Bill's Board
Friday, July 03, 2009
 

ISRAEL IS A RACIST COLONIZING STATE
THE UNMENTIONABLE IN HAJO MEYER’S INTERVIEW

William C. Carlotti, July 1, 2009, latest July 3, 2009


It was with considerable interest that I read the interview with Hajo Meyer and, of course, his personal experiences with the Nazi led government of Germany, the Nazi led occupation of the Netherlands, and his experiences in Auschwitz are important. See HAJO MEYER-Auschwitz survivor

At the same time, however, these same experiences serve to focus his historical perspective. So, when he encounters the activities of the Jewish Zionist led, Christian Zionist supported Israeli government that have similarities to his experiences in each of these Nazi created environments he makes what he considers to be valid, based on his experiences, comparisons.

According to the interview, Mr. Meyer makes the comparison that coincides with his experience:

“I can write up an endless list of similarities between Nazi Germany and Israel. The capturing of land and property, denying people access to educational opportunities and restricting access to earn a living to destroy their hope, all with the aim to chase people away from their land. And what I personally find more appalling then dirtying one's hands by killing people, is creating circumstances where people start to kill each other. Then the distinction between victims and perpetrators becomes faint. By sowing discord in a situation where there is no unity, by enlarging the gap between people -- like Israel is doing in Gaza.”

“Of course it is positive that parts of the Jewish population of Israel try to see Palestinians as human beings and as their equals. However, it disturbs me how paper-thin the number is that protests and is truly anti-Zionist. We get worked up by what happened in Hitler's Germany. If you expressed only the slightest hint of criticism at that time, you ended up in the Dachau concentration camp. If you expressed criticism, you were dead. Jews in Israel have democratic rights. They can protest in the streets, but they don't.”

This last, “Jews in Israel have democratic rights. They can protest in the streets, but they don't.” is a clear distinction between what went on in the brief period—approximately two decades---in the environments created by the Nazi led, fascist led German, Italian, Spanish governments that so much of our history of brutalizing, murderous regimes has focused on and what is going on in the current Zionist led Israeli government created environment.

It is a critical distinction.

This critical distinction between the Zionist led Israeli government’s created environment and the Nazi led German government’s created environment makes the totality of the comparison demonstrably invalid even though elements deserve comparison.

What is Zionist led Israel doing and what historical comparison would be more valid than the comparison to Nazi led Germany’s created environment?

First, the Jewish Zionist led Israeli government is bombing, strafing, shooting the people of Palestine using cluster bombs, depleted uranium coated bombs and shells, white phosphorous bombs fired from F-16 supersonic jet planes, from helicopter gunships, from remote operated, unmanned drone airplanes and from huge Abrams tanks; using behemoth bulldozers supplied by Caterpillar to demolish more than a thousand Palestinian homes and eradicate hundreds of whole villages and towns; crush thousands of hectares of decades old olive and orange orchids; they fly their supersonic jets low over the Palestinian population and break the sound barrier to create the sonic boom that has deafened hundreds of vulnerable Palestinian children; they are building ghetto style armed Jewish settlements all over the territory of Palestine; they restrict the water, the electricity, the medical care, the sewage, the education, the employment, the travel, the communications and every facet of the lives of the people of Palestine; they make targeted assassinations of the selected and elected representatives chosen by the people of Palestine killing dozens of other people in the process; they have confiscated court, land and title records that confirm the property rights of the people of Palestine; they are building a wall to recreate their beloved ghetto existence armed to the teeth with nuclear bombs and chemical and biological weapons: they have driven millions of the people of Palestine off of the land of their forebears, they hold thousands of Palestinians, not only men. but also women and children in prison many of whom are tortured.

In the meantime, the Israeli economy is nominally flourishing, the Israeli government, its administration, its Knesset, its courts, its Supreme Court, its army, navy. air force, its clandestine intelligence, its regularly held elections, its colleges, universities, religious institutions, its factories, schools, water electricity, transportation, farming, international trade are all functioning.

