Just what, then, might be the lesson of Major Hasan’s far more deadly wake-up call at Fort Hood six and a half years later? Like Sergeant Akbar, Major Hasan is a devout Moslem who chose to engage in an essentially suicidal act of violence in order to remove himself from a military campaign that he opposed against an Islamic nation. Despite his best efforts, his deployment to Afghanistan was imminent, and the massacre was his “final solution” to avoid its consequences. Like Akbar, he seems to have joined the army a couple years earlier without realizing that his mission would take him to the Near East to go to war against Islamic societies. And like Akbar, he seems to have resorted to a lethal act of disobedience both to escape such combat and to declare his moral opposition to its happening. The question remains after more than a half dozen years of warfare in both Iraq and Afghanistan, whether Hasan’s massacre will have any impact on President Obama’s impending decision whether to escalate combat in Afghanistan–a choice that might turn out to be at least as important to our nation’s future as President Johnson’s choice in 1965.

What I am suggesting here is that, like Akbar, Hasan himself intended his suicidal behavior to be a “wake up call,” if without fully taking into account its effect on the present choice whether to escalate warfare in Afghanistan. What, then, were some of these issues that Hasan himself might have overlooked? The list here of four relevant aspects is short but important: (1) as a symptom of demoralization; (2) as a gesture of outrage against our nation’s military goals; (3) as an illustration of unanticipated consequences; and (4) as insistence that a cultural war is in progress tantamount to a modern crusade against Islamic societies.

As explained by Bob Herbert in his Saturday, Nov. 7 New York Times column, “Stress Beyond Belief,” Major Hasan’s outburst was a wake-up call in the sense that it exemplified the severe demoralization in the U.S. military resulting from the longest stretch of warfare in U.S. history (slightly longer than the Vietnam War, which lasted almost exactly eight years from 1965 to 1973). Our nation has too few soldiers to conduct two wars at the same time, too many of whom have been recycled to Iraq and Afghanistan on multiple tours of duty that inevitably impact the entire army–not just the soldiers directly involved. Everybody is affected, including families, friends, and neighbors. Even the military psychiatrists who treat post-traumatic stress disorder (P.T.S.D.) among veterans returning from war suffer negative effects sometimes described as “compassion fatigue.” This in fact might have been the primary cause of Hasan’s massacre. If so, it was the therapist who totally broke down rather than his patients in response to their memory of their traumatic experiences. In any case too many of our troops have suffered pathological effects they must endure for the rest of their lives. This collective burden has necessarily contributed to the decline of our nation’s social fabric–the wasted lives, high crime and divorce rates and general social malaise. The impact of incessant military combat abroad over the past sixty years might not be the single most important factor in the moral decline of our nation, but it cannot be ignored.

A second wake-up call would be suggested by the individuals targeted by Major Hasan. His primary choice seems to have been the fellow psychiatrists and medical technicians who might have been among the personnel he claimed harassed him because of his Muslim faith. As indicated by press reports, he increasingly played up his commitment to his faith, and in turn those who ridiculed him probably became more hostile in response to his intensified religious piety. It is also significant that Hasan focused much of his rage on American soldiers, most of who were about to embark to military assignments abroad, probably either Iraq or Afghanistan. In any case, there seems to have been no doubt about his choice whom to shoot. As much as possible he selected those in uniform as opposed to those in civvies with whom they were talking. As a trained psychiatrist his primary task on a daily basis was to interview troops about to be deployed to Afghanistan, but to the extent that he also provided professional assistance to soldiers suffering from P.T.S.D., he might be expected to have felt profound empathy with their crises. However, this turns out not to have been the case. If anything, Major Hasan’s rampage enacted excessive hostility against U.S. soldiers, almost as if he wanted to kill them before they had a chance to kill their supposed Islamic enemies.

It therefore seems likely that Major Hasan’s homicidal rage was provoked to a certain extent by the stories his patients and colleagues shared with him that featured Muslim victimization at least as much as that of the American troops. Until Hasan recovers from his wounds well enough to explain himself, any retroactive assessment of his motives is of course entirely speculative, but manifold accounts from Iraq of innocent people shot down in the streets, of the grotesque dead bodies of children, of the families packed in houses mistakenly destroyed by rocket attacks, of the cars full of incinerated bodies killed by bazooka fire because they didn’t slow down enough, and in general the disdain expressed regarding the countless “sand-niggers” (or “ragheads,” or “camel jockeys”) who had to be pushed around at checkpoints–all of these topics and epithets as recounted by combat veterans in therapy sessions could only have outraged Hasan more than his non-Muslim colleagues.

One can also assume that Hasan’s seemingly disproportionate response despite his professional training for dealing exactly with this kind of provocation helps to explain the comparable outrage of Iraqi and Afghans against the U.S. troops occupying their country. American military spokesmen repeatedly emphasize the benevolent effort of U.S. troops to befriend their captive host populations, but their actual day-to-day impact unpublicized by the American press would seem to involve quite the opposite treatment as suggested by Hasan’s deadly outburst. He actually heard the stories of Muslim mistreatment first hand, as most Americans have not. He actually experienced this disdain first-hand in his own personal experience, as most Americans have not.

A third wake-up call would be suggested by the total surprise of Major Hasan’s attack. Nobody at Fort Hood had the slightest idea that such a massacre was possible. Yet it happened, and it took a female civilian police officer to terminate the event. Being taken by surprise has been an unfortunate byproduct of military conflict for American troops since Korea, when China suddenly invaded from the north. Vietnam’s 1968 Tet Offensive was comparable, as were the various bomb attacks in Iraq when they first came into play. Time and again the U.S. military command from top to bottom has been confident of what seemed a stable operation only to discover that the situation was totally different. When a General Shinseki or anybody in a lesser position has had the temerity of express doubts, he has been eliminated from the hierarchy and replaced by somebody with a more “positive” outlook. Everybody in the chain of command–certainly officers such as Hasan who have been limited to psychiatric tasks relatively low on the totem pole–has learned the necessity of reflexive optimism whatever decisions come down from above. This has been essential for peddling themselves with their superiors as “part of the team” and ultimately for the Pentagon to peddle itself with Congress and the White House because of its essential role in the “defense of freedom.”

The very possibility of inadvertent results has been so completely suppressed in the military except by strategists at the very top of its leadership–and even there to too great an extent–that our nation’s defense establishment has been far less effective than it ought to be, given its enormous share of the federal budget. As illustrated by General McChrystal’s recent “take it or leave it” diagnosis of future prospects in Afghanistan, military strategists have been able to examine all the contingencies preceding a military campaign in great detail and with marvelous tactical sophistication, but they have been far less successful in bringing it to what they themselves might have considered an acceptable outcome. In fact every one of our nation’s major wars over the past sixty years–in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and now most probably Afghanistan–has fallen short of what might be described as victory. How many more misbegotten optimistic tactical assessments need to be played out before beltway politicians realize what is going on–that poker players are trying to play bridge, that checkers players are trying to play chess? For too many surprises occur to upset the most intricate calculations. In a bloodthirsty epiphany that lasted a mere seven minutes during which more than 100 rounds were fired, Hasan’s explosive outburst epitomized everything to be expected–and not to be expected–once the Afghan-Pakistani conflict becomes a full-scale war.

And a fourth and final wake-up call would be suggested by the fact that Major Hasan, like Sergeant Akbar, is a devout Muslim–sufficiently devout to have maintained contact with the radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki, who actually responded to his massacre last week by praising him as a hero, “a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.” Official U.S. spokesmen repeatedly insist that the various Near East conflicts involving our nation have nothing to do with religious or cultural issues that might identify our policies as any kind of a modern Crusade against the Islamic world. However, this purpose is exactly what too many Near Easterners take for granted additional to the importance of oil profits and Israel’s nationalist agenda. In any case, it is more than coincidental that Hasan gave a PowerPoint presentation about a year ago, “Why the War on Terror is a War on Islam.” And exactly so! This is what Asia’s Muslim population has come to believe, whatever our spokesmen try to say to the contrary. Hasan himself was raised and educated in the United States, but with his massacre he has betrayed his oath of loyalty to the army and declared his personal rejection of our government. His shift in loyalty to the Islamic faith was a personal choice, but it also reflected his sympathy with his brother who now lives in Ramallah on the West Bank as well as his deceased parents, both of whom were born as Palestinians near Jerusalem before migrating to the United States–also his friendship with al-Awlaki, whose emphasis on arms training might have encouraged his purchase of his own pistol.

Israel has been engaged in this cultural battle since 1948, and we have let ourselves be dragged into its nightmare over the last couple of decades on a much more expansionistic scale–from Gaza and Lebanon all the way to Pakistan and beyond. Whatever the cause, whatever the explanation, our nation’s war on communism for fifty years transmogrified into a war against a particular religion. When the supposed Bolshevik menace finally collapsed, we as a nation, without quite realizing what we were doing, shifted our sights to the Islamic world, for the most part a borderless society that is largely both tribal and feudal except for urban enclaves. As opposed to the communists in earlier wars, the Muslim “enemies” we killed in limited situations generated further enemies–their cousins and cousins of cousins–to be killed on a bigger scale, and bigger yet, until the retaliation for 9-11 pits us against what will soon enough be the entire global region from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea to the western edge of India.

The question remains whether our nation can afford this particular war. Until the Berlin Wall fell, the United States enjoyed economic superiority as well as a tactical advantage over the U.S.S.R. that was highly lucrative in the sense that our defense industries helped to keep our economy afloat. However, our conflict with the U.S.S.R. has long since terminated, and a new and strictly economic global standoff is now emerging that puts us on the losing end of the stick, especially because of our economy’s excessive debt to China, Japan, and many other nations with sovereign reserve funds invested in U.S. Treasury notes. Resulting from the steady fall of the dollar, these nations are looking for more profitable investments, and their political alignment can be expected to shift along with their financial withdrawal. So we are no longer in a position to waste our economic resources on a publicity-driven “war of choice” that is no longer in fact a “war of necessity” if the Taliban has expressed its willingness to negotiate a settlement and fewer than 100 Al Qaeda fighters are reported to be left in Afghanistan. If true, the military escalation now under consideration by the White House turns out to depend on an excuse just as fraudulent as the Tonkin incident in 1965 and Iraq’s “secret” nuclear weapons in 2003. At this point, however, we cannot ignore the significant difference that our almost guaranteed military quagmire in Afghanistan can only accelerate the international realignment that has begun to manifest itself with the effort of creditor nations to coordinate their impending rejection of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, for example as sponsored by BRIC (ominously inclusive of Brazil, Russia, India, and China).

Victory in Afghanistan might seem a quick antidote to such an economic threat, and it might even benefit our economy in Keynesian terms through the increased subsidization of our defense industries. However, any military occupation of Afghanistan would necessarily be prolonged–perhaps a decade or longer, especially if we resort to the construction of permanent military bases. Moreover, the conflict would unavoidably spread to include a large portion of Pakistan, whose volatile population is over half that of the United States. As Hasan’s massacre suggests, further surprises can be expected both on and off the battlefield, much as happened to the U.S.S.R. when its effort to subdue Afghanistan provided the coup de grace to its own economy. And of course the latest of our modern wars would further enlarge our national debt, ultimately reducing our nation’s standard of living into the foreseeable future. The rest of the post-industrial world need only stand aside and watch us destroy ourselves.

There is a lesson to be drawn from Hasan’s massacre if we have the sense–and courage–to recognize it: namely that we should wind down the conflict in Afghanistan as we claim to be doing in Iraq and pursue equitable diplomatic solutions throughout the entire Near East. Unfortunately, it seems, as current reports indicate (for example the CBS news Monday evening), President Obama can be anticipated in the near future to declare with his predictable rhetorical effectiveness that all those killed and wounded at Fort Hood further justify the Afghan escalation so their deaths will not have been in vain. In the words of Shakespeare (used fully eight times in his plays)–alas, alas.

The factual information used here has been primarily obtained from the New York Times coverage since the event occurred last Thursday, Nov. 5. Especially useful have been the two Nov. 6 articles by Robert McFadden and James Dao; the four Nov. 7 articles by James McKinley, Liz Robbins, Clifford Krauss & James Dao, and Campbell Robertson & Ray Rivera; the single Nov. 8 article by Benedict Carey & Damien Cave; the two Nov. 9 articles by James McKinley & James Dao, and Andrea Elliott; and the three Nov. 10 articles by Tamar Lewin, David Johnston & Scott Shane, and Michael Moss & Ray Rivera.

No wonder Obama has refused to reveal the list of his visitors in the White House. His two broken promises would be obvious if he fully disclosed the identity of his Oval Office guests.

How and why has this happened? One answer — perhaps the primary one — is that Obama has actually turned the Oval Office into a University of Chicago graduate seminar classroom. Obama is the professor and the American public is the entire student body, some of whom (mostly lobbyists, it seems) have access to his classroom. Whenever business-suited advocates for a conservative cause at the expense of the American people — say, in defense of retaining the prohibitive cost of pharmaceuticals — are ushered into his presence, it is as if they are a throng of lively graduate students who respectfully disagree with his liberal assumptions. Obama hears them out as an obliging hierophant and in response comes up with a brilliant compromise that somewhat diminishes their expectations but gives them a substantial portion of what they have requested — in fact, as much as they had been hoping for. They leave the Oval Office fully satisfied with their gain, and he in turn sits back in his leather swivel chair delighted that he has once again whittled down their demands so effectively. Next in line comes a team of advocates insistent on Wall Street deregulation, or insistent on escalation in Afghanistan, or insistent on putting the screws on Iran. Time and again through the day — nay, through the week, the month, perhaps his entire presidency — he wins countless partial victories against respectful requesters. However, the stack of dispensations steadily mounts favorable to the conservative agenda, and, like so many professors since the beginning of time, he himself seems to miss the point. Some niggling critics might complain that he has given away too much prematurely, but what else is possible? Everybody present seems the winner — at least at the time. Of course not all of his Oval Office sessions fit the pattern, but enough of them to make a difference.

Try to imagine an alternative agenda. The gaggle of talented pharmaceutical lobbyists, for example, crowd into the Oval Office, only to find Obama in the presence of lean and mean experts hostile to their cause and with ample documentation to back up their arguments. And, of crucial importance, the number of critical experts be roughly equivalent to that of the lobbyists. Suddenly the lobbyists find themselves up against a tide of information antithetical to their perspective, so the gentleman’s handshake they are hoping for turns out to be far less generous than otherwise. This arrangement would put Obama in pretty much the situation of a judge or a strike negotiator instead of an obliging professor. Hard decisions would occur, and a different outcome could be expected after meticulous debate. Obama’s presidency could actually begin to bear credible results. As yet, however, such is not the case, so that many of the electorate enthusiastic about Obama’s election last November now feel cheated by his current performance.

How, then, has Obama’s professorial diffidence betrayed our nation? Let me count the ways.

Right now Obama is favoring all the health insurance corporations in providing national care at the expense of the American public. What started out as a grand design to protect the American public from health insurance profiteers is turning into exactly the opposite — a plan to augment their profits that much further at the expense of the American public.

Right now Obama is favoring all the Wall Street bankers who have benefitted from extraordinary federal generosity well enough to get back on their feet. What they demand at this point is to be able to resume the same extravagant financial manipulation that threw them into what should have been bankruptcy in the first place.

Right now Obama is favoring all the federal agencies that have exploited the task of homeland security to the limit under President Bush and want to perpetuate the arrangement into the indefinite future, of course because our nation is supposedly under the threat or dire imminent attack. At this point these agencies are big and persuasive enough to be included in the same category as bankers and health insurance providers.

Right now Obama is favoring all Pentagon interests that want to shift our nation’s military juggernaut from Iraq to Afghanistan, a state whose military Keynesian potential now exceeds that of Iraq, especially if portions of Pakistan can be thrown in as well.

Right now Obama is selling out in favor of Israel, which wants our nation to impose an embargo on Iran, setting the stage for a potential military attack at the same time as any kind of a two-state solution with Palestinians continues to be perpetuated into the indefinite future.

And so on.

Additional disappointments in foreign policy are listed in Garry Wills’ article, “Entangled Giant,” in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books. Obama has fallen short, for example, in his use of signing statements, in his retention of the state secrets privilege, and in the indefinite detention of Gitmo prisoners, military tribunals, and extraordinary rendition. He also seems to be trying to perpetuate the denial of habeas corpus, the unilateral cancellation of treaties, and the existence countless military bases abroad (many with their own golf courses). In most, if not all, these instances, one can imagine Oval Office consultations with supposed experts, most of whom are defending their jobs or former jobs as well as those of others who have worked with them as subordinates. Inevitably, these individuals turn out to be knowledgeable advocates of policies involving exactly what they themselves did for a living for a couple decades. Their jobs too often necessitated their deliberate ignorance relevant to the questions that matter the most (e.g., should we truly be invading any particular nation?), but they escape being challenged about this ignorance while presenting their case to the president. Later on they or their families can admit, “Oh yes, too bad about Vietnam.” or “Oh yes, too bad about Iraq.” Or “Oh yes, too bad about the collapse of Wall Street,” neglecting to acknowledge that these huge mistakes were the product of very bad judgment by themselves and others like them.

As Wills explains, our nation’s current imbroglio of layered crises has grown worse from one generation to the next since World War II. Our last president severely escalated the trend, and now Obama seems to be holding his own without sufficient incentive to reverse it. As of yet, we have had no dramatic increments beneficial to the genuine needs of the American public during his presidency. What President Obama has provided instead is effectively an administrative plateau whereby too many of Bush’s gains seem in the process of being consolidated. And of course both Iran and Afghanistan loom as potential future wars equivalent to Vietnam and Iraq in guaranteeing the ruination of his term in office.

One can appreciate how Obama advertised himself with the electorate last year as both a Chicago legislator and community organizer. It sounded promising. But he was also a University of Chicago law school professor who spent plenty of time teaching seminars and having lunch with colleagues dedicated to Milton Friedman’s assumptions. These assumptions have been discredited since then, but far more important has been his sense of personal identity as a thoughtful professor willing and eager to accommodate the needs of all involved. And what site in America can better serve this end right now than the Oval Office itself in the White House — the most impressive classroom of all. Let the espousers of profitable ventures make their arguments at the expense of the American public, whatever they might consist of, and our brilliant president can bestow them what seems their appropriate share. This genteel flexibility can be harmless enough in an academic setting, but its consequences might well be disastrous in running the nation. Unfortunately, Professor Obama just doesn’t seem to get it.

