How God Made the English A Chosen People

From Pope Gregory to the monk Bede

From Bede to the English people

Henry VIII crushed the Catholic church, and 800 monasteries, in England and established an earlier church, based on the Thorn of Joseph of Arimethea, who predated Gregory/Bede and Catholicism/Rome.

Wilberforce crusade against slavery meant the English were god’s policemen, commissioned to impose moral order on the world.

WWI shook the confidence of the English: god had made the English supremely self-confident, but where was god in the battlefields of Europe?

The coronation of Elizabeth restored confidence.

Winston Churchill went to war against Germany to “save Christianity.”

Tony Blair joined the invasion of Iraq because it was the right thing to do.

Simulated Iranian Retaliation to Israeli Attack

BLAM Ben Gurion airport GONE

BLAM Military barracks GONE

KaPOW Israeli missile launch sites GONE

Splat Netanyahu’s nickers.

 

 

 

Nov 10 2013

Jewish dual loyalty and false equivalence betw zionism and Nazism

‘Forward’ columnist says ‘divided’ loyalty is as American as cherry pie

Philip Weiss on November 4, 2013 40

Brandeis

Last week the Israeli Foreign Ministry was preparing to distribute a poll to American Jews asking them to which country they would feel allegiance during a crisis, Israel or the U.S., when Prime Minister Netanyahu stuffed the survey out of concern that it would raise an “explosive” issue (as Haaretz put it). In response, Hillel Halkin stands up at the Forward for dual loyalty on the part of Jewish Zionists. “Why American Jews Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Put Israel First.”

. . .

I believe that Louis Brandeis made a similar argument about Americans’ diverse cultural affinities in seeking to remove the dual-loyalty stigma from Zionists 100 years ago, after he was converted to Zionism.

 

See http://c-spanvideo.org/program/Frankf

Tribute to Justices Brandeis and Frankfurter  Nov 13, 1997 Conference of Pres. of Major Jewish Org.

A tribute to justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter was held during a celebration of one hundred years of Zionism. Justice Breyer, Senator Moynihan and others talked about the role the justices played in the 1930s to help the Zionist movement attain a home for Jewish people.

 

Weiss continues:  “The poll sought to determine, among other things, which country American Jews would side with in case of a serious confrontation between Israel and the United States. As such, it was rightly criticized for conjuring up the specter of “dual loyalty” that Jews in America and elsewhere have been accused of by their enemies. There’s certainly no need to provide extra grist for the anti-Semitic mill. Yet it’s also time to stop pretending that the loyalties of some American Jews aren’t divided between Israel and America. Of course they are. There’s just nothing wrong with it — nor is there anything uniquely Jewish about this. You’ll find plenty of similar cases in other places.

The truth is that any American Jew who doesn’t care as much about a Jewish state as he or she does about the United States can’t be very identified with the Jewish people. Suppose vital American and Israeli interests were to clash. What would it mean for a Jew to say: ”I don’t give a damn what’s best for Israel. All that matters to me is what’s best for America”? What kind of Jew would that be? How deep could his or her Jewishness be said to go?

But one could ask a similar question about tens of millions of other Americans. Do Cuban Americans who have pressed for decades for harsh American policies toward Communist Cuba ask whether these are really in America’s interest? It’s enough for them to tell themselves that they’re in Cuba’s interest. Do Mexican Americans favor a relaxation of immigration laws because they think America’s general public will benefit? What they think, you can be sure, is that other Mexicans will benefit — and why shouldn’t they want them to?”

It is excellent that the Forward has run this. It is akin to Eric Alterman’s frank declaration at the 92d Street Y that he has dual loyalty (not going in for Halkin’s euphemism, divided). It’s plainly the case that many American Jews would choose Israel’s interest over the U.S.’s if the two countries clashed.

While Halkin regards that choice as just fine, the Forward opens the door on those who may disagree– citing the regressive Cuban example, or the Irish-American support for a revolutionary movement back where they came from. Or: Did the neoconservatives support the Iraq war because it was in Israel’s interest? Joe Klein said they exhibited “divided loyalties” in doing so.

Myself I believe in the honorable principle of Doykeit, hereness in the Polish Yiddish formulation of the 1900s. Yes it worked out badly for the Polish Jews, but it remains the ideal of a democratic polity.

