(Don’t) Mention the word J**

by William Bowles

Speaking at a memorial for the victims of a Palestinian attack that took place 26 years ago, [Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev] Boim said: “What is it about Islam as a whole and the Palestinians in particular? Is it some form of cultural deprivation? Is it some genetic defect? There is something that defies explanation in this continued murderousness.” [Likud Knesset Member Yehiel] Hazan subsequently stated: “He’s right. It’s been a known fact for many years that Arabs slaughter and murder Jews, without any connection to land. It’s imprinted in their blood. It’s something genetic. I haven’t done research, but there’s no possibility of explaining it differently. You can’t believe an Arab, even one who’s 40 years in his grave.”
Mention the word Jew in anything except reverential tones and it’s like calling the Pope a paedophile. Talk about walking on soft-boiled eggs as Muddy Waters used to sing.

Such is the lock the Zionist propaganda machine has on the way anything to do with Israel is reported that even ‘Jews’ are not exempt from the wrath of the Zionist disinfo blitz as the various vicious campaigns being conducted on university campuses amply demonstrate against so-called self-hating Jews who don’t fall into line behind the mythology of the Zionist state testifies to.

Now many in the West excuse this craven obeisance by putting it down to some kind of collective guilt about the ‘Holocaust’, oh that such guilt should extend to my Roma brethren, who were also exterminated in their millions and to this day, remain the ‘niggers’ of Europe, excluded, ghettoized and victimised. Where are the endless stream of documentaries and rending of garments concerning our treatment of the Roma people? Where are the daily news stories about the continued treatment of the Roma right across Europe, let alone what the Nazis did to them sixty years ago?

However, talk of Jews as a ‘race’ controlling the media, banks etc, is not only incorrect, it entirely misses the point about the role Zionism plays in the imperialist project and indeed the key role that Zionism has played throughout the 20th century as a weapon of imperialism. Worse still, Zionism has virtually nothing to do with being Jewish, it’s yet another sleight of hand pulled by imperialism. Being Jewish, which aside from its religious connection is very much a state of mind, which just goes to show how successful the propaganda has been in creating an illusion about the Jewish ‘race’.

We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel … Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.
– Rafael Eitan, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, quoted in Yediot Ahronot, April 13, 1983, and The New York Times, April 14, 1983

Can you imagine what the reaction of the Western media would have been if the statement above had been made by a Palestinian, or indeed anyone who is not Jewish? So how is it that Israeli Zionists can get away with such obviously racist statements?

Central to the issue of Israel and ‘Jews’ is the ideology of racism as an essential element in the class war being waged against all who oppose the imperium. An ideology used to divide and rule, an ideology so pervasive that it completely determines any and all debate about Israel, whether it be the ‘right’ that Jews allegedly have to ‘return’ through to the way the West regards Palestinians and its brazen acceptance of being ‘Jewish’ as a justification for theft, murder and oppression.

Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial. – Ariel Sharon

For anyone has been following the massive propaganda campaign that has been conducted over the ‘evacuation’ of settlers in Gaza, one thing is clear; Palestinians are obviously non-people for how else can one explain the gulf between press coverage of the relocation of the settlers with the following statistics

1,719 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip from the end of September 2000 until today; and according to various estimates, some two-thirds of them were unarmed and were not killed in battles or during the course of attempts to attack a military position or a settlement.

Based on figures from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, of those killed, 379 were children under the age of 18; 236 were younger than 16; 96 were women; and 102 were the objectives of targeted liquidations during the course of which the Israel Defense Forces also killed another 95 individuals who, according to the military too, were “innocent” bystanders.

Some 9,000 Gaza residents were injured; 2,704 homes to some 20,000 people were razed by the IDF’s bulldozers and assault helicopters; 2,187 were partially destroyed. Some 31,650 dunams of agricultural land were left scorched.
‘The remaining 99.5 percent’ Amira Hass

Were such statistics to be about Israelis, again, imagine the clamour in the Western media! There is only one explanation for the existence of such a vast chasm between press coverage of Israel and that of the Palestinians and that is the role racism plays in reducing Palestinians to that of sub-humans, but don’t take my word for it, let the Zionists own words speak for them

[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs – Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset – New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

And these words are by no means the exception, they underpin the central thrust of the Israeli state’s propaganda war which is to project ‘Jews’ as the eternal victim, and of course, the epithet ‘anti-semite’ is synonymous with any criticism made of the Israeli state’s colonial/imperialist objectives.