As Mr. Meyer says: “Jews in Israel have democratic rights. They can protest in the streets but they don’t.”

The question is then, What is the appropriate historical comparison for the Jewish Zionist led created environment?

Israel is a racist, colonizing country.

It is a racist colonizing country just like the democratic French government as the racist colonizer of Viet Nam (remember Dienbienphu) and Algeria that Franz Fanon wrote about; just like the democratic government of Italy as the racist colonizer of Ethiopia and Libya; just like the democratic government of the Netherlands as the racist colonizer of the East Indies: just like the democratic government of Belgium as the racist colonizer of the Congo (remember King Leopold); just like the democratic government of Germany as the racist colonizer of East Africa; just like the democratic government of England as the racist colonizer of India (remember Ghandi) , Rhodesia and South Africa; just like the democratic government of Australia as the racist colonizer of its indigenous people and in its completed genocide of Tasmania; just like the democratic government of the United States as the racist, genocidal colonizer of its indigenous population and the African slave trade.

In each of these countries its citizens had the same democratic rights as those that Mr. Meyer describes for the Jews in Israel. In fact, it seems that one of the principal characteristics of these democratic countries during the last several centuries (not two decades) has been their racist colonizing. And in each of these countries the opposition to the racist colonizing has been ”paper thin”.

And, in fact, it remains so.

The United States, with its unspeakable history of racist colonizing, refused to send representatives to the United Nation World Conference On Racism. France, Italy, Belgium, Australia, and England, each with its own unspeakable history of racist colonizing, formed a coalition of racist colonizers to walk out of the conference in opposition to the Conference’s condemnation of Zionist led Israel’s racist colonizing.

In fact, the racist colonizers in the European Union have invited Zionist led Israel’s racist colonizing government to join the European Union.

So, if we are going to make historical comparisons we ought to get it straight---ISRAEL IS A RACIST COLONIZING STATE—without the kind of caveat-like exception that Mr. Meyer’s experiences compel him to make and that serve the purposes of Zionist exceptions.




Labels: , , , , ,


Thursday, February 07, 2008
 
THE LOGIC OF RESISTANCE
William C. Carlotti--January 27, 2008
williamccarlotti@msn.com

It should be apparent that the problem in Palestine is not just simply a problem of checkpoints, human rights abuses, the wall, home demolitions, the architecture of occupation or even the siege of Gaza; the core of the problem is the illegal theft, colonization and occupation of a whole country.

These are only symptoms of the Jewish nationalism expressed in the cancerous ideology called Zionism. It is an ideology that has been organized into the World Zionist Organization with branches in all of the countries of Europe, in the United States and in dozens of other countries ranging from Australia to Mexico to South Africa. The Organization held its 35th Zionist Congress in 2006 in Jerusalem with some 2000 delegates and observers from all over the world. 510 delegates participated in its proceedings including 145 delegates from the United States.

Christian Zionist support, however, unlike the international World Zionist Organization, is principally centered in the United States. In concert with the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and the Conference of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (52 Org.) they constitute an enormously well-funded confluence with the Bush/Cheney neocon cabal led United States government's drive for hegemony over the oil and gas reserves of the middle east and the Caspian Sea for the United States based international oil, gas and finance conglomerates.

This organized international Jewish Zionist support centered in the World Zionist Organization is critical to the Jewish Zionist led, Christian Zionist supported Israeli government that has been on a 60-year messianic mission to acquire the whole of Palestine and parts of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, which they describe as "Eretz Israel".

According to the Zionists, "Eretz Lsrael" is described in that book of short stories that has become known as the bible in Genesis 15:18-21, Ezekiel 47:13-20 and similarly in Numbers 34:1-15, descriptions which have been adopted by the Jewish Zionist led Israeli government.

