- Winning wars in the Information Age largely depends on
winning the
- battle for public opinion. Thus the opinion-shaping role
of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) when it attacked a high profile California
professor for his criticism of Israeli policy in Palestine.
-
- That ADL intimidation campaign successfully chilled debate
on campuses
- nationwide during several time-critical months while
a new president, promising the hope of change, reassessed U.S.-Israeli
relations. His only change-endorsing more Israeli settlements on Palestinian
land-quashed any hope of peace.
-
- This ADL silencing strategy offers a microcosm of how
the U.S. was induced to war in Iraq based on false intelligence. From the
provocation of September 11, 2001 until the invasion of March 2003, war-planners
ignored, dismissed or sought to silence anyone critical of the spurious
premises offered for war.
-
- Only later did we discover that the intelligence was
fixed around a preset agenda. Even now, Americans are unaware that the
U.S.-led invasion had long been an Israeli goal.
-
- In similar fashion, an ADL campaign silenced on-campus
criticism of Israel's December 2008 assault on Gaza. At the University
of California Santa Barbara, ADL-initiated charges were lodged against
sociology Professor William Robinson.
-
- The disciplinary action dragged on until June 24th when
100 professors and 20 department heads demanded an end to all proceedings.
- By then the damage was done-to the reputation of Professor
Robinson, to academic freedom at the University of California and to national
security as this campaign silenced academics countrywide. While Robinson's
reputation can be restored, the damage to national security is irreparable.
-
- Manipulating Thought
-
- The ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles
coordinated the
- assault on Robinson after he shared with students from
his globalization website a photo essay critical of Israel. The essay had
circulated for weeks on the Internet.
-
- Aaron Ettenberg, a member of the Faculty Senate Charges
Committee,
- collaborated with Santa Barbara Rabbi Arthur Gross-Schaefer
who reviled Robinson in the local community and urged-along with the ADL-that
he be disciplined by the university for his "anti-Semitic" behavior.
-
- Chancellor Henry Yang was subjected to threats to withhold
funding featuring a campaign led by ADL National Director Abe Foxman and
Rabbi Marvin Heir from the Wiesenthal Center.
-
- Professor Ettenberg had served the previous two years
as president of the local chapter of B'nai B'rith, an ADL affiliate. Rabbi
Gross-Schaefer was director of the local chapter of Hillel, an on-campus
ADL affiliate.
-
- Mark Yudof, president of the University of California,
opted not to intervene even as this silencing campaign attracted international
attention. Yudof's wife, Judith, is the immediate past international president
of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism representing 760 synagogues.
She is also a director of Hillel.
-
- As with the dominance of Jewish Zionists among neoconservative
war-planners, the pro-Israeli bias was all-pervasive. Richard Blum chairs
the statewide Board of Regents for the University of California. His wife,
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
What was their reaction as this professor was silenced? Silence.
-
- Coincidence or Faith-Based Coordination?
-
- Would a professor and a local rabbi have risked their
careers and their reputations absent their confidence that-based on the
shared bias of university administrators and government officials-they
could intimidate with impunity?
-
- Absent such implied support, would this silencing operation
have dragged on for so long?
-
- Absent their silence-with its tacit approval-what might
have been the impact of campus criticism when Israel's assault on the captive
population of Gaza left 1300 dead, one-third reportedly women and children?
Those complicit in this silencing campaign knew the impact on public opinion
of student protests against the Vietnam War-particularly on California
campuses.
-
- Those concerned about anti-Semitism must explain how
this broadly coordinated intimidation campaign was allowed to succeed.
In the same way that public opinion was manipulated prior to an invasion
that launched the Global War on Terrorism, this campaign sought to deny
students the facts required to understand Israel's role in provoking that
terror.
-
- Absent access to facts, how can the U.S. preserve a system
of self-governance founded on the premise of informed consent? Without
facts, how can national security be protected from those who "fix"
intelligence in order to deploy the U.S. military for the interests of
a foreign nation?
-
- Unless those complicit are held accountable, how will
American youth learn the essential role of free and open debate on topics
of direct relevance to their lives?
-
- In a representative system of government, the greatest
threat to liberty is manipulation of the facts required for informed citizen
participation. Anyone who cherishes freedom should be alarmed at the ongoing
success of such manipulation and outraged that its common source traces
to a purported ally.
-
- Psychological warfare targets knowledge as a means to
manipulate thought, opinion and emotion (the "hearts and minds")
and thereby influence behavior. At the center of such disinformation is
the displacement of facts with false beliefs meant to prod decision-making
toward a preset goal. Thus the false reports of Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to
Al Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories and so forth. Thus
the high profile assault on a high-profile center of learning to silence
a professor who threatened to replace
- manipulated beliefs with confirmed facts.
-
- Where U.S. policies toward Israel are at stake, facts
are routinely
- suppressed to shape debate. Such strategic deceit systematically
undermines U.S. national security.
-
- Treason in Plain Sight
-
- Intimidation campaigns have long been a key tool for
organized crime and for those whose undisclosed agenda can succeed only
when shielded from public scrutiny. Those complicit in such "psy-ops"
know their agenda could not prevail in an open debate. They also know that
if their treachery is detected they face charges of treason, a capital
crime.
-
- That's why this form of treason instead targets knowledge
to corrupt the facts required for informed choice. That focus denies those
targeted a meaningful choice while leaving intact the appearance of open
debate. Meanwhile the perpetrators seek refuge behind the very freedoms
they undermine-freedom of speech, press, assembly and religion.
