The HyperTexts
Israeli Tail Wags U.S. Dog
compiled and edited by Michael R. Burch,
an editor and publisher of Holocaust poetry
If Americans want peace rather than never-ending acts of terrorism and war, it is past
time for them to stop subscribing to myths, and begin facing and confronting
painful truths. The simple, obvious truth is that 9/11 was not the result of
"irrational religion" on the part of Islamic extremists, but that 9/11 was a
terrible but reasoned response to earlier and far greater acts of terrorism by
the governments of Israel and the United States. If we want to avoid future acts
of terrorism and more unwinnable wars, we, the American people, need to end our
government’s acts of terrorism — now, today.
It is important to understand that the victims of 9/11 were innocent, but
that their government was not. When the government of Nazi Germany committed
crimes against peace and humanity, many innocent German individuals suffered and
died as a result. When we live in collective societies with collective
governments, we cannot escape the fact that the sins of our societies and
governments can have terrible consequences for innocent individuals. When the
governments of Israel and the U.S. elect to perpetrate all sorts of horrors on
completely innocent Muslim women and children, how can we fail to understand
that the men who love them will act to defend them?
The most comprehensive examination of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was
conducted by the 9/11 Commission, co-chaired by Thomas H. Kean, a former
governor of New Jersey, and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Indiana congressman. The
9-11 Commission was chartered to "prepare a full and complete
account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks." [My italics.]
Together Kean and Hamilton have written Without Precedent: The Inside Story
of the 9/11 Commission. So we are privy to an "inside view" of the proceedings
and can hear what the men who led the investigation discovered and thought
themselves.
Before I continue, providing information "from the horses’ mouths," so to
speak, please allow me to state my main premise, which I will then attempt to
prove with simple, verifiable facts. My main premise is this: 9/11 and the
subsequent wars were caused primarily by U.S. government support of the terrible
racial injustices of Israel, which include apartheid, ethnic cleansing, Jim Crow
laws and kangaroo courts, torture, extrajudicial assassinations, home
demolitions, and the arrest and imprisonment of minors.
In effect, the Israeli
tail wags the U.S. dog, costing Americans thousands of lives, national security,
and trillions of dollars.
I am an editor and publisher of Holocaust poetry, not an anti-Semite. What I
conclude and say has nothing to do with racism against Jews. It has everything
to do with the racism and injustices of the government of Israel, which are
aided and abetted by the government of the United States.
I largely agree with Ron Corvus, who wrote: "I define ‘terrorism against
America’ as stateless, individual, Islamic criminal acts designed to free
Islamists/Palestinians from decades of U.S.-Israeli foreign policies of illegal
occupation, murder and systematic abuse. We shouldn't be breaking our laws and
violating our constitution in 'huntin' em down and killin' 'em all;' instead, we
should eliminate the motivation of terrorists targeting America for terrorism.
But first we must identify and collectively realize the motivation of terrorists
seeking to attack America. The 9/11 Commission did achieve this feat. [But] both the Democratic and Republican parties believe that the solution to
terrorism against America is to kill all the terrorists—present and future
tense. Both the Democratic and Republican parties do NOTHING to eliminate the
motivation of the terrorists who target America for terrorism. Both the
Democratic and Republican parties believe the best ‘solution’ is to kill anyone
physically opposing U.S.-Israeli policies. Both the Democratic and Republican
parties promise to keep troops in numerous nations to ‘fight terrorism.’ Both
the Democratic and Republican parties believe they have the right to invade
sovereign nations at will, commandeer their schools and dictate the lessons
taught [to] children in their classrooms. Both the Democratic and Republican
parties suffer an incredible arrogance of power, subsidized by a blatant
disregard of our U.S. Constitution and laws.
The reason the Democratic and Republican parties refuse to address the issue
of eliminating the motivation of terrorist is because both parties do not want
the American people to understand the motivation of the 9/11 hijackers
and other terrorists targeting America. This would mean voting our pro-Israeli
Congress OUT of office! The FBI testified to the 9/11 Commission that the
motivation of the 9/11 hijackers was U.S. support of Israel; however, the FBI's
statements were left out of the 9/11 Commission Report. You can see a video of
it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n9_EwIQBYE."