Speaking of which, my people came from Poland and Rumania and Russia, not from the Middle East. Yet to be concerned for Israel, a place most American Jews have never laid eyes on, is in Halkin’s view to “be identified with the Jewish people.” This is the knot at the bottom of Jewish identity in our times. Marc Ellis would say that identification with the Jewish people means concern for Palestinian conditions.

 hophmi says:  November 4, 2013 at 6:05 pm

Ask this question again when Judaism is the preferred religion of an entire continent rather than the majority religion in one state.

What stupidity. Jewish-Americans take an interest in Israel because it’s where the world’s largest Jewish population is.

Christopher Hitchens defends Iraq War — by debasing history

:http colon slash slash www dot youtube dot com/watch?v=XLKQGwVkczg

Christopher Hitchens and ___ debate the correctness of the war on Iraq.

 

He opens his argument claiming that If war had not been waged to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, then today Kuwait would be in the possession of Saddam …

 

BUT he does not account for the fact that the Egyptians and Arabs had worked out a nonviolent resolution; and that

 

Bush administration did NOT wage war for the purpose of liberating Kuwait; Kuwait was not of concern for them.  Bush’s goal was to take the first step of imperialism.

 

 

Clawson proposes a false flag to push US to war on Iran

h/t to Arash Bandiari at http://waliyicislam.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/or-does-it-explode/comment-page-1/#comment-6

 

There are two major, intertwined lines of thought that deserve thorough research:

1. How the US government has lied to the American people in order to take the nation to war — every one of the events Clawson listed was based on a lie; (see this powerful statement  — “We were lied to” says Dana Karon, re her upbringing & schooling in Israel — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmkmwuDAy90&feature=player_embedded; and

2. Having gotten away with lying to the American people on numerous occasions over the past 70+ years, the US government no longer bothers with declaring wars:

see Michael Hayden, formed head of national security — http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Haydenon

see “War Powers Abuse Makes Iran Conflict Likely” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/war_power_abuse_makes_iran_conflict_likely_20120930/

see Lt. Col Lawrence Wilkerson,  “We have killed 300,000 people (in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, based on Pentagon estimates).  http://larouchepac.com/hcr107press

see Bruce Fein, Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Reagan: “Because those deaths were not consequent to a declared war, they are murders.”

We’ve gotten away with mass murder before:  The US has hidden their crimes against humanity in prosecution of the wars that US lied itself into, namely,
– US complicity in blockade that caused starvation-deaths of 800,000 German civilians in WWI;
– US leadership in firebombing of German cities that deliberately incinerated 600,000 German civilians and destroyed 75% of German infrastructure in WWII;
– US starves to death 500,000 Iraqi civilians, 1990s;

– US kills 300,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan);

– In 2008, Ephraim Sneh directly threatened to starve Iranians to death — see http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/USIsraelRelations35

– In 1992 Sneh spearheaded the effort in Israel’s Knesset to use the nuclear issue as a faux rationale for the demonization and eventual destruction of Iran; his agenda found its first legislative expression in the US in 1995 when AIPAC obtained first, Pres. Bill Clinton’s signature on Executive Orders sanctioning Iran, then developed that Order into legislation, the D’Amato Amendment sanctioning Libya and Iran.

 

Shirazi versus Leveretts on De-Listing MEK Sept 2012

Some initial thoughts on the MEK being delisted

by Nima Shirazi on September 22, 2012

Adam Horowitz asked Nima Shirazi for his thoughts on the de-listing of MEK. Nima responded:

My thoughts are these:                                                                      US State Dept probably made such a decision for the following reasons:

1. The political pressure from MEK’s highly-paid lobbyists (e.g. Dersh, Rendell, Dean, Townsend, Giuliani, Ridge, Ros-Lehtinen, Mukasey, Jim Jones, Wesley Clark) was probably not as powerful a tool as the fear of these people getting prosecuted for supporting a declared terrorist organization.  With all the recent attention and mainstream reporting on MEK tactics, events and money funneled to these public figures, I think State worried about DOJ actually having to act upon its own “material support” laws (which obviously were only intended to target Muslims, not fine, upstanding, establishment scumbags like Sheila Jackson-Lee.)

2. The US and Israel are already funding, training and arming the MEK.  Delisting the group, in real terms, barely does anything in a tangible sense.  It’s far more of a de-moralizing tactic to punish the Iranian people for not doing the bidding of regime change advocates here in the West.

