Muslims for the Israelis.
-
- In America today blind ignorant hate against Muslims
has been brought to a boiling point. The fear and loathing is so great
that the American public and its elected representatives in Congress offer
scant opposition to the Bush administration's plan to make Iran the third
Middle East victim of American aggression in the 21st century.
-
- Most Americans, who Harris believes to be so reasonable,
tolerant, and deliberative that they cannot defend themselves, could not
care less that one million Iraqis have lost their lives during the American
occupation and that an estimated four million Iraqis have been displaced.
The total of dead and displaced comes to 20 percent of the Iraqi population.
If this is not fanaticism on the part of the Bush administration, what
is it? Certainly it is not reason, tolerance, and deliberation.
-
- The Bush supporter will ask, "What about 9/11?"
Even those who believe the fraudulent 9/11 Commission Report should understand
that in the official account the attack was the work of individuals, none
of whom were acting in behalf of Muslim governments and none of whom were
Iraqi, Afghan, or Iranian. 9/11 provides no justification for attacking
Muslim countries.
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- Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
in the Reagan administration.
-
- He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial
page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
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