According to Prime Minister Ehud Ohmert of Israel in his address before a genuflecting joint meeting of the United States Congress on a May 24 of 2006 Address to Congress,

"For thousands of years, we Jews have been nourished and sustained by a yearning for our historic land. I, like many others, was raised with a deep conviction that the day would never come when we would have to relinquish parts of the land of our forefathers. I believed, and to this day still believe in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire land."

What is not often mentioned is the fact that this biblically defined land that the modern day Jews claim as their "entire land" was acquired, according to the short story accounts of their claimed ancestors, by the genocidal slaughter of the peoples of seven other nations that occupied the land that these modern Jews now claim by "historic right".

The description of this completed genocidal slaughter is the only known written admission of genocide by any of the perpetrators of genocide in recorded history. Even the nazi led German government and the European colonialist led United States government never deigned to produce a written admission of the genocides that they were engaged in. The following are some of the descriptions of this genocide by the ancestors claimed by Olmert and the whole of the Jewish Zionist led government of Israel.

"In Deuteronomy 7:1-36, ".the Lord thy God shall have destroyed many nations before thee, the Hethite, and the Gergezite, and the Amorrite, and the Chanaanite, and the Pherezite, and Hevite, and the Jebusite, seven nations much more numerous than thou art,.thou shalt utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make no league with them, nor show mercy to them: and shall slay them until they are utterly destroyed...and thou shalt destroy their names under heaven: no man shall be able to resist thee, until thou destroy them."

In I Samuel 15:3, "Now therefore go, and smite Amalec, and utterly destroy all that he hath; spare him not, nor covet any thing that is his; but slay both man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

In Numbers 31:1-35, ".the Lord spoke to Moses saying: Revenge first the children of Israel on the Madianites...when they fought against the Madianites and had overcome them, they slew all the men. Therefore kill all that are of the male sex, even of the children: and put to death the women that have carnally known men. But the girls, and all the women that are virgins save for yourselves...and the spoils which the army had taken, was...thirty two thousand persons of the female sex that had not known men."

In Numbers 33:50-52, ".the Lord said to Moses: Command the children of Israel. When you shall have passed over to Jordan, entering into the land of Chanaan, Destroy all the inhabitants of that land: beat down their pillars and break in pieces their statues, and waste all their high places."

In I Samuel 27:8-9, "And David and his men went up, and pillaged Gessuri, and Gerzi, and the Amalecites; for these were of old the inhabitants of the countries...David wasted all the land, and left neither man nor woman live."

In Isaiah 13:15-18, "Every one that shall be found shall be slain; and every one that shall come to their aid, shall fall by the sword. Their infants shall be dashed in pieces before their eyes: their houses shall be pillaged, and their wives ravaged...with their arrows they shall kill the children, and shall have no pity upon the sucklings of the womb, and their eye shall not spare their sons."

So the lands that are claimed as "ancestral land" was acquired, according to the writings of Olmert's ancestors, by a genocide that is unprecedented in human history-----unprecedented as regards the scope of the completed annihilation of seven tribal nations and unprecedented as it regards the written admission that they committed the genocide.

With this understanding of the use of the term "Eretz Israel" as used by the Jewish Zionist led Israeli government, it should be apparent that the problems in Palestine goes beyond the immediacy of one or the other of some action of the Jewish Zionist led Israeli government.

For 60 years the Jewish Zionist led, Christian Zionist supported Israeli government has invaded Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestine beyond the 1947 internationally recognized border to recreate the biblically described Eretz Israel originally acquired by the genocidal annihilation of seven tribal nations. This messianic impulse of Jewish nationalists, this messianic program that seeks to expand the territory provided for the creation of the State of Israel by a world's compassion for the nazi-led German government's assault on the Jewish people of Europe has transformed the Jewish Zionist led Israeli State into the mirror of the ancestors that they claim as their own---- a nation with a messianic impulse for genocide.