As must have been the case with all previous hegemonic societies, our nation’s pursuit of warfare abroad is inevitably cloaked in the rhetoric of national defense. Somehow the story is sufficiently twisted that it seems an inferior military force abroad poses an enormous threat to our national interest, and to such an extent that we must send our troops abroad to confront this force in its own territory and with civilian casualties almost entirely limited to its population. Intellectuals vent their doubts, so homespun Americans become indignant in response, insistent on the need once again to enforce their vision of democratic exemplification to the rest of the world. Meanwhile, our nation’s banks and defense industries reap enormous profits and increased financial liquidity benefits the rest of our population at least to a certain extent.

Warfare accordingly continues to play too big a role in our nation. There has been too much combat on foreign soil–far more than for all other nations combined since World War II. Vietnam and Iraq were illegal, the first because Secretary of State Dulles refused to sign the 1954 Geneva Accords, thereby precluding American involvement in the avoidance of a plebiscite election as dictated by the Accords, and the second by having bypassed Article 42 of the U.N. Charter, having already benefited from Article 41. The rest of the wars, if arguably legal, could have been avoided without much difficulty by effective negotiations. And too many innocent civilians have needlessly died in these wars. U.S. troops caused the deaths of as many as three million people in Vietnam and an estimated one million in Iraq, totaling two-thirds of the Holocaust victims during World War II. Throw in the two million lives lost in Korea, which was partly our responsibility, and we just about match the Holocaust. Not to forget the heavy financial burden of war, for example the congressional allocations to the military industrial complex to equip and supply the pursuit of warfare. According to Stiglitz, the total cost of our “war of choice” against Iraq will ultimately cost $3 trillion dollars from taxpayers that go into the military industrial complex.

The total financial cost of our military establishment has been no less debilitating to our economy than was the case for most of the previous hegemonic civilizations described two decades ago by Paul Kennedy in his excellent book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (Random House, 1987). It seems that all U.S. military expenditures combined, inclusive of such items as the Veterans Administration, now consume at least 55% of our annual federal budget. This might seem useful in military Keynesian terms, but the total now equals or exceeds military expenditures for the rest of the world combined. Whether we like it or not, our nation has become addicted to warfare since World War II. Most of our military budget is spent on defense industries with trickle-down benefits to a large number of grateful subcontractors (most of them highly patriotic for obvious reasons) as well as their host communities (also highly patriotic for obvious reasons), but this can only be at a substantial cost to the rest of the nation without sufficient trickle-down access. In general Vermont farmers tend to lose; Texas laborers tend to win.

But it cannot be sufficiently emphasized that the Vietnam and Iraq wars–as well as the military operations in Korea, Panama, the Persian Gulf, and even Yugoslavia–have been only the tip of the iceberg. According to Chalmers Johnson in The Sorrows of Empire, published in 2004, 725 U.S. military bases, inclusive of sixteen Main Operating Bases (MOBs), exist in as many as 41 nations. Altogether, 250 thousand U.S. troops are stationed abroad, including 118 thousand in Europe, 92 thousand in east Asia, and 14 thousand in the western hemisphere. Significantly, there was almost no military conflict in these regions at the time of Iraq’s invasion and occupation, yet large numbers of U.S. troops continued to remain deployed in these regions instead of being transferred to Iraq to participate in the fighting there. Preceding the 2007 “surge,” military spokesmen repeatedly insisted in prime time interviews that more troops were needed in order to win in Iraq. They neglected to explain why many thousands of U.S. troops were retained in military bases elsewhere in the world, apparently as a no longer necessary Cold War measure that seamlessly converted into a peacetime occupation strategy. It almost seems as if our government has had an unspoken commitment since the fall of the U.S.S.R. to dominate the entire world into the indefinite future. Proponents might argue that their purpose is to protect the world, but this is to protect the world under our nation’s authority, hence to dominate the world, just as gangland protectionist rings “protect” those they extort money from. It’s no accident that U.S. investors are active worldwide with governments fully cooperative with U.S. authority.

Also deplorable has been the ongoing effort of our government to intervene in other country’s internal affairs by manipulating elections, assassinating both enemies and potential enemies, and in general bringing into play whatever dirty tricks seemed useful. As calculated by William Blum in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, published in 2003, at least fifty such interventions can be counted for less than the four decades since World War II. Among the many countries manipulated by the CIA and other such U.S. organizations have been Greece in the late forties, the Philippines in the 1940s and 50s, Iran and Guatemala in 1953-54, Syria in 1956-57, Ecuador in 1960-63, Iraq in 1972-75, Australia in 1973-75, Angola in 1975-the 80s, Morocco in 1983, and so on. Among the many foreign political leaders targeted for assassination were Chou en-Lai of China, Lumumba of the Congo, Castro of Cuba, Torrijos of Panama, Sukarno of Indonesia, Mossadegh of Iran, Nehru of India, Nasser of Egypt, Sihanouk of Cambodia, Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, De Gaulle of France, Allende of Chile, Manley of Jamaica, Milosevic of Yugoslavia, etc. Fortunately many of them lived to talk about it, but others didn’t.

According to John Perkins in Confessions of a Hit Man, published five years ago, the arrangement was simple enough. Bogus U.S. economists including himself (which he freely admitted) would try to convince foreign governments to “liberalize” their economies by accepting U.S. investments without imposing fees, tariffs, or other such costs. If these governments refused to cooperate, U.S. secret agents identified as “jackals” would arrive to take whatever steps seemed necessary in order to reverse the situation, even if it meant destabilizing the government or assassinating whoever seemed an impediment, presidents and friendly dictators included. And if the jackals failed, then an invasion became necessary as in the cases of Iraq, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. Of course the issue was always the war against communism, but somehow the beneficiaries just as inevitably turned out to be U.S. business ventures that had financial interests to be protected and/or advanced by U.S. military forces.

Our country’s unique relationship with Israel has been the source of enough problems that it deserves to be listed here in a category of its own. The $3 billion per year of foreign “aid” to Israel ($500 per capita) is relatively small compared to our nation’s budget as a whole even when a large variety of supplemental benefits provided to Israel is taken into account. However, this supportive relationship has borne unexpected difficulties that Truman should have recognized when he hastened Israel’s creation as a campaign strategy in 1948. Without any clear mandate, Israel’s relentless effort since then to annex adjacent territories in the West Bank has led to such excessive persecution of the Palestinians that the world’s entire Muslim population has become hostile to both Israel and the United States as its primary benefactor. Bin Laden’s first public statement after 9-11, made available on October 7, primarily spoke of retaliation for the American role in Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians.

The perhaps unrecognized Machiavellian advantage of our nation’s connection with Israel right now is that it has permitted military Keynesianism to persist during the Obama administration through combat with a variety of Arab nations hostile to Israel. Arab terrorists have replaced the commies as our nation’s most invidious enemies. As a result, warfare continues to play its role as a crutch to our economy exactly when it needs it the most. Obama insists the Afghan campaign is not a war of choice, but of course it has become one, and its potential economic benefit to our defense industries (i.e., all our major industries) can hardly have been overlooked. There is no doubt that bin Laden is still loose and that al Qaeda continues to thrive in Afghanistan as a potential threat to our nation. However, their role focuses U.S. aggression and thereby intensifies their appeal in almost every nation in the region. In fact, al Qaeda’s successful recruitment of guerrilla fighters thrives because of our nation’s aggressive military effort of to root it out in any particular country. And why not? If U.S. troops invaded and forcibly occupied Canada to root out murderous Canadians hostile to Americans, it wouldn’t be long before everybody in Canada could be treated as a potential enemy. The same with Afghanistan, especially now that the brutal Afghan warlord general Dostum has been allowed to return to the fold as a supporter of our puppet president Karzai.

One also asks whether Obama actually thinks combat can be limited to the mountainous region on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan? Or is a new full-scale war what he really wants? Because that’s what he is going to get. Of course we’ll “win” if this is his intention–but all we need to do is declare victory and withdraw any time we want, since the Taliban lacks the capacity to chase us beyond their own border. Nor do they want to. As a result the war is both unwinnable and unlosable–in other words at least as much a quagmire as Vietnam had been. But does Obama really want to mount an escalation that might be judged by history with the same disfavor as President Johnson’s fabricated 1965 Tonkin attack and Bush’s fabricated 2003 threat of Saddam Hussein’s atomic capability? Does he want to be another infamous American president for exactly the wrong reasons?

One also wonders why Obama has, if anything, expanded the use mercenary forces such as Blackwater (now identified as Xe) in Afghanistan, Iraq, and even Africa. It has been disclosed, for example, that roughly one quarter of our nation’s intelligence activity in Afghanistan is farmed out by the CIA to Blackwater. Once Obama and Secretary of State Clinton opposed Blackwater–now they depend on it. Also, why has Obama chosen to enlarge the size of our military by as many as 21,000 new troops, 17,000 of which will be sent to Afghanistan? And why doesn’t he put more effort into negotiating with Taliban factions who are willing to reject al Qaeda–just as was done to “win” the war in Iraq by paying once hostile Sunni tribal leaders monthly salaries between $240 and $300 per month to participate in the so-called surge? And when will our administration finally realize, if they haven’t already, that U.S. combat troops make inferior occupation troops, often provoking a hostile opposition sufficient to initiate a costly full-scale war? This is exactly what happened between March and September, 2003, when the Iraqi populace were goaded by the severe and unprovoked aggressiveness of U.S. troops into outright resistance. Many of these troops are now being used in Afghanistan. Do we truly want déjà vu all over again? Would McCain have gotten away with this sort of thing if he had been elected president? Indignant liberals would be demonstrating in Washington, New York City, and elsewhere.

As for potential conflict with Iran, why does Defense Secretary Robert Gates announce a “routine” trip to Israel to consult its leadership and deny that this consultation would involve the current standoff with Iran? And then, having concluded consultations, why does he announce in his press conference a September deadline imposed on Iran to fully cooperate with U.S. objectives? And why does he insist that if Israel chooses to attack Iran the U.S. would have no recourse but to accept this choice? Is an attack on Iran now in the works? Would this also be suggested by Dennis Ross’s reassignment to the National Security Council perhaps to take operational control of such an attack? If this is what happens, Zionists will once again succeed in diverting U.S. policy from the effort to obtain negotiations with the Palestinians to a peripheral issue that diverts our energies toward a useful and relatively harmless cause beneficial to Israel on another front–this time Iran instead of Iraq.

Speeches by Obama now and again indicate his full awareness that genuine peace is only possible in the Near East once a two-state solution has been implemented between Israel and the Palestinians. But what exactly has been done to bring this about since he came into office? Why hasn’t his administration offered Israel an obvious quid pro quo through diplomatic and trade relations with all Arab nations plus the guaranteed elimination of Iran’s nuclear weapons program–if it has one–in exchange for Israel’s full acceptance of a viable two-state solution respected by both parties? Just as our government has generously financed Israel’s aggressive foreign policy since 1967, it would even more generously finance a peace settlement based on all the agreements already in the works at Oslo, Madrid and Taba, to say nothing of Camp David, Roadmap and Annapolis. All groups and nations involved would get a fat payoff, even ourselves by once and for all terminating the crisis. Suddenly there would be an area-wide peace agreement such as has been proposed repeatedly by the Arab League. Both the Iranians and Palestinians would gladly accept such an arrangement as would most nations outside the Near East. Until this can be brought about, the United States will remain hostage to the Near East quagmire so effectively orchestrated by the Zionist lobby with lies, threats, broken promises, staged indignant rallies, and the like.

Turning to South America, why the announced establishment of three or four new U.S. military bases in Colombia near the border of Venezuela? Even if the command of these bases is turned over to the Colombian government, as Hillary Clinton promises, construction costs would obviously be paid by ourselves, and we can expect that American troops would be permitted to be stationed there. There would also be an airfield for military transport planes and fighter planes. Is this Obama’s first step to enlarge our military presence in South America in order to combat “Chavismo” at the very edge of South America’s most hostile nation? Also, why has it been disclosed that several other bases–half a dozen in all–would be constructed elsewhere in South America from the Andes to the Caribbean? Moreover, was the present military insurrection of Honduras a thousand miles away intended (or permitted) as a “friendly” takeover in the spirit of President Aristide’s forced exile from Haiti in 2004 orchestrated by the Bush administration? Is Obama actually dusting off Otto Reich’s counter-productive South American strategy a couple decades ago in order to initiate full-fledged regional imperialism once again in South America? How can an apparently aggressive shift in policy be undertaken at the same time both in South America and the Near East inclusive of Russia? Is some kind of an overarching strategy in the works to expand our military presence worldwide even further? Or is the timing simply to be chalked up to ineptitude by Washington bureaucrats? They shouldn’t want this kind of thinking to happen.

5. Running Dogs That Bark Up The Wrong Tree

American news coverage is heavy, lasting from morning to night, but with a paucity of genuine new information. Crime and human interest stories predominate, and, relevant to what might be described as “hard” news, the same stories are incessantly repeated until the topic has exhausted the public “mind,” whereupon the press switches to other such stories to fill the gap. In too many instances the primary task is to suppress crucial facts and shape and craft the stories that cannot be avoided to such an extent that they keep the American public ignorant of exactly the issues that matter the most. On the other hand, information that cannot be ignored but is found distasteful and/or ideologically unacceptable (for example, U.S. drones that accidentally kill large wedding parties in Pakistan) lasts just one or two news cycles at most.

Most obviously, the “respectable” American media has almost without exception given full support to our nation’s foreign intervention across the globe. Seldom does news coverage feature information that might discredit military operations against a foreign nation. Instead, with the current exception of Afghanistan, our press has celebrated the cause with full patriotic approval exactly when its approval has seemed the most useful. News coverage repeatedly vilifies the putative enemy and extols the American cause and those engaged in making it happen. And whenever needed, competent patriotic reporters can be found who willingly participate in bending their evidence to support a positive judgment, as illustrated by Barbara Miller’s famous coverage of U.S. preparations preceding the invasion of Iraq as well as the bias of “embedded” war correspondents in response to the fighting. The same “respectable” journalistic support, if not quite at the same level, was put into play to justify military operations in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and Afghanistan. All of these wars of choice were more or less illegal and ill conceived, and in at least two instances–Iraq and Vietnam–they were finally ruinous to our nation’s sense of collective decency among those who keep track of foreign policy issues. Yet the press promoted them with great enthusiasm exactly when they could have been prevented if there were more public opposition at the time.

Many claim the basic problem is that news coverage has become a commodity almost totally dominated by such media giants as Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, NBC Universal, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and the New York Times Company. Among all these corporate entities, profit predominates at the expense of keeping the public informed. In varying degrees, with Fox at one extreme and the New York Times at the other, the reporter’s “job” of telling stories with a guaranteed audience takes precedence over informing the public at large on an adequate basis. Of course a modicum of information remains important, but it plays second fiddle to the bottom line, the profits guaranteed by the size and enthusiasm of the audience. As a rule of thumb, media owners are Republicans, reporters are middle-of-the-road Democrats (with one or two liberal Democrats to enliven the package), and publishers mediate between owners and reporters, almost inevitably giving the nod to the owners when the choice really matters, for example when it comes time to endorse a political candidate. The bias–and there always is one–thus tilts toward conservatism with a sprinkling of information that might be considered middle-of-the-road liberal.

As an exception to the rule, significant bias often occurs in news coverage relevant to Israel. The news corporations listed above are dominated by billionaires and multi-millionaires incidentally friendly to the Zionist cause as illustrated by their willingness to publicize Arab atrocities and to suppress information about Israeli transgressions. This bias seems evident in the almost total suppression of information about Sivan Kurtzberg and four other Israeli citizens (two of whom were connected with Mossad) when they were arrested at the edge of a New Jersey highway cheering and photographing the 9-11 catastrophe across the Hudson River. It seemed at the time that they were somehow involved in the event, if only as witnesses who knew in advance that it was going to occur. They were held in detention for 71 days, then flown back to Israel with little if any publicity. This bias may also be observed in the almost total lack of press coverage relevant to the 2005 story about Larry Franklin, a Zionist spy who served at a high level as a Pentagon analyst, having been caught and then involved in a sting operation that trapped Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman of AIPAC in the act of accepting secret information to be forwarded to Israel. Many other Zionist spies embedded in U.S. agencies might also have been uncovered if the investigation had been pursued more effectively, but it wasn’t, and the case against Rosen and Weissman was finally closed based on the argument that the secret information was so sensitive that it could not have been used as evidence in a courtroom hearing.

On the other hand, the media’s persistent anti-Arab bias has been in in full display most recently in the media’s top billing over the better part of a week of its indignation with the release of Abdel Baset al Megrahi from prison in Scotland for the destruction of Pan American flight 103 in 1988, over two decades ago, in which a total of 270 people were killed. The official explanation for releasing Megrahi, the token culprit, was his terminal cancer. But whether or not he had any part in the conspiracy–which he has persistently denied–the U.S. media has featured his presumed guilt while totally neglecting the probable justification for this act of terrorism, either the earlier sinking of a couple of Libyan boats in the Gulf of Sidra by American fighter planes or the destruction just six months earlier of an Iranian civilian airliner, flight IR 655, by antiaircraft fire from the U.S. aircraft carrier Vincinnes under the command of Captain Will Rogers III. In this case 290 passengers died (twenty more than in flight 103), 66 of whom were children en route to a vacation with their families on a recognized civilian air route. Neither Rogers III nor President Bush ever apologized for this inexcusable “mistake,” but a couple years later the U.S. government paid slightly over $60 million in damages.

Significantly, the IR 655 incident led to Iran’s acceptance of a U.N. ceasefire that ended the war between Iran and Iraq at a time when Reagan’s administration was intensifying the conflict with its Iran-Contra strategy that just happened to benefit Israel through the mutual destruction of two potential enemies. Today, newsmen such as Wolf Blitzer, a former reporter for the Jerusalem Post, excoriate Megrahi’s release without at all mentioning the overall context. As usual, they totally ignore the full story with the justified expectation that the American public has an even shorter memory than they themselves. But some of us don’t.

Too often the media seems almost eager to convey approved misinformation without questioning it. The majority of intrepid Fox watchers, for example, did not realize for a couple years beyond the 2003 invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein had no connection whatsoever with al Qaeda. Vice President Cheney kept insisting that a connection existed between the two based on false reports, and Fox kept this assumption afloat on the airwaves as an unassailable fact–which it wasn’t.