If you don’t believe me or Ron Corvus, please at least consider the thought
processes and findings of Lee Hamilton. Lee Hamilton is president and director of
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and director of The Center
on Congress at Indiana University. He represented Indiana in Congress for 34
years and served as chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on
Foreign Affairs. He also chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East,
the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Select Committee to
Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, the Joint Economic Committee,
and the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. As a member of the
House Standards of Official Conduct Committee, he was a primary draftsman of
several House ethics reforms.
In other words, Hamilton is a senior statesman, and very knowledgeable about
U.S. foreign policy, intelligence and affairs in the Middle East.
The 9/11 Commission was charged with explaining what happened on 9/11, and
why it happened. [My italics.] While the most popular explanation for the
motivation of the 9/11 terrorists is Islamic fundamentalism (i.e., irrational
religion), the 9/11 Commission discovered that religious orthodoxy was not a
common denominator, since some of the hijackers used alcohol and drugs, while
others engaged in casual sex. Instead, hatred of American foreign policy in the
Middle East seems to have been the prime motivation.
Another popular explanation is that Islamic terrorists "hate American
values," but in reality it seems the 9/11 terrorists actually embraced a
swinging American lifestyle.
On September 20, 2001, George Bush famously (or infamously) told a joint
session of Congress and the American people that the men responsible for 9/11
"hate our freedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our
freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."
According to a charismatic moron, "they" hate us because "they" hate our
freedoms and values. But is this really true?
We may not care for the values of people in the Middle East, but how many of
us would go out of our way, much less sacrifice our lives, to murder thousands
of innocents over a difference in values and lifestyles? Do it make any sense to
believe that other people are killing Americans over differences of opinion?
Thus, a prime question becomes: is the hatred of the men we call "terrorists"
in any way warranted? Do Muslims, perhaps, have legitimate grievances against
the governments of Israel and the United States? If Muslims lack the military
wherewithal to combat the governments of Israel and the U.S. directly, does this
explain the use of guerilla tactics? Is it possible that the men we so easily
label "terrorists" see millions of completely innocent Muslim women and children
as the victims of terror, and are trying to defend them, with very limited
means?
There is also the troubling question: was either war justified? As Terry
McDermott, writing in the Los Angeles Times, said: "Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed, the man who conceived and directed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was
motivated by his strong disagreement with American support for Israel, said the
final report of the Sept. 11 commission. Mohammed conceived the initial outline
of the attack six years before its execution and brought the plan to al-Qaida
leader Osama bin Laden because he thought he did not have the resources to carry
it out on his own. The Sept. 11 report contains the fullest accounting of
Mohammed's overarching role from original conception to supervision of details.
Bin Laden, too, was fully involved, selecting all or most of the participants,
ordering the substance and the location of their training, and contributing to
the timing of the attacks and the selection of targets, the report says. [But]
the report makes a strong case that al-Qaida accomplished the attacks
without any hint of state sponsorship. [My italics.] The report also
appears to lay to rest the notion, long alluded to by administration officials
including Vice President Dick Cheney, that hijacker Mohamed Atta traveled to the
Czech Republic to meet an Iraqi intelligence operative in the spring of 2001. In
addition to repeating evidence that Atta was in the United States at the time,
the report revealed that the Iraqi agent was not in Prague either when the
meeting was alleged to have occurred."
Should the U.S. invade and destroy entire nations because of the actions of
small numbers of individuals who have legitimate grievances against our
government? Should thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of
completely innocent women and children be killed, mutilated and/or left homeless
and destitute, because Israeli robber barons want to acquire "free" land from
Palestinian farm families, at the expense of American taxpayers?
Furthermore, on August 13, 2006 there was a very interesting exchange between
a reporter for the Institute for Public Accuracy and 9/11 Commissioners Hamilton
and Keane, outside the NBC studios in Upper Northwest Washington ...
Reporter: "I'd like to ask a foreign policy thing, gentlemen. You spoke about
the motivation of the terrorists and how to decipher them. This is Bin Laden's
statement from October 2004, and he's talking about his – what he says his
initial motivation is — in seeing the Israeli [and the U.S. Sixth Fleet]
bombing of Lebanon, back in 1982. To quote: ‘When I saw those destroyed towers
in Lebanon it sparked in my mind that the oppressors should be punished in the
same way and that we should destroy towers in America so that they can taste
what we tasted and so they will stop killing our women and children.’