There are two aspects for the rationale for this messianic impulse. On the one hand, the Israeli occupation, absorption, devastating occupation of the Palestine beyond the internationally recognized 1947-1967 borders is met by a resistance by the people of Palestine--- a resistance that is every bit as justified as the Italian Partisan resistance to the nazi occupied, fascist led Italian Government, every bit as justified as the French resistance to the nazi occupation of France, every bit as justified as Geronimo's leadership of the indigenous resistance to annihilation in what has become the United States, every bit as justified as the Chicasaw resistance to the United States Indian Removal Law that resulted in the "trail of tears". The Jewish Zionist led Israeli government then uses this resistance as the rationale for the continued occupation and absorption of Palestine and the continued assault on the Palestinian people.

Any notion that the struggle of the Palestinian resistance is the equivalent of the Jewish Zionist led Israeli government's massive assault on the Palestine beyond the 1947 borders or that the subsequent continuing assault is to be treated "even-handedly" is shear, unadulterated, vicious sophistry. The behemoth tank demolitions, supersonic jet plane bombings, black hawk helicopter strafing of the people, infrastructure, and property in occupied Palestine is nothing less than a description of the naked aggression of Israel's all-Jewish armed forces.

On the other hand, Jewish Zionist led Israeli government uses the "peace ploy" to counter the justified resistance of the Palestinian people to the continued occupation, absorption of Palestine and the assaults on its people. In this instance, the "peace ploy" as outlined by the Israeli government requires that the Palestinians cease the resistance to the Israeli occupation and absorption of Palestine and the assault on the people of Palestine in order for the Jewish Israelis to cease the occupation and absorption.

Anytime that there is a call for a "negotiated peace" or "a peace broker" or the "peace process" it is a part of the peace ploy that the Jewish Zionist led, Christian Zionist supported Israeli government has used for the past sixty years, and a signal that it will be used again, in their strategic objective to absorb the whole of Palestine and parts of Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon.

It is a ploy that has garnered thousands of additional square miles for the Jewish Zionist Israeli cause to recreate the Eretz Israel of their genocidal messianic impulse.

There is nothing that can be discussed with regard to the Jewish Zionist led, Christian Zionist supported Israeli government's assault on the people of Palestine without the understanding that it is their strategic objective, already in process for 60 years, to acquire the whole of Palestine and parts of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Every move that they make, every peace ploy that they engender, every bomb that they drop, every farm that they destroy, every targeted assassination that they make, every Palestinian child that is starved, every Mosque, every school, every Palestinian government building or home that they demolish, every action that they take in Palestine and in the Middle East that their counterparts take in the United States, every political, ideological, philosophical, religious statement that they make is driven by the messianic, genocidal impulse to recreate Eretz Israel. The Jewish Zionist led, Christian Zionist supported Government of Israel has no intention of doing anything but continuing the ongoing assault on Palestine and its people until it has absorbed the whole of Palestine. Part of its modus operandi is the peace ploy that is designed to never arrive at the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

That is what they are about and that is the source of their genocidal impulse.

Aside from the Jewish Zionist led Israeli activity, we are confronted in the United States with an extremely well organized, well funded Zionist led, Christian Zionist supported significant segments of the Jewish community that has been at the forefront in support of the Bush/Cheney neocon cabal led United States government's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, its threatened invasion of Iran and its clandestine operations in Pakistan.

Jewish Zionists and their Christian Zionist supporters are certainly collaborators in the Bush/Cheney neocon cabal led United States government's invasion and occupations to secure hegemony over the oil and gas reserves of the middle east and the Caspian Sea for United States oil and finance conglomerates as it intensifies the political organization of the state apparatus of the United States to suppress the resistance and opposition that the cost and tragedy imposed on the people of the United States engenders.

The express statements of support for these operations by the Zionist led Anti-Defamation League (ADL), by the Zionist dominated American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), by the Zionist dominated Conference of the President's of Major Jewish Organizations. The participation of this significant, well-funded element of the Jewish community in the production of the world-dominating scheme detailed in the Project for A New American Century is notorious. This well organized support is distinct from the opposition to these operations by the majority of people of the United States.

