Norman Finkelstein Speaks at CSU-Northridge
I found this via a link at Portland indymedia and, poking around a little bit, got the impression that "The Sundial" is a paper put out by CSUN students in conjunction with local highschool students, which may explain some of the minor errors, which I haven't bothered to fix.
I think the idea Finkelstein suggests, that the US and the West are using Israel -- and not merely that Israel, via the Israel Lobby is using the US -- is an important one. It connects to the idea I encountered in Israel Shahak's book that the ruling class in Europe used a marginalized Jewish community for certain social control purposes, such as tax collection.
Finkelstein Gives Israeli-American Relations Lecture
Cynthia Gomez
The Sundial
In a series of lectures last week, Norman Finkelstein, a noted political scholar and a former professor at DePaul University of Chicago, presented a lecture titled, "A Critique on the Walt-Mearsheimer Thesis," which focuses on the "core" thesis of a work that touches on Israeli lobby ties with American foreign policy.
"His case shows the difficulty of making wise decisions about teachers and students who work in political areas of scholarship," said Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Harry Hellenbrand, who invited Finkelstein to speak at CSUN.
The thesis comes from a working paper titled, "The Israel Lobby," written by John Mearsheimer, a professor from the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, a professor from Harvard University.
Finkelstein explained why he only focused on the thesis of the paper. "I wanted to avoid all of the nuances because I think a lot of the nuances are not really nuances, but efforts to detect themselves in the politically correct environment," Finkelstein said. He later explained why he does not support the thesis.
"I should be supporting (it), but the (fact of) the matter is, I don't determine my allegiances by ethnicities," he said. "I determine my allegiances by where the facts take me and in looking through the (working paper) and reading it very carefully, I simply was not convinced by the core thesis."
Finkelstein explained the argument both Mearsheimer and Walt have discussed in the thesis.
"The thrust of their argument was there is this powerful lobby in the United States," he said. "It is, they called it, the Israel lobby, but that in itself is an euphemism of sorts because clearly they believe the core of that lobby is American Jews or some American Jews. There qualification is important…they're promoting Israel's agenda."
Finkelstein said promoting Israel's agenda is "half of the problem," but the other half of the problem is that Israel's agenda is contrary to the best interest of the United States…so in promoting Israel's agenda, they are effectively underlying what they call U.S. national interests in the world."
The first argument that Finkelstein focused on was of the beginning of the main thesis made by Mearsheimer and Walt, which is "U.S. support of Israel does not serve U.S. national interest."
"They say that Israel was a strategic asset for the United States during the Cold War," he said stating that he was using Mearsheimer's and Walt's words and not his own. "Mainly it acted as a check on soviet expansion in the Middle East."
Finkelstein said he disagreed with Mearsheimer's and Walt's argument because it is "not what Israel's utility was to the U.S." He added that the main concern of the U.S. in the Middle East was anti-western nationalism and not soviet expansion. "That is, the U.S. was fearful that an independent autonomous power may emerge in the Middle East that will threat its strategic interests, most notable, oil," Finkelstein said.
"Secondly, Israel offers advantages to the west or to the U.S. which cannot be duplicated anywhere else in the Middle East," Finkelstein said. "You often hear the argument, 'Why is the United States investing so much in Israel and alienating the Arab regimes?' Doesn't it make much more sense for the United States to work with the neighboring Arab countries rather than work with Israel, from the point of view of our national interest?"
Finkelstein said the problem behind Mearsheimer's and Walt's argument is that it "completely misunderstands the special utility and the special value of Israel."
"Israel's special value for the U.S., which can't be duplicated anywhere in the Middle East is that fundamentally, Israel was a creation of the Western world," he said. He added that since 1967 Israel has been culturally, economically and politically in parole to the United States. "Unlike anywhere else in the Arab world, where you may have a regime which is committed to the U.S., you don't have populations committed to the U.S. and therefore the support of those countries can disappear overnight," Finkelstein said.
The political scholar disagreed with Mearsheimer's and Walt's claim that the "U.S. allies with Israel."
"Now to demonstrate that the U.S. allies with Israel distorts the American national interest, which is what Mearsheimer and Walt claim," Finkelstein said. "You have to show that U.S. policy in the Arab world would be different were it not for Israel. That seems to me an obvious requirement."
"If you're claiming that Israel is distorting U.S. policy in the Middle East then you would have to show that whether or not for Israel, U.S. policy would be fundamentally different," Finkelstein said, "but if you look at the historical record, there's just no evidence for that."