3. The decision may be designed to distract the Iranian delegation during its UN General Assembly visit next week.  Rather than having to focus on the obvious threats and lies coming from Netanyahu (which has been in the news so much lately that people are starting to catch on), the Iranian delegation – lead as usual by Ahmadinejad himself – will now have to address this decision all week, rather than the overhyped warmongering.

Also, an interesting element of this is that, if the US doesn’t believe the allegations about Mossad’s backing of the MEK to murder Iranian scientists, that probably means that the US believes (read: knows) that Mossad itself is responsible for the attacks (without using MEK operatives as proxies), as  revealed by Yossi Melman and Dav Raviv.

Just some thoughts…

The Leveretts were not nearly so tactical in their assessment, but a lot more passionate:

Uri Avnery: Two-State USA? Sept 2012

Avnery’s essay is an epic FAIL.
NetanyahuA Marriage of Morons: Romney and Netanyahu

1. It is a mistake to dismiss Netanyahu as a moron.  Psychopath is the more appropriate term; psychopath with an uncontrolled nuclear arsenal with the finger of his left hand on Israel’s trigger and the finger of his right hand on POTUS’s nuclear football.

The naming of Cherly Saban to represent the US in United Nations, and the delisting of MEK from terror list, blare the message:  Americans are no longer in charge of their government. Psychopaths are in charge of the United States, not just State Department, foreign policy, but also finance, media, entertainment/mind control, communications, homeland security and press/publishing. As Jane Eisner told a J Street audience in March 2012, “we Jews are now in charge.”  (‘Forward’ editor Eisner challenges US Jews to acknowledge ‘extraordinary wealth, status and political power’)

(By the way: J-Street hangs its entire raison d’etre on advocacy — or forcing Obama to extend his efforts — for a two-state solution.  Did Jeremy Ben Ami just spend three or four years building a 180,000 member organization that provided $1.5 million to support 61 US congress candidates, all to promote a quixotic, can’t possibly happen two-state solution?)

2. But this is the more important point that Avnery made:

Quote: “The two peoples [Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs] have different cultures, languages, religions, historic narratives, social structures, standards of living. At present, after some 130 years of continuous conflict, there is intense hatred between them.

The possibility that these two peoples could live peacefully in one state, serving in the same army and police, paying the same taxes and abiding by the same laws enacted by the same common parliament, is nil.

The possibility that these two peoples could live peacefully side-by-side in two states, each with its own flag and its own elected government (and its own soccer team), does exist. ” End Quote ( A Message from Romnyahu 22 Sept 2012 )

= = =
Recall in ‘Pretty Woman,’ when Gere offered to keep Julie Roberts in luxury, but not marry her, she rejected the offer:  She would still be a prostitute, the change was “just geography.”

Look at the situation of Jews in the United States. As more and more non-Jews learn about what zionists are doing to the nation [see, for example, Israel seeks war on Iran to keep lid on 9/11, excerpt below ***];  how Jane Eisner is right on the money; how US media is controlled and high offices of US government are infiltrated — Haim Saban’s wife as UN representative, fer gawd’s sake– the “truth” is going to generate an intensity of hatred between the two groups: Americans will come to hate Jews.

It is inevitable.

Some Jews know this and are attempting to end-run the situation, trying to distance themselves from the predations of uber zionists like Netanyahu, Dennis Ross, Adelson, Saban, Makovsky, Ross, Feith, Kristol, Wolfowitz etc etc. A recent column by M J Rosenberg reflects this phenomenon.
It’s reasonable that they should do so, but it won’t work: a mob aroused does not make distinctions. Masters of mass propaganda know this, and Freud & Bernays introduced the concepts of mass propaganda.
So right here in the good ole USA, we will eventually have an atmosphere of in-group (Jews, according to Eisner) vs out-group (everyone else, especially ‘WASPs’) hatred comparable to Jews vs Arab in Palestine/Israel. The only thing different will be geography.

When that happens, and it will, would Avnery propose a “two state solution” for the USA?

Do Jews get New York, Boca Raton, Chevy Chase and Bethesda and non-Jews get Idaho, Camden and S Central LA?

Where do the walls get built in Two-State USA?
Who controls the military in Two-State USA?
Who controls the financial system in Two-State JewSA?
Who controls the skies in Two-State USA?
Who controls communications, trade, borders, law enforcement, judicial system, political system, legislatures in Two-State JewSA?