Much as these pitiful panderers to the power of the United States might suppose that they are in control of their destiny, it behooves them to consider the fate of Pinochet, Noriega, Marcos, Batista, Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, the Taliban and now Musharraf when the rubber hits the road of the interests of United States international conglomerates.

In the meantime, we will watch these Jewish Zionists engaged in the fantasy of their messianic nightmare that will proceed with the unabated slaughter of the Palestinians.

And, in case we have any doubt, the Palestinians currently escaping the Jewish Zionist led, Christian Zionist supported Israeli government's messianic, genocidal impulse join the millions of Palestinians that have already been driven out of their homeland to live in the squalor of the refugee camps.

For those that have succumbed to the corporate media conglomerate's hype and have engaged in sounds of rejoicing for the Palestinian "breakout" from Gaza, the following statements of Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger in Israel should begin the process of getting them to take their heads out of the clouds. The statements are certainly significant enough in Israel to be placed in its major "liberal" newspaper with international internet distribution. Obviously what occurred at the wall between Palestine's Gaza and Egypt was a forced exodus of Palestinians through a devised break in the separation wall built by the Jewish Zionist led Israeli government. If there is any one that believes that the all Jewish Israeli armed forces, that shoot Palestinian teenagers throwing rocks at tanks or shoot Palestinians getting water at the public water taps after an Israeli imposed curfew, were taken by surprise when the wall that they built was knocked down by a behemoth bulldozer, I'd like to have the opportunity to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge.

The only difference between this forced exodus and the others that occurred in 1947-48, in 1967, in Jerusalem, and all over Palestine to build the armed Jewish settlements, is that this exodus was forced by a total siege of food, medicine, water and electricity in combination with terrifying raids and incursions into Gaza by the all Jewish Israeli army, navy and air force toting United States supplied weapons, planes and helicopters. In those other, earlier forced exodus of millions that are now living in the squalor of refugee camps, the forced exodus was produced by the terror created in a slaughter of innocents by the all Jewish that became Israeli forces and the scorched earth policy applied by them to Palestinian towns.

The blessed Rabbi's plan, according to Haaretz, would be "to take all the poor people from Gaza to move them to a wonderful new modern country with trains buses cars, like in Arizona - we are now in a generation where you can take a desert and build a city. This will be a solution for the poor people - they will have a nice county, and we shall have our country and we shall live in peace."
See http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/948907.html

But that is not the whole of it. On the other side of the world in the Wall Street Journal's pages referenced on their Editorial page, Bret Stephans writes,
"The Egyptian-Israeli treaty may ultimately have to be revised to take account of the changing facts on the ground. Israel, too, will have to rethink some basic strategic assumptions. Supporters of Ariel Sharon's "disengagement" plan -- present company included -- can take a measure of satisfaction in noting that Gaza is increasingly becoming an Arab problem rather than an Israeli one. But in addition to the physical challenge of having to defend against incessant (if so far rarely deadly) rocket attacks from Gaza, and reinforce its long desert border with Egypt, Israel must also now consider the possibility that the current regime in Egypt may not long survive the death of its soon-to-be octogenarian president." See http://online.wsj.com/article/global_view.html

So it should be obvious in considering the matter, that there is nothing that can be discussed with regard to the Jewish Zionist led, Christian Zionist supported Israeli government's assault on the people of Palestine without the understanding that it is their strategic objective, already in process for 60 years, to acquire the whole of Palestine and parts of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon devoid of their historical inhabitants.

Every move that they make, every peace ploy that they engender, every bomb that they drop, every farm that they destroy, every targeted assassination that they make, every Palestinian child that is starved, every Mosque, every school, every Palestinian government building or home that they demolish, every olive grove that they flatten, every action that they take in Palestine and in the Middle East and that their counterparts take in the United States is driven by the messianic, genocidal impulse to recreate Eretz Israel.