-
- In this case, pro-Israeli operatives silenced on-campus
criticism of Israel while Israel committed dozens of war crimes and crimes
against humanity. Evidence of those crimes was depicted in the Internet-posted
photo essay that the ADL attacked as "anti-Semitic."
-
- What was the strategic result? That assault on Gaza marked
yet another
- violent provocation guaranteed to catalyze a violent
reaction (aka "terrorism"), adding plausibility to the narrative
of "militant Islam." The result made the U.S. appear guilty by
its association with this criminality.
-
- We then compounded our complicity by covering up the
facts when the Congress, dominated by the Israel lobby, overwhelmingly
approved a resolution portraying as "irredeemably biased" a chronicle
of those war crimes in "The Goldstone Report," a comprehensive
account by an eminent Jewish jurist. [See How the Israel Lobby Took Control
of U.S. Foreign Policy http://criminalstate.com/2009/07/how-the-israel-lobby-took-control-of-us-foreign-policy/]
-
- The U.S. was doubly damaged. We not only discredited
ourselves, we also endangered our national security by condoning criminality
destined to provoke more violence directed at our troops.
-
- When such psy-ops campaigns are detected, defenders of
democracy must fight back by making the perpetrators transparent and their
common motivation apparent. This is how Israel wages war on the U.S. from
inside the U.S.-by deceiving us to wage its wars and by provoking others
to hate us due to our alliance with religious extremists and their apartheid
policies.
-
- Duplicity has long been a weapon deployed to "wage
war by way of deception." That's the operative motto of the Mossad,
the intelligence and foreign operations branch of the Jewish nationalists
who have dominated Israeli politics since a Christian-Zionist president
erred in 1948 by recognizing as a legitimate "state" this enclave
of Jewish extremists and ultra-nationalists.
-
- Israel specializes in what the Pentagon calls unconventional
warfare. Such warfare is only "unconventional" for the targeted
population (us). For militant Zionists, this is how war is waged. When
your numbers are few and your ambitions vast, deceit becomes an essential
force-multiplier.
-
- In the Information Age, why would anyone expect war to
be waged in any way other than by deception? Where else but in plain sight
could such warfare be waged?
-
- For freedom to prevail against such psy-ops requires
a shift in strategic focus. A robust defense would make this manipulation
transparent in real time before deception can work its intended impact
on public opinion. The dominance of pro-Israelis in mainstream media complicates
that task. Media complicity was essential to succeed in the deceit that
took the U.S. to war and that now seeks to obscure Israeli war crimes.
-
- A Special Relationship with Fanatics
-
- The Pentagon warned six decades ago that Jewish extremists
sought military and economic dominance over the entire Middle East. As
the Joint Chiefs of Staff cautioned Harry Truman:
-
- "All stages of this program are equally sacred to
the fanatical concepts of the Jewish leaders. The program is openly admitted
by some leaders, and has been privately admitted to United States officials
by responsible leaders of the presently dominant Jewish group-The Jewish
Agency."
-
- Other than religious fanatics, who would deny Americans-including
college students-the facts required to make informed choices on an issue
as critical as taking the U.S. to war in the Middle East? Other than pro-Israeli
publishers and broadcast media owners, who would have the motivation to
report as "facts" the phony intelligence that was fixed around
Israeli goals?
-
- If not Israel and its Zionist advocates-both Christians
and Jews-who would have the means, motive, opportunity and, importantly,
the stable nation state intelligence required to corrupt the intelligence
that took the U.S. to war? Or to silence academic critics just when those
who induced the invasion of Iraq intensified their efforts to expand this
war to Iran and now Pakistan?
-
- If the behavior described is not treason, what is? If
this is treason, why have those complicit not been charged? Is Professor
Ettenberg still employed by the university? If so, why? Have rabbis Gross-Schaefer
and Heir been dismissed from their positions of influence? If not, why
not?
-
- Why hasn't the ADL's Abe Foxman been indicted? Did he
confer with the Yudoffs during this silencing campaign? Has a federal grand
jury been impaneled to consider charges of treason? Foxman was invited
to the White House for the October 28th signing of the ADL's "model
hate crimes" bill. Will that federal legislation now be deployed to
lawfully intimidate critics?
-
- Have mainstream publishers and media owners been investigated
for their complicity in this national scale fraud on public opinion? If
not, why not? Is the Federal Communications Commission moving to revoke
the broadcast licenses of those who used the public airwaves to deceive
the public? If not, why not?
-
- Are news reports correct that an investment firm run
by Richard Blum made more than $100 million on the rising value of its
stock in a top defense contractor? Did his firm also invest in media outlets
that sold us this war?
-
- In an irony of epic proportions, ADL's amendment to federal
hate crimes law was tacked onto an appropriations bill for the Department
of Defense. Will the ADL now seek to portray as "anti-Semitic"
those who document for a long-deceived military the common source of the
psy-ops that took U.S. forces to war in the Middle East?
-
- Will those who repeat the Joint Chiefs' warning about
religious fanatics be targeted for federal prosecution? Will allegations
of hate be deployed to silence debate? Is treason now lawful?
-
- Jeff Gates is author of Guilt By Association, Democracy
at Risk and The Ownership Solution. Author, educator, attorney, merchant
banker and adviser to policy-makers worldwide and U.S. Veteran.
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