But excessive collaboration has been in effect at all levels in the media, including the three most respectable newspapers, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.

Even today, for example, during the supposedly enlightened Obama administration, the American public is kept ignorant of the likelihood that our government secretly encouraged the recent coup d’etat in Honduras. Suggestive of this possibility are the facts that our nation already has 400 troops stationed there and that the military coup leaders are using the Washington lobbyist Lanny Davis, once closely connected with Bill and Hillary Clinton, to represent their case in Washington. It also seems relevant that a U.S. military airfield was used to help fly the deposed president out of Honduras and that U.S. government apologists first tried to excuse themselves with the argument that U.S. representatives in Honduras–whether military, diplomatic, or both–warned the coup leaders not to go through with their plan. How, though, could these Americans have done this if they weren’t aware that a coup attempt was being undertaken? And if they did know of it and opposed such a possibility, as they now insist to their Latin American friends, why didn’t they make an effort to prevent it?

But there are more questions as well. Honduras’ military leadership, mostly educated in Fort Benning’s School of the Americas, avoids doing anything we don’t let them do–so why did we let them do this? Why has our government belatedly cancelled its aid of $30 million to Honduras at exactly the same time as an aid package of $150 million is being provided by the IMF? Could our current administration’s manipulative involvement have anything to do with the State Department’s concern about President Zelaya’s friendship with President Chavez of Venezuela? And is its “lukewarm” support of Zelaya linked with the strategy of “waiting it out” until the next election is held on November 29, less than three months from now, when our government can once again help to manipulate election results as it has done so many times before? One wonders, though, if Zelaya might be able to run for reelection on the technicality that he has not served his full term. The answers to these and other such questions will have far-reaching impact on our nation’s relations with most of Latin America during the rest of Obama’s presidency. Yet coverage in the American press tells us very little. Everybody who is anybody in Latin America is well aware of what is involved–it is the supposedly informed American reader who remains ignorant.

Of course one cannot discount the possibility that the NYT and WP are now researching the Honduras issue to be able to give a full report later, but this did not happen after last August, when Georgia waged a surprise attack against South Ossetia. U.S. newspapers inclusive of the NYT and WP treated the counter-attack of Russian troops as having been the initial assault. But this was not true, and these news sources never fully conceded their error afterward. This left American readers with the false impression that the Russians were mostly at fault–which was not the case. Instead, the encounter began with a highly destructive midnight surprise attack on South Ossetia’s capital planned by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. One suspects his strategy was at least partly to expedite admittance in NATO in the near future. But Russians troops stationed in South Ossetia staged a successful counter-attack the next morning, and Georgian troops fled for their lives.

In his recent visit to Georgia, Vice President Biden was able to reinforce the notion that Russia was at fault in his repeated insistence that Russia had first launched the invasion, once doing so while standing arm in arm with Saakashvili. Whether he believes it himself, Biden’s misinformation is only possible because of the failure of most of the American press, especially the New York Times, to set the record straight. Now, just a couple weeks later, we hear that 750 Georgian troops are to be trained by U.S. marines, presumably to serve in Afghanistan. But who is kidding whom? If Russia retaliates, for example by supplying its most advanced technology to augment Iran’s defensive missile system, as it has already announced, the Cold War just might be effectively resurrected, and Obama will have pulled off what McCain could never have achieved if he had been elected. We also learn from a recent Nation article by Alexander Cockburn that Saakashvili has actually boasted of Georgia’s defense minister, David Kezerashvili, and Temur Iakobashvili, its minister in charge of negotiations regarding South Ossetia, having both been Israeli residents before coming to Georgia.

So the picture gets complicated. Israel demands that pressure be exerted on Russia to withdraw its offer to Iran, and the State Department seems to be making an effort to use both the training of Georgian troops and a new missile system offered to Poland, manned by as many as 100 American technicians, as leverage against Russia in order to give Israel what it wants–the opportunity to attack Iran without any possibility of high-tech Russian intervention. A little news coverage is to be found in our major newspapers relevant to some of what is happening right now, but only in bits and pieces, and without acknowledging the other side of the story or the full extent of all the tradeoffs now in play. If and when military conflict erupts in the region involving a Zionist attack on Iran, our press can take satisfaction in Israel’s “existential” justification, and nobody in the United States will know any better. And with Iran eliminated as a potential threat, Israel can junk any prospects of a regional solution for the Near East, letting it (Israel) continue doing what it pleases in its suppression of Palestinians, hopefully culminating in their transfer elsewhere within another decade or two.

6. Matters Cultural (or not)

And finally the demoralization of the American public cannot be disregarded as a byproduct of collective decline resulting from what might be described as spent expansionism. When a hegemonic civilization begins to disintegrate, in imperial America no less than our nine hegemonic predecessors, this decline bears with it with a full array of negative consequences that are more or less precipitous. Just as our economy is both broke and extravagant at the same time, and just as our military juggernaut is both powerful and ineffectual at the same time, our collective lifestyle and the social infrastructure that supports it are both wasteful and impoverished at the same time. The virtue of growth has degenerated into mere extravagance, and traces of decline can be expected to penetrate every aspect of society that has directly or indirectly shared in this excess. Enlarged rewards proportional to output become an insistence at all levels of economic behavior, and innovation (today a corporate mantra) usually consists of useless variation to suggest improvement instead of a cheapening of the product. Greed thrives, and intrinsic value almost completely takes a back seat to profit maximization.

Cherished possessions become junk too soon. Almost every feature of what we buy and use manifests planned obsolescence as first explained by Bernard London in 1932. Our cars, appliances, TV, computers, cameras, and telephone gadgetry too quickly become obsolete, far too vulnerable to damage, and far too intricate to understand for anybody but the most avid junkies devoted to their use. New houses and furniture are actually stapled together, and new cars and appliances too often depend on plastic components exactly at the sites where wear is the greatest, thus guaranteeing the need for early replacement. Metal isn’t exactly metal, nor is plastic quite plastic. Nor are wood and its various substitutes straight from the tree, if at all. Also, our food, our lawns, and everything we touch, smell or breath is laced with presumably non-toxic chemicals that somehow increase corporate profits but whose combined effect on our health can only be harmful. And so on.

Our medical system is the most expensive and least productive, dollar for dollar, in the entire post-industrial world. Our longevity statistics are actually forty-sixth from the top worldwide according to the 2008 CIA World Factbook estimates. Almost all of Europe lives longer than we do. Obesity has become rampant resulting from the consumption of processed junk food, much of it with the “diet” brand. Today an estimated one-third of the American public are both too bulky and too unhealthy, emblematic of our society as a whole. Also contributing to our nation’s bad health, as many as forty-six million Americans go without health insurance, and according to the Institute of Medicine in 2004, quoted by Wendell Potter (a former private health insurance publicist), as many as eighteen thousand Americans die each year because of the lack of health insurance. Their medical care at emergency wards is both too expensive and necessarily insufficient.

Meanwhile the 1200 private health care providers collectively reap about $30 billion in annual profits. Thirty percent of the health industry’s overall budget is spent on administration costs inclusive of profits, lobbying, and so-called “rescissions,” the ongoing effort of lawyers and medical researchers to exclude potentially unprofitable individuals (i.e., those with bad health) from its benefits programs. Trained employees scour the medical records of patients suddenly in trouble to find an earlier medical problem unmentioned in their original applications, however minor, then retroactively cancel these application for fraud exactly when these patients are the most desperately in need of this support.

No wonder the private health care industry depends as heavily as it does on lobbying elected officials in Washington and dredging up a swarm of blustering “angry” demonstrators presumably eager to retain their private health insurance. During the first three months of this year alone, it is also estimated that health-care companies and their employees have contributed almost $1.8 million to House members supervising health care reform, with the 52 Blue Dog Democrats receiving 25 percent more apiece than other Democrats. Another report says altogether $5.4 million has been spent in campaign donations, 60 percent of which went to the Blue Dog Democrats who now control the committees.

Unfortunately, single-payer insurance comparable to the programs of other post-industrial nations no longer seems a viable possibility in Congress. Moreover, even the substitution of a public option that would include single-payer insurance as a competitive alternative to private insurance plans seems likely to be sacrificed in favor of a much watered-down co-op option guaranteed to fail. Not surprisingly, conservative congressmen supportive of the health insurance industry are now suggesting that even this concession would be unacceptable to them. And it appears their lobby has the political leverage to impose their own choice. As a result, Obama’s campaign promise to obtain genuine health insurance reform if elected seems to have caved in despite its widespread public support, in large part because his public relations effort has been inadequate and he and his subordinates have been too compliant in their negotiations toward acceptable compromises. It seems he is willing to make basic concessions before obtaining an adequate tradeoff from those with whom he is negotiating.

Our educational system is also victimized by bloated costs matched with inferior results. This contradiction is relevant to both the current K-through-12 test-based improvement strategies and the steady degeneration of colleges and universities into corporate ventures that primarily treat knowledge and student enrollment as marketable commodities. Business Administration and computer technology have almost completely replaced history, philosophy, anthropology, and comparative literature as the chosen majors of students, and this is in fact the appropriate choice, given our nation’s current economic crisis. Our universities feature expensive new construction, high salaries for an excessive number of administrators, and a variety of operational costs that have escalated proportional to the total budget. If all these expenses were pegged to faculty salaries and/or student tuition at the same level as five, three, or even one decade ago, one suspects there would be no serious budget crisis. To offset these needless costs peripheral to the basic task of education, our colleges and universities jack up tuition each year and substitute instructors and teaching assistants for tenure-track faculty as much as possible–to the extent that many students do not encounter a genuine tenured professor until they reach their junior year. As a result many college-educated individuals are no longer particularly educated, only competent in making money–that is to say, in maximizing their income relative to the effort expended.

The gap between poverty and perceived respectability seems to have become almost unbridgeable. Vertical mobility has become less accessible than in the past, quite opposite the prevalent myth of poor people striking it rich one way or another. The few who do succeed (rock stars, etc.) get heavy publicity, and most others rest satisfied with the dream. The poor are mostly to be found in run-down urban neighborhoods, the middle-class in stapled split-level houses located in upscale housing projects, and the wealthy in gated communities crowded with stapled McMansions minus personal libraries except for Christmas and birthday books.

Moreover, traditional families have become almost archaic.

Among two-parent families both fathers and mothers work to support an artificial standard of living, and their children either run free or endure the supervision of nannies, many of whom have trouble coping with the English language. Similarly, the rates of divorce and single parenthood are off the chart, as is the deliberate rejection of parenthood among exactly the best and most suitable candidates for this role. Too many of our most promising potential parents don’t parent, while too many of our most challenged parents excessively test this challenge.

Meanwhile, a steady diet of teen-appeal TV movies, reality TV programming, violent computer games, and internet pornography consume the attention of too big an audience. Extravagance has become an obsession of too many Americans who live otherwise impoverished lives. Hollywood movies have become for the most part hebephrenic junk except for a few weeks preceding the March Oscar ceremonies. In response to this collective vulgarity, an ultra-reactionary tide of mindless opposition now manifests itself among our nation’s quasi-literate sub-population of supposedly concerned citizens. As to be expected, these strident misguided soldiers of democracy have latched onto arch-patriotism, fundamentalist religion, the rights of unborn babies, and the freedom to bear arms as the primary answers to our nation’s most compelling problems. A fraudulent $3 trillion war is far less offense to them than health care reform at a far lower cost that actually saves many tens of thousands of American lives.

So exactly who, then, best fits the description as our current generation’s great thinkers, great creators, great jurists and great statesmen comparable to those of previous generations? Alas, they don’t exist except for a few dozen angry iconoclasts, further testimony to our nation’s present decline into mediocrity despite its abundance of glitz and technological gimmickry.

7. Flopping on the Dock

President Obama is certainly bright and competent enough to confront this challenge under the right circumstances. However, he is far too conciliatory with the Bush-style Republicans who managed to survive the last election. It is to be conceded that his supposedly unbeatable majority in both houses of Congress is vulnerable to partisan resistance by blue-dog Democrats working in conjunction with their Republican friends equally indebted to the K-Street lobbyists. Nevertheless, Obama seems almost eager to appease these people, and if his ultra-conciliatory strategy persists much longer his administration is likely to replicate the disappointing outcome of the Carter and Clinton presidencies as opposed to the earlier successes of the FDR and Johnson administrations, the latter despite the glaring exception of the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, Obama’s current foreign policy adventurism should be curtailed, to begin with by coming up with an acceptable withdrawal strategy from Afghanistan. Obama might seem a more effective spokesman in defense of military operations abroad than Bush had been, but his ability to gild a sullied strategy will eventually catch up with him.

Again it is to be acknowledged that the United States enjoys dominant status in the world today similar to that of a handful of hegemonic societies–nine in all–that preceded us throughout the history of Western Civilization. But as much as anything this historic similarity suggests the likelihood of a similar outcome, of course in a manner appropriate to our particular circumstances. For history cannot entirely be forgotten. In 1909, exactly a hundred years ago, England seemed completely dominant across the entire world, and in 1809 so did Napoleon across Europe inclusive of Spain, Egypt, and soon enough Moscow. Both hegemons tumbled, England beginning with the First World War five years later, and France more decisively with Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo six years later. So what about our current prospects as a world power in 2009? As with all our precursors, paradoxically, our economy and military capabilities are at once both formidable and fatally overextended, dependent on a debt level one trillion dollars in excess of the total annual GDP of the entire world combined, the United States included. This amounts to incredible extravagance. It is what has paid for everything else, and now the party is over–almost. Like a landed barracuda, our nation vigorously flops on the dock. It is dangerous to everybody who stands too close but its chances of surviving much longer as a threat to others are slim. So the question poses itself what can be done to slow down this process, if not turn it around. For, again, our nation’s particular version of hubris seems to be running on empty, unable to take things much farther in the direction we’re going.

       All these nations and city-state societies listed here over the past twenty-five centuries enjoyed obvious hegemonic status or were in direct competition with others that did. They were all in possession of major urban epicenters, a distinctive culture of their own, and–with the exception of Italy during the Renaissance–the military capacity to expand their authority well beyond their borders in order to obtain favorable markets and adequate resources from abroad.  Moreover, as in the case of Rome described by Gibbon, they were all susceptible to decline, and their collapse resulted more from reckless expansionism than the success of their enemies.  In historical terms it can be blamed as much as anything on their bad judgment, their mistaken policies, and, most of all, their obsessive commitment to military and financial aggrandizement.  Again with the exception of renaissance Italy, all of them ceased being hegemonic states when their enlargement could no longer feed on itself.
 
2. American Civilization
 
This brings us to the United States, the latest hegemonic society in the history of Western Civilization.  We became a nation during the Revolutionary War by defeating Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. Before Yorktown, British troops were more than holding their own; afterward they ceased to be much of a military threat.  At the time, however, we were hardly a world power, and in fact our decisive victory at Yorktown was planned, financed, and mostly carried out by the French.  The 1787 Constitution was also largely inspired by the French Enlightenment, and several of our top leadership–Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and Monroe, among others–spent a lot of time in France.  Moreover, the 1803 Louisiana Purchase was essentially a gift from Napoleon. In effect our nation was a byproduct of the French effort to defeat England in the New World, thereby contributing to its defeat in Europe.  The French failed in their effort, but the U.S. carried on as a relic of their effort in the western hemisphere.
 
              Our primary collective task over most of the rest of the nineteenth century was the forcible transfer of Indian lands to the possession of settlers from Europe. This effort began as early as King Philip’s War in 1675-76, when most of the Indians in New England were killed, driven away, or sold into slavery.  But it went into high gear during Jackson’s presidency and persisted throughout the nineteenth century.  The Mexican War [more accurately: war against Mexico] was obviously a “grab” of territory from Mexico. The Civil War intervened as a regional war in which slavery provided the excuse for giving northern financial interests dominant economic power at the expense of southern plantations dependent on slave labor. This was followed by the Spanish-American War, which was no less a “grab” than the Mexican War, this time with the capture of the Philippines setting the stage for a more “ambitious” policy with China, Japan, and other Asiatic states.
 
              It was the First World War that first gave our nation its hegemonic advantage on a truly international scale.  The creation of the Federal Reserve Board in 1913-14 under the ownership of New York banks (and thus of those who owned the banks) effectively centralized our nation’s collective financial wealth, among other things providing the funds sufficient for American allies to conduct massive warfare in Europe during World War I.  It was the belated involvement of U.S. troops starting in 1917 that tipped war’s balance to the allies. As a result of the war, European nations inclusive of Germany became heavily indebted to American banks, giving our nation de facto control of the world’s economy.  This reality was confirmed by negotiations at Bretton Woods in 1944, just before victory in World War II, when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was created and the dollar became the world’s reserve currency.
 
              Hitler’s most useful discovery during the thirties was the value of military expenditures in helping to buttress aggregate demand sufficient to keep factories running, thereby preventing a full-scale depression. Demand levels had plummeted below productive capacity, so military expenditures were used to augment demand as justified by the supposed threat of enemies abroad.  This so-called military Keynesian expedient also helped the United States during World War II, and it helped carry on what seemed an endless Cold War against the Soviet Union.  The beauty of this strategy was that Russians impoverished by combat with Germany were unable to restore their non-military industries because of the heavy military production needed to match American production committed to the struggle against them.  In effect, the United States was suffering from severe over-production and the Soviet Union from severe under-production, so we doubled our advantage by using relentless military competition to augment our economic growth while hurting theirs. As a result our society thrived, theirs suffered. Two costly “wars of choice” can also be mentioned, in Korea and Vietnam, as well as the U.S. subsidization of the Afghan rebellion against the Soviet Union before its tattered economy finally collapsed in the late eighties because of its inability to match the latest U.S. escalation with a star wars strategy devised under President Reagan.
 