Finkelstein said he disagreed with Mearsheimer's and Walt's claim that "the U.S. supports Israel despite its powerful impact due to the Israel lobby."
"As I've already said, fundamentally I think that's mistaken," he said. "The U.S. supports Israel when it's useful to U.S. fundamental interests. However, and here I have to be a little bit more settle in the argument because that's what the evidence requires, I do think it's the case that the U.S. supports Israeli policy in the occupied territories due to the lobby."
Finkelstein clarified his statement, saying, "When it comes to broad regional fundamental interests, Iraq, Iran, South Arabia oil, it is U.S. national interests that take priority," he said. "When it comes to a local question like Israel and occupied territories, there I think it is a true that it's the lobby that is destroying U.S. policy because the obvious question you would ask yourself is, I think, 'What does the U.S. stand to gain from the settlements that Israel is building?' The answer quite obviously is nothing."
Later in the lecture, Finkelstein argued Mearsheimer's and Walt's claim that the Israel lobby was the "driving force behind the Iraq War." "The main architects of the war are always said to be Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney," Finkelstein said. "Well everyone in this room knows Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney are not Jewish and they don't fit the profile of these Jewish neoconservatives. So how do Mearsheimer and Walt reconcile? (Rumsfeld and Cheney) are obviously not Jewish neoconservatives, and yet you say it was the Jewish neoconservatives who caused the war?"
A question-and-answer session followed after Finkelstein's lecture. James Morris, 44, said he agreed and disagreed with Finkelstein's arguments.
"I think some of his arguments about the Palestinian situation and the lobbying influencing what happens in occupied territories are accurate," Morris said, "but then again if he uses the same argument with the lobby and how it influences our policy and occupied territories. And about that time the attack on the USS Liberty happened and that's been covered up ever since."
"Also, you had 9/11 that happened," Morris said. "If you look at the paperwork that's out there and the scholarly publications…our support of Israel resulted not only the attack on the World Trade Center in '93 but in 9/11. So that's not in our national interest. So when he's trying to say that we can't define that term, it's not in our national interest, right? So supporting Israel...was a direct result for the plotters of those attacks."
Morris commented on Finkelstein's arguments about Jewish neoconservatives. He wanted to rebut Finkelstein's argument that Rumsfeld and Cheney were supposedly not part of the neoconservative moment, said Morris.
"They've been associated with it for years," he said.
Morris said he was upset because he was "cut off" while asking a question to Finkelstein.
"I have a great deal of respect for Provost Hellenbrand, how he hosted this event, but he cut me off when I was trying to make my points to rebut," Morris said. "I didn't get a chance to finish my question. He cut me off. He said let's take one point at a time. I was cut off and I never came back to be able to make the rest of the question."
Mujahidul Haque, a political science major, said the lecture was informative to him and that some of Finkelstein's arguments caught his attention.
"What he said pretty much about the Jewish neoconservatives," Haque said, "I think all the neoconservatives are pretty much the same. I don't think I would want to separate the Jewish and Christian neoconservatives (from each other). The all have the same agenda. Other than that, I pretty much agreed with everything else he said."
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Norman is a 9/11 Denier
and supporter of the OCT. somewhere on this site I posted my exchange with him over email from a couple years back... I no longer think of him as anything but a limited hangout tool, alas...
Finkelstein thinks Cheney and Rummy are the Iraq War Masters?
Although many things here require a debunking-like critique, Norman Finkelstein correctly points out that a major thesis in “The Israel Lobby†is that because of various forms of AIPAC, etc. lobbying pressure – such as “we will take you out of office in the next congressional election, or tarnish you publicly as a racist anti-Semite, destroying your career and reputation (and don’t forget about those pictures we took) – U.S. foreign policy concerning the Middle East has essentially been taken from the hands, control, and decision making processes of the U.S. Congress, Senate, and the White House, and is now in the control of a foreign lobby that works on behalf of a foreign state. When you have a situation like this, you will often see foreign policy decisions being made, such as the decision to invade Iraq based upon cooked evidence, that turn out to be beneficial to the foreign power who “lobbied†for these moves, but turn out disastrously for the sucker, I mean host-government, who actually carries out the agenda of that foreign power, whose own interests are, in many cases over the last century, ill served to say the least by its own actions and operations. Aside from Israel’s long-proclaimed desire for colonial hegemony over the Middle East by “removing†the Arabs, it also does not serve long-term, regional U.S. policy interests to support an ally which behaves like a racist pariah state, has long been committing regional genocide and ethnic cleansing, and is engaged in building an outdoor apartheid prison that would make any of history’s psycho totalitarians completely envious. This is another point that Mearsheimer and Walt make in their thesis, that it is not in our national, moral interests as a people to support the present state of Israel, but Finkelstein conveniently leaves out the morality part of their thesis in his discussion. He presents their thesis as one based only upon a cold, calculated, utilitarian “neo-realist†look at what is best for America’s political and financial interests.