It is a pattern of expulsion has been reproduced consistently for the past sixty years not only in Palestine but also in portions of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt with the Jewish Israelis claiming the land and resources of the areas of the expelled population.

In order to put an end to this genocidal messianic impulse of the Jewish Zionist led Israeli government we must insist, demand, support, and encourage that the international community use the force of economic boycott and economic sanctions to have the Zionist led Israeli government withdraw from the occupation of the Palestine beyond the 1947 internationally recognized border and to have them cease the blockade of Palestine's water, electricity, sewer, air space, sea coast, and borders.

That is a plan that is in keeping with International Law, the Geneva Convention, and the Convention on Human Rights.

Vermont, January 2008

THE 1947 U.N. PARTITION MAP










Labels: , , , ,


Friday, August 24, 2007
 
THE UNMENTIONABLE IN HAROLD PINTER'S NOBEL SPEECH
NOBEL SPEECH-ART, TRUTH and POLITICS

Ever since I read the transcript of the speech given by Harold Pinter on the occasion of his receipt of the Nobel Prize In Literature I've pondered whether to write about it. Before I read the speech on the internet, I had never heard of Pinter in spite of the evidently considerable attention that has been given to his work. That I haven't heard or read of him is probably because of what can be viewed as a shortcoming in not having spent much time with plays and fiction.

I have hesitated writing about the speech because of the obvious strength of its evaluation of United States international activity in the post World War II era and its clear denunciation of the United States current invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yet, I have had reservations about the speech. I can certainly just be silent about my reservations and given the accolades that he has received what I have to write about his speech can easily be dismissed. Yet the unmentionable in Harold Pinter's speech has acquired its own life in other commentaries and needs to be addressed in this the most obvious of circumstances.

There is no question about the fact that the speech serves to focus considerable detail on the murderous activity of the United States foreign policy in the world and England's subservient support of such activity particularly in its participation in the latest slaughter of innocents in Iraq. The passionate verbal portrait of the process of these horrors only serves to make unquestionably obvious, in my opinion, the glaring omission in the speech.

I read with real interest the description of how Pinter described the process that he went through to produce two of his plays. Pinter tells us that one play began with a word and the other play began with a phrase. According to Pinter,

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The first line of Old Times is 'Dark.'"

For Pinter the "truth in drama is forever elusive". He writes,

There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false".. "But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

Pinter then distinquishes between himself as a writer and himself as a citizen and writes,
I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?
With that established, Pinter describes the process of his writing and then proceeds to describe the truth of United States foreign policy. Pinter then describes two methods of the implementation of United States foreign policy. If he, a writer and a citizen, can describe them so precisely and succinctly, it occurs to me that the policy makers, the policy implementers must have the two methods as part of their play book of standard methods for United States domination. In any case they seem, at least to me, to be accurate descriptions of what the United States has been about. One of the methods Pinter calls the "low intensity conflict" and describes it as follows,
"Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer."
From there Pinter proceeds through the litany of the United States support of the slaughter of innocents by this method of low intensity conflict ----Nicarauga, El Salvador, Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile.

His use of language in the descriptions makes it evident that he is a writer who is a citizen. My friend Kenneth Burke described humans as "symbol-using animals, inventors of the negative" in distinction from anthropologists who described humans as "tool-using animals". But it has always occurred to me that we are an identity of symbol-using, tool-using animals, inventors of the negative. One or the other elements of this identity can be the most dominant as the dominance of tool-using for the auto mechanic compared to the dominance of symbol-using for the playwright. The Nobel Prize for Literature is evidence of Pinter's skill as a symbol-user.