= = =

*** Israel seeks war on Iran to keep lid on 9/11:

“Netanyahu needs the 9/11-triggered 100-years-war on Islam to continue for the very good reason that if it does not, the State of Emergency still in place in the US will be lifted, and Americans, unencumbered by the National Security restrictions of wartime, will quickly learn what really happened on September 11th, 2001. That possibility poses a very real existential threat to Israel – and to Netanyahu.

As Alan Sabrosky, former Director of Strategic Studies at the US Army War College, told Press TV: “I have had long conversations over the past two weeks with contacts at the Army War College, at the Headquarters Marine Corps, and I have made it absolutely clear in both cases that it is 100 percent certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation. Period. If Americans ever know that Israel did this, they are going to scrub them off the earth.” And even if Israel were “scrubbed off the earth” peacefully through a one-state solution, Netanyahu would certainly hang for his role in the 9/11 attacks.

Unfortunately for Netanyahu and Zionism, Dr. Sabrosky isn’t the only US National Security insider leaking the truth about 9/11. A very large number of military and intelligence people have come forward.The two biggest recent leaks are revelations by CIA asset Susan Lindauer that the CIA had detailed foreknowledge of 9/11 and attributed the controlled demolitions of the three NYC skyscrapers to “those goddamned Israelis”; and the assertion by Gwenyth Todd, who worked beside Richard Clarke on the National Security Council, that Clarke (who was publicly fired from an earlier job for being an Israeli spy) is the top suspect as hands-on controller of 9/11 from the US end. ”

“What is the best way for confronting the West’s anti-Islam campaign?”

On 20 September 2012  Kevin Barrett posted an important article on the Press TV website.  Barrett argued that Benjamin Netanyahu is behaving in as irrational and dangerous a fashion as he is, inflaming fears of war against Iran, in an effort to elect Mitt Romney to the presidency and  keep the lid on 9/11.

The essence of Barrett’s charge is that the American people have been lied to about the perpetrators of 9/11:  as Alan Sabrosky claims, Mossad and CIA planned and carried out the attack on the World Trade Center that killed 3,000 innocent civilians.

Americans have been lied to in order to frighten them into a war against Iraq (that cost hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives).  Bibi is desperate to keep that lie covered up, lest he hang for his/Israel’s part in it.

A poll was appended to Barrett’s article.  It asked the question: “What is the best way for confronting the West’s anti-Islam campaign?”

The poll offered the following options, and as of noon EST 21 Sept 2012 displayed these results:

Poll

What is the best way for confronting the West’s anti-Islam campaign?

• 1) Intensifying worldwide demonstrations. 11 %
• 2) Ignoring Islamophobic and sacrilegious acts. 18 %
• 3) Public pressure on Muslim states to cut US ties. 59 %
• 4) Criticizing those behind the desecration of Islam. 12 %

In my Solonic opinion, the option most obviously suggested by the article was not included in the choices the Poll offered.

The best answer, in my opinion, to the question: “What is the best way for confronting the West’s anti-Islam campaign?”

Tell the truth.

Tell the truth about Esther:  there was no scheme to “annihilate Jews.”

Tell the truth about the difference between mythology and “divine revelation.”  All cultures have unifying myths; they understand them as their own and rely upon them for cultural cohesion.  But cultures that are self-aware understand that their myths are myths, that history is history — fact based, not ego-driven; that spiritual enlightenment and “salvation” is an individual and personal matter.

Tell the truth about “2000 years of antisemitism.”  According to David Biale’s “Cultures of the Jews,” the first instance of persecution of Jews in  post-Roman Christian Europe occurred in 1095 in the context of the Crusades. A majority of the Jews who died in that event were suicides.

Tell the truth about zionist complicity in the blockade on German civilians that cost the lives of 800,000 German civilians (but apparently, none of whom were Jewish) between 1915-1919.

Tell the truth about the complicity of the Warburgs, Bernard Baruch, Louis Brandeis and a dozen other zionists in “stabbing Germany in the back” at Versailles.

Tell the truth about Churchill’s warmongering-for-pay:  how he received large cash contributions from the Focus Group, which included wealthy Jewish leaders and heads of major oil companies, whose agenda was to destroy Germany to preserve the British empire and maintain British trade routes to its colonies.

Tell the truth about the Jewish declaration of war on Germany in March 1933.  Confess the fact of the actions;Own up to it and Own its consequences, which were just as they were fully intended to be.

Tell the truth about Louis Brandeis’s February 1933 diktat that “All Jews must leave Germany.”