Would U.S. foreign policy be different without Israel in the Middle East? Absolutely. Everytime an American President has tried to swing a deal with an Arab or Persian power to accomplish something which is in the best interests of America and its workers, the Israel Lobby steps in to squash the deal. The Arab states have been trying from the start to have normalized, rational relations with the U.S., but Israel is always there to sabotage and poison the well, for Israel does not want peace. It wants war and the territory that can be gained by waging war, and always has, at least according to the early Zionists’ writings and publications. Mearsheimer and Walt already prove this point in the book, but Finkelstein conveniently leaves this out in his discussion. Too many pesky nuances, I guess.
For evidence of Zionist pressure and control politics exercised on the policies of the U.S. government, see: Senator William Fulbright’s statement before the U.S. Senate (U.S. Congressional Record, 86th Congress, 2nd Session, Vol. 106, No. 78, April 29, 1960).
And for early investigations into Israeli espionage against the U.S., see the investigation of the Foreign Relations Committee into the Activities of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), [see Hearings before Committee on Foreign Relations (U.S. Senate, 88th Congress, 1st Session, Part 9, May 23, 1963)].
It is all about deception and creating appearances while working evil behind the scenes. Media control and censorship of free speech is essential to this cause. The currently fashionable and ever popular propagandistic notion being pushed by Zionists everywhere these days is that Big Bad Bush, Cheney, and Blair were using poor, innocent Israel as a patsy, as a cover, or a front for their evil Big Oil Agenda. Why this whole idea qualifies as transparently desperate propaganda should be obvious, but a refutation to this apparently logical, yet highly flawed argument definitely deserves an article unto itself. Unfortunately for said argument, from the documentary evidence we have, it would appear that “Big Oil†was dead-set against the invasion of Iraq from the start – bad for business, and business was fine. Oil sanctions, oooh, Gimme a break. The oil was flowing, not a problem. Saddam didn’t need to be taken out for the sake of U.S. security or oil. He was taken out as part of Israel’s “Clean Break†plan. One down, three more to go. Any money or men left? Absolutely not. Will Israel fight? Absolutely not.
The “must protect American taxpayers’ ears from info-leaks concerning all the super crazy shit Israel just pulled†folks, including Finkelstein, are obviously getting desperate in their attempts to shield the public from the realization that, all along, all these many years, Israel has been one of the top three state sponsors of international terror operations, at least seven of which have been launched against its dear ally, friend, and overly generous financial benefactor, the United States of America. Basically, they get us to do shit for them by attacking and terrorizing us as they empty our national treasuries. It’s a “special relationship,†as you might imagine, probably similar to the relationship a beaten wife has with her crazy, unpredictable husband. Truly a relationship made in Hell.
And remember kids, when caught, just deny, deny, deny. Even if they got it on film.
I am truly perplexed by Finkelstein’s statement that Mearsheimer and Walt’s thesis “completely misunderstands the special utility and the special value of Israel.†After having just finished the “Israel Lobby,†as well as several other books on this subject, and after coming to understand the albatross-like nature of Israel, this promotion by Norman Finkelstein of the mythic concept of the ‘special utility and the special value of Israel’ is something, the reality of which, I perhaps missed in my readings of history. Although it certainly was a popular idea to promote back in the day, Israel was not in fact an asset during the Cold War, although American politicians pretended she was, but when that era came to a close, Israel needed to come up with something new to prove that it could still be an “asset†to the West in a post-Cold War Middle East; something that would act as a catalyst for the accomplishment of the long-dreamed-of Zionist take-down of the Arab Middle East. Bingo! 9/11 generates a “War on Terror†with Israel stepping in as an experienced, strategic asset in this new, uncharted endless conflict! Unfortunately, Israel’s current concocted value as an asset in the “War on Terror†is completely bogus, seeing as they themselves provided the operational apparatus to start the whole thing in the first place with the big Israeli Mossad-American Neocon 9/11 Operation against their own ally and financial benefactor. The War on Terror is a fraud, and Israel, still not an asset. Are more false flag terror operations against your allies the answer, O Israel?