With Russia no longer a military threat, some kind of an alternative was needed to supplant the Cold War in stretching aggregate demand.  The first President Bush rose to the challenge by conducting limited wars of choice against both Panama and Iraq in the Persian Gulf, but these ventures were insufficient to prevent a recession just preceding the 1992 election. Bush’s successor, President Clinton, limited military conflict to relatively modest operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia and Sudan. His principal effort, however, was to sustain our economy by means of economic globalization under the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other such trade organizations that would presumably benefit both advanced and developing nations on a win-win basis.  U.S. corporate profits would increase resulting from the export of production (in effect factories) to such countries as Mexico and China in order to benefit from their reduced labor costs and environmental constraints, and no less profitable would be the opportunity for U.S. investors to extract natural resources in other non-western nations restricted by treaty from imposing heavy taxes and export duties. Meanwhile, non-western nations would benefit from sufficient growth subsidized by western investment to provide “takeoff” into truly competitive economies as had been proposed several decades earlier by the American economist Walt Rostow.
 
 However, it soon became obvious that globalization was far more lucrative for Wall Street investors than for the indigenous population of non-western states, and moreover that the pursuit of economic ties in and of itself was insufficient to prevent a major depression in the near future in the United States. At this point deregulation must have seemed a perfectly reasonable means of augmenting our nation’s GDP.  Burdened with the threat of impeachment, President Clinton cooperated with Republicans and Wall Street in deregulating the financial markets first with the 1999 Financial Services Act and then the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act, effectively rescinding the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act for bringing Wall Street financial markets under control.  As a neo-liberal, Clinton was willing to loosen up the markets, but not to the extent that was permitted by this legislation.  If he had more time to study it in depth, he would undoubtedly have tightened its application.
 
              A depression nevertheless began to gather momentum soon after the second (and less talented) President Bush came to office.  As to be expected, he resorted to every possible expedient that might help in diminishing its impact. His effort included going to war in both Afghanistan and Iraq as justified by the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center (one excuse sufficing to justify two wars), along with a sharp reduction in taxation, especially for the wealthiest Americans. This was the very first time in U.S. history that full-scale military Keynesianism and large tax reductions were combined to stimulate our economy.  For good measure, Bush also helped to pump up the economy by letting the housing and oil bubbles supplant the defunct dot-com bubble, and he encouraged the further deregulation of industry, banks, and Wall Street speculation.  Not surprisingly, the 2001 depression soon abated, and an artificial surge of prosperity followed until mid-September, 2008, just two months before the election and four months before Bush’s departure from office. This was when Wall Street imploded and Bush’s desperate economic legerdemain was finally over. Extravagant funding provided by the  federal bailout legislation saved the biggest Wall Street banks and brokerages, leaving the rest of our nation to cope what now amounts to a serious depression whose effects can be expected to persist for at least another couple of years.
 
              Barack Obama was elected president mostly because of the economic crisis, but as far as can be determined at this point, his measures for dealing with this crisis will probably be insufficient as predicted by the Nobel prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.  Obama has also retained an essentially conservative staff to deal with both the domestic economy and U.S. military policy in Asia. Unfortunately, too many key figures he has brought into his administration are either what might be described as constituency choices or seasoned experts who had themselves played major roles in creating the problems we now confront.  Apropos of talented but relatively ineffectual constituency choices would be the selection of Kathleen Sebelius instead of Howard Dean as the Secretary of Health and Human Services despite Dean’s superior qualifications as a doctor, author, politician and the former governor of Vermont who led the effort to initiate its successful health care program for children and pregnant women. One suspects the principal reason for Dean’s rejection was his hostile relationship with Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff regarding campaign funding, Dean having emphasized a 50-state strategy as opposed to Emanuel’s effort to target the swing states.  However, if true, this feud is insufficient reason for rejecting Dean’s appointment.  One of Obama’s most appealing promises during his campaign was his intention to bring individuals who aggressively disagree with each other into his inner circle in order to benefit from their dialogue.  Having been deprived of Kennedy in the current health reform struggle, it would be a pity if Obama falls short of his goal in health care reform because of the absence of Dean as well from his inner circle. 
 
                Apropos of the economic crisis, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Ben Bernanke` played central roles in events leading up to the September crash, yet they have been put in charge of the current recovery effort.  As in the case of Dean, it seems unfortunate that Obama skipped over both Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman from his inner team for dealing with the current economic crisis, apparently because Summers has taken a dislike to them, especially Stiglitz. The collapse of our nation’s economy has been severe enough that all of these economists should be able and willing to work together in the interactive manner earlier suggested by Obama.

And finally, apropos of the transfer of combat from Iraq to Afghanistan, Henry Gates and the two Generals Petraeus and McChrystal played central roles in the misbegotten occupation of Iraq, yet have been put in charge of operations in Afghanistan. True, they can be identified with the apparently successful “surge,” but it remains to be seen if it was truly a success. What seems most needed in Afghanistan right now is an effective occupation force rather than combat troops, and McChrystal in particular seems a dubious choice for this task.  His leadership of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in Iraq from 2003 to 2008 featured heavy combat, excessive interrogation techniques, and other such dubious responsibilities that necessarily antagonize the host population under occupation.
 
              It can also be mentioned that Obama has gone along with too many precedents established by Bush.  For example, he has continued Bush’s practice of adding his own “signing statements” to legislation passed by Congress, if not to the same extent, and his first official act as president was to issue an Executive order banning the release of presidential records just as Cheney had done eight years ago to prevent the disclosure of oil corporation executives with whom he had negotiated an energy policy in Iraq.  Obama’s cap and trade legislation also seems as much as anything a capitulation to Republican lobbyists. And why can’t Obama nudge public radio’s Democracy Now into at least balanced reportage if not a liberal bias equivalent to its pro-administration bias during Bush’s term in office.  And why can’t Obama put a stop to the incessant airport orange alerts that blare over the loudspeaker every half hour or so, apparently intended as much as anything to keep air travelers scared, therefore more willing to acquiesce to personal searches. And why is Obama willing to retain too many of Bush’s oppressive policies, especially in homeland security and the imprisonment and mistreatment of prisoners labeled as terrorists into the indefinite future. Despite his election promises, the Guantanamo prison camp continues to hold prisoners who die under suspicious circumstances, for example the individual al-Hashani as reported by Naomi Klein after her recent visit there.  All of this should be stopped.
 
              Admittedly, the multiple tasks that now confront Obama’s administration seem almost insurmountable after the collapse of an economic policy equivalent to the use of steroids for almost seventy years now. Severe deterioration set in well before Obama’s presidency, and he is stuck with cleaning up the mess, so he can and should be given slack in performing his mission.  But when does slack become free rein to abandon most of his campaign promises?  For the current situation requires the best effort from the very best experts and leaders in dealing with it.  It also requires genuine integrity on the part of these individuals rather than the greed and power-hungry gamesmanship that have dominated Washington politics for too many decades now.  Everything is beginning to fall apart, and the question remains whether it is possible to obtain some kind of a “soft landing” least harmful to the American people. 
 
3. The American Economy
 
              Numbers alone are daunting as an indication of our current financial crisis.  Our total Gross Domestic Product (GDP), including all goods and services produced in a single year, is now $14 trillion, almost exactly a quarter of the world’s total GDP.  However, our government’s annual deficit this year will be in the range of $1.75 trillion, having exceeded more than a trillion dollars for the first time; our gross national debt (specifically the total debt of our government alone) is now somewhere between $9 and $12 trillion; and our nation’s total debt including all household, business, financial, and government debt is now in the range of $57 trillion, about a trillion dollars more than the world’s total GDP inclusive of our own. As estimated by our nation’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), $2 trillion is now in the process of being spent to cover the cost of our present economic crisis, and it is estimated that the total cost will eventually amount to $23 trillion.  Incredibly, the total debt of derivatives traded on Wall Street before the September crash was between $600 and $650 trillion dollars–well beyond anybody’s ability to pay.  Moreover, our nation now owes at least a trillion dollars apiece to China and Japan as well as many hundreds of billion dollars to the sovereign wealth funds (SWF) for such nations as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and Russia.
 
              Whether intended or not, the dollar has dropped 40 percent of its value compared to the euro over the past five years, effectively reducing our national debt to foreign borrowers by means of inflation just as happened with the collapse of the German mark during the twenties. This likelihood can only be intensified by the Federal Reserve Board having circulated more than a trillion dollars in order to maximize “liquidity” in order to combat depression. The dollar can accordingly be expected to continue its decline, probably setting the stage for its wholesale abandonment as the world’s reserve currency in the relatively near future.  This in turn would result in further and more dramatic losses for our economy as a whole.
 
              Meanwhile, our nation’s unemployment rate is 9.4 percent pushing 10 percent, underemployment is 16 percent, and the country has lost 6.7 million jobs since December, 2007, many of which will probably not be restored by “improved” productivity levels as well as a permanent decline in our nation’s affluence.  Not surprisingly, income disparities have considerably widened between the rich and the poor.  In 2006, two years before the current depression, the top one percent of U.S. households received 22.9 percent of all pre-tax income, more than double the ratio in the 1970s and by far the biggest concentration of wealth among the most prosperous Americans since 1928.  As reported recently by the Wall Street Journal, corporate executives now account for more than one-third of all salary compensation earned in the U.S.  On the other hand, there was only a 24 percent pay increase for the average worker from 2002 to 2007, less than 5 percent per annum, half of the 48 percent increase for highly paid individuals and less than double the official rate of inflation.  In sum, the income gap has steadily widened between the wealthiest Americans and average and poor Americans, and this is not a healthy trend for the nation as a whole. For this kind of plutocracy does not work in the long run.  Such an imbalance is like being fifty pounds overweight with a pulse of 120, a blood pressure of 180-125, a 300 mg/dL cholesterol level, a PSA of 12 going on 15, and a robust 9 on the Gleason cancer scale. These might seem impressive numbers, but they are anything but healthy.
 
              It should also be of major concern, as explained by Kevin Phillips in his 2008 book, Bad Money, published before September’s financial meltdown, that our economy has shifted in emphasis over the past century from agriculture to manufacturing and to the financial sector led by Wall Street.  Farm production has been brought almost entirely under corporate control, and far too many of our factories have been exported to non-western nations in order to minimize both wages and environmental costs.  Just as junk has become the Port of New York’s principal export, debt as wealth owed by one party to another has become our nation’s principal commodity. According to Phillips, the so-called credit market debt roughly quadrupled from nearly $11 trillion to $48 trillion between 1987 and 2007  (p viii).  As a result, financial services amounted to 20 percent of the GDP in 2005, as compared to manufacturing’s 12 percent of the GDP (Phillips, p. 5).  In effect, the two-to-one ratio favorable to manufacturing as our nation’s principal source of income just three decades ago has almost completely reversed itself.  It should therefore be no surprise that our major banks now wield extraordinary influence unprecedented in the previous history of our nation. As Senator Durbin of Illinois recently explained, banks currently “own” Washington, and this is not a healthy development. According to Phillips, this shift in power from manufacturing to the banking sector often sets the stage for the collapse of modern hegemonic powers just as happened for Spain and England when they ceased to play a dominant role (p. 36).
 
              As to be expected, our current depression resulted from a major breakdown on Wall Street.  Virtually all its major investment banks went bankrupt simultaneously last September.  They were only saved by an enormous federal bailout effort that entailed $700 billion in promised loans by the federal government. Of the funds received so far, the top nine of these banks have as yet paid back only $50 billion while awarding their top executives almost $33 billion in bonuses for the year 2009.  It seems they are confident that the crisis has been eliminated and our economy is on the brink of recovery as indicated by several variables. The Index of Leading Indicators, for example, has risen for the third month in a row with seven of the ten leading indicators having risen in June.  Bank and corporate stocks have improved, and the stock market has shot up, surging 725 points or 8.6% in July.  Even the oil bubble is beginning to expand once again, suggesting that oil speculation has resumed on Wall Street.  On August 22 at Jackson Hole Wyoming, Bernanke has boasted, “The prospects for a return to growth in the near term appear good,” as demonstrated by a 7.2 percent jump in home sales in July and a stock market leap of 156 points the same day (perhaps in part because of his announcement).  But he conceded that “cautious confidence” is still appropriate, given unexpectedly weak sales last week, increased unemployment claims, and the likelihood that hundreds more American banks would fail in the next year. And indeed there are many additional problems preventing full recovery in the near future.  In fact, it still seems probable that our nation will undergo what has been described as a “double dip” depression (what might also be described as a “W” depression rather than a “V” or “L” depression). 
 
              As explained by Jack Rasmus in his informative article, “Green Shoots or Stinkweeds?” published in the July 2009 issue of Z Magazine, economic dislocations have been too pronounced for anybody to be too hopeful about an economic reversal.  The job market is worse than it has been in decades, and with every possibility that as many as 22 million workers will go jobless before economic recovery fully happens. Even then, however, it seems unemployment could remain high because of improved productivity levels as well as the transfer of labor costs abroad. Similarly, the foreclosure rate on homes can be expected to rise to 8 million and housing prices to fall another 20 percent in the near future. Pension plans have already dropped a third and will continue to fall, and the simmering credit card crisis will expand even further than the $406 billion losses incurred so far in 2009.  Similarly, auto and student loans are likely to crash the same way sub-prime loans did.  Business expenditures can also be expected to drop at least a quarter more in the near future, and global exports that have fallen by 50 percent in early 2009 cannot be expected to recover soon.  Likewise, state and local budgets deprived of adequate revenue sharing in the May omnibus package will also reach crisis proportions. Last but not least, the 27 percent increase in corporate bankruptcies in 2008 can be expected to be exceeded by the end of 2009 by as much as 35 percent.  Many of these statistics can be reversed with a general rise in the economy, but it is difficult to believe that all of them will, and any three or four in combination just might be sufficient to produce the double-dip depression that worries Obama’s chief economists right now.
 
              Nor can much help be expected toward an effective solution from our government in Washington, D.C.  Congressmen, for example, are almost entirely in the pockets of industries opposed to economic reform that might bear a negative impact on their profits. These elected officials are amazingly unprincipled in their acceptance of hefty campaign contributions in exchange for services rendered, and indeed big business, big banks, big agriculture, big labor, and inclusively anything “big” engages in the practice of paying them off. The amount of these contributions might seem large, but it turns out to be nominal compared to the yield, often more than 100-1 in federal subsidies obtained through earmark legislation and comparable services provided by these congressmen. The few Congressmen unwilling to go along with this arrangement quickly disappear from politics because of inadequate campaign funding. When others more willing to depend on corporate donations finally retire, most find the means to transfer their remaining campaign funds to their own bank accounts and often join the ranks of lobbyists who, like themselves, had first learned the ropes as congressmen. The situation is strictly plutocratic verging on klepto-plutocracy when the law is broken to make it happen. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens have little if any influence except to the extent that they belong to issues-related public constituencies represented by their own variety of lobbyists.

When the LORD your God delivers them into your power and defeats them, you must put them to death. … for you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the Lord your God chose you out of all nations on earth to be his special possession.

– Deuteronomy, 7:2-6

And Joshua said to the army, . . . “The Lord has given you the city. The city shall be under solemn ban: everything in it belongs to the Lord. No one is to be spared except the prostitute Rahab.”

– Joshua, 6:17

Now listen to the voice of the LORD. This is the very word of the LORD of Hosts: … “Spare no one; put them all to death, men and women, children and babes in arms, herds and flocks, camels and asses.”

– 1 Samuel 15:2-4

Throughout modern history powerful nations have waged war against relatively weak neighbors with the expectation that they would both win and somehow benefit from having done so–as they usually do. But they also realize the need to justify their aggression by seeming as if they are somehow threatened by their victims. They themselves are presumably under attack, but fortunately big and powerful enough to win in the end. This fraudulent cultivation of public support was perhaps best (and most laughably) illustrated by Hitler’s frenzied speeches denouncing Poland’s military threat against Germany in order to justify its 1939 invasion. The same approach was used by the American government in the Mexican War (with the shelling of Fort Brown) , the Spanish-American War (with the sinking of the Maine), the Vietnam War (with the Tonkin incident), the 1989 invasion of Panama (with one dead marine), and of course the 2003 Iraq invasion (with the bogus WMD threat). Israel has done the same at the expense of Palestinians since 1948, as documented by Donald Neff’s three books through the 1967 war. Israel’s current assault on Gaza once again fits the pattern, this time by imposing a tight embargo and occasional incursions to provoke harmless rocket attacks that can be publicized to justify a full-scale assault on a relatively defenseless population of 1.5 million inhabitants trapped in Gaza.

Surprise attacks by weak nations against superior enemies have been a different matter. The most famous example, of course, was Japan’s 1941 air strike against Pearl Harbor. George Washington resorted to surprise attacks against Hessian troops in 1776 and the British at Yorktown in 1781. Arab nations did the same against Israel in the 1973 Gaza War. Many other such examples may be cited across the world, some of which have resulted in victory. What I am suggesting here is that the effectiveness of Israel’s present assault on Gaza results from its combination of self-serving propaganda typical of dominant aggressor-nations with its use of an overwhelming surprise attack that could only be considered a defensive necessity by the public at large because of a relentlessly supportive editorial bias in the American news media. Israel has maintained an extravagant 100-1 kill ratio at the expense of Palestinians, roughly 40 percent of whose fatalities have been identified as civilians, and yet public opinion in both Israel and the United States continues to accept the excuse that Israel’s effort is entirely defensive.

Even the New York Times (hereafter NYT) and Washington Post (hereafter WP), two of the most responsible American newspapers succumb to this bias despite their effort to seem otherwise. Such may be observed when they explicitly defend their coverage, for example in Clark Hoyt’s January 11 NYT editorial piece, “Standing Between Enemies,” and when they explicitly defend Israel itself, for example in Steven Erlanger’s January 17 NYT article, “Weighing Crimes and Ethics In the Fog of Urban Warfare.” Here every sentence–every period and comma–is favorable to Israel’s role despite ample evidence to the contrary. The presence of Hamas fighters is repeatedly cited to justify killing civilians in the presence of U.N. workers who insist to anybody who will listen that there have been no Hamas fighters in the vicinity. And the euphemistic notion of “asymmetrical” casualties replaces the uncomfortable word combination “kill ratio,” but with no indication to what extent asymmetry has been stretched.

Also painful is Erlanger’s neglect of the Zeitoun massacre last week compared to the more specific reports of Tom Eley and Tim Butcher published elsewhere as well as Taghreed el-Khodary and Isabel Kershner’s January 10 NYT report, “For Arab Clan, Days of Agony in a Cross-Fire.” Erlanger neglects to recount how Israeli troops herded many dozens of captured civilians into a single Zeitoun building, then bombed it three times, or how the building was packed for days with dead and dying Palestinians, or how those who tried to escape were shot down by Israeli troops stationed nearby for this purpose, or how Red Cross workers defied the threat of Israeli troops to shoot and kill them as well if they tried to retrieve four small children tucked against their mother’s rotting corpse, all of them too weak to remove themselves. If anything this horrific ever happened to an Israeli mother and children, there would probably be a four-column photograph across the top of the front page and the story would pass into media legend as a modern counterpart to the Holocaust.

