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In his last interview - after the 1967 six-day war - the historian Isaac Deutscher, whose next-of-kin had died in the Nazi camps and whose surviving relations lived in Israel, said: "To justify or condone Israel's wars against the Arabs is to render Israel a very bad service indeed and harm its own long-term interest." Comparing Israel to Prussia, he issued a sombre warning: "The Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase 'Man kann sich totseigen!' 'You can triumph yourself to death'."
The Guardian (Tariq Ali, July 20 2006)
Photo; Emilio Morenatti - AP
'Palestinian women grieve at the funeral of 18-year old Khalil Abu Mugheisid, who witnesses say was killed by an Israeli tank shell in the southern Gaza Strip town of Deir Al Balah.' Washington Post
This week we were reminded yet again of the price of 'democracy', both at home in the UK and abroad. In the Middle East over 300 civilians have been killed in the airstrikes over Lebanon by the State of Israel - a state immune to the vagaries of International Law or even the opinion of their supporters in Western Europe.
Without minimising the effect of the rocket strikes by Hizbullah on the civilians within Israel, or the psychological effect that the kidnap of the three soldiers had on the most powerful army in the region; anyone who supposes that the bombing of civilian areas, killing children and refugees is not a war crime, has obviously substituted their moral code with the ethics of brutalism.
'A child is killed in an Israeli attack that caught villagers trying to flee Lebanon on a main road near the southern border. At least 13 civilians were killed in the attack, which happened after Israeli forces issued warnings over loudspeakers for residents to evacuate.' Washington Post
Photo; Nasser-Nasser-AP, Washinton Post
It is hard to remember now the Israeli missile hitting the beach in Gaza and killing the Palestinian family, and the Israeli Government's pathetic denials of responsibility soon afterwards; contradicted by various impartial international organisations. We have forgotten that this was just one more transgression perpetrated by a state that regards itself as a "European-style democracy"; along with assassinations, incursions into a sovereign territory, the punishment of civilians, a blockade of all border crossings leading to impoverishment and a state run on a system of religio/racial apartheid.
Instead, we are led to believe, the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world are vengeful perpetrators of violence, immune to the lure of democratic ideas; initiating violence against the Jewish people for the sake of a place in Heaven.
Bush and his cronies have their own reasons for their policy of aiding Israel in spreading this 'meme'; partly to do with domestic votes and funding, and partly because Israel is their largest and most effective proxy army in that area - with an annual budget of over £7billion. Think how easy it would be to live in peace with their neighbours if some of that money had been invested in Palestine; in business start-ups, hospitals and infrastructure. Call me a fantasist, but only people who have nothing to lose and a life in Hell will be prepared to strap on a suicide jacket and be blown to pieces.
However, the US Government has decided to start its war on Iran and Syria, by using its proxy force in the region - the Israeli Defence Force and Air Force - to 'soften up' the edges of their influence in preparation for the full onslaught.
It is clear that the fears of the majority of European Jews up until the Second World War has been borne out; that Zionism was a right-wing pseudo theology, which in fact contradicted the basic ethics of Judaism, and could lead to tragedy and disaster for both all of the people in and around Palestine.
It was only after the horror of the Holocaust that the Western Powers aided the flight of the Jewish peoples to Palestine; partly through guilt, partly what they perceived as self-interest. Most European Jews before 1945 were socialist, urbane, and not overly religious. They felt at home in a liberal Europe and had little interest in returning to a land inhabited by another people with many different traditions and histories.
In Britain, the Labour Party, which was then a socialist party, contained many Jewish members and more than a few MP's - nearly all avowedly anti-Zionist, and internationalist.
However, the Labour Party's transformation into the Thatcherite New Labour under Tony Blair, with the majority of MP's prepared to follow the Friends of Israel, and their uncritical support for whatever rationale is given in Tel-Aviv for unlimited aggression, has been a process clouded in shady dealings.