Pinter uses this skill with language to describe the United States involvement with torture and imprisonment both in the United States prison system but also in its creation of the torture prisons at Quantanamo and elsewhere in the world. Pinter's descriptions are sonorously graphic. He writes,
"We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'"
And, again,
"The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves."
And, more,
"Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood."
But in the end, Pinter writes, the "low intensity conflict" is not enough for the United States. The stakes have been raised; all bets are off; the United states policy makers decide on the final solution. Pinter writes,
"I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources."
So there we have it. Full spectrum dominance.

Pinter describes the United States' use of torture, its proliferation of nuclear weapons, its torturous prison policies, the mounting direct horrendous death and consequent death tolls of its policies, its targeted assassination of leaders of the countries that are the targets of its policies and, finally, "control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources".

It is, using his words, a "full spectrum" description of United States foreign policy.

Yet, in the 2970 odd words of his speech, amounting to about eleven pages of printed material, there is not a single word, not even a hint of a word or phrase not a scintilla of the United States unstinting, incontrovertible support for the Jewish Zionist-led Israeli government's assault against the people of Palestine.

Given the means that he describes how he came to write some of his work- the mention of a word or the mention of a phrase leads to conjuring a whole story---one is forced to wonder how the mention of the invasion and occupation of Iraq in the Middle East didn't conjure up the invasion and occupation of the Palestine beyond the internationally recognized 1949 and 1967 borders by Israel in the Middle East.

. how the mention of United States nuclear proliferation did not conjure up the near life long imprisonment of Israeli citizen Mordechai Vanunu for revealing Israel's nuclear proliferation

. how the mention of Quantanamo and the other torture prisons did not conjure up the Israeli dungeon-like prisons that hold nearly ten thousand Palestinian men, women, adolescents and children and, until recently , the Israeli use of torture of prisoners sanctioned in Israeli law

. how the mention of the targeted assassination of the leaders of countries did not conjure up Israel's stated policy of killing Palestinian leaders

. how the mention of cluster bombs, depleted uranium, random killings and murder did not conjure up the Israeli behemoth buldozers leveling homes and decades old olive groves and Israeli helicopter gunships and jet plane killing machines assaulting the peopl;e of Palestine and their infrastructure of every description

Because I wondered how Pinter's words and phrases did not manage to conjure up the details of United States supported Israeli actions in the very location of the world that occupied so much of Pinter's speech, I went to the internet to find out about Pinter.

What I found out was that Pinter is Jewish. Yet that means little in the context of the fact that there are a considerable number of Jews that have demonstrated and voiced opposition to the Israeli government's occupation and absorption of the Palestine beyond its internationally recognized borders. That opposition includes hundreds of military "refuseniks" that will not participate in the occupation.

In fact, what I found out was that Pinter is one of those Jewish intellectuals that specifically and directly expresses opposition to Israel's occupation and absorption of the Palestine beyond its borders outside of the context of his Nobel Prize lecture.

In a letter also signed by Noam Chomsky, John Berger and Jose Saramago, Pinter along with these others declared on July 26, 2006,
"Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.

This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and resisted. See the letter at LETTER BY PINTER

So, in December of 2005, at the time of the Nobel Lecture, Pinter delivers a 45 minute speech of some 2900 words that translates into 11 printed pages whose content ranges all over the world, including the middle east, about the United States support and direction of  "low intensity conflict" and "full spectrum dominance" without even an aside mention or obscure   reference to the United State support of Israel's nearly half century combination of these tactics against the people palestine.

Then in July of 2006, only six months after his Nobel presentation before the entire world, Pinter signs a letter that the United States supported Israeli ".long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation...must be unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and resisted.'

See the liquidation of the Palestinian nation by a graphic portrayal of the land lost by the Palestinians since 1946    LOST LAND OF PALESTINE

Even more than that according to Genevieve Fraser of Ramallah On Line,

"When Israel held Mordechai Vanunu in captivity (much of it in solitary confinement) for 18 years as a nuclear whistleblower, Britain's renowned playwright Harold Pinter served as a trustee for the Campaign to Free Vanunu and for a Free Middle East.