Tell the truth about Chaim Weizmann’s and Erich Mendelsohn’s involvement in the firebombing of Germany that incinerated 600,000 German citizens, but, apparently, not a single Jewish person died in the Allied attacks.  (After building Chaim Weizmann’s residence at Rehovoth in ~1937, Erich Mendelsohn left Palestine for the USA, where, in ~1941 he volunteered to assist the US Air Force and Standard Oil company to design the “most efficient” means of creating a firestorm to destroy the maximum number of working class Germans and their residences. Surely Weizmann was aware of this project.  In the same time frame, David Ben Gurion and other key Palestine-based Jewish leaders, who must surely have included Weizmann, fretted over whether to urge Americans to bomb Auschwitz.  The first concensus decision, enunciated by Ben Gurion, was: “We cannot take on the responsibility for a bombing that could cause the death of even one Jew.”America’s Failure to Bomb Auschwitz )

Tell the truth about the “gas chambers” at Auschwitz, Dachau, etc.

Tell the truth about Eisenhower’s complicity in carrying out the genocidal plan of Henry Morgenthau to annihilate the German people.

Tell the truth about Israeli as well as American treachery  in Shah Pahlavi’s regime.

Tell the truth about why the United States invaded Iraq in 1991.

Tell the truth about 9/11.

Tell the truth about why the United States assaulted Afghanistan.

Tell the truth about why the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

Tell the truth about United States and Israeli support for the assault on Syria.

Tell the truth about ( Solon speculates) the west’s involvement in the assassination of its own diplomat, (reminiscent of Herschel Grynszpan’s assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, an action which set off Crystal Night, and called down upon the German government the hatred of all the world. It is not at all unlikely that the 1938 event was a ‘false flag’ operation calculated to do exactly what it accomplished.)

American Christians must be called to account for their support for genocide.

More importantly, Christians all over the world must be called to account for attempts at subverting indigenous cultures.  Proselytizing should be made Off Limits for 50 years:  Christians should tend their own flocks, and men and women of other faiths and cultures should remain free of dandled suasions to forsake their faiths in exchange for false claims and ‘shiney toys.’

Tell the truth.

Then ask forgiveness.

Then accept culpability and accountability.

Then make reparations.

Then submit to a “probationary period” during which the world will monitor behavior to ensure that the lessons of past bad acts have been learned, and declarations to reform are genuine.

THEN, and only then, can Americans, Israelis, zionists, Westerners, be trusted to take their place among the nations.

And ONLY then can those many Muslims who have been oppressed for decades and generations also be called upon to calm their rage, lay down their swords, and parlay in peace.

= = =

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad conducted one of the bravest acts of any leader in recent memory:  he called together men and women whose research into and perspective on the holocaust led to conclusions different from the enforced narrative.

For that crime, attempting to tell the truth, Ahmadinejad has been relentlessly vilified and the Iranian people subject to collective punishment.

= = =

In her book, “The Great Transformation:  The Beginnings of Our Religious Traditions,” Karen Armstrong writes:

“The Avestan Aryans called their gods daevas (“the shining ones”) and amesha (“the immortals”).  …They were not omnipotent and had no control over the cosmos.  Like human beings and all natural forces, they had to submit to the sacred order that held the universe together.  Thanks to this order, the seasons succeeded one another in due course …the crops grew each year in the appointed month.  The Avestan Aryans called this order asha… It made life possible, keeping everything in its proper place and defining what was true and correct.

“Human society also depended upon this sacred order.  People had to make firm, binding agreements about grazing rights, the herding of cattle, marriage, and the exchange of goods. Translated into social terms, asha meant loyalty, truth, and respect, the ideals embodied by Varuna, the guardian of order, and Mithra, his assistant.  These gods supervised all covenant agreements that were sealed by a solemn oath.  [In contrast, on Yom Kippur, it is said that Jewish rituals give one leave to renege on solemn oaths.]  The Aryans took the spoken word very seriously. …As far as we know, the Aryans did not make effigies of their gods.  Instead, they found that the act of listening brought them close to the sacred.  [In my one visit to a Muslim shrine, in Mashad, I witnessed how Muslim women surrounded themselves with the Infinite and sat in an attitude of humble listening to the divine.] Quite apart from its meaning, the very sound of a chant was holy; even a single syllable could encapsulate the divine. [A Muslim friend invited me to participate as a circle of women recited from the Quran, on a day in Ramadan.  I witnessed the care each woman took to speak the words precisely.] Similarly, a vow, once uttered, was eternally binding, and a lie was absolutely evil because it perverted the holy power inherent in the spoken word.  The Aryans would never lose this passion for absolute truthfulness.”

