In an appauling demonstration of what Obama refers to as ‘change’, the US has boycotted the UN conference on racism, citing its uncritical support of Israel as the justification.. So it’s business as usual for the US on the foreign policy front for the entire Middle East. Indeed the US has strengthened its occupation forces in Afghanistan, while Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has ‘pledged support’ for Iraq beyond the official end of the Iraqi occupation.
At the heart of the US’s opposition to the UN conference on racism is the observation by many at the previous conference that Israel is a racist state. Both the US and Israel consider this obversation itself to be racist. The term ‘anti-semitic’ is used regularly in such an occasion, branding any criticism of Israel to be racist and patently incorrect. But it’s not just the previous conference on racism, or anti-war activists, who consider Israel to be a racist state. Firefox’s search bar has autocompletion for google’s most common searches. When searching for ‘israel’ and ‘racist’, the autocompletion suggests:
Google common searches for 'israel' 'racist'
Why is Israel a racist state? The foundation of Israel in 1948 was a blatant act of racism and aggression. The justification for Israel becoming a state was being spearheaded by the Zionists. Zionism is the explicitely racist ideology that Jews and non-Jews can’t live together. Further to this, they consider all other humans to be in fact non-human, not possessing a soul, and not destined to go to heaven. In Palestine, this translates to everyday behaviour such as Palestinians being beaten to death by mobs of Israelis, Palestinians mothers dying during childbirth at Israeli checkpoints, and of course constant rocket and US jetfighter attacks on so-called ‘militant bases’, which is just code for ‘any Palestinians who oppose the occupation’ … which in turn means just any Palestinian.
Ha’aretz, an Israeli media outlet which is often cited of an example of Israel’s supposed liberal, critical media, has images with these texts, only on the Hebrew-language version of their website:
- A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription “Better use Durex,” next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him.
- A sharpshooter’s T-shirt from the Givati Brigade’s Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull’s-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, “1 shot, 2 kills.”
- After Operation Cast Lead, soldiers from that battalion printed a T-shirt depicting a vulture sexually penetrating Hamas’ prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh
- Another sniper’s shirt also features an Arab man in the crosshairs, and the announcement, “Everything is with the best of intentions.”
- A shirt printed after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza for Battalion 890 of the Paratroops depicts a King Kong-like soldier in a city under attack. The slogan is unambiguous: “If you believe it can be fixed, then believe it can be destroyed!”
Ha’aretz also regularly carries paid advertisements openly advocating the total destruction of the Palestinian people, the murder of large numbers of Muslim civilians, the assassination of the family members of Arab rulers, and the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons against dozens of countries.
If Ha’aretz is the ‘progressive’ media outlet ( and in mainstream circles at least, it is ), then you can imagine the racist propaganda that comes out of the conservative media, the government, schools, ‘defence’ forces, etc.
Israeli children signing bombs destined for Lebanon
So what did President Ahmadinejad of Iran say at the conference on racism that caused such an international stir? He said that Israel was founded “on the pretext of Jewish suffering” during the Second World War. There’s nothing racist in that. This is in fact precisely what happend. The Zionists leveraged their treatment under Hitler to gain support for the creation of the state of Israel. This started with the expulsion and killing of millions of Palestinians, referred to as Al Nakba ( the cataclysm ). Zioniosts are all too eager to attack Ahmadinejad on the grounds that he is a so-called ‘holocaust-denier’, yet the Israeli state itself denies the Palestinian holocaust, claiming that the land was vacant when they arrived, or that any Palestinian inhabitants voluntarily abandoned their land as the Jews seized it. While the Germans have admitted their crimes during World War II and made it a crime to deny the holocaust, Israel and a very large majority of Jews living around the world are themselves still holocaust deniers when it comes to Al Nakba.
Ahmadinejad and Iran are regularly denounced in the Western media for their nuclear ambitions. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel refuses to sign this same treaty, and already possesses nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Why should Iran be criticised for wanting nuclear power plants ( no-one has a shred of evidence that there is a nuclear weapons progam at present ) when Israel, and aggressive enemy with a frighteningly expansionist policy already has nuclear weapons? And if Iran did want a nuclear weapons program, why should they be denied while we applaud Israel’s secretive program? Why should we invade Iraq to rid the world of said weapons ( that turned out not to exist, by the way ), when Israel not only possesses WOMD, but uses them regularly in wars such as the Lebanon war, and of course the on-going Palestinian occupation? The answer to all these questions is simple: racism. We are constantly bombarded with propaganda from our own governments and media, and of course Israel’s unprecedented public relations campaign, that Israel is some bastion of hope, peace and democracy, and needs WOMD to defend itself from the hoards of barbaric Muslims. Unfortunately many people accept this idea, just as they accepted the need to invade Iraq, Vietnam, etc.
There is an incredible danger in such unconditional support for a fundamentalist, racist state. The US would do well to consider the problems they have now with the Taliban. The US established, funded and trained the Taliban to help them fight USSR. The linked Wikipedia article states:
“Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan, and “by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war.”
The Taliban were very handy at the time, and successfully fought off the USSR. Now the US has somewhat changed its tune, and is trying ( and failing ) to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. It’s certainly not inconceivable that the geo-political importance of the Middle East will subside ( for example if we manage to transition from oil ), and when that happens, Israel will have outlived its usefulness as a rabid watchdog in the Middle East. Will they turn into another Taliban? Of course, Israel’s neighbours already claim this is so. But what if Israel is seen more as a threat than as asset in the region?
The incredibly narrow-minded short-term support for Israel, dependant on accessible oil in the region is sure to pave the way for disaster. This is particularly so now that Israel has the US’s full arsenal of dreaded weapons of mass destruction. It reminds me of the story of an old woman who swallowed a fly …