[My italics.] Now, now, his stated and his real goals — just like other
politicians stated goals and real goals — might be different. But those are his
stated motivations, that he says to the people of the region and to us ..."
Hamilton: "Osama bin Laden is a very skillful propagandist. He weaves all
kinds of possible appeals to the radicalized Muslim world. Some of it is
religious, theological, philosophical. Some of it relates to American policy.
The original thing that set off Osama bin Laden was the presence of American
forces in Saudi Arabia."
[Please note that even Hamilton seems to refuse to address the main concern
of many Muslim men: that the governments and militaries of Israel and the U.S.
are killing Muslim women and children. Is this propaganda, or simply the truth?]
Reporter: "Which have been removed ..."
Hamilton: "Which have now been removed, that's correct, but ..."
Reporter: "So he [inaudible] ..."
Hamilton: "I think it is, I think it is — well — we withdrew those, I
think, for our own interests. You can argue whether he would claim it's a
victory, we would not, of course. But the point is that he cleverly weaves a lot
of different appeals to get this radicalized Muslim world ..."
Reporter: "But don't make matters worse? Now we're backing another Israeli
invasion of Lebanon — aren't we planting the seeds of further terrorism? Aren't
we putting out the fire with gasoline here? And you can do all the security
measures, all the law enforcement, but if that continues isn't that a
fundamental argument ..."
Hamilton: Foreign policy gets very complicated. When you take certain
actions to support a friend, the security of Israel, as we did, it has
consequences. No question about it.
This is what I mean by "the Israeli tail wagging the U.S. dog." Why should
American taxpayers pay trillions of dollars, and thousands of American citizens
and soldiers die, in support of an insane plan for Israeli Jews to "cleanse" all
Palestine of Palestinians? Aren’t Palestinian women and children every bit as
human as Jewish women and children?
But in any case, shockingly, perhaps the most important testimony and the
commission’s most important conclusion were stricken from the commission’s
final, written report! Let us closely and carefully examine what happened on the
last day of the commission’s public proceedings ...
TWELFTH PUBLIC HEARING
The 9/11 Plot and National Crisis Management
National Transportation Safety Board Conference Center, Washington, D.C.
June 16-17, 2004
During the twelfth and last public hearing conducted by the commission, Vice
Chair Hamilton asked FBI Special Agent James Fitzgerald, "You’ve looked [at] and
examined the lives of these people as closely as anybody . . . What have you
found out about why these men did what they did? What motivated them to do it?"
Fitzgerald replied, "I believe they feel a sense of outrage against the
United States. They identify with the Palestinian problem, they identify with
people who oppose repressive regimes, and I believe they tend to focus their
anger on the United States."
Reinforcing Fitzgerald’s analysis, the commission also discovered that the
original plan for 9/11 envisioned an even larger attack. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,
the main strategist of the 9/11 plot, "was going to fly the final plane, land it
and make a speech denouncing U.S. policies in the Middle East."
The commission also discovered that the terrorist pilots shared the same
motivation. Both Mohammed Atta, the pilot who crashed into World Trade Center 1,
and Marwan al Shehhi, the pilot who crashed into WTC 2, were angry about what
Israel was doing to the Palestinians. According to the commission’s report,
"when someone asked why he and Atta never laughed, Shehhi retorted, ‘How can you
laugh when people are dying in Palestine?’" The report also showed that the
architect of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, shared the same motivation. "By his
own account, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s animus toward the United States stemmed
not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent
disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel."
According to James Barnford, the conflict between Israel and Palestine was
always at the heart of 9/11. "It's central', he said. "It's not the only thing,
but it's the central thing." [Page 248, A Pretext to a War.]
In his own book, Hamilton says that he "felt that there had to be an
acknowledgment that a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was vital
to America’s long-term relationship with the Islamic world, and that the
presence of American forces in the Middle East was a major motivating factor in
Al Qaeda’s actions."
But shockingly this conclusion, and Fitzgerald’s testimony were stricken from
the official record.
