ReDiscover 9/11

Mohamed El-Moctar El-Shinqiti
aljazeera.net

Aggression immersed in victimhood is a striking reality of the Israeli discourse

An American academic once told me: “Many people in the Islamic world think America does not believe in human rights, but they are wrong; America believes in human rights indeed, the problem is the American definition of human.”

In other words: the American definition of ‘human’ is not a universal one. This is not purely an American characteristic; every culture faces the challenge of broadening its cultural limits and universalising its moral norms.

But among all human cultures and ideologies, the Israeli case is unique in its double standard.

Criminality wrapped in self-righteousness and aggression immersed in victimhood are a few striking characteristics of the Israeli reality and discourse.

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Ludwig Watzal
CounterPunch
22 June 2010

Jeremy Milgram is a member of “Rabbis for Human Rights” and a participant in the inter-religious dialogue in Israel. He lives in Jerusalem.

Ludwig Watzal: What do you think of Israel´s handeling of the Gazean freedom flotillas?

Jeremy Milgram: Pretty bad. Excessive use of force. We have known this for a long time when it comes to demonstrations by Palestinians. This time it was an excessive and inappropriate use of force against Europeans and Internationals. The people today did not do anything illegal. They tried to get into Gaza. These are terrible moments in Israeli society.  

My feelings are that Israel`s reckless reaction to the boats should make a lot of people very nervous, as well as the fact that Israel continues to posses atomic bombs. This was poor policy by Israel in terms of responding to a non-threat in case of the boats. Just imagine the reaction if there would have been a real threat from Iran.

Why does the Israeli government react to every crisis with such ferocity? 

The idea of always using force and to be the first in using force as a last resort, has to do with the identities of those who are in charge, the group of seven who make the decisions [the so-called security cabinet L. W.] Of those seven, three were military commanders: Netanyahu, Yaalon, Barak, Lieberman and Yihsai are off-the-wall: they are people to whom you don´t want to give any power. We have a very inadequate leadership.

Has the reliance on force anything to do with the holocaust trauma?

There is an abnormal amount of fear. I think of the fear that is being manufactured from above. By this fear, any anger regarding what we suffered in the holocaust is redirected from Christian Europe to the Muslim Middle East. I think this is a manipulation. But I think also that Israelis are really afraid. The Palestinian resistance, which has also taken violent forms has been a catastrophe because it hardened Israeli attitude. Israelis are thus afraid to make any change, such as to relinquish any piece of land or accord the Palestinians any geographic advantage, even if they have a bad conscience.

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Shabana Syed
Arab News
14 June 2010

Israeli-born British jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon

According to the famous Israeli-born Jazz musician, Gilad Atzmon, “The ideology that carried out execution-style killings on the Gaza aid flotilla the ‘Mavi Marmara’ is the same ideology that carried out the massacres at Deir Yassin, Qibya, Sabra and Shatilla, Qana, Gaza, Jenin and the murder of Rachel Corrie — more than that it is the same ideology that killed Christ.”

He continues: “there is no biological, racial or ethnic continuum between the ancient Israelites and the contemporary Israelis. The attack on the aid convoy is a continuum of the same ideology that killed Christ. Christ’s killing is a symbol of a brutal assault against goodness, in the same way the attack on the aid convoy was against humanity and compassion.” Speaking to Arab News after the deadly attack on the aid Flotilla where 9 peace activists were shot dead and around 50 injured Atzmon was scathing against Israel’s actions and demanded that it should be stripped of its UN membership.

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Hasan Suroor
The Hindu
1 June 2010

File photo of Mordechai Vanunu (centre). Mordechai Vanunu's case is as much about suppressing dissent by a supposedly democratic state as it is a demonstration of western double standards.

Had Mordechai Vanunu been, say, an Iranian or a Russian whistle-blower and facing persecution at home, he would have been assured of a prominent place in the western pantheon of heroes. But he is an Israeli dissident and Israel’s friends in the West have no time for him.

The Morocco-born Mr. Vanunu first hit the headlines more than two decades ago when he revealed details of Israel’s secret nuclear programme to a British newspaper — an offence for which he served a long jail term. Since then, he has been fighting an almost lone battle against harassment by successive Israeli administrations even though since his release in 2004 he has not said or done anything to harm the country’s security.

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9/11’s a lie–WHO are the liars?

We are conditioned not to criticize our controllers. If we are afraid to tell the truth, we are enslaved already.
The Jewish mafia should be treated like the Italian mafia…jail the guilty and don’t generalize/prejudge a people for the criminals hiding amongst and behind them.

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Peter Beinart
The New York Review of Books
12 May 2010

In 2003, several prominent Jewish philanthropists hired Republican pollster Frank Luntz to explain why American Jewish college students were not more vigorously rebutting campus criticism of Israel. In response, he unwittingly produced the most damning indictment of the organized American Jewish community that I have ever seen.

The philanthropists wanted to know what Jewish students thought about Israel. Luntz found that they mostly didn’t. “Six times we have brought Jewish youth together as a group to talk about their Jewishness and connection to Israel,” he reported. “Six times the topic of Israel did not come up until it was prompted. Six times these Jewish youth used the word ‘they‘ rather than ‘us‘ to describe the situation.”

That Luntz encountered indifference was not surprising. In recent years, several studies have revealed, in the words of Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College and Ari Kelman of the University of California at Davis, that “non-Orthodox younger Jews, on the whole, feel much less attached to Israel than their elders,” with many professing “a near-total absence of positive feelings.” In 2008, the student senate at Brandeis, the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored university in America, rejected a resolution commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the Jewish state.

Luntz’s task was to figure out what had gone wrong. When he probed the students’ views of Israel, he hit up against some firm beliefs. First, “they reserve the right to question the Israeli position.” These young Jews, Luntz explained, “resist anything they see as ‘group think.’” They want an “open and frank” discussion of Israel and its flaws. Second, “young Jews desperately want peace.” When Luntz showed them a series of ads, one of the most popular was entitled “Proof that Israel Wants Peace,” and listed offers by various Israeli governments to withdraw from conquered land. Third, “some empathize with the plight of the Palestinians.” When Luntz displayed ads depicting Palestinians as violent and hateful, several focus group participants criticized them as stereotypical and unfair, citing their own Muslim friends.

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