In contrast, over the past decades, the United States has conducted its affairs according to the protocol Ron Suskind reported on in 2004. In 2002, Suskind notes, he had written an article about Karen Hughes’s press office that rankled some in the White House.  He discussed the situation with an aide to the president, and learned this:

“The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” “

“Enlightenment principles and empiricism” are closely aligned with Aryan notions that reality resides in nature, and that “human beings and all the natural forces …had to submit to the sacred order that holds the universe together.”

Torah reflects a radically different view of the source of knowledge; it is reflected in the opening words of Torah: “In the beginning was the word.” In Hebrew epistemology, words create reality and not the other way around.  Thus, reality is limited only by the spiderwebs of ideas one could weave in his own mind — or dreams.  Since this idea base is so ephemeral, it is difficult to make an accounting of truth-value: a thing or a person either subscribes to the ideology, or does not, but the relationship of that ideology to nature and the world of reality are of secondary importance.

In the 1930s in Germany, Walther Grundmann attempted to separate Christianity as understood by Germans from a Hebrew matrix.  Germans had introduced a method of reading scripture that applied rationality to the text.  In this, German theologians deviated from the proclivities of British and American Christians.  American pastors damned the Germans for this apostasy, and declared that Germans were rightfully punished by war because they failed to honor the “inerrant word of God.”

Adolf Hitler tried to steer a middle course between competing faith systems in the Nazi era.  His claim that Germans were Aryans is more appropriately understood as a cultural claim, not a racial claim.  (It is undoubtedly true that the word “race” was used to designate shared cultural and ethnic values.  Until very recently, census questionnaires in the United States asked if one were “Caucasian.”  How many Americans who checked that box are aware that the Caucasus is the same general local as the original Aryans? Furthermore, recently, American leaders — former National Security chief Michael Hayden comes to mind — have taken to proclaiming that “It is in the American DNA to — XYZ.”  Such a statement amounts to racism.)

In other words, Aryan = Caucasian.  In Germany in the 1930s, Aryan meant little more than a distinction from Semitic because Aryans were Indo-European in geographic environment — ie. forests rather than deserts — and in language. All of these details-that-make-a-difference are swallowed up in the propagandist rants, “Hitler was evil,” and “Holocaust denier!”

As Armstrong assessed, Aryans are truth-tellers.

The men and women who subscribe to the ‘reality-inventing’ methods Suskind described are forced to spend prodigious energy enforcing a “reality” that has no being in nature.  The frustration inevitably engendered by the constant need to revise “reality” finds expression in destructiveness.  Erich Mendelsohn offers an  intriguing case study in the compulsion to destroy that which exists in nature and which many generations of people before him have created, when the visions in his head are not validated by the natural and observed world surrounding him.

The only way forward for those who “invent reality” and those who “submit to the sacred order that holds the universe together” is Truth.

Among Jesus last words were, What is Truth?

Whatever truth is, we know that it cannot be phosphorus bombs and assassinations and mass starvation and economic destruction and plunder.  There is nothing natural about deliberately starving an entire people to death.

What is the best way for confronting the West’s anti-Islam campaign?

It is the same as the best way for creating a renaissance of the highest values of Jesus: Tell the truth.

“We are very scared of what Israel might do” – Commenter on Atlantic blog

On 19 September 2o12, Evan Thomas posted an article on the Atlantic blog, titled “The Brilliant Prudence of Dwight Eisenhower.”I

This exchange took place in the comments section:

Harry Huntington:

“Of course the key point for the President today was that when the Cold War was in full flower, President Eisenhower was not afraid to meet with the leaders of the Soviet Union, or the country that was then the US’s leading enemy.  When does President Obama plan to invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Camp David? Perhaps Obama should invite Ahmadinejad and his family to meet the Obama family?  Eisenhower’s presidency offers up other fine examples as well, but the most important might be that in the nuclear era, you are obliged as President to meet and talk with “the enemy.”  You cannot simply drop bombs and expect the other side to make nice.  Eisenhower knew that from his time spent in two world wars (before he was President).   But the current President (and Mr. Romney too) are the smartest people in America.”

