- Is there nothing that is safe from debasement by the
propaganda machine of the U.S. and Israel? A full-page ad in the Sunday
NYT of February 7 provides the answer. Sponsored by Elie Wiesel's modestly
named "The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity," and signed by
44 Nobel Laureates, 35 of them in the physical sciences, it urges brutal
and lethal actions against Iran.
-
- Before getting to the cruel prescriptions, which Wiesel
and his recruits offer for Iran, let us consider their reasoning such as
it is. In a single brief topic sentence they assert their central claim
that the Iranian government "whose irresponsible and senseless nuclear
ambitions threaten the entire world continues to wage a shameless war against
its own people." Two charges are fired off in this brief sentence,
and it is all too easy to conflate them. So let us take them one at a time,
as is the habit in science when one wishes for clarification.
-
- The first charge deals with Iran's nuclear "ambitions,"
but the ad does not say what these ambitions are. And then it asserts without
evidence that such "ambitions" threaten "the entire world."
This is certainly a very grave charge, and some scintilla of evidence should
be offered for it. But none is provided, not one word, not even a footnote
or reference in this spacious advert. Yes, such allegations are made repeatedly
and vehemently by government figures in Tel Aviv and Washington and by
many segments of the US and Israeli press. But what is the evidence for
these allegations? Many of them turn out to be false as exemplified by
a recent AP story, which was pulled after being exposed on Antiwar.com
by Jason Ditz. Many of the same voices which now warn that Iran is a nuclear
threat "to the entire world" assured us not long ago that Saddam
Hussein was connected to Al Qaeda and that he had weapons of mass destruction,
both of which turned out to be shameless lies. And is it not strange that
Russia and China, so proximate to Iran, are not obsessed, as is the U.S.
about this threat to "the entire world"? The signatories of the
ad ought not to make such intemperate and incendiary assertions without
at least a reference to unimpeachable evidence. No such reference is provided.
Is this the proper standard of thought and reason, which a Nobel in the
physical sciences implies?
-
- The second claim wrapped up in the topic sentence is
that the Iranian government is engaging in a "shameless war on its
own people." This too is quite a striking charge, going far beyond
the usual charge that the recent Iranian elections were rigged which in
fact does not appear to be the case. In what does this "shameless
war" consist. Certainly there are human rights abuses and striking
ones in Iran, just as there are in many countries who are US allies, but
that does not amount to a government's "war on its own people."
The U.S. and Israel make charges against Iran almost daily, and so Iran
is certain to be demonized in our elite press which so often functions
as stenographer for the government. The same media treatment was given
Iraq so very recently, and it is amazing that this fact did not deter the
signatories from the intemperate statements in this ad. Earlier under the
presidency of Bush I we were treated to stories of infants being pulled
from incubators and discarded on hospital floors in Kuwait by Iraqi troops
during the run up to the US attack on Iraq in the first Gulf War. These
charges uttered by Bush I himself were lies, concocted by a P.R. firm,
as we later learned.
-
- Given that there are human rights abuses in Iran, although
we do not know their extent, two questions arise. Who are we to criticize
Iran when our own government has been abducting, secretly detaining and
torturing people all over the planet? Historically, the CIA overthrew the
duly elected Iranian government of Mossadegh in the 1950s and installed
the Shah whose brutality was legendary and who was eventually ousted in
1979. Today the CIA is still engaging in "extraordinary renditions"
under Obama as it did under Bush and probably before. And Israel is equally
guilty of crimes against humanity with the Apartheid order it is imposing
in the occupied territories, as Jimmy Carter demonstrated in his recent
book, this being the most egregious of human rights violations since it
is based on ethnicity.
-
- Now let us turn to the vicious prescriptions called for
by Wiesel and his recruits. They first call for "harsher sanctions,"
without any mention of restrictions on such sanctions. We already know
that sanctions as practiced by the U.S. are a recipe for massive death
and destruction. We know what the years of sanctions did to Iraq under
the presidencies of Clinton and Bush II. When Madeleine Albright was informed
in a notorious TV interview that 500,000 Iraqi children had died due to
those sanctions, she did not deny it but replied "This is a very hard
choice, but ... we think the price is worth it." Do the signers of
this ad agree with Albright's assessment in the case of Iraq and now Iran?
Sanctions are far from harmless and they fall hardest on the helpless and
rarely on the powerful. In 2000 Christian Aid stated:
-
- "The immediate consequence of eight years of sanctions
has been a dramatic fall in living standards, the collapse of the infrastructure,
and a serious decline in the availability of public services. The longer-term
damage to the fabric of society has yet to be assessed but economic disruption
has already led to heightened levels of crime, corruption and violence.
Competition for increasingly scarce resources has allowed the Iraqi state
to use clan and sectarian rivalries to maintain its control, further fragmenting
Iraqi society."
-
- And yet Wiesel's recruits call for sanctions almost casually.
They would do well to read Brian Cloughey's essay on "The Evil of
Sanctions," and the sources to which he refers.
-
- But Wiesel's recruits do not stop there. They go on to
call for "concrete measures" to protect the "new nation
of dissidents in Iran." But these concrete measures are not spelled
out. What could they be? There are only two that appear on the lips of
those who are demonizing Iran these days in Tel Aviv and Washington: "sanctions"
and "war." This ad will certainly be used by those who wish to
attack Iran, as Israel has threatened. Do the signers understand this?
Since they are intelligent men and women, they must. Are they then calling
for war?
-
- In signing onto Wiesel's statement, the Laureates have
put themselves in very questionable company. Although he claims to speak
out for "human rights," Wiesel is very selective in the cases
he chooses. He has not and will not criticize Israel and its Apartheid
policies, and in fact attacks those who do. In an interview with Haaretz
wherein Wiesel announced his ad campaign, he "blasted Judge Richard
Goldstone, saying his report on the Israeli offensive in Gaza was "a
crime against the Jewish people." Goldstone's report is in fact quite
mild, but it makes clear that the crimes of Israel against the Palestinians
of Gaza are atrocities much like those in Sabra and Shatilla years ago.
Do Wiesel's recruits know that his view of human rights is quite selective?
-
- One cannot know the motives that drove Wiesel's recruits
to sign such a thoughtless and cruel document. Certainly the document reflects
the wave of propaganda on Iran to which we are all subjected. But that
is no excuse. These are after all intelligent men and women and should
see through such propaganda, given our recent and historical experience.
Certainly this writer holds many of these signers in great regard, and
one can only hope that their signatures were obtained without time to examine
the matter properly. In this case a retraction is in order. Finally, one
cannot help but wonder whether Wiesel's recruits felt that signing on to
such a statement would be fine now that Obama is in charge and he is a
man they can trust. If so, this is another sign of the gift to the Empire
that is Obama.
-
- In the end Wiesel's signers, Nobel Laureates though they
may be, are of small stature next to those giants of science, humanitarians
as well as thinkers, who were unafraid to take on authority in their work
and in their role as citizens. Einstein and Galileo and many others must
be tossing in their tombs over Weisel's handiwork.
-
- John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com.
|