Finkelstein’s assertion that “the state of Israel†was a creation of the West is also bogus, and historically inaccurate. He has forgotten all his Israeli and British history it seems. All the British and American documents, and investigatory commissions (such as the American King-Crane Commission) by 1920 were saying unanimously that the “Palestine as a Jewish State†idea was going to be a total disaster, and that it should be either stopped, or highly curtailed and controlled. Besides, the original Balfour deal called for supporting a Jewish national homeland IN Palestine, not Palestine AS a Jewish State with political control over an indigenous Arab majority. No, the state of Israel was created by unilateral force, out of Zionist terrorism, criminal thuggery, and guerilla war waged against both the British and the Arabs. Israel is also a state created by its militant, terrorist leaders signing international agreements for conditional UN admission, and then turning right around and giving their finger to all the conditions in the agreements which they had just signed a moment ago. Israel as a state has upheld 0 (as in zero) international agreements that it has signed. In international legal terms, it is indeed a bonafide pariah state that needs to wake up and smell the coffee of modern reality, so to speak. The actual Zionist-Israeli agenda for the Middle East is just sheer madness and needs to be stopped by a unified and awakened world community.
It most definitely seems here that old Norm, a well-informed scholar, for some strange reason is preferring to leave out any inconvenient information that doesn’t fit his present propaganda gig. He begins by saying he wants to avoid all the nuances in the book (i.e. the voluminous details that prove the thesis) to concentrate on the incomplete version of the thesis he has been paid to put forward.
How was he approached? I wonder. “Norm, here’s the deal, see. If we set you up on a little lectchuh tour where you go around puttin’ on a little show and takin’ down the Mearsheimer-Walt book thesis, we’ll throw in some decent cash to help you make a new start, ‘cause we know that you are unemployable presently, after that Dershowitz bitch-slapped you outta De Paul, just after friends of ours kicked you outta New Yawk. And Norm, if you’re a good boy on the tour, and rehabilitate yourself like we know you will, we might sees about getting’ you a little teachin’ job somewheres.
Rumsfeld and Cheney are the big movers behind the Iraq War?!? Jeez. As Rabbi Weiss would say, Finkelstein is “lying like a Zionist.â€
old news
>>>I think the idea Finkelstein suggests, that the US and the West are using Israel -- and not merely that Israel, via the Israel Lobby is using the US -- is an important one.
important, well known, and acknowledged in most 911 forums.
Israel = US funded client dictatorship
Blah blablah blah blah
My suggestion was that it is a relationship of mutual use, and whether it is weighted in one way or another is very much open to debate. Lazlo's post is a very good argument AGAINST the idea that the relationship is US dominated.
As for the part of my introduction that you post, I think that is NOT AT ALL acknowledged on the majority of 9/11 fora, where the knee-jerk reaction to any suggestion of Israel's independent agency is to bring out the anti-Semite bait.
what is "the US"?
the Bush admin? Congress? the people? Do any of the above control Israel? No, but partisans of Israel certainly have some sway over all of the above!
if it weren't for the lies about terrorism most Americans would not even be able to place israel on a map. in fact, even WITH the lies about terrorism most probably can't.
The Israel Lobby's "shared values" PR campaign wouldn't be necessary if Americans actually supported Israel implicitly. In fact, Americans who understand their constitution tend to agree that a country should not have an official religion, i.e. the sparation of church and state. And that is while most Americans remain unaware of Jonathan Pollard, the Liberty Incident, the King David Hotel bombing, just to name a few blights on Israel's record.
WHO uses Israel? And for what? We know what Israel gets out of the deal--classified military technology, special nuclear privileges (e.g. not signatories to nonproliferation treaty, no international inspections, etc. In fact, Doug Feith and others urged Israel in A Clean Break to essentially declare independence from the US (forsake financial aid) so as to assert itself without regard to the good graces of its "patron".
What do I as an American get, other than attacked and robbed blind and threatened with more if I complain?
I know I'm late with the assignment, but
i just picked up "The Israel Lobby" from the library. I had been on a "Shill Game" kick, rereading the Alten classic eleven times.
edit: Abe Foxman is at it again...