Not that NYT and WP coverage is invariably biased favorable to Israel. In his January 19 NYT News Analysis, “Parsing Gains of Gaza War,” Ethan Bronner concedes the excessive violence of Israel’s invasion, quoting Israeli pundits who describe it with the Hebrew phrase, “baal habayit hishtageya” (“the boss has lost it”), the use of calculated rage to intimidate lesser people. After summarizing the typical litany of complaints against Hamas, Bronner also concedes its victory in the sense that its leadership has suffered few losses comparable to the death and injury of Palestinian civilians. By implication, further conflict would be undesirable because it can be expected to increase Israeli casualties in house-to-house combat as well as lifting the 40 percent civilian kill ratio to an excessive level for retaining international public support.

In the same issue of the NYT, Sabrina Tavernise and Taghreed el-Khodary’s piece “Shocked and Grieving Gazans Find Bodies Under the Rubble of Homes,” confirms the earlier reports of Eley, Kershner, and Butcher & Khodary regarding the extreme violence against Palestinians. And a third article in the same issue, Isabel Kershner’s “Rebuilding Begins Upon a Wobbly Truce,” treats with relative optimism the broad effort at this point to initiate negotiations. There is little to criticize in these three articles as a comprehensive assessment of the present situation in Gaza. One only regrets that the coverage was less adequate just days before, when its full impact on American public opinion might have helped to discourage Israel’s tactics at an earlier stage.

Apropos of the Gaza crisis preceding the January 6 invasion, this bias supportive of Israel has played a significant role in at least two instances: first the NYT’s almost total neglect of Israel’s November 4 surprise attack which provoked Hamas’ resumption of rocket fire that could be publicized to justify the December 27 air attack on Gaza; and, secondly, the total lack coverage for a day or so preceding the Dec. 27 attack, helping to guarantee its success as a surprise attack. These two surprise attacks (the first no less than the second) set the stage for a military campaign of crucial importance to Israel, the Palestinians, and the region as a whole. Yet the American press inclusive of both the NYT and WP fell short of providing a full account of the confusion preliminary to Israel’s attack exactly when it mattered the most, and in both instances with obvious benefit to Israel’s strategy.

It is to be conceded that the NYT’s neglect of the Gaza story was generally sparse once the April, 2008, peace accord between Hamas and Israel seemed to result in an effective modus vivendi beneficial to all parties concerned. There seemed to be no story to tell. If mentioned at all, Gaza coverage was accordingly kept on the back pages, completely overshadowed by the U.S. election campaign and events in the Near East. The NYT and WP only took interest again after the Nov. 4 attack with reports emphasizing Hamas rocket fire that obliged Israeli incursions as retaliation against this rocket fire, of course with the cause-and-effect sequence reversed favorable to the Israeli cause. As a result, the American public at large remained sympathetic with Israel once the propaganda spigots were fully opened after the December 27 surprise attack. However, the situation was all too plain for those who had paid closer attention. A clear and impartial grasp of Israel’s intentions was already possible based on reports published by the NYT and WP as late as a few days before the attack, especially if these were checked against leftist and Arab sources, the latter including Al Jazeera, Al Manar, imemc.org, Electronic Intifada, Uruknet.info, not to forget Israel’s version of the NYT, Haaretz.

But first a bit of history just a few years earlier in Gaza. In the year 2003. the “Road Map” peace plan sought by England’s Prime Minister Tony Blair obliged Israel to engage in serious negotiations toward a peace treaty with Palestinians in exchange for Britain’s participation in Iraq‘s invasion and occupation [see Con Coughlin’s American Ally, pp. 274-75]. By 2004, however, Prime Minister Sharon could dilute this quid pro quo by substituting Gaza and a couple of West Bank settlements for a full-scale peace treaty. In response, Palestinians elected the Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to be their President at the beginning of 2005 with the primary objective of resuming the effort to obtain a full-scale peace settlement. However, Sharon refused to negotiate, after which Palestinians elected the more militant Hamas party a year later. Surprisingly, Hamas’s chose as Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya, the most peaceable member of its top leadership, who soon joined with Abbas in seeking a 10-year peace settlement with Israel. However, Sharon responded once again with an intensification of hostilities, culminating with Operation Summer Rains in June and the occupation of Beit Hanoun in November. This escalation caused a split between Hamas and Fatah that was nevertheless resolved with the creation of a coalition, the Palestinian National Unity Government, whose primary objective was once again a peace settlement. However, Israel with the support of the U.S. plotted a Fatah coup d’etat that was thwarted by Hamas, ending with Fatah’s expulsion from Gaza in June, 2007. Israel’s siege of Gaza followed despite the Road Map, the Arab League’s 2002 and 2008 peace proposals, and President Bush’s abortive Annapolis Conference in November of the same year.

By June, 2008, hostilities between Israel and Gaza dominated by Hamas had persisted to such an extent that a resumption of negotiations seemed long overdue. This is when our story begins, almost exactly six months ago, told in the present tense and with wording as close as possible to the original reports in order to emphasize the sense of immediacy. The NYT coverage is emphasized, but with frequent additions from the WP as well as a variety of other sources.

Isabel Kershner’s June 17 NYT article, “Israel Seems to Make Progress in Talks,” suggests a possible truce with Hamas. According to Haniya, “talks brokered by Egypt for a period of calm with Israel [are] nearing completion and that he [hopes’ for a ‘happy ending.’” Kershner explains, “”towns and villages in southern Israel have been under continual rocket and mortar fire from Gaza in recent months, while Gaza has been subject to frequent Israeli military strikes aimed at militants and incursions.” Most recently, Israeli troops killed three militants in Gaza as they were trying to plant explosive by the border fence, one Israeli civilian was lightly wounded by rocket fire, and at least one Palestinian militant was killed in a retaliatory strike.

Isabel Kershner’s June 18 NYT article, “Israel Agrees to Truce with Hamas on Gaza” makes the surprise disclosure that “Egypt has been mediating the truce for months” behind the scenes and that “an Egyptian-brokered deal” between Hamas and Israel would include “an end to frequent military strikes” as well as “an easing of some of the economic sanctions on Gaza in exchange for the halt of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza . . . that has killed four Israeli civilians this year.” No indication is given here how many Palestinians have been killed over the same period. Apparently the duration of the treaty would be six months. Israel is expected to open the commercial crossings as soon as the truce comes into effect, and two weeks later Egypt would host talks at reopening the Rafah crossing on its border with Gaza. The article ends, “Israel is insisting that Hamas halt all fire from Gaza, and will hold it responsible for actions by smaller groups.” Last minute hostilities preceding the acceptance of the accord include three Israeli air strikes in Gaza, killing six Palestinian militants and in retaliation 10 rockets fired at Israel.

Griff Witte and Ellen Knickmeyer’s June 18 WP article, “Israel, Hamas Agree on Gaza Strip Truce,” emphasizes that the agreement would be implemented in phases, with Israel easing the year-old siege on Gaza if Hamas stops attacks, and with Israel granting permission to open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt if there is progress on the release of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. It is estimated that Israel could begin allowing more supplies into Gaza as early as Sunday, June 22. Additionally it is disclosed that Hamas at first lobbied for the truce to apply to both Gaza and the West Bank, but Israel limited negotiations to Gaza. It is also disclosed that Israel had contemplated an invasion of Gaza to oust Hamas, but Olmert and his top aides rejected this option out of concern that the campaign would bog down against Palestinian counterinsurgents. Nevertheless, an unnamed Israeli official warns, ‘If this [accord] breaks down, there will not be another attempt at a cease-fire. There will be a large-scale Israeli operation. This has to hold.”

The unsigned June 19 WP editorial, “Truce in Gaza – A Middle East Conflict is Postponed,” explains, “Hamas is the immediate beneficiary of the deal – one reason the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert [has been] slow to agree to it. One year after it drove out the secular administration of President Mahmoud Abbas, the Islamist movement has consolidated control over Gaza as well as having demonstrated that it can force Israel into acknowledging its authority. If a border crossing with Egypt is reopened, as the agreement contemplates, relatively normal life and commerce could resume in the territory.” Obviously, such an outcome would be at least dangerous in the opinion of whoever wrote the editorial.

Isabel Kershner’s June 20 NYT article, “Truce Starts for Israel and Hamas in Gaza,” stresses that many Israeli and Palestinians sense that the truce is “doomed from the start.” In fact, most Israeli believe that Hamas will “exploit the quiet to increase its strength, or will fail to control other militant groups in Gaza, making a military confrontation unavoidable in the end.” Among the Gaza Palestinians, on the other hand, there is a widespread optimism that border crossings will open in the immediate future. Because Israel’s earlier strategy was to “squeeze Hamas out of power in Gaza,” the truce is generally considered a victory for Hamas. Obviously more constrained, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority Salam Fayyad, describes the truce as “a good thing” and offers the assurance,“Our platform is based on nonviolence.”

Isabel Kershner’s June 25 NYT article, “Rockets Hit Israel, Breaking Hamas Truce,” tells of Palestinian rocket fire as a breach of the five-day old truce. The Islamic Jihad, a small extremist group, takes responsibility for attack, saying it has been “a response to an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Nablus at dawn on Tuesday, in which a senior Islamic Jihad operative and another Palestinian man were killed.” Nevertheless, the truce applies only to Gaza, so retaliatory attacks from Gaza in response to Israeli operations on the West Bank are felt to be unacceptable according to the terms of the truce.

Griff Witte and Samuel Sockol’s June 25 WP article, “Gazan Rockets Threaten Truce,” etc. confirms the reaction of Israel to the rocket attack. An Israeli official is quoted to the effect that Israel would not open its border crossings with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as planned, and would stay closed until further notice. Also mentioned is a visit of Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert to Egyptian President Mubarek to discuss the arrangement. Among the issues discussed is the fate of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who is being held captive in Gaza. “We demanded, and we received, promises that the Rafah crossing will not be opened until the solving of the Shalit issue,” insists an official in Olmert’s office, but Mubarak explains in a later TV interview that the issues should not be linked. According to Hamas officials, the Shalit release can only be linked with the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Isabel Kersher’s June 27 NYT article, “Truce is Strained as Militants Launch Rockets and Israel Keeps Goods Out of Gaza,” indicates that two rockets launched against Israel are used to justify a continuation of the embargo for a second day. A rocket attack three days earlier justified Israel sealing the border crossings on Wednesday, which in turn has led to the rocket attack on Thursday. Meanwhile, Gaza farmers have reported that Israeli troops along the border opened fire on them to keep them away from agricultural land near the border fence. Two elderly Palestinian men have been seriously wounded by the army gunfire, including an 82-year-old farmer. Also, Israeli Navy vessels have fired on Palestinian fishermen to keep them outside proscribed areas close to the shore. Members of the Islamic Jihad have admitted firing three rockets in retaliation for an Israeli raid that killed one of the group’s senior commanders in the West Bank. A spokesman for Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades explains, “The rocket attack on Thursday was in response to Israeli violations.” He adds, “Any calm deal must end Israeli attacks on our people in the West Bank, too.”

There is almost a total lack of NYT and WP coverage for the better part of the next five months relevant to the peace accord except for a couple of stories about the effectiveness of the embargo in response to continuing rocket attacks. This relatively peaceful interlude is suddenly interrupted by an unsigned November 6 NYT piece, “Gaza: Rocket Fire and Israeli Strike Disrupt Cease-Fire,” which reports an event of pivotal importance–Israel’s November 4 incursion into Gaza that breaks the ceasefire with Hamas. Coincidentally, this is the same day as the U.S. presidential election that makes Obama the next U.S. President. The article is only 67 words long, short enough to be quoted here in its entirety:

Hamas fired dozens of rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after Israeli forces killed at least five Palestinian militants in an eruption of violence that disrupted a four-month-old truce. The rockets caused no deaths. Israeli forces later killed a Palestinian who the military said had taken part in the rocket attack.

Significantly, the article neglects to indicate how many Israeli troops were involved and the fact that Israeli force included tanks and helicopters additional to the troops. Nor does it provide any indication that this is the first major transgression against the June accord, initiating Hamas’s resumption of rocket attacks on Israel for the next two months as well as the restoration of incursions by Israeli troops into Gaza. It is not until December 19 that Ethan Bronere’s NYT article, “A Gaza Truce Undone by Flaws May Be Revived by Necessity,” finally mentions this escalation in the third-to-last paragraph, attributing it to Israel’s decision to destroy a tunnel Hamas had been digging near the border. [More about Bronner’s useful article later]

It should be mentioned that a useful January 12 summary of the press response to the Nov. 4 incursion, Jim Lobe and Ai Gharib’s Electronic Intifada piece, “U.S. media didn’t report Israeli ceasefire violation,” mentions a slight enlargement of the story in a later NYT edition on November 5 and cites British, Canadian, and Australian sources that actually took into account with the magnitude of the issue at the time. Lobe and Rharib also mention a Tzipi Livni “Meet the Press” interview in which she totally neglects to mention the November 4 episode, and they indicate that a Nexis search “made no reference to the raid in the transcripts of any television public-affairs broadcast during the period.” They emphasize that this is “a particularly significant omission given the fact that about 70 percent of U.S. citizens say their main source of international news comes through that medium.”

A November 5 WP article attributed to Reuters, “Hamas Fires Rockets At Israel After Airstrike,” starts by referring to “35 rockets [fired at] Israel on Wednesday, hours after the Israeli arm killed gunmen in the Hamas-ruled territory.” It then indicates no damage has been done and that Hamas has asserted responsibility for the attacks, the first such military action since June. It also explains that five of the six gunmen were killed in air strikes late in the afternoon after they fired missiles at Israeli forces who were destroying a tunnel built by Hamas fighters to kidnap an Israeli soldier at a later date. A sixth was supposedly killed by Israeli troops while advancing to destroy the tunnel. Other reports have reversed this sequence, suggesting that the five were killed in the tunnel and the sixth (or seventh) while firing rockets at a later time. The Israeli incursion is described as a “rare” Israeli military operation since the cease fire began. A Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, is quoted saying that the Nov. 4 raid is a major violation of the accord and proves that Israel is not interested in continuing the cease-fire. However, an Israeli army spokeswoman offers the assurance, “this is a pinpoint operation to thwart an immediate threat and there is no intention to bring about the end of the cease fire.”

A November 6 WP article, just a day later, by Nidal al-Mughrabi of Reuters [very possibly the same author], “Israel-Hamas Truce Tenuous After Violence,” indicates in its first sentence that the incident has “disrupted a four-month-old truce along the Gaza Strip’s frontier.” It also tells of Hamas rocket attacks in retaliation, including salvos that landed on the coastal city of Ashkelon without having caused any casualties. It quotes Hamas sources who indicate that “calm could return if Israel held its fire,” and Israel’s defense minister [Barak] is also quoted insisting, “Israel [does] not want the truce to collapse,” and “We have no intention of violating the quiet. We have an interest in perpetuating the calm. … But whenever it is necessary to thwart operations against Israel Defense Force soldiers or the civilians on the Gaza outskirts, we will act.” Barack Obama is also quoted to the effect that “resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be a priority for hs administration.” It is disclosed that a summit is planned in Cairo the following week and that Condaleezza Rice is scheduled to arrive in the region on Thursday, presumably to participate in the summit. One of the most important issues to be resolved according to al-Mughrabi is the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for an acceptable number of Palestinian prisoners who have not killed Israeli. Significantly, there is no reference to the Cairo “summit” in any of the other news reports.

Several additional reports can also be mentioned here relevant to the November 4 attack. Published on November 5, an International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) report, “Israeli army kills five Qassam fighters in Gaza,” indicates that Israeli soldiers supported by tanks and armored vehicles have invaded the central Gaza Strip early Tuesday evening and fired several shells at a number of homes. At the same time, Military helicopters hovered over the area firing flares and missiles. Israeli army spokesmen nevertheless assure reporters that the invasion does not constitute a violation of the cease-fire but has instead been a “legitimate step to remove an immediate threat to Israel from Gaza.”

In a November 5 IMEMC report, “Israeli invasion ongoing; seven fighters killed,” the IMEMC quotes an Israeli military spokesperson that the attack has been intended to prevent the use of a tunnel to abduct an Israeli soldier. Israeli troops were forced to detonate the tunnel, which was dug under one of the buildings, thereby killing the Palestinian fighters inside the tunnel. Otherwise, the Israeli spokesman insisted, “This invasion has a certain target and does not aim at violating the truce.”

According to a November 5 BBC report, “Rockets fired after Gaza clashes,” “Tuesday evening’s fighting broke out after Israeli tanks and a bulldozer moved 250m into the central part of the coastal enclave, backed by military aircraft … Residents of central Gaza’s el-Bureij refugee camp said a missile fired from an unmanned Israeli drone flying over the area injured another three Hamas gunmen.”

Ten days later, Sara Flounder’s article in workers.org, “Israel Invades Gaza again; Palestinian resistance continues,” provides even more information about what happened:

The Israeli Army invaded the Gaza Strip on Nov. 4 with tanks, helicopters and jet aircraft. … According to reports in the Palestinian media, Israeli soldiers and tanks accompanied by military helicopters firing flares and missiles invaded an area east of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, while Israeli jets shelled an area east of Kahn Younis in the southern part of Gaza. The next day Israeli tanks moved into Beit Hanoun in the northern part of Gaza.

Here the sequence seems plain once the Nov. 5 Israeli incursion is taken into account: (1) an Israeli incursion early on Nov. 4; (2) Hamas’s rocket attack later in the day; and (3) a second Israeli incursion the next day. Like a typical starter motor, Israel’s two incursions put the cycle of retaliatory strikes back in motion again seven weeks preceding the December 27 air attack.