One only has to look at the career of Robert Maxwell; resistance fighter, MI6 agent, press baron and Labour MP for a while; a fraudster who left thousands of his employees without pensions after robbing his company coffers, and conveniently toppled from his boat a few days before his company collapsed, and was then given a hero's burial on the Mount of Olives.
Whose hand is up the puppet's back? Levy and Blair in happier days
Then later to the neferarious influence of Lord Levy in the Labour Party; a man that originally met young Tony Blair on a trip to Israel and emerged within days of former leader John Smith's premature death, to fund Blair's incontestable rise to the top, and consequently the transformation of a long-awaited Labour victory to Toryism with a toothy grin.
The British Police are essentially a political force now; controlling the pressure-cooker of our neo-american society. If you're being mugged on the street, don't bother looking for a bobby, they won't want to get involved; but if you're of a slightly dark complexion hurrying to get to work, don't carry a rucksack without body armour.
State Theatre set-piece shows like Forest Gate are justified by the racheting up of tension and fear by the political class; and if it all goes a bit wrong - hey! no-one gets named or blamed, and we all forget by the time of the next one, don't we . . . ?
The politicians, especially those in the Blair Administration, justify and support anything done in the name of the "War on Terror"; yet we, the people, now live in conditions of fear which they themselves are largely immune to, thanks to their life within the bubble of power.
We feel like this because of their incessant propaganda, because of the society that they have created for us, and those they chose to make war on without our support
After allegations of impropriety made by Nationalist MP's (Scottish National Party MP Angus MacNeill, was the MP whose complaint triggered the investigation) the police have arrested the pop-baron Levy for treating the House of Lords like an extension of the singles chart. Payola is the name of the game; and for some peculiar reason, what has been an open secret in the world of domestic politics since the days of Lloyd George has now become a scandal crawling towards the door of No.10 Downing Street.
Instead of being a courageous socialist leader with a massive majority in 1997, who would have followed Devolution with a Bill abolishing the Lords as a concept best left in (medieval) history and replaced it with an elected second chamber, the Blair Government preferred to tinker with the status quo and replace aristocracy with 'meritocracy'.
This idea of 'meritocracy' means the creation of a new, self-perpetuating parasite class, convinced of their own - and their childrens' - superiority and 'right to govern'. It also means a quick source of funding from snob-businessmen, not usually thought of as philanthropists or socialists - who are keen to see their 'benevolence' towards society rewarded by a grateful establishment. Despite the fact that this benevolence is usually expressed through a few charity-tax breaks and the swift transfer of money earnt from the sweat of British workers being squirelled abroad to tax-havens ( see 'Sir' Peter Green for instance); these people are regarded by the Blairites as victors of 'the real world', not nurses or bus drivers who have to deal with the sharp end of the society that he has created. In fact, the only 'public services' that remain immune to criticism are the police and their shadowy colleagues in the 'intelligence services'.
Without even the oversight provided by the Senate Committees in the United States; and with no Constitution embedded in British Law; the individual's only recourse for some sort of justice in the UK has been to appeal to the European Court, a process that takes many years.
Just as in the US, '9/11' and '7/7' have become slogans or religious mantras chanted by every arm of the State, from Blair downwards; to justify every oppression and aggression, every creeping inch of the State on your back, in your bed, in your mind.
Neither event has been given the benefit of an open Public Inquiry in their respective country, despite the pleas of politicians, victims and the public themselves for these to take place.
Any questioning of the 'received history' - the formulas in which these emotive events are wrapped inside to provide clear examples of 'good versus evil' and 'them versus us' are condemned as conspiracy or 'insensitive'.
Instead, they have been used to justify aggressive war against two countries - Afghanistan and Iraq - and a perception that Islam has some world-plan never considered by the Crusaders of the West; despite a history which included slavery, Victorian Colonialism, the genocide of the natives of the Americas, both North and South, and the transformation of all peoples into bonded slaves under the yoke of Corporate Capitalism.
The result of the "War on Terror" is a war by the Western Establishment on us, all the people without bodyguards, armoured cars, secret service personnel watching out for us.