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/Internet_75/5232_75.htm
Abe Foxman looks like a mobster
go figure! here's something for Abe..,
Foreword to the Arabic Edition of Garaudy's The Founding Myths of Modern Israel
Mohamed Hasanein Heikal
Whereas "Holocaust denial" is a crime in France, Germany and some other European countries, skepticism of the familiar Six Million story is widespread in Arab and Muslim countries. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic Egyptian president and pan-Arab leader, said in a 1964 interview: "No one, not even the simplest man in our country, takes seriously the lie about six million murdered Jews." More recently this skepticism was manifest in an outpouring of support from across the Muslim world for French scholar Roger Garaudy when he was brought before a Paris court for daring to challenge Holocaust claims in his book on Israel's "Founding Myths." (See T. O'Keefe, "Origin and Enduring Impact of the 'Garaudy Affair'," July-August 1999 Journal.)
Mohamed Heikal has for decades been widely acknowledged as the most influential journalist in the Arab world. Under his editorship, the Cairo daily Al Ahram became one of the world's most often quoted newspapers. His weekly column in the influential paper was eagerly read as a reliable reflection of informed and official opinion in Egypt.
Born in Cairo in 1923, he was for years a personal friend of Gamel Nasser, and served as a cabinet minister in President Nasser's government. A skillful writer and leading Arab authority on contemporary Middle East politics, Heikal is the author of numerous books, several of which have been published in English.
Because of his international stature, it is significant that he not only agreed to contribute a foreword to the Arabic edition of Garaudy's controversial book, but that in doing so he endorsed the revisionist view of the Holocaust issue. (The Arabic-language edition of Garaudy's Founding Myths, translated from French by Mohammad Hisham, was published in Cairo in 1998 by Dar Al-Shurooq. The Founding Myths of Modern Israel is published in the US by the Institute for Historical Review.)
Here is the complete text of Mohamed Heikal's foreword, translated for The Journal of Historical Review by Dr. Abdullah M. Sindi, an author (The Arabs and the West: The Contributions and the Inflictions) and Journal contributor ("How the Jewish-Zionist Grip on American Film and Television Promotes Bias Against Arabs and Muslims," in the Sept.-Oct. 1998 Journal), and by E. G. Mueller, an Arab studies specialist who translated "Foiling Espionage in Berlin Radio's Arabic Service," in the Jan.-Feb. 2000 Journal.
-- The Editor
I don't exactly know how to present this book to Arabic readers. I want to recommend it. Yet I don't want to get involved in a discussion of its contents -- something that writing a foreword usually entails.
I would have preferred that this book in particular not include a foreword written by someone other than the author. Some manuscripts -- including this book -- can do very well without them. In fact, it is possible that a foreword can become a burden on a book rather than a support for it.
In such cases the forewords, directly or indirectly, offer an interpretation of the book according to the bias of the person writing the foreword. Such a slanted interpretation can sometimes distort a work's message. This is a sensitive matter in the case of a book such as this: The Founding Myths of
Modern Israel by Mr. Roger Garaudy. This is a collection of Zionist myths summarized by Garaudy as follows:
The "Promised Land" for Jews in Palestine
The Jews as God's Chosen People
A "Land Without People for a People Without a Land"
The Nazi Holocaust
The Jewish faith and political Zionism, and the distinction between the two
In his presentation of these founding myths of Israeli policy and the state of Israel, Garaudy did not author a book in the traditional sense, but rather was careful to weave events into a fabric of facts. The author's task in such a case is to act like a loom, stretching the threads horizontally and vertically to create an expanse of material that can be looked at, studied, and examined for its cohesiveness and tenacity.
In relating each of these founding myths of Israeli policy, Garaudy did not want to discuss or contradict them himself. Instead he drew the facts out of the primary sources and the original documents and let them speak for themselves, and follow their logical courses to reach their own natural conclusions by themselves.
There were others, in fact, before Mr. Garaudy, who tried to approach this subject. Yet he surpasses them in the comprehensive way by which he deals with all the Israeli myths. All Garaudy's predecessors, at least so far as I know, concentrated on a single myth. Most of the focus was on the Nazi holocaust, which according to Israeli myth claimed six million Jewish victims alone. Perhaps the furor that has surrounded this myth in particular stems from the struggle between the European conscience or feeling of guilt, on the one hand, and on the other, the attempt by Zionists to put pressure on that conscience and torture it for the benefit of their own project.