In retrospect, it cannot be discounted that the supposedly preemptive attack of Nov. 4 is conducted on the day of the U.S. election, when the world’s attention is focused on Obama’s victory instead of events in the Near East. This presumably accidental timing would suggest Israel seeks to intensify hostilities against Hamas with a minimum of publicity, thereby letting Hamas’ acts of retaliation be publicized as unprovoked hostility to justify Israel’s invasion of Gaza. This sequence is in fact what later happens–the question remains to what extent it has been planned in advance with the November 4 attack setting the stage for all that followed. It should also be taken into account that Hamas might have been more circumspect in response to the Nov. 4 and 5 attacks if the Israeli blockade of Gaza were not so devastating to its inhabitants.

A November 15 WP article by Linda Gradstein, “As Israel-Hamas Clashes Continue, Gazans Face Crisis – Closed Border Halts Food Aid from U.N.,” indicates that Israeli and Palestinian fighters have clashed repeatedly since the Nov. 4 attack, leaving at least 10 Hamas fighters dead. Meanwhile, there is a shortage of medicine in Gaza hospitals, and the U.N. announces on Nov. 9 that it is closing its food-distribution program because it cannot resupply its warehouses. Moreover, most of Gaza City has been dark since Thursday night [November 13]. when Gaza’s main power plant ran out of fuel. “It is unprecedented that the U.N. is unable to get its supplies in to a population under such obvious distress,” John Ging, the senior U.N. official in Gaza, says in a telephone interview. He also indicates that the present crisis would not have occurred if U.N. suppliers had not been prohibited from building up their reserves during the cease fire. According to al-Khodari, 80 percent of Gazans live below the poverty line and the average per capita income is $2 per day. Israeli spokesman Peter Lerner says Israel had planned to open the border crossings, but maintained the closure after Israeli intelligence warned that Palestinian gunmen planned to attack the crossings.

A month later, in a December 14 NYT article, “Hamas, Showing Split, Hints It may Extend Truce,” Taghreed El-Khodary and Isabel Kershner tell of a mixed response by the Hamas leadership to the impending cessation of the June Peace Accord. On one hand, Khaled Mashal, an exiled leader in Damascus, insists on Hamas’s satellite TV station Al Quds that “the truce was limited to six months and ends on Dec. 19.” However, Mahmoud Zahar, the senior Hamas leader in Gaza, says there will be a meeting of the leadership of Hamas and other groups on the following Sunday, December 21, to determine the possibility of renewing the treaty. Addressing a large crowd of 200,000 Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas’ Prime Minister Haniya criticizes Israel for its strict embargo and continuing aggression, but avoids making any definitive pronouncements about the extension of the truce. The choice is thereby left open. Meanwhile, Israeli spokesmen express their readiness to extend the truce. The senior Israeli Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad goes to Cairo to discuss extending the truce with Egyptian mediators. Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Olmert announces, “Israel has been willing, and continues to be willing, to abide by the understandings reached with the Egyptians,” but then adds that calm [is] conditioned on Hamas stopping the daily rocket fire from Gaza.

In their article, El-Khodary and Kershner also summarize events since June: “A tense calm largely prevailed for the first months of the truce, showing that Hamas has been able to control smaller militant groups in Gaza.” But that began to unravel Nov. 4, they explain, when Israeli forces entered Gaza for the first time since June to blow up a tunnel that, according to Israel, Hamas was planning to use to capture soldiers along the border. Six Hamas militants were killed on the night of the tunnel raid. Since then, Hamas has fired some 250 rockets and mortar shells from Gaza at Israel without killing anybody, whereas at least 10 more Palestinian militants have been killed in Israeli strikes. Meanwhile, Israel has tightened its blockade of Israel, and life in the Israeli towns and villages around Gaza has become intolerable.

In his long and eloquent Dec. 15 piece, over a month later, “Israel’s Crime Against Humanity,” in Truthdig, Chris Hedges quotes Princeton law professor Richard Falk to the effect that Israel’s embargo of Gaza constitutes a “crime against humanity” suggestive of the Warsaw Ghetto. More specifically, Falk suggests, it constitutes “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” Hedges details all of the problems endured in Gaza without food, drugs, water, electric power, adequate hospital care, and the rest of the necessities of life. He also summarizes the sequence of events in the simplest possible terms:

The point of this Israeli siege, ostensibly, is to break Hamas, the radical Islamic group that was elected to power in 2007. But Hamas has repeatedly proposed long-term truces with Israel and offered to negotiate a permanent truce. During the last cease-fire, established through Egyptian intermediaries in July, Hamas upheld the truce although Israel refused to ease the blockade. It was Israel that, on Nov. 4, initiated an armed attack that violated the truce and killed six Palestinians. It was only then that Hamas resumed firing rockets at Israel. Palestinians have launched more than 200 rockets on Israel since the latest round of violence began. There have been no Israeli casualties.

Actually, the accord had been obtained in June, not July, and four Israeli citizens had been killed by rocket attacks by this time in December. Otherwise, this retrospective account is entirely accurate–more than can be said of earlier U.S. coverage.

In his Dec. 19 NYT article, “A Gaza Truce Undone by Flaws May Be Revived by Necessity,” Ethan Bronner tells of Hamas rocket fire having increased as well as Israel’s warplanes firing missiles and even further tightening of the border crossings by Israel. In other words, Bronner says, the June 19 agreement is over. Each side accuses the other of bad faith and violations of the accord. Rockets from Gaza never stopped entirely during the truce, and Israel never allowed a major renewed flow of goods into Gaza. The reason, Bronner explains, is that the agreement had “no mutually agreed text or enforcement mechanism.” Hamas officials emphasize their understanding on June 19 that Israel would open the crossings within two weeks and allow the transfer of goods that had been banned during the previous year. They argue that their effort to step the rockets has been largely successful, indicating that while more than 300 rockets had been fired into Israel in May, only from 10 to 20 were fired in July. In August from 10 to 30 were fired, and in September from 5 to 10. In contrast, the shipment of goods into Gaza never increased more than 25 to 30 percent, far short of the 500 to 600 truckloads delivered daily before the border was closed a year earlier. In response, Shlomo Dror, chief spokesman for Israel’s Defense Ministry, explains, “The Palestinians wanted to have one or two rockets a week to keep our people in tension. … The moment we fail to react to one rocket we encourage them. Our only choice was to close the crossings when rockets came in.”

A December 20 AP article published by the NYT, “Israel: Hamas Formally Ends Truce,” is short enough to quote in its entirety:

Hamas formally announced the end of its unwritten, often-breached truce with Israel on Friday, as Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired four rockets into southern Israel. The Israeli military said two rockets were fired Friday morning and two more after sunset. It also said troops guarding Israeli farmers in fields adjoining Gaza came under sniper fire from across the border. No injuries were reported. In a statement posted on its Web site, Hamas said it was Israel that had ended the truce by imposing an economic blockade on Gaza carrying out military strikes and hunting down Hamas operatives in the West Bank. Thousands of Gazans rallied in Khan Yunis, … in support of the militant group Islamic Jihad.

A December 20 WP article by Steve Weizman, “Hamas Formally Suspends Truce – Gazans Accuse Israel of Breaches, etc.,” quotes Hamas, “Since the enemy did not abide with the conditions … we hold the enemy fully responsible for ending the truce, and we confirm that the Palestinian resistance factions headed by Hamas will act.” Israeli spokesmen insist that the truce [does] not have an official expiration date and that Israel is interested in prolonging understandings with Hamas. An opinion poll this week indicates that 74 percent of Palestinians and 51 percent of Israelis want the truce to be extended.

A December 22 WP article by Ben Lynfield,“Livni and Netanyahu vow to oust Hamas after Gaza rocket,” tells of 20 Palestinian rockets having been fired against southern Israel since the six-month cease fire ended two days ago. In response both Tzipi Livni and Benyamin Netanyahu vow to topple Hamas in Gaza despite Prime Minister Olmert’s warning, “A responsible government doesn’t rush into battle, neither does it shy away.” Barak, the Labour leader, warns that more than 20,000 troups would be needed to stop the rocket fire. Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, Likud’s security expert, recommends the assassination of Hamas leaders, but Yossi Alpher, a leading analyst, suggests it is time for Israel to admit it lacks a “workable strategy.”

On the other hand, a December 22 Reuters article, “Hamas says open to new truce in Gaza,” by Nidal Mughrabi, Aziz el-Kaissouni, Dan Williams, and Adam Entous, indicates that Palestinian armed groups have halted rocket fire against Israel for 24 hours at the request of Egyptian mediators. Shortly before the truce is set to expire, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh telephones Turkish Prime Minister Tavyip Erdogan to ask that he convince Israel to lift its blockade, and Erdogan assured him he would. Isaac Herzog, a minister of Olmert’s security cabinet, assured Israel’s public, “I like many of my colleagues, am ready to continuing the calm, on terms that are comfortable for Israel.”

A December 23 WP article by Matti Friedman, “Hamas Tells Fighters to Hold Fire for 24 Hours, etc.” indicates that Hamas has ordered gunmen to hold their fire for 24 hours on December 22 because of the possibility that the truce with Israel can be restored. Also, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar indicates on Israel’s Channel 10 TV that the Palestinian Islamist group is interested in renewing the truce with Israel. However, since three rockets have fallen by nightfall, Israel signals that the cargo crossings remain sealed and it is preparing for a possible offense. Mubarak, who brokered the initial truce, invites Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Lvvni to Cairo to discuss a new arrangement. Her spokesmen say she is prepared to listen but would also complain about the rockets and mortar fire. Analysts nevertheless think both sides want to renew the truce, since past incursions have not stopped the rocket fire and an Israeli ground operation into Gaza would probably result in heavy casualties for both sides.

A December 23 WP editorial , “More Rockets from Gaza,” etc., predicts that if and when full-scale hostilities begin, Hamas will shift from homemade rockets to Iranian missiles that could reach large Israeli cities. It is also suggests that a ground invasion might trigger bloody conflict that could spread to the West Bank and Lebanon. The author also mentions the apparent decision of Hamas’s Damascus-based leadership to end the cease-fire regardless of the suffering this might bring, apparently with the expectation that Israel would be forced to lift the blockade on Gaza. What seems ignored by the Damascus leadership is the fact that Israel is in the midst of a heated election campaign with two leading candidates both of whom are taking a “predictably hawkish tack.” With the U.S. in the midst of a presidential transition, it would be unlikely to impose any outcome unacceptable to Israel’s new government.

A December 24 AP article published by the NYT, “Israel: 3 Militants Killed in Gaza,” is short enough to quote in its entirety:

Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants on the Gaza border on Tuesday, the deadliest clash since a truce expired Friday between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza. Israel said the three militants were planting explosives in northern Gaza along the border fence. Soldiers crossed a few yards into Gaza and engaged the Palestinians, who threw grenades. The soldiers returned fire, killing the three, according to Israeli news media.

A December 24 NYT article by Isabel Kershner, “Gaza Rocket Fire Intensifies,” indicates that a Hamas militant has been killed in an Israeli air strike, while more than 60 rockets and mortar shells have been fired at Israel without killing anybody. Most of the rockets fired out of Gaza are locally made, Kershner reports, “short-range projectiles that fall within a few miles of the border.” But at least two of those fired Wednesday [Dec. 24] are imported Katyusha-type rockets with a longer range. Kershner also reports that Israel’s security cabinet has held a meeting that has lasted about five hours, but with no details having been made public regarding any decisions about Gaza.” Israel’s official spokesman Mark Regev says, “a renewal of mutual calm [is] possible but that Israel’s patience [is] running out.” Some Israeli officials call for tough military action, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak maintain a policy of restraint. Unnamed defense officials are quoted to the effect that a military invasion would be costly in lives on both sides and would not guarantee an end to the rocket fire.” Also quoted is Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas official, to the effect that “Hamas would consider renewing the truce if border crossings were opened to allow the regular transfer of goods into Gaza.” Kershner ends the article by quoting a nameless Israeli official that Israel would have allowed about 40 trucks of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza on Wednesday, but cancelled those plans as a result of the heavy rocket and mortar fire.”

In a December 26 NYT article provided by Reuters, “Israel Issues an Appeal to Palestinians in Gaza,” Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert is quoted as having issued on Christmas a “last minute” appeal to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to reject the militant leadership of Hamas and stop firing rockets at Israel, warning that he would not hesitate to use force. According to the article, “He [Olmert} issued what amounted to a public call to Gazans to overthrow Hamas, the Islamic group that controls the territory. “I’m telling them now,” he [says]. “It may be the last minute. There will be more blood there. Who wants it? We don’t want it.” Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a leading candidate in the Feb. 10 election, holds emergency talks with President Mubarak of Egypt, who cautions against escalation. Ms. Livni says Hamas [has] to pay for “unbearable” rocket fire, insisting, “Enough is enough.” According to a Palestinian official, an unnamed Egyptian source is quoted as having appealed to Hamas leaders “to calm the situation so as to avoid an Israeli military escalation.” In Gaza, however, a Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, warns that Israel would “pay the price” for any attack.

Significantly, neither the NYT nor WP provides any coverage whatsoever on December 27, the day of Israel’s surprise air attack. The question suggests itself whether these two newspapers and/or anybody in the federal government is aware of this likelihood. Is the American press so closely aligned with Israel’s government that it actually participates in a news blackout exactly when it is needed in order to mount a surprise invasion?

On December 27, as indicated, Israel finally launches a full-scale air attack against Gaza. As recounted by Taghreed El-Khodary and Ethan Bronner in their NYT December 28 article, “More than 225 Die in Gaza as Israel Strikes at Hamas,” a major Israeli surprise air attack is launched on Saturday, December 27, that produces the highest death toll for Gaza in years. Many of the victims are shoppers and school children who have been freely walking in the Central Food Market as well as police cadets in a nearby graduation ceremony held in an open square. About 500 Palestinians are also wounded in what amounts to a totally successful surprise attack. Despite Israeli claims of targeting Hamas fighters and security posts, according to IMEMC’s December 28 article, “Israeli Offensive in Gaza,” “the army [shells] mosques, blacksmith workshops, local media agencies, charitable societies, police stations, detainees’ affairs societies and … the Islamic University in Gait. It is estimated that there have been at least a hundred targets, including the Saraya security compound in Gaza city, the municipal building of the town Beit Hanoun, the police station of the Shija’via neighborhood of eastern Gaza city, two additional Hamas police posts in central Gaza Strip, and a variety of Hamas-run charities.

As on November 4, the surprise attack has been undertaken with total success. According to Haaretz correspondent Barak Ravid on December 28 in “Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about,” “Israel [had] continued to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza Strip and that Olmert would decide whether to launch the strike following three more deliberations on Sunday – one day after the actual order to launch the operation was issued.” Ravid also discloses that Israeli Defense Minister Barak had initiated plans for the invasion as early as March, 2008, three months before the June accord, and had made these plans operational beginning in November, supposedly in response to Hamas’ resumption of rocket attacks in early November after Israel’s November 4 incursion.

Further trickery is suggested by Les Blough, Editor of Axis of Logic in his provocative article, “The 2008 Attack on the People of Gaza is Like-No-Other and the World Responds,” dated on December 28, “On the day before the attack, the Israeli government [lies] to the Palestinians, telling them they have opened the borders to receive the first shipment of food and humanitarian supplies in 2 months. The Palestinians have been waiting for relief and instead are bombed.”

The exact timing is another matter. Undoubtedly the planes have been scheduled to arrive during the graduation ceremony in order to maximize fatalities among police officers as potential combatants once the invasion begins. According to the Jerusalem Report, as recounted by David Brooks in his January 6 NYT column, “The Confidence Game, ”In the first wave 80 Israeli planes hit more than 100 targets and nearly all of the Hamas military compounds within 3 minutes 40 seconds.” Aerial attacks are sustained throughout the following day, and in response Palestinians shoot dozens of rockets into southern Israel, but without killing anybody. By the end of the year four days later as many as 400 Palestinians have been killed, between twenty and thirty percent of them children, mostly from incessant air strikes, artillery strikes, and gunfire from Israeli warships off the coast. In contrast, only 4 Israeli have been killed by Palestinian rockets.

And thus the initial air bombardment. On January 4, after eight days of incessant bomb attacks, Israeli troops invade Gaza. The invasion has begun.

What is one to conclude from this entire narrative stretching over the past six months and with every chance of persisting into the indefinite future? Several generalizations seem appropriate.

First and foremost, contrary to the repeated insistence of Zionists, Gaza’s Hamas government is not a terrorist organization to be excluded from negotiations. Hamas was first organized in 1987 to provide social services as well as resistance against Israel’s occupation–not much different from Israel’s leadership opposed to British occupation when it took power in 1948. There is also ample evidence the creation and initial growth of Hamas was encouraged by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, as a counterweight to the Fatah movement. When Hamas won the 2006 popular election in Gaza, its new prime minister, Ismail Haniya, turned out to be the most conciliatory member of its top leadership, and he soon joined with the Fatah President Abbas in promoting a peace settlement along the lines proposed by the Arab League in both 2002 and 2007. Once again it was Prime Minister Sharon who refused to negotiate, putting into motion everything that has happened since. Moreover, as explained in Khalid Amayreh’s pivotal 2004 article based on inside Knesset sources, “The Second Intifada – An Israeli Strategy,” the conscious intention of Israel ‘s leadership since the beginning has been to intensify violence in order to intimidate and encourage the departure of the Palestinian people. In other words, it is primarily the Israeli who have kept up the role of terrorists, not the Palestinians.

Secondly, Zionist apologists have also repeatedly attacked Hamas for seeking the destruction of Israel, but this is an obvious equivocation on their part. Indeed, some members of Hamas want to “destroy” Israel in the sense of crushing it and reducing its people to devastation, just as many Israeli want to do the same with Palestinians. However, what most of Hamas’ leadership mean by “destroy” is to terminate Israel’s “democratic” theocracy, replacing it with a genuine democracy in which all citizens have equal rights–Palestinians and Christians as well as the Zionist Jews. On the other hand, contrary to Zionist protestations, much of Hamas’ leadership is actually willing to accept a two-state solution whereby the Israeli and Palestinians coexist in two adjoining nations, an arrangement that would permit Israel’s continuation of its anachronistic theocratic status.