Since 2001, Pinter has promoted the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's boycott of Israeli products and tourism. And when George Galloway, Britain's anti-Israel MP, declared that Ariel Sharon was a war criminal who deserves to be locked up for human rights abuses, Pinter supported Sharon's condemnation. He has not only been vocal about the desperate suffering of the Palestinians, but has gone so far as to declare Israel "the central factor in world unrest."

But Israel and its supporters in Washington and throughout the world would have a hard time condemning Pinter as an anti-Semite. Pinter was born in London to working-class Jewish parents of Ashkenazi ancestry. Three of Pinter's grandparents were from Poland and one from Odessa.

In his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, "Art, Truth & Politics," Pinter stated, ".the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot." In keeping with that philosophy, on July 6th, Pinter's name appeared along with 300 prominent members of the Jewish Community in Britain in a full page ad published in the Times of London condemning Israel's massive assault on Gaza. Sponsored by Jews for Justice in Palestine, the ad serves as a "Call by Jews in Britain" and begins by asking, "What is Israel doing?"

"We watch with horror the collective punishment of the people of Gaza. Everything reasonable must be done to secure Corporal Gilad Shalit's safe release but nothing Israel is doing contributes to that aim. Instead, it is using its enormously superior military might to terrorize an entire people."

"Destruction of the fragile Gaza infrastructure will not release Shalit. Bombing power stations and cutting off fuel supplies deprives people of electricity, refrigeration, pumped drinking water and sewage disposal services. It holds hostage hospital patients on life support systems, or undergoing dialysis. It brings the threat of epidemics and starvation."

"As Gideon Levy wrote in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, this is "not only pointless, but. blatantly illegitimate". Gilad Shalit has become a pawn in the Israeli government's ongoing battle to topple the democratically-elected government of the Palestinians."

"Presenting this as an isolated hostage-taking incident ignores Israel's regular snatching of Palestinians from their homes. Thousands are held in 'administrative detention' without trial, women and children amongst them. A doctor and his brother - civilians - were kidnapped from their home in Al Shouka, near Rafah, the day before Corporal Shalit was captured. Like him, they need to be returned to their families in the established practice of prisoner exchange. And all elected MPs, punitively imprisoned by Israel in recent days, must be immediately released."

"For the US and its allies merely to call for 'restraint' is desperately inadequate - and evidently ineffective. This is a situation that requires determined action by the international community."

See Jews For Justice For Palestinians at JUSTICE

So it is clear that outside of his presentation of the lecture on the occasion of his receipt of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pinter is thoroughly aware of the Israeli "low intensity conflict' and "full spectrum dominance" of the people of Palestine supported by the United States.

The question remains, then, how is that Pinter's participation in the collective statements that address the United States nearly half century support of Israel's invasion, occupation and absorption of the Palestine beyond its borders--- ".that is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation."--- is omitted entirely in his personal statement; draws a blank in his own Nobel Prize lecture even when he has contended that Israel is "the central factor in the world unrest"?

We can only conjecture about the reasons for the glaring omission. But Pinter's information provides us with the process of producing his writings---how it proceeds from the mention of a word, from the mention of a phrase and as a citizen his writing is a search for "What is true?, What is false?" His writing is deliberate, it is thoughtful, and it is precise. And that is exactly what Pinter's omission of the United States support of the Israeli "liquidation of the Palestinian nation" in the personal statement of his Nobel Prize lecture was---it was deliberate, thoughtful, and precise.

Perhaps Pinter anticipated that the organized response (a la Jimmy Carter) that he would have received if his lecture included his personal condemnation of United States support for Israel's slaughter of innocents in Palestine would have been too much to bear at a moment of personal triumph when the world's accolades and attention were focused on the successful son of a Jewish tailor.

William C. Carlotti
August 23, 2007
Vermont

Labels: , ,



Powered by Blogger