It was natural for the European conscience to try to seek the truth and to put this period in its proper place in the context of human history. On the other hand, it was also natural for the Zionist movement to do its utmost in order to put Israel where it wanted it to be on the map of the Middle East!
I have been following these battles ever since I read Far and Wide, a book by Douglas Reed that was published in the United States in 1947 [1951]. Reed was one of the most prominent British journalists who covered World War II. After the war, the legend of the Nazi Holocaust and its promotion, particularly in the US, attracted Reed's attention. Reed's approach in discussing this myth in practice was based primarily on demographic data and what they pointed to. Such data, Reed felt, do not lie. He cited the statistics of the League of Nations on the number of Jews in the world in 1938, the last annual report of this global organization before World War II. Then he compared those data with the figures found in the first post-war population statistics published in 1947 by the United Nations -- the organization that replaced the League of Nations. The comparison revealed that the number of Jews in the world after the war of 1939-1945 was the same as it had been before the war -- just under eleven million persons.
Douglas Reed estimated that the number of the victims of the Nazi holocaust -- which had indeed occurred -- did not exceed 300,000 or 400,000 -- the range of natural growth of the Jewish population over a period of seven or eight years.
This is, in any case, a dreadful figure -- enough not only to torture the European conscience, but that of all humanity. Nevertheless the Jews were not the ones who sacrificed the most victims in the Nazi inferno; more were Germans themselves, and Russians, Poles, and Gypsies. (And then there were the Palestinians, who were blameless, but who were forced by the Zionist movement to atone for the guilt that weighed on German and European consciences. It fell on them to pay that debt with compound interest many times over, and to pay with their native homeland of Palestine itself, their history, land, people, and future!)
Douglas Reed was subjected to a vicious campaign. His book disappeared from libraries and bookstores. He himself vanished from journalistic life and from public life as a whole, buried in oblivion!
Later I was able to see for myself -- and not just by reading -- what happened to the meticulous British historian David Irving. By chance I witnessed the vicious physical beating he received [on July 12, 1992] while eating breakfast at the Richoux restaurant in South Audley Street in London, near the Egyptian Embassy. The reason for this beating was not that David Irving wrote about the Nazi holocaust, but that he spent time investigating and researching it. It became widely known in many circles that he was on the verge of finding the truth, because he had obtained access before everyone else to the Soviet archives, whose vaults held the real secrets of the Nazi holocaust due to the circumstances surrounding the end of the war.
For it was the Soviet army that marched into Poland to pursue and chase out the Nazi army in 1944. Since more than 80 percent of pre-World War II Jewry had been living in Poland, the most important and famous of all Nazi camps for Jews, such as Dachau [sic], Auschwitz and Treblinka, were on Polish territory. Accordingly, it was the Soviet military that entered them, and were the first to uncover and observe their secret contents. Later, all of the documents of the camps with all their secrets came to rest in the vaults of the Soviet state archives, which the state then closed and locked, just as it closed and locked everything else. Finally the doors to these archives were opened to Irving, when the grip of that state loosened and its power collapsed due to the decay and collapse of the Soviet state itself.
David Irving knew where and how to dig out the secrets of the Nazi holocaust. His feet trod the damp corridors and his hands reached for the shelves and into the drawers!
An angry storm erupted against Irving and escalated so far that he was harassed and physically assaulted in the street. There was incitement against him that went so far as a boycott. All of this occurred before he had written up his findings in a book. It was enough that he had come the closest of all researchers to the truth by using sources that were more precise and more accurate.
Apparently the evidence David Irving turned up led one to conclusions similar to those reached by Douglas Reed. In other words, the comparison of the figures published by the old League of Nations with those of the post-war United Nations -- and also the figures that could be extracted from the Soviet archive material were all notably similar. Thus it is probable -- perhaps certain -- that between 300,000 and 400,000 Jews paid with their lives as a result of the insane notion of racial purity that led to the Nazi madness.
Still, it is evident that even within the limits of these figures it is humanely and even politically possible for the Arab mind to realize two facts:
First, that there was indeed a tragedy inflicted on the Jews in Europe under Nazi rule (and also before it). It is not acceptable fundamentally to deny the tragedy just because Israel uses it to camouflage and cover up another, even more catastrophic tragedy: that perpetrated by Israel on the Arabs of Palestine, whose people were killed and whose homeland was stolen.