RobertSF replied to Huntington:

“That’s because we were genuinely afraid of the Soviet Union, but we’re not really afraid of Iran.  We don’t like Iran, nor they us, but we’re not afraid of them so we have nothing to gain by making peace with them.”

Huntington responded to Robert’s flight of irrationality with:

“Perhaps I am having a slow day.  If we are not afraid of Iran, why do we have three carrier battle groups in its neighborhood, and why is Israel pressing the United States to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.  I mean, the French have nuclear facilities and there is no pressure to bomb them.  So nuclear facilities by themselves are pretty benign.  It looks to me like we are very scared of Iran.  That is the perfect time for a summit meeting.”

RobertSF:

“We’re not existentially afraid of Iran.  Israel may be, but we’re not.  We were existentially afraid of the Soviet Union.  Notice that homeowners aren’t building concrete bunkers in their back yards out of fear of Iran.  They did during the 50s, out of fear of the Soviet Union.”

Carrington Ward joined the conversation:

“No way we’d be able to get all the relevant players to a summit.

Israel is very scared of Iran — with good reason.  Saudi Arabia is very scared of Iran, with better reason.

We are very scared of what Israel might do.  And we’re scared of what might happen to our friends in the House of Saud.  And so we’re still stuck with ‘dual containment.’

January 2013 might be the perfect time to put solar panels back on the White House.”

At this point, Solon to Croesus responded to Carrington Ward:

Let’s explore your comment, Carrington Ward:
Precisely WHAT “good reason” does Israel have to be “very scared of Iran?”
If Iran wished to harm Jews, they would start with the 30,000 Jews who live in Iran.  Instead, Iran has not even retaliated against those Jews or ANYONE for Israel’s assassination of five of Iran’s nuclear scientists, attacks on Iran’s infrastructure, Israel’s leadership of an economic ‘blockade’ of Iran.  Iran has NOT retaliated, after 17 years of punishment and demonization engineered by AIPAC.
Moreover, as Israel has informed the world since at least the mid-’80s, Iran is 10 years away from having a nuclear weapon.  Let me make that point kindergarten-clear:  Iran does not now have a nuclear weapon.  (Israel does.)
So who has “good reason” to be “scared” of whom?
You answer that in your next assertion:
“WE are very scared of what Israel might do.”
Look at that again:
WE ARE VERY SCARED OF WHAT ISRAEL MIGHT DO.
Unlike Iran, Israel has demonstrated the willingness to slaughter unarmed civilians on a massive scale — Lebanon 2006 and Gaza 2008-9.
Israel has carried out assassinations, provocations, and demonizing propaganda against not only Iran and its leaders and people but also against the American people and their leaders.
Israel HAS an arsenal of nuclear weapons that is not under the control of ANY objective oversight.
As you say, “We are very scared of what Israel might do.”
The United States has the largest DEFENSE establishment and budget in the world.
And we deploy that DEFENSE capacity and budget to ‘defend’ against a nation that has not harmed the US, has little capacity to harm the US, has no demonstrated plan or tendency to harm the US, while perpetually supporting with money and weapons a state that HAS harmed the US, that has extensive capacity to cause the US further harm (i.e. by inflaming the Middle East); that does have uncontrolled nuclear weapons and that has demonstrated the willingness to use proscribed weapons against civilians, and about whom you and many Americans admit:

WE ARE VERY SCARED OF ISRAEL.

You are not alone, Carrington Ward.

In July 2010, at a forum at the Middle East Policy Center discussing “The Israel-Iran Linkage,” a member of the audience posed this question (quoted verbatim):

“Q:  Okay.  I am Michele Steinberg from Executive Intelligence Review.  And my question begins with something that Paul Pillar mentioned, which is – and it is in my view the most immediate danger that we face as a foreign policy issue and might be the highest priority, which is what do we do here in the United States to ward off a potential unilateral Israeli strike against Iran? 

I have to disagree with the comment that this has left the lexicon of Israeli policymakers. – while maybe openly, but certainly not behind the scenes.  I draw everyone’s attention to two big articles in the Times of London in the last year, complete with maps, what air routes will be taken, submarine capabilities, et cetera, which quotes a myriad of Israeli high policy sources that say we are ready, we are able and we are in the process of convincing the United States to go along with this.

I feared this for a long time since I read “Clean Break” back in 1996, which called for regime change in Iraq and then Iraq.  And I fear it more now after hearing Netanyahu’s interview while he was here and that everything is on the table.  And it’s been reinforced by some of the things that Mr. Indyk has said.  So what can we do to ward off an Israeli strike against Iran from a United States standpoint?

