Pirates of the Mediterranean by Paul Craig Roberts • July 6, 2009 • Printer-friendly

On June 30, the government of Israel committed an act of piracy when the Israeli Navy in international waters illegally boarded the Spirit of Humanity, kidnapped its 21-person crew from 11 countries, including former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire, and confiscated the cargo of medical supplies, olive trees, reconstruction materials and children’s toys that were on the way to the Mediterranean coast of Gaza. The Spirit of Humanity, along with the kidnapped 21 persons, is being towed to Israel as I write.

Gaza has been described as the “world’s largest concentration camp.” It is home to 1.5 million Palestinians who were driven by force of American-supplied Israeli arms out of their homes, off their farms and out of their villages so that Israel could steal their land and make the Palestinian land available to Israeli settlers.

What we have been witnessing for 60 years is a replay in modern times, despite the United Nations and laws strictly preventing Israel’s theft of Palestine, of the 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century theft of American Indian lands by U.S. settlers. An Israeli government spokesman recently rebuked the president of the United States, a country, the Israeli said, who stole all of its land from Indians, for complaining about Israel’s theft of Palestine.

I knew the Spirit of Humanity would fall to Israeli piracy the minute I received a “public advisory” on June 25 from an official of an Israeli peace organization that the government of Cyprus had withheld permission for the Spirit of Humanity to leave for Gaza. The U.S. State Department had advised, “The Israeli Foreign Ministry informed U.S. officials at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv that Israel still considers Gaza an area of conflict and that any boats attempting to sail to Gaza will not be permitted to reach its destination.” The Spirit of Humanity obtained permission to leave Cyprus when all aboard signed a waiver absolving Cyprus of all responsibility for the crew’s safety at the hands of the Israelis.

As President Obama has called for humanitarian aid to be sent to Gaza, and as the International Red Cross has damned the inhumanity of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, the question that immediately comes to mind is why the United States did not send sufficient U.S. Navy escort to see the Spirit of Humanity safely through international waters to Gaza. We send ships against Somali pirates, why not against Israeli ones?

We all know the answer. The United States talks a good “human rights” game, but never delivers—especially if the human rights abuser is Israel. After all, Israel owns the U.S. Congress and President Obama. Israel even has an Israeli citizen and former member of the Israeli Defense Forces as the chief of staff in Obama’s White House. Israel owns millions of American “Christian Zionists” and “rapture evangelicals.” When it comes to Israel, the American government is a puppet state. It does what it is told.

Macho Americans might stand tall, but not when Israel snaps its fingers.

Israel, of course, will get away with a mere act of piracy. After all, Israel has been getting away with its war crimes and violations of international law for 60 years. If the United Nations tries to do anything, the United States will veto it, as it has done for decades.

What will happen to the kidnapped foreign nationals? Most likely they will be released and sent back to their respective countries. Israel, of course, will keep the stolen Spirit of Humanity to foreclose any further attempts by human rights activists to run Israel’s inhumane blockade of Gaza.

On the other hand, Israel might declare its captives to be terrorists on the ground that the Gazans chose in a free election Hamas as their government. Hamas, unlike Israel, is declared to be a terrorist organization by the puppet American State Department in Washington. Thus, the human rights activists on board the Spirit of Humanity are aiding and abetting terrorists by delivering goods to them. The U.S. Department of Justice (sic) prosecutes American citizens and charities for sending aid to Palestinians on the grounds that Palestinians, if not every one a terrorist, are governed by terrorists.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a Nobel laureate and a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, along with the rest of the crew, are handed over to the Americans for indefinite detention and torturing and waterboarding in the American torture facility at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. I am certain that “Homeland Security” and the U.S. government are desperate to be rid of all of critics, and knocking off a Nobel laureate and a member of the House sets a precedent for getting rid of the rest of us.

Meanwhile, California, which has become a failed state, has been denied bailout money from Washington. Israel, which has been a failed state for 60 years, can, unlike the American state of California, always count of Washington to deliver the money and the weapons to keep it going.

The same week that “our” government in Washington told the governor of California “not one red cent,” President Barack Obama handed over $2.775 billion to Israel.

The June 29 Online Journal reported that the handover to Israel of the unemployed Americans’ tax dollars took place in a “tiny Capitol room” to which members of the press were denied access. I mean, really, who wants the media writing about U.S. taxpayer dollars for Israel’s nuclear weapons while Americans are being kicked out of their homes? Not that, of course, the “Christian” supporters of Israel would mind.

Unlike every other recipient of U.S. military largesse, Israel is permitted to bypass the Pentagon and deal directly with U.S. suppliers. Consequently, the Israel lobby’s influence multiplies, because military suppliers fight for Israel in congressional committees in order to get Israel’s business. This lets Israel turn the screws on Iran.

According to Grant F. Smith writing in Online Journal, Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Steven from Illinois has received $221,000 in campaign contributions from Israel political action committees (PACs). Therefore, it was a sure thing that he would introduce legislation preventing the Import-Export bank from providing loan guarantees to countries doing business with Iran.

Americans think that they are a superpower, but in fact they are a stupor-power. A puppet state, if truth be known.

There is a great deal of evidence, even in Time Magazine, that Israel is a child-abuser. “God’s Chosen People” routinely abuse captured Palestinian children. The Israelis also abuse Palestinian children by shooting them down in the streets.

Don’t take my word for it. The Geneva-based Defense for Children International says, according to Time Magazine, that “the ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian child prisoners appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized, suggesting complicity at all levels of the political and military chain of command.”

According to Time Magazine: “Often, children suffer lasting traumas from jail. Says Saleh Nazzal from the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoner Affairs: ‘When soldiers burst into a house and drag away a child, he loses his feeling of being protected by his family. He comes back from prison alienated from his family, his friends. They don’t like going back to school or even leaving the house. They start wetting their beds.’ Says Mona Zaghrout, a YMCA counselor who helps kids returning from prison: ‘They come out of prison thinking and acting like they are men. Their childhood is gone.’ And they often turn to another father figure—the armed militant groups fighting the Israeli occupation.'”

And so it goes. There’s no money for California, or for Americans’ health care, or for the several million Americans who have lost their homes because Israel needs it. Israel needs the American taxpayers’ money so that it can create even more enemies and, therefore, needs more American money to spend with the American armament industries to oppress more Palestinians and to make more enemies, requiring more American money to protect Israel from its folly and its evil.

And the brainwashed American public goes along year after year.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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