In Ivan Eland’s review, "9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the
Cause of the Attacks" he makes the point that the book "usefully details the
[Bush] administration’s willful misrepresentation of its incompetent actions
that day, but makes the shocking admission that some commission members
deliberately wanted to distort an even more important issue. Apparently,
unidentified commissioners wanted to cover up the fact that U.S. support for
Israel was one of the motivating factors behind al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Although
Hamilton, to his credit, argued for saying that the reasons al Qaeda committed
the heinous strike were the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and
American support for Israel, the panel watered down that frank conclusion to
state that U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. policy on
Iraq are "dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim
world."
As another reviewer put it, "Some commissioners wanted to cover up the link
between the 9/11 attack and U.S. support for Israel because this might imply
that the United States should alter policy and lessen its support for Israeli
actions. How right they were. The question is simple: if the vast bulk of
Americans would be safer if U.S. politicians moderated their slavish support of
Israel, designed to win the support of key pressure groups at home, wouldn’t it
be a good idea to make this change in course? Average U.S. citizens might
attenuate their support for Israel if the link between the 9/11 attacks and
unquestioning U.S. favoritism for Israeli excesses were more widely known."
Congress is now threatening sanctions against Palestinians for seeking
UN membership
The United States claims to support Palestinian statehood but Congress is now
threatening sanctions against Palestinians for seeking UN membership.
The Independent recently reported that even before Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas submitted Palestine's UN membership application, members
of Congress had quietly placed "holds" on spending already allocated
for U.S.
assistance to Palestinians.
And now, as if that weren't bad enough, Congress is considering additional
far-reaching sanctions against Palestinians as punishment for seeking UN
membership.
Palestine has waited more than 64 years to become a UN member. The Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: "For years now
I have heard the word 'Wait!'... This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.'"
The worst stumbling block to freedom's advance, King argued, is the person who
"believes he can set the timetable for another" person's freedom.
Congress remains deaf to the demands of the people as the "Super Committee"
meets behind closed doors to debate deficit cutting measures that are likely to
bring additional cuts to the critical social services that should be guaranteed
to all. Yet $30 billion in military aid to Israel remains untouched, a budgetary
"sacred cow."
Ongoing massive ethnic cleansing in broad daylight happening now in the 21st
Century!!!
by Zahi Damuni
Israel approves plan to relocate 30,000 Bedouin from "unrecognized villages."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet on Sunday approved a plan
to relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin from their "unrecognized villages" into
settlements with official state status.
The plan emerges from the Prawer Report, drafted to find a solution to the
problem of unrecognized villages in the Negev.
As part of the plan, some 20,000 to 30,000 Bedouon will be relocated to
recognized settlements including Rahat, Khura and Ksayfe. The plan also includes
financial compensation for those relocated, as well as alternate plots of land.
The program is estimated to cost the state NIS 6.8 billion.
Opponents of the plan have accusing the government of evacuating people from
their homes for no justified reason and against their will.
Bedouin representative called the decision "a declaration of war," and some
150 members of the community gathered outside the prime minister's office in
Jerusalem on Sunday to protest the decision.
"This stupid government will be responsible for a Bedouin Intifada in the
Negev," said Arab MK Taleb al-Sana, who took part in the protest.
Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, slammed the
government's approval of the plan as a major violation of basic rights, pointing
out that it would result in the uprooting of tens of thousands of people and the
demolition of many Bedouin villages.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel in June submitted its objections
to the Prawer Report and argued that the conditions it sets for recognizing
Bedouin villages are prejudicial.
These include meeting minimal levels of population density, contiguity and
economic sustainability. The criteria established, the organization maintains,
flout principles of equality and justice in the distribution of resources. "If
the same criteria were applied to the Jewish population, whole settlements—
including community settlements, observatories, kibbutzim and moshavim—would
be doomed," the association notes.
Moreover, according to its claims, Bedouin villages are planned without
considering the needs of the population, which is largely agrarian and rural,
not urban. The association also opposes making any planning for the Bedouin
conditional on settling disputes over land ownership.
Why does the government of Israel continue to practice apartheid and ethnic
cleansing in the 21st century?
The HyperTexts