Exempting Israel From Criticism by Paul Craig Roberts • May 8, 2009 • Printer-friendly

On Oct. 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the U.S. Department of State to monitor anti-Semitism worldwide.

To monitor anti-Semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House. As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.

It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.

It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee-written resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza that were endorsed by 100 percent of the U.S. Senate and 99 percent of the House of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel for its barbarity.

It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.

It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews in the media, finance, and foreign policy.

In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned.

Given the hubris of the U.S. government, which leads Washington to apply U.S. law to every country and organization, what will happen to the International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the various human rights organizations that have demanded investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population? Will they all be arrested for the hate crime of “excessive” criticism of Israel?

This is a serious question.

A recent U.N. report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within U.N. premises in Gaza. The Israeli government has responded by charging that the U.N. report is “tendentious, patently biased,” which puts the U.N. report into the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel sentiment.

Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis. These acts are clearly war crimes.

It was the Israeli press that published pictures of Israeli soldiers wearing T-shirts that indicate the willful murder of women and children is now the culture of the Israeli army. The T-shirts are horrific expressions of barbarity. For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, “One shot, two kills.” These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is one of extermination.

It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli peace groups. For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of the organization Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the Western democracies, where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even praised.

Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper? Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-Semitic act”?

Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel. These Americans will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror. They will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts about Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding and abetting terrorists.

A massive push is under way to criminalize criticism of Israel. American university professors have fallen victim to the well-organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Roman Catholic university because of the power of the Israel lobby. Now the Israel lobby is after University of California professor William Robinson, reports Doug Henwood. Robinson’s crime? His course on global affairs included some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

The Israel lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice Department that it is anti-Semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying. The Israel lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges. Yet, Larry Franklin, the Department of Defense official accused of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and seven months in prison.

The absurdity is extraordinary. The two Israeli agents are not guilty of receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to them! If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving secrets to a spy?

Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American, rather than Israeli, interests. It eliminates any prospect of Americans escaping from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.

To keep American minds captive, the lobby is working to ban as anti-Semitic any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel. It is permissible to criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel, and anti-Semitism will soon be a universal hate crime in the Western world.

Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust. It is a crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6 million Jews were murdered.

With all that we have heard about the Holocaust, surely the facts must be there. Why does the Israel lobby consider the case for the Holocaust to be so weak that it is impermissible to study the facts and to reach an independent conclusion?

Why is the Holocaust a subject that is off limits to examination? How could a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and anti-Semites? Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by thought control.

Imprisoning people for doubts is the antithesis of modernity.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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