Second, that the "myth" of the holocaust plays a real role in the existence and subconscious of contemporary Jews. It is therefore a dangerous mistake to leave the true part of the holocaust story to the scheming of the Zionist movement, so that it can be exploited as myths have usually been exploited throughout history.
All through history -- and this is the difference between myth and general tall tales and fairy stories -- the raw material of myth has been extracted from the convolutions of the distant or recent past to be remade and reconstructed for the purpose of carrying out its assigned task. The task of myth has always been to mobilize people. Mobilization is a preparation for confrontation, while confrontation is preparation for struggle, and the struggle that follows is simply a ready description of war. Hence, myth is often haunted by the specter of a fighter, and in some circumstances this spectral fighter is better able to kill than a real cavalier is able to fight.
Perhaps it was the desire to distinguish between history and its facts, on the one hand, and the myths and their specters, on the other, that moved an Arab intellectual of the stature of Edward Said to demand that the Arabs acknowledge the holocaust. He believes that this is the only way to "banish the specter," allowing the facts of history to remain as much as possible, while the effects of myth could be removed from it -- at least as much as possible.
There have been other writers and historians who have tackled other founding myths of the Israeli policy, particularly the myth of "a land without a people for a people without land." Their writings, however, did not set off as many battles as have been sparked by the subject of the holocaust. The reasons for this could be understood in the fact that these writings were part of political or moral debates that lacked the heat of the tragedy or the flame of the holocaust. In addition, none of these writings evoked that confrontation between a tortured European conscience, trying to place facts in their proper places, on the one hand, and a Zionist movement that exploits the pains of the whole of humanity in order to put Israel on the map of the Middle East!
Professor Garaudy's attempt has finally come, all the same. And he has made it a much more difficult battle because he did not tackle just one myth, but all the myths at once.
He did not publish a book, but rather wove a complete tapestry out of the fabric of events.
The most distinguishing feature of Garaudy's attempt, though, is that it comes from a man who knows what awaits him and is well prepared for it in advance. In addition, with his notoriety and stature, he is not a man who could be easily buried in oblivion, as happened to Douglas Reed, for example, or be beaten and boycotted, as happened to David Irving.
Even so, it has been proved that when confronting Zionist power no one is impregnable and there are no guarantees. Yet, to judge from the long discussion I had with him in Cairo recently, Garaudy knows the danger that faces him and I saw that he was ready for it. It was strange for me to see this man who has passed the 85th year of his life, not only ready for danger, but even relishing it. That is one of the traits of courage. To choose a course where danger is known to be waiting is different from accidentally leaping into its path. The first situation is a case of bravery, while the second is a sign of foolishness, and there is a great distance between the two!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliographic information Author:
Mohamed Hasanein Heikal
Title:
Foreword to the Arabic Edition of Garaudy's The Founding Myths of Modern Israel
Source:
The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)
Date:
November/December 2000
Issue:
Volume 19 number 6
Location:
page 30
ISSN:
0195-6752
Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $60 per year."
Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.
Hey Larry, You’re going to have a good read.
Hey Larry,
You’re going to have a good read. I hope you’re not on heart medication. A half hour cooling down period is usually recommended after reading this book for a half hour or longer. It’s 350 pages of WTF!? Remember to chant “Rabbi Weiss†three times if the heat of irrational passion starts to rise. I am actually going to hear John Mearsheimer’s lecture tomorrow night at the University of Montreal. The talk is being sponsored by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East. Maybe I’ll have him autograph my copy of “The Israel Lobby,†and perhaps I should slip him a copy of “Debunking 9/11 Debunking.â€
Yeah, Abe Foxman is a real piece of work. He basically runs an organization that fervently supports and defends Israel’s program of anti-Semitic, genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Middle East, yet his organization poses as an enemy of anti-Semitism and racism. Word to Abe – The ever-popular, “you’re an anti-Semite†scam, I think, should really be retired, seeing as a lot of folks are now highly aware that most Ashkenazim, or European Jews, are actually of Caucasian/Turkic ethnicity and decent. So, in the true tradition of surreal history, we now have the European and American descendents of 8th century Caucasian/Turkic converts to Judaism running around everywhere, with suitcase nukes in their hands, claiming to be real Semitic ancestors of the actual tribes of Israel, and screaming “you’re an anti-Semite racist†at anyone who points out that their so-called “legitimate, God-given right†to the land of Palestine is not in fact genetically or historically genuine. People from southern Russia who converted to Judaism around 750 CE (a time when Arabs were already living in Palestine, I might add) do not have any ancient ethnic or genetic right to the land, nor do they possess a contract from any supreme Deity that entitles them to claim the land of Palestine in the 20th century as “theirs and theirs alone.â€
The collective delusion of the modern Zionist cult member is based upon several different levels of myth in their forms of exaggerated empirical history and false, or concocted history – the story of the Exodus would fit into this last category, for example. After many, many decades, sorry, archaeology says no. No such event occurred. Yet it is from the story of the Exodus that the “chosen people†concept and the land grant by Yahweh of Palestine to the Jews to hold in perpetuity comes from. Also, it should be noted that the books of the Bible were written and compiled by Hebrew scribes and scholars, i.e. the authors were clearly biased. Who was their literary deity going to choose as his “chosen people†in the story? The Tahitians? Actually, I would vote for the Tahitians on that issue, or the Hawaiians. We should do a poll! I’ll call James Zogby or Gretavo.