= = =

Isn’t it the job of the United States government to protect its citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic?

And isn’t the first element of that commitment to properly identify the enemy?
Did Sun Tzu have anything to say about knowing who your enemy is?

___________

To his credit, Carrington Ward responded:

“You’re right, I neglected to mention that Israel has a fairly good deterrent of its own.

On the other hand, you can drive across Israel in a few hours, drive across Israel in a tank in a few hours more.

Various assortments of Israel’s neighbors have tried the latter project a couple times in living memory.

I have a modest degree of sympathy with Israeli efforts to build a strong defense force–mind you, I’m in no way happy with Israeli efforts to get past this ‘symptomatic response.’

I have no sympathy with the idea that we in the United States must harness our foreign policy strategy to Israel’s, not least because of the dependence it engenders in Israeli policy.

= = =

Ward gets credit for a civil response, but failed to grapple with the question I asked:  Does Iran pose a genuine threat to Israel? Define it.

No response.

Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric as “existential threat” to Israel

Comment on Netanyahu Shilling for Romney in Florida TV Ad, Tikun Olam, by Richard Silverstein, Sept. 20, 2012.

  In the comment section, mary wrote:  “why does Israel assume it is under a direct and immediate threat of a nuclear attack from Iran? Is it because of Ahmadinejhad’s florid, self-aggrandizing rhetoric? “

Solon to Croesus responded:
Definitely!! It must be!!
Because if the “existential threat” to Israel hinges on Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, that would explain purrfectly how it came to be that AIPAC wrote the first major sanctions against Iran in 1995, TEN YEARS before Ahmadinejad was elected to the presidency.
Before his election in 2005, Ahmadinejad had been mayor of Tehran, where he was on the short-list of the world’s most successful mayors of a major city.
But according to Israel’s own Yossi Melman in “Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran,” Ahmadinejad was on NOBODY’s radar before 2005:  MI6 (or is it -5?) knew nothing about him; ditto for CIA, and Mossad was equally in the dark about Ahmadinejad.
Quite a feat of prophecy to impose sanctions on Iran TEN YEARS before the major threat-or to Israel was known to the threat-ees.

2. On two specific occasions, one in 2008 at the AIPAC conference in DC, the second in Jan. 2012 at a Wilson Center panel discussion, Ephraim Sneh said unequivocally:  “The nukes are not the problem. The problem is the regime; they have got to go.”
On the first occasion, Sneh said, “The Iranian people are incapable of changing their government…We must cause Iran’s leaders to worry how they are going to feed their 70 million people.”  In other words, physician Ephraim Sneh recommended threatening 70 million Iranian civilians with starvation.  Madeleine Albright redux.

On the second occasion, Sneh said that not only must the “regime” be overthrown, Iran’s entire culture should be changed:  “When Iran is secular and democratic, then it can have anything it wants.”

wrt to first situation, Sneh is having his way.  In remarks at the Move Over AIPAC conference in DC in March 2012, Semnan Anderlini told the packed hall that “Iranian children are going without vitamins and cannot find adequate food; Iranian-Americans are fearful of speaking up or speaking out.  YOU speak for 73 million Iranians.”
Well done, Dr. Sneh.  Perhaps Albright can design a pin for you to adorn your chest:  “I starved more people than Madeleine Albright did.”

re Sneh’s second ‘goal,’ the secularization of Iran, 1. It ain’t gonna happen.  Some Iranians still chafe at the imposition of Islam in the 7th century, but most Iranians consider Islam an integral part of their culture.  In “Iran’s Epic and America’s Empire: A Handbook for a Generation in Limbo,” Mahmoud Omidsalar argues that it is a grievous mistake to think of the Shahnameh as Ferdowsi’s complaint at the imposition of Islam: Islam is as integral to the Iranian people as is the epic Shahnameh, which most Iranians can recite and which forms the cultural glue of Iranian society and culture.  Far from castigating Islam, as he wrote in 900 CE, Ferdowsi wove ancient Persian Zoroastrianism and contemporary Islam; as Cyrus had done 1400 years earlier, Ferdowsi melded the cultural legacies of Persians, Turks, Mongols, Arabs and many others who compose the Iranian culture.

Sneh’s drive to shatter that cultural cohesion is the most dangerous agenda of any that I can imagine.

It is also contrary to the norms established by Geneva Conventions.