Third, there is ample evidence that Hamas and the residents of Gaza wanted (and expected) to avoid warfare. The Dec. 15 NYT article of el-Khodary and Kershner indicates a mixed response among Gaza’s Hamas leadership–as opposed to its exiled Damascus leadership–to the renewal of a peace accord with Israel. Such a renewal was advocated by Zahar and not rejected by Haniya. As indicated in a recent opinion poll reported by Weizman in his December 20 WP article, 74 percent of the Palestinians overall, as opposed to only 51 percent of the Israeli, wanted the truce to be extended. What primarily brought a renewal of overt hostilities was the continuing embargo on Gaza as well as two decisive steps taken by Israel. First its Nov. 4 attack provoked the resumption of rocket fire from Hamas; and second, Israel’s December 27 air attack terminated all talk of a renewed peace accord that had persisted through Christmas and even, arguably, the morning of the attack. It may also be mentioned here that Olmert’s demands as reported by Reuters on December 26 might seem an explicit warning of an impending invasion, but, as reported By Ravid of Haaretz on December 28, the misinformation available to Gaza’s residents that Israel’s war cabinet would meet on Sunday, the day after the attack, to decide the appropriate choice gave Palestinians the false impression that they were safe at least until Monday. Also, Olmert’s demand, as reported by Reuters, that Gaza inhabitants reject its elected leadership on the brink of its invasion was necessarily gratuitous and imposed an impossible condition. It could only be ignored, thus justifying an invasion only in the opinion of the aggressors.

Fourth, both Israel and the Palestinians have repeatedly broken the June verbal accord, but on balance Israel was more culpable than the Palestinians. The tradeoff accepted by both parties was for the Palestinians to terminate rocket attacks in exchange for Israel’s cessation of the embargo against Gaza as well as the termination of military incursions into Gaza. As Bronner documents in his December 19 NYT article, Palestinian rocket fire has been substantially reduced over the past six months as compared to the relentless continuation of Israel’s embargo and its Gaza incursions. As indicated in Gradstein’s Nov. 15 WP article, the effect of this embargo has been severe poverty and sufficient hostility that Hamas rocket attacks could be incited by the November 4 incursion.

Fifth, the explanation for the inability of Hamas to curtail rocket fire entirely is that most of the early rocket attacks were conducted by the Islamic Jihad, a radical group loosely connected with Hamas that kept up these attacks to retaliate against Israeli attacks on the Jihad on the West Bank. Hamas itself did not resume rocket attacks until Nov. 4, after Israeli forces killed six Palestinian fighters in their surprise attack on election day in the United States. As earlier indicated, the imprudence of Hamas in accepting the bait was probably because of the effectiveness of Israel’s embargo at the time as well as the impact of the surprise attack in and of itself.

Sixth, most of the rockets used by the Palestinians have been relatively harmless homemade Kazam rockets, thus accounting for the exceptionally low casualty rate among Israeli as the result of rocket attacks. Not more than eight Israeli were killed during the entire year once the total of four mentioned in Kershner’s June 18 NYT article is added to the four killed after the December 27 attack. It accordingly seems more than likely that Kazam rocket attacks were useful to Israel as a “good” excuse for mounting both the air attack and invasion that followed. Whatever the benefit of these rocket attacks to Hamas’ defense strategy, they have been far more helpful to Israel’s government in producing almost no damage whatsoever while obtaining the needed public support for an enlargement of its operations against the Palestinians. One almost wonders if Zionist agent provocateurs aren’t somehow responsible for what seem to many the dubious use of rockets in the Palestinian cause.

Seventh, the overall kill ratio since December 27 has actually been sustained at 100-1, culminating at the time of the January 17 cease-fire at thirteen hundred Palestinians as opposed to thirteen Israeli troops, four of whom having been killed by friendly fire. Any kill ratio this disproportionate suggests an egregious double standard on the part of the winning side. Do Zionists actually believe the Biblical nonsense that they are God’s chosen people with the license to engage in such one-sided slaughter against their supposed enemies? Not so. All human lives must be treated as being sacred–even Palestinians, including the men, women and children killed since December 27. Those portions of the Bible that say otherwise (Deuteronomy, 7:2-6, etc.) can and ought to be ignored.

Eighth, the question necessarily suggests itself whether Israel had tightened the embargo and mounted its Nov. 4 attack as planned from the very beginning in order to obtain exactly the results that wereproduced, a cessation of the June peace accord followed by a full invasion that could be blamed on Hamas instead of Israel, followed by negotiations on a heavily favorable basis for Israel. Barak Ravid’s disclosure in his December 27 Haaretz article should be no surprise–that Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak instructed the IDF “to prepare the operation over six months ago.” Barak was said to explain to fellow IDF strategists, “Although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare as well.” It accordingly seems more than likely that everything starting with the June peace accord was planned on a contingency basis well in advance. Of primary importance in reverse order of conception was the invasion of Gaza, whose occurrence would be most opportune preceding the September 20, 2008, U.S. inauguration (thus providing the international “surprise” predicted by Vice President Biden, if a couple months earlier than predicted). Then in reverse sequence came a suitable provocation scheduled in time to renew the cycle of violence needed to stir up public support for the invasion (and what better date than the U.S. election?). Finally, at the very beginning, the June peace agreement would provide the time needed to make sufficient preparations over the following six months. This hypothetical game plan might seem absurd verging on paranoia, but we must remember than Barak is an intricate thinker–a clock maker in his spare time. He can be expected to play chess in foreign relations as opposed to the relatively simple strategy of Palestinians, something between checkers and tic-tac-toe as with most of the rest of us.

Ninth, as suggested in Entous’ December 22 WP article, Israel’s upcoming February 10 election cannot be ignored. As an additional bonus to Israel’s current government, the Gaza invasion has tipped Israel’s public support from Netanyahu, an arch-conservative Likud candidate for Prime Minister, to Tzipi Livni supported by Ehud Barak, relatively progressive candidates both of whom have supported a two-state solution one time or another. By proving themselves to be sufficiently hawkish, Livni and Barak have enhanced their image among Israeli voters who would otherwise support the arch-conservative Netanyahu. Once in office, Livni and Barak might actually be able to work with Palestinians and the Obama administration in pursuit of an acceptable two-state resolution of the conflict, presumably with both Hamas and Fatah involved in the creation of their own political entity within the 1967 border suitably adjusted. However, there would be serious problems if such a strategy is in the works. The results would be risky at best and at too great a cost in Palestinian lives. Moreover, if such a strategy fails, a destabilization of Arab states can be expected throughout the region, and the political climate in Israel inclusive of all its parties would shift even further to the right than today. Once Hamas has been crushed–as it can be if Gaza is totally flattened and many thousands more are killed–Fatah would provide a relatively easy target, Abbas himself reduced to nothing more than a “plucked chicken” as once described by Sharon. Zionism’s triumph would be at the expense of the Palestinian people and ultimately, one suspects, the Israeli people as well–at least their self-respect.

And tenth, the option cannot be discounted that Israel’s victory might set the stage for the prevention of any Palestinian state whatsoever. The avoidance of a two-state solution is mostly sought by Israeli who seek full possession of the greater Israel for themselves alone. At present they cannot exactly reject both the current one-state and two-state options, since the only alternative would be the dispersal of Palestinians into cantons equivalent to Native-American reservations and their eventual “transfer” to adjoining states–a modern Palestinian Diaspora entailing everything offensive to Jews about their own historic experience. The immediate tactic is therefore to keep relations in perpetual disruption toward the possibility of such a transfer when it finally presents itself as a reasonable choice. In other words, Ben Gurion and Sharon’s basic strategy (“We must expel Arabs and take their place”) still seems in effect at least as an option relevant to the outcome of the present Gaza operation. Chances seem excellent once again that Israel’s conservative leadership will somehow thwart genuine negotiations in the hope and expectation of obtaining the eventual opportunity to rid the “greater Israel” of its Palestinians once Hamas is out of the picture. The strategy is reminiscent of God’s ultra-chauvinistic pronouncements in the Old Testament and Hitler’s effort to rid Europe of its Jewish population. It’s basically the same motive all over again, though Israel can be expected to avoid an “existential” final solution. One or two Warsaw episodes might be O.K. such as in Gaza right now, but without any need for concentration camps–at least not yet.

Tracking Deception, by William A. Cook, offers a sustained diatribe against Israel and the United States, comprising forty-three articles published between September, 2002, and April, 2005, when the two governments were escalating hostilities against their respective enemies of choice. Not more than thirty-two months transpired, but Cook’s articles went into print on the average once every three weeks for this entire period. The result is something more than a book.

Most histories relax somewhat to let the story tell itself, as may be seen, for example, in the impressive investigative books about Iraq by such authors as Thomas Ricks, Bob Woodward, and Chalmers Johnson that were published at about the same time. In contrast, Cook’s admixture of data and acrimony was persistent in all his articles and therefore throughout his text as a whole. Dates, laws, quotes, sources, and fascinating lists of names and transgressions abound to illustrate and justify his sense of outrage. Granted, his “hard” information is now and again incorrect (usually on the short side of the truth), but this is typical during warfare, and in retrospect it is obvious that Cook’s distortions were far more accurate than most of the reportage in the respectable press at the time.

Apparent toward the end of 2002, when the book begins, was that a major invasion was imminent in Iraq and that Israel’s Prime Minister Sharon had been doing everything he could to intensify the conflict with Palestinians since he came to power eighteen months earlier, most notably by having scuttled negotiations both at Taba and in response to the generous Saudi Peace Plan. By spring, 2005, when Cook’s diatribe ends, the invasion of Iraq had degenerated into outright warfare that culminated in the siege and total destruction of Fallujah once Bush was reelected. Meanwhile, Israeli troops had isolated Arafat in his Ramallah compound, where he would be “contained” until his death, and Sharon had refused to negotiate with his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, despite his generous peace plan that began with a unilateral ceasefire.

Predictably, American activists were outraged by the development of events, if with far more concern about Iraq than Israel. Cook’s articles, most of them published by CounterPunch, rectify this imbalance by focusing on the tactics of Israel as well as its enlarged dependence on the United States since 1948. Most of them discuss the two in combination with an emphasis on Israel’s tactics. Obviously, Cook was willing to risk displeasure from the predictable chorus of angry Zionist apologists who go after anybody who dares to criticize Israel.

2

Tracking Deception’s final essay, “The Destructive Power of Myth,” at least double the length of any of the rest, turns out to have been written in response to the 9-11 catastrophe a full year later. It seems intended as an appendix providing a final overview of Cook’s historic perspective, but it can also be appreciated as a theoretical introduction that clarifies his effort throughout the text to challenge the merits of public mythology exemplified by both Zionist ideology and the misbegotten patriotic support of Bush’s foreign policy shared by the vast majority of the American people. Contrary to Marxist base-superstructure assumptions, Cook features the paramount impact of ideology at the expense of economics, but then traces chauvinistic enthusiasm in both Israel and the United States to the highly successful effort of relatively small but powerful minorities in distorting this shared consciousness to meet their own needs. Crucial to their success, he argues, is their ability to manipulate relatively simple myths to serve this purpose. Such myths, he argues, usually put to use the perceived virtues of the community at large (e.g., a nation’s presumably unique dedication to freedom or its right to occupy its ancient “homeland”) as well as the need to take action now and again in defense of these virtues.

Cook also suggests that these collective myths can be political, religious, or both in combination, and remarks that they seem best promoted by a hierarchical structure (a priesthood, for example, or a political party) to “codify, justify, and implement” their enactment. (pp. 344-45) Obviously Cook tailors this definition of myth to apply equally to the American obsession with freedom inclusive of the laissez faire and Israel’s even greater obsession with its unique status as a “chosen people” deserving of a theocratic state of its own.

Relevant to the collective mythology dominant in the United States, Cook warns of the ability of capitalistic enterprise to distort public opinion, and here Marxist assumptions come to the fore:

In truth, what we believe is what the corporate world wants us to believe, and they have the means to make it happen. They own communications – newspapers, television channels, magazines, movie production studios, movie distribution houses, telephone systems, and radio stations. . . . In truth what Capitalism actually does in the name of the United States is to reap the greatest profits by producing for the least possible cost, regardless of the consequences to the peoples of other countries. . . . Capitalism, not Democracy, is at fault. (p. 355).

More specifically, Cook identifies eight dominant corporations engaged in this effort to sustain a public mythology beneficial to corporate hegemony: General Electric, AT&T/Liberty Media, Disney, Times Warner, Sony, News Corporation, Viacom and Seagram, and Bertelsmann (p. 324). The specific identities of these corporations shift at times resulting from mergers and buyouts, but both their leadership and shared goals remain the same.

And what are these goals in the United States today? It seems, as Cook insists, that a very small elite imposes “useful” beliefs on the public at large. But useful to exactly whom? Relevant to our nation’s economy since World War II, this lucrative mythology has featured the defense of American democracy and the American way of life against predators both at home and abroad. Beneficiaries include all who either directly or indirectly support themselves through their participation in what seems best and most accurately described as Keynesian militarism. These individuals extend from the very wealthiest investors to the employees of contractors and sub-contractors as well as the multitude of local stores and services that provide their needs. This turns out to be a very huge chunk of our present economy, as illustrated by the total financial costs incurred by the military establishment since the thirties.

President Clinton sought a better and more acceptable alternative by featuring globalization, but it wasn’t enough. President Bush added two wars to the recipe, and, lo, the affluence of the nineties extended well into the first decade of the twenty-first century. Our nation’s economic prosperity turns out to have been the most important byproduct of its military status abroad combined with the high costs involved – a double benefit difficult to ignore. Low taxes and deregulation could be thrown in for good measure. And look at America today!

Unfortunately, this financial benefit dependent on military aggression abroad is hardly admirable and needs a credible mythology to gloss over its disreputable imperfections. No problem at all. The appropriate collective narrative rooted in the robust defense of universal freedom enjoys widespread acceptance promoted by books, movies, magazines, newspapers, the popular media, and of course the round-the-clock news coverage on cable TV and the radio. As to be expected, the public has fully taken to heart this collective myth ultimately epitomized by President Reagan’s notion of American democracy as a shining city on the hill, indeed a beacon of hope for oppressed people across the world.

More Americans resonate to this myth than anybody wants to acknowledge among educated friends. The Republican Party in fact seems to depend on it. The real story, of course (if such exists), is far more complicated, and with an abundance of ramifications that too often fail to reflect positively on our nation’s accomplishments. For anybody interested in pursuing a more adequate narrative, a variety of standard one-volume U.S. histories may be suggested here: by Charles Beard, Samuel Eliot Morrison, Howard Zinn, Paul Johnson, Walter McDougall, and/or William Appleman Williams, among many others.

3

Cook’s Preface begins with the blatant warning, “The life-blood of Democracy is truth, and Bush has murdered truth” (p. ix). Can the truth be murdered, strictly speaking? Perhaps not, but Cook obviously thinks Bush came as close to doing this as anybody in recent history. Cook then becomes more specific relevant to the Iraq invasion:

Month by month Bush’s duplicity and deception mounted. His administration took America to war against a nation that had no intention of harming America, no means to harm America, and offered no threat to America…. He fabricated an enemy force of considerable might that would confront American troops once the invasion started – when in reality Iraq had been devastated by 12 years of sanctions and had no army to field (p. xii).

In other words, the entire operation was total fraud from the very beginning. Supposedly Iraq had been invaded because it posed a dire and immediate threat to the rest of the world, whereas it was in no threat at all except when it came to combating occupation troops.

In Chapter 1 (Sept. 8, 2002), Cook complains of Bush’s Manichaean assumption that America “represents the forces of good fighting against the forces of evil,” supposedly justifying our nation’s unilateral world domination. “You are either with us or against us,” Bush explained to announce the so-called Bush doctrine of universal war against terrorists, necessitating preemptive attacks wherever this seemed needed. And of course our nation’s principal ally in this holy cause was Prime Minister Sharon’s government in Israel. As others have argued, however, it seems the tail just might have been wagging the dog, for Sharon actually boasted to the Knesset on one occasion, “Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel; we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it” (Cook, p. 65).

Cook ridicules Bush’s effort to obtain the support of the U.N. for the attack on Iraq by pointing out its earlier refusal to abide by Resolutions 686, 687, and 688. However, Cook discloses that in doing so Bush conveniently ignored the more than 55 UN sanctions that Israel had defied back to 1948 (in later pieces Cook increased this number to 155 violations), not to mention the UN Security Council resolutions, 242, 338, 262, 267, 446, and 465. Obviously a double standard was in play.

In Chapter 2 (Oct. 10, 2002), Cook uses the same comparison in response to Bush’s speech of September 12 that justified rushing to war against Iraq based on four arguments, all of which could more easily be applied to Israel: (1) that Iraq had once invaded and occupied Kuwait (quite aside from Israel’s occupation of 8 out of 9 principal cities in the Palestinian territory); (2) that Iraq had failed to comply with UN-imposed commitments in 1991 (quite aside from Israel having established over 30 settlements on the West Bank since Sharon became Prime Minister); (3) that Saddam had defied the UN by not complying with 16 UN resolutions (quite aside from the fact that Israel had defied the UN by not responding or complying with at least 68 resolutions); and (4) that Iraq had failed to return approximately 600 prisoners (quite aside from Israel having refused to allow the return of over one million Palestinian refugees).

In Chapter 24 (Feb. 28, 2004), titled “Israel: America’s Albatross,” Cook reports that more than 50% of Europe’s population considers Israel to be a threat to world peace. He also goes so far as to declare more sweepingly, “Israel and America are perceived by the vast majority of people around the world as true threats to world peace” (p. 158). Moreover, he insists that Israel cannot rightfully identify itself as a democracy, since it lacks a constitution after 60 years of existence. Instead, he argues, it abides by a system of laws that seems primarily derivative of the Torah (the first five books in the Old Testament). He also deplores Israel continued refusal to deny the recognition of the Palestinian minority despite UN Resolution 181 calling for this to be done.

Cook focuses on Ariel Sharon’s unique responsibility for having intensified hostilities against the Palestinians. He summarizes Sharon’s three most despicable crimes against Palestinians: (1) his responsibility in 1953 for the killing of 53 civilians in a refugee camp and soon afterwards 69 more in the village Qibya; (2) his responsibility for the destruction of Had’d Street after the 1967 war, culminating in the destruction of 2,000 homes, the displacement of 16,000 people, and the assassination of 104 suspected guerrillas, and (3) his role in the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, when 1,962 men, women, and children were massacred by Lebanese Falangists under the supervision of Israeli troops. Cook then compiles a more extended list of various other crimes and provocations by Sharon that have so effectively kept hostilities brewing against the Palestinians for almost half a century.