May the Holy Name visit retribution on the Arab heads, and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them.

It is forbidden to have pity on them. We must give them missiles with relish, annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones – Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Yosef , Ha’aretz April 12, 2001

Is this Osama bin Laden speaking or the so-called pinnacle of Western civilisation, our ‘Judeo-Christian’ culture? And the propaganda campaign is endless without a day passing when there isn’t some reference to the ‘plight’ of the Jews in the Western media. Interminable documentaries on the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis but rarely a mention of the many millions of others who were exterminated using the same methodical and ruthless system. So complete is the appropriation of the Holocaust by the Zionists I am surprised the word hasn’t been trademarked.

And the following statement sums up the policy of the state of Israel and points to how fundamental the role of racism is in relegating first and foremost Palestinians and then the Arabs to that of a sub-human species from the very beginning of the founding of Israel, hence betraying the notion that the current response is to Palestinian ‘terrorists’.

The state… must see the sword as the main if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may know it MUST invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation and revenge… And above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space – Diary of Moshe Sharett, Israeli’s first Foreign Minister from 1948-1956, and Prime Minister from 1954-1956.

The parallels with the Nazi concept of ‘lebensraum’ or loving space is not lost on me even if it is ignored by the Western media.

Instead, Western media coverage continues to misrepresent the reality of the illegal Israeli occupation, so we read in an article titled ‘Israeli PM faces West Bank gamble’ on the BBC News Website, 25/8/05

Even as Israeli forces moved in to clear four West Bank settlements, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reaffirmed his commitment to settlement construction.

Mr Sharon was referring to the large blocs of Ariel and Maale Adumim, and controversial plans for new suburbs linking the latter to Jerusalem.

He has made no secret of his intention to hold on the major West Bank blocs.

No mention of the fact that all the settlements on the West Bank are illegal, instead they are presented to us “controversial”. The piece ends once again by placing the responsibility on the Palestinians

Much now depends upon what happens in Gaza.

Will the Palestinians focus on peaceful reconstruction or will radical groups seek to use the abandoned settlements as launch-pads for attacks into Israel?

Will violence simply move from Gaza to the West Bank, where the Israeli Army will still patrol the area of the evacuated settlements?
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4176822.stm

Thus the issue of the vast bulk of the illegal settlements on the West Bank is neatly sidestepped as the BBC’s report is already setting the stage for the next series of hoops that the Palestinians will have to jump through.

Through continually misrepresenting the reality of continued land grabs, not to mention the genocidal policies of Sharon’s government in carving up what’s left of any putative ‘Palestinian state’, as being dependent on the actions of Palestinian “radicals”, the media avoid the issue of Israel’s illegal policies. And in fact, the BBC article, quoted from above, doesn’t once mention that the actions of Israel are in fact illegal under international law as well as innumerable UN resolutions going back for thirty years.

What has to be emphasised is the fact that I picked the BBC article pretty well at random, it could have been one of literally dozens of articles from a wide range of ‘news’ sources, all of whom ignore the fundamental reality of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians and focus instead on how ‘unreasonable’ the Palestinians are, or how they had to ‘curb’ the actions of ‘radicals’ before Israel even conceded to rehousing a mere 2% or so of the 450,000 illegal settlers on what’s left of any future Palestine. And note here that unlike the 2700 Palestinian homes destroyed by the Israelis since September 2000, with armoured bulldozers and helicopter gunships, sometimes with the inhabitants still inside, the Israeli settlers will be rehoused (at US taxpayers expense), many on the continually expanding settlements on the West Bank. The same cannot be said of the Palestinians whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed.

As some reportage has made plain, Gaza is now one big prison instead of four, yet what this means, what it says about Israeli policies toward the Palestinians is still ignored by the mainstream press, even as the words are uttered. There can only be one explanation for such a deliberate myopia and that is a racism so entrenched in Western news coverage that it can blatantly ignore the awful injustice of Israeli actions and policies. It points once more to something I will continue express ‘til I die, that the ideology of racism is a major stumbling block to opening peoples’ eyes to what is going on in the world and that until we face this reality, we cannot begin to deal with our rulers actions, let alone our own role in allowing the continuance of such an unjust world.