They have allowed the question of Palestine to fester for 50 years, allowing the State of Israel to expand into other sovereign states, denying rights to people who have lived there for thousands of years. They have equipped this State with an arsenal, both conventional and nuclear which makes peaceful negotiation or diplomacy pointless - it's easier to threaten and destroy.
The result is an international underclass of people in the Muslim world who feel they have no option but to engage in this war that the West has engineered; from the replacement of the only real Iraqi Government with Saddam in the 60's, to the destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan and now the Lebanon in the 21st Century.
Sadly, the State of Israel itself may not survive the hatred that has been built up in this time; whatever superiority they have in the arms race will not help once the oil runs out in the region and the US abandons its client and good-time friend.
President Bush, a man whose granddaddy worked tirelessly for the Third Reich, and left him a trust fund based on the business, has no particular love for the Jewish people. In fact, his greatest supporters believe that Israel is only important in the context of the Armaggedon rapture, which may yet prove to be the greatest self-fulfilling prophecy ever made.
The tragedy for the people of Britain is that they are now unwilling victims; dragged whimpering into the 'War on Terror' by Blair's only real master; the US Presidency. Every other day brings news of the deaths of some poor-boy soldiers on the dusty plains of Iraq, or the mountains of Afghanistan. Holidaymakers have become targets, people on their way to work, or even those shot in their own houses by over -eager gun squads.
And all the while, that shallow democracy we are fighting so hard to 'impose' on other countries, disappears from our own; the freedom to question anything; to express the idea that the freedom of thought is the most basic human right, beyond morality, (for thought itself is not moral or immoral); the rights to protest against our own regimes or even that of our imperial master; we are losing them all.
The greatest enemy to these freedoms are the 'psychologies of control' which have been developed by the establishment to make us think that there is still choice, that we have our own opinions, that we are individuals rather than slavebots, microserfs, dumb impressionable creatures following predictable paths from cradle to grave.
Our television is crammed with lifestyle programmes and 'reality TV' - one of the great misnomers - pushing the aspirations of the poor majority into hyperdrive; most are struggling to achieve a basic standard of living without sinking into the morass of debt through over-inflated mortgages or rent. Judged now by what you can buy, rather than what you can do, what you know or how you contribute to society, we are caught in a whirl of super-consumerism which has reached the point of fetishism, where mundane or useless objects are given sacred status.
All this while the world's environment is burning up faster than we can save it, the animals are disappearing - species after species - and our children's children will be stranded on a concrete and tarmac wasteland, with the polluted waves that were once the Arctic icecap lapping around their feet.
The television news is presented differently for each class; check the difference between channels, dependant on the 'social profiling' of their audience.
The same is true of the newspapers; tabloids exploiting the ignorance of their readership to keep them stupid and subservient. They run on a diet of scandal and petty vindictiveness - Kate Moss or Gary Glitter, Beauty or the Beast - leaving the readership assuming that they are to stupid to understand, too uninformed, and powerless, to deal with the real problems of our society.
The broadsheets are generally owned by the same media barons; and although not as patronising, they do not ultimately challenge the status quo, or question too deeply the 'received versions' of history.
And the Government we are saddled with, like beasts of burden, whip us on into the arms of the corporate thieves. They surrender us to the whims and bigotry of the regime in Washington who have created their own version of the human jungle in the USA, spreading out across the globe; where the biggest beasts eat all below them and profit from the spread of war.
This is why it is the duty of everyone;
Not just to do or die
But maybe ask the questions
WHY ????
We hope we'll make someone, somewhere pause to think; because stopping to think, or even read has become regarded as superfluous and a luxury in this shallow society; and once people can think, they start to act as human beings, with free will and direction, and some regard for all those others stuck on this rock whirling through the limitless mass of space.
STOP THE KILLING - STOP THE WAR!!!
Photo; Hassan Ammar - AFP-Getty Images
'The bodies of eighteen civilians caught in the attack near Shamaa are lined up outside the hospital in Tyre. The civilians were caught in helicopter fire as they tried to flee their villages.' Washington Post
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