Cook also estimates the costs incurred by the U.S. for supporting Israel to have been in the range of $1.6 trillion since 1973, an excessive amount for a total Jewish population that increased from 2 million in 1958 to 7 million today. Cook specifies that 737,166 Palestinians were evicted from their nation in 1948 and another 69,000 in 1967, and he later supplements this data, declaring that in 1948 alone Palestinian families were driven from 418 towns and villages so all the houses and property could be destroyed and replaced by Israeli settlements (p. 202).

Cook culminates Chapter 24 by listing ten ways Israel has “repaid” the American taxpayer during this period (he proposes only nine, but the last can easily be subdivided): (1) its unwillingness to return any stolen lands whatsoever to the Palestinians; (2) its total defiance of more than 100 UN resolutions (on p. 277 he cites 155 UN resolutions); (3) its frequent use of spies in the U.S. exemplified by Jonathan Pollard (and later Larry Franklin); (4) its inexcusable attack on the US Liberty during the 1967 War; (5) its heavy dependence on neoconservative influence in Washington; (6) its countless atrocities illustrated by the attack on the Jenin refugee camp and the murder of international peace observers; (7) its encouragement of Evangelical Zionist Christians to incite hatred against Arabs in the United States; (8) its defiance of the Arms Export Control Act through its use of cluster bombs acquired from the U.S. without the needed permission; (9) its lucrative arrangement that obliges both U.S. and Israel military establishments to purchase military hardware from Israel instead of the United States; and (10) its sale of U.S. classified technology to such nations as Ethiopia, South Africa, Chile, Venezuela, and China despite prior agreements not to (pp. 164-66).

Regarding Sharon’s presumably conciliatory “liberation” of Gaza, Cook quotes Dov Weisglass, Sharon’s principal advisor, to the effect that the “ulterior motive behind Sharon’s unilateral decision to withdraw from the Gaza strip was not to further the peace process but to ‘freeze it’ in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state” (see chap. 35, p. 251). He had promised a full diplomatic settlement as a tradeoff for the American invasion of Iraq, but then reneged on his offer by substituting relatively minor concessions: the elimination of a couple of Israeli West Bank settlements as well as granting independence to Gaza. Apparently he justified this bait-and-switch arrangement with the argument that bigger concessions required by the Road Map would have been unacceptable to the Israeli public as demonstrated by one or two well-publicized demonstrations by Israeli settlers upset with the loss of their property on the West Bank. Afterwards (later than the publication of Cook’s account), Sharon nullified even these concessions by besieging Gaza and imposing a tight embargo to starve its population into submission.

The final observation buried earlier in the essay, “Israel: America’s Albatross,” is the risk taken by American politicians who dare to resist withholding their full support of Israel’s agenda. This was illustrated, Cook discloses, by the intense public relations effort against Howard Dean’s presidential campaign simply because he expressed his doubts about Israel’s status as a democracy. Of course he was not specifically attacked for this particular reason, but, whatever the declared reason (as much as anything his joking litany of new states to be visited), his campaign was strangled, as it were, because he lacked adequate sympathy with Israel. According to Cook, “The Israeli political forces launched a massive attack against Dean, as vicious as any mounted against Arafat, and he folded. Such is the power that controls America’s Democracy” (p. 159). Cook neglects to mention the earlier exposé by Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out, published in 1985, which mentions many other public figures – inclusive of Ball, Percy, and Fulbright – whose careers were terminated for the same reason.

Cook also devotes a couple chapters to the religious bigotry of American millenarian (”end-time”) fundamentalists and Arab fanatics as well as Zionist extremists obsessed with their status as God’s “chosen people.” Significantly, his choice of quotations by Zionists seems far more damning than for the other two. For example, he quotes Effi Eitam, the head of Israel’s National Religious Party, to the effect that Palestinians “are not ordinary people, but “uncircumcised,” “little people,” and “evil,” by contrast with the Jews who are ‘the blessed.’” He also quotes Gush Emunim rabbis, of another right-wing religious group, who insist that “Jews who kill Arabs should be free from all punishment,” and claim that “Arabs living in Palestine are thieves because the land was Jewish and belongs to them.” (p. 10).

Apparently these rabbis also find satisfaction in such Talmudic edicts such as, “those who read the New Testament will have no portion in the world to come” (Sandhedrin 90a); and “Jews must destroy the books of the Christians” (Shabbath 116a), and “Whosoever disobeys the rabbis deserves death and will be punished by being boiled in hot excrement in hell” (Erubin 21b). Of course the Talmud’s principal appeal is said to consist of its arguable contradictions. However, these particular examples seem at least excessive. According to Cook, once this kind of thinking is brought into play combined with the dogma of the Christian right, the result is “a virtual whirlpool of Zionist Christian fanaticism” (p. 293).

And thus Cook takes his argument to almost every aspect of the Near East crisis since the year 2001. He scrutinizes such concerns as torture, shock and awe, extra-judicial executions, the “fence” (or wall), the roadmap, green parrots [Ed: bombs intended to be used against children; Cook p. 276], the assault on Rafah, insufficient opposition in Israel, the spread of hostility into Syria, the decline of American democracy, the unfortunate 2004 Democratic Convention, the failed Kerry campaign, the failed Camp David negotiations, the ambiguous role of Osama bin Laden, the despicable Yassin assassination, and the flawed assumptions of Leo Strauss, Richard Perle, Alan Dershowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Charles Krauthammer as well as neoconservatives in general. Last but not least, he explores in depth the critique of supposedly anti-Semitic trends summarized by the State Department. Ironically, the State Department’s so-called “Country Report” almost entirely refrains from criticizing Israel in the main body of its text, but then launches into a full-scale assessment in its Appendix that is more or less in line with Cook’s arguments throughout his book. The government authors of the study seem to concur with much that Cook says, but with the typical prudence to limit their concerns to an appendix easily overlooked by readers.

4

There is one major oversight in Cook’s line of argument. He appropriately pairs current U.S. and Zionist excesses, but draws upon our nation’s early history – and indeed that of Western Civilization as a whole – to suggest a vast prehistory of similar excesses, but without mentioning Zionism’s comparable historic record. This oversight can be misleading. For just as American history’s respectable narrative can and should be amplified by a counter-narrative that features harsh and even unspeakable disclosures, the same is possible with Zionist history. Here, too, a counter-narrative needs to be acknowledged – in this case lest the fiction of incessant victimization is used to gloss over what might seem an atypical and therefore partially justified instance of violence against others – the Palestinians now under attack by Israel.

Appropriately, Cook draws attention to earlier American atrocities that anticipate our nation’s conduct in Iraq – for example the total destruction of the Pequot tribe during the early seventeenth century and the persistent effort through the end of the nineteenth century to disperse native American societies that occupied territory sought by white-European settlers. Most obvious was the so-called Trail of Tears, when approximately 4,000 innocent Cherokee Indians died in transit. As Cook indicates, all this was entirely in accord with the wishes and intentions of our Founding Fathers, Jefferson having declared that the U.S. government was obliged “now to pursue them (Indians) to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach.” Washington suggested in the same vein that Indians deserved nothing from whites but “total ruin.” And Cotton Mather had inveighed a century earlier, “Turn not back till they are consumed. . . . Beat them small as dust” (Cook, p. 299).

Also inexcusable was our nation’s heavy dependence on slavery as well as the Mexican and Spanish American Wars, the despicable occupation of the Philippines, and the various invasions of Central America and the Caribbean region. Similar ventures after World War II included more military operations on foreign soil than by the rest of the world combined, for example in Panama, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Kuwait. The Korean War was partially justified, but not Vietnam, setting an example famously ignored with the invasion of Iraq forty years later.

Cook and the Jeffrey St. Clair, the author of his fascinating introduction, trace this penchant for violence both at home and abroad back to seventeenth century Protestantism and its obsession with the cosmic struggle between good and evil, then further back to the Catholic Inquisition and the extermination of Cathars in the early thirteenth century. The entire city of Beziers with between 15,000 and 20,000 people was annihilated because most of its inhabitants adhered to the unacceptable Cathari heresy. When admonished that the entire population shouldn’t be killed because not all were heretics, the Papal Legate Arnaud Amaury supposedly replied, “Kill them all. God will know his own.” And of course the Crusades were brutal, with Jews and many others exterminated additional to the Arabs trying to defend their homeland. The capture of Jerusalem and massacre of its citizens during the First Crusade was particularly bloodthirsty.

So what unspeakable narrative can be brought to bear against the Zionist cause? Just where and to what extent do its earlier transgressions come into play? To begin with, Old Testament violence is evident throughout the Books of Kings, Chronicles, and Daniel, in which the relentlessness of hostilities suggests the probability that Israel was fully as responsible as its enemies for the centuries of intertribal conflict that incessantly beset the Levant before the Jews were finally defeated by Roman troops with the destruction of Masada in 73 A.D. followed by exile from the region imposed by the Emperor Hadrian in the year 135 A.D.

The penultimate but culminating event actually took place in 115-17 A.D., two decades earlier, when Jewish refuges tried to establish a state of their own on the island of Cyprus, apparently having migrated there in large numbers after their earlier defeat by the Romans. Once they obtained a majority of the total population, they are said to have resorted to a surprise attack to kill all of Cyprus’s non-Jewish inhabitants, estimated to have been in the range of 240,000. The entire gentile population – men, women, and children – were supposedly dispatched in a single day, some of them horribly butchered. Another 220,000 were supposedly killed in the African city of Cyrene in order to secure a friendly mainland port, and countless others were killed in Egypt as well. Altogether something on the order of 500,000 were said to have been murdered in order to create a state entirely populated by Jews. Soon afterwards, however, the Roman general Hadrian brought troops to Cyprus and defeated the Jews, exiling the few who were permitted to live. After another Jewish revolt two decades later, Hadrian – by then Rome’s Emperor – apparently lost his patience and exiled from the Levant the entire Jewish population. The infamous Diaspora was at last totally in effect.

Not surprisingly, the 115 A.D. massacre is almost totally forgotten today, probably because it contradicts the prevalent myth of unsullied Jewish innocence. Useful Jewish histories by such competent authors as Abram Sachar, Barnet Litvinoff, and Paul Johnson ignore the episode as if it never happened. However, it did, as confirmed by articles in the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and even the 14th edition (the latter without mentioning the numbers involved). Gibbon discusses the episode in chap. 16, fn. 1, of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and the Jewish Encyclopedia mentions it in a context cluttered with sufficient pedantry to obscure its full implication. Houston Chamberlain’s summary fills half a page in the Fifth Chapter on Jewish history in his remarkable study Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1 (p. 342 in the current edition). Wikipedia also summarizes the episode, and it can be further researched on Google with the combination of such terms as Hadrian, Cyprus, and Jews.

So it would seem an incident in ancient Cyprus anticipated today’s effort in Israel, if in a much more brutal manner typical of the age. Here apparently Zionists first sought to impose their own “final solution” toward racial purity in a state they hoped would supplant Israel, better protected from enemies by the Mediterranean Sea. However, just as Hitler’s genocidal effort to rid Europe of Jews bore a disastrous impact on Germany, the similar effort of Cypriot Jews turned out to be no less catastrophic for the Jewish population in the region. Hadrian alone succeeded in effecting the dispersion of an alien population – Jews themselves – and only, one suspects, because the horrific crimes of the Cypriot Jews were common knowledge at the time. As a result Jews were scattered across the region and unable to concentrate their population well enough to lay claim to territory again – at least not until the State of Israel.

Is Israel now immersed in much the same strategy, if in a relatively humane manner (as brutal as it seems today)? The reluctance of Israel’s government to engage in serious negotiations with Palestinians would suggest this, as would the remarks of various prime ministers since the thirties, for example Ben-Gurion’s remark, “We must expel Arabs and take their place,” Begin’s remark, “Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever,” Sharon’s remark, “. . . there is no Zionism, colonization or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands,” and Olmert’s remark, “I . . . still believe in our people’s eternal and historic right to the entire land.” [all of these are quoted from James Petras's The Power of Israel in the United States, p. 93]

The Dark and Middle Ages were of course a different matter. Jews lived in urban ghettoes by both choice and necessity, supporting themselves as a small but talented sub-population useful to their respective communities. Most were shopkeepers, doctors, and the like, but some engaged in money lending offensive to their host populations because of usurious interest rates as well as the transfer of wealth gathered in this manner to subsidize warfare and the extravagance of the gentile aristocracy. Numerous feudal lords were dependent on the services of Jewish usurers as middlemen able to extract money from the peasants – money that they themselves could thereupon extract in turn from the moneylenders as loans, gifts, fines, ransom, etc. Many of the usurers nevertheless became wealthy and powerful themselves, sometimes at extravagant levels. As a result, the aristocracy (including the royalty) now and again doubly benefited from the persecution of Jews, both by regaining their own lost popularity with their aggrieved subjects, many of them debtors, and by using the opportunity to squeeze even more wealth from the usurers.

It should therefore be no surprise that Jews were persecuted and banished from England in 1290, from France in 1394, and from Spain in 1492, and that they were massacred and driven from Poland in the mid-seventeenth century and from Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. By this time moneylenders had been supplanted by more powerful Jewish banks, especially the Rothschild enterprise with branches in England, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, and with close ties in the United States, especially with the Morgan and Kuhn, Loeb Wall Street firms. Most of the wars during the nineteenth century were said to be financed by Rothschild banks as lucrative investments. And as explained in the insightful but somewhat incoherent study, The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, coauthored by Eustace Mullins and Ezra Pound, the Rothschild connection seems to have played a major role behind the scenes in the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, the finance of World War I, the 1929 Crash, and even the subsidization of Hitler’s political campaign in early 1933.

The situation in Germany was relatively complex in the twentieth century, but it also reflects on Zionist excesses as well as those of the gentile population. On one hand, many Ashkenazim Jewish refugees from Russian pogroms had migrated to Germany, thereby stirring anti-Semitism among many of the gentile population. Then again, many German Jews since the early nineteenth century had both assimilated with the non-Jewish and become secularized in their relative indifference to religion. Marx, Freud (of Austria), and Einstein provide the most obvious examples, all three of them atheists (Einstein of the closet variety as disclosed in his 1954 letter to Eric Gutkind). However, there were many others as well who abandoned religious studies for a secular university education, and often with exceptional results. Though Jews comprised just 2% of Germany’s total population (the same as in the U.S. today), a large number quickly rose to eminence in the fields of science, medicine, the law, education, philosophy, journalism, art, music, popular entertainment, etc. Meanwhile, Jewish banks continued to play a dominant role at the top of society, and, among the so-called proletariat at the other end of the social spectrum, Jews played a no less dominant role both in labor unions and radical groups, most notably the Communist Party. At the time, it seemed to many middle and lower middle-class Germans that Jews had stolen their nation from them despite the benefit that Germany’s combination of Aryan and Jewish talent had put the country at least neck-in-neck with England at the beginning of the twentieth century. For a couple decades, the two nations were in intense competition in almost every category of achievement as the primary epicenters of Western Civilization.

Unfortunately, Germany lost World War I, a conflict that should never have happened in the first place. And no less unfortunately, the German public blamed Jews (the banks, Marxists, etc.) for their defeat – as they would for the two depressions and period of hyper-inflation in the mid-twenties. Moreover, the rapid increase in intermarriages between Jews and gentiles offended both Jewish and gentile advocates of racial and cultural purity. Many ethnocentric Germans sympathized with the anti-Semitic campaign of the Nazi Party led by Adolph Hitler (who was himself probably a quarter Jewish), and a similar contingent of Jews no less beholden to a purist answer sought redress in the Zionist movement initiated just a decade or two earlier by Theodor Herzl in response to the Dreyfus Affair in France. What better way to end anti-Semitic violence, Herzl argued, than by giving the Jewish people a nation of their own – specifically Israel, where they had first come from twenty centuries earlier?

According to Carl Schorske in Fin de Siecle Vienna, chapter 3, Herzl, like Hitler, used the popular pre-fascist leadership of the Viennese figures, Georg von Schönerer and Karl Lueger, as a model for the movement he was trying to create. As a result, Herzl, like Hitler, was actually identified by his followers as Führer and addressed with “heil” and the salute of an outstretched arm. According to Lenni Brenner’s account, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, there was also what might be described as ongoing hostile cooperation between Zionists and Nazis in transferring German Jews to the Levant preceding World War II.

With the advent of full-scale warfare Hitler felt compelled to resort to a “final solution” – the Holocaust – in order to rid Europe of its Jewish population once and for all. In this instance the word “final” had at least a double meaning: first and foremost as Germany’s last opportunity to rid itself of its Jewish population, but also of course as a strategy dependent on the finality of outright murder. Almost six million Jews were killed as a result. The elimination of Jews seems to have been more important to Hitler than their slaughter, but if slaughter was the only remaining means to obtain their elimination, Hitler insisted on giving its implementation the highest priority, whatever its cost to the German war effort, which was probably more than anybody realizes today.

According to Brenner, the Nazis nevertheless remained willing to continue ransoming Jews for release abroad into the early forties. As late as 1942 they actually offered Rabbi Michael Dov-Ber Weissmandel a bargain basement tradeoff that liberated the entire Jewish population of Western Europe in exchange for $2 million – something on the order of a dollar apiece for the entire population. Weissmandel conveyed this offer to the World Zionist Organization (WZO) in Zurich, only to receive a reply from the Zionist leader Nathan Schwalb of the HeChalutz in Switzerland explaining why this offer had to be rejected:

Since we have the opportunity of this courier, we are writing to the group that they must constantly have before them that in the end the Allies will win. After their victory they will divide the world again between the nations, as they did at the end of the first world war’s end, we must do everything so that Eretz Ysroel [the region of Palestine] will become the state of Israel, and important steps have already been taken in this direction. About the cries coming from our country, we should know that all the Allied nations are spilling much of their blood, and if we do not sacrifice any blood, by what right shall we merit coming before the bargaining table when they divide nations and lands at the war’s end? Therefore it is silly, even impudent, on our part to ask these nations who are spilling their blood to permit their money into enemy countries in order to protect our blood – for only with blood shall we get the land (p. 237).

In other words Jewish martyrs were needed to justify the creation of Israel, and who better served this purpose than the concentration camp victims (too many of them assimilationists) who had not already heeded the invitation to come to Israel.

After World War II, the American connection in the creation and sustenance of Israel came into play beginning with the remarkable generosity of President Truman just months before the 1948 election