So two basic problems here:
Non-Israelite, Non-Semitic people in the modern world are claiming, at the barrel of a gun, significant land rights based upon an ancient (c. 1200-1100 BCE) event that never even happened to the actual, original Semitic Israelites. At the same time, these delusional, modern Zionist ideologues are planning on having the American military kill the actual long-time (1,300 years) residents of the land who actually are Semitic, yet anyone who objects to the pure moral depravity of these events and actions is called an “ANTI-SEMITE,†by people like Abe Foxman, who as previously mentioned, is not of Semitic ethnicity. Zionism has been a giant con-job from day one, and the oceans of uselessly spilled blood that have come from the machinations of this deluded, racist cult of Zionism have stained, as the rabbis of old predicted, the soul of Judaism, the religion and faith. They are a stiff-necked people who spit on the wisdom of their elders. The completely insane surreality of it all is just, there are no words. We are on a floating nuthouse traveling around a fireball. It sure is a beautiful planet though. Too bad about the psychos and their huge caches of gold and weapons.
There is this Pastor Peters, a Christian preacher who has a program on short-wave radio, who calls people like Foxman, “the sons of Hell.†I believe it was originally Foxman’s idea to launch the big, “Anyone who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite†public relations/media campaign. He is also the inventor of the ADL’s popular “List of 7,000 Self-hating Jews†(Google it). Woody Allen is on it? Abe probably lies awake each night, grinding his teeth, worrying about those Internet Tubes and all the international free speech real estate still out there, not completely tamed and controlled by the forces of Zionazism and Zionazism Lite. “It’s those goddamned Internet Tubes, spewing molten Jew-Hate and neo-Nazi propaganda on every channel, 24/7/365.†I think Abe needs some of that medication that Bill Maher was talking about. Rule of thumb (always) – never let a psychopathological paranoid run your organization. It’s bad for PR.
ADL's Campaign "Against" Online Hate Dates At Least to 1999
Fascinating...
It is through their propaganda techniques that the minds of others are controlled. The latest of which, as stated earlier involves not only their most recent analysis of hate on the internet, their poll of several months ago, measuring the depth of anti-Semitic sentiment in the Unites States among different groups of people. The poll, as well as this recent Internet study aims at mind control. Newspaper editors, journalists and other organizations mindlessly printed the ADL’s "objective" information without sifting through the information, or even attempting to verify it.
Once the mind is under control, then action takes place, and the ADL with their Internet studies, and "hate-filtering" software desire to control the collective minds of others. No credit is being given to the decision-making capabilities of fair-minded individuals.
The ADL in one of their press releases congratulated President Clinton for his "decisive action" in bombing the Al-Shifa medical plant in the Sudan, and then later the United States admitted that they might have made a mistake. What other kinds of "decisive action" would the ADL endorse against those with whom they disagree?
A relentless war is being waged right now in the battle for the minds of the people. Slander and libel through innuendo and half-truths along with distortions, revisions and exaggerations of the historical record exist as standard operating procedures for the ADL, AJC, Hillel and others like them. Many today are speaking the truth, and as a result, there are more people than ever critically evaluating them. As more of their deceptive practices are exposed, the fair-minded masses will begin to participate in Zionism containment strategies, and relegate them to an inconsequential place in history. It is for these reasons their power, influence and ability to impact the present is being diminished.
http://www.truthinstitute.org/ADL_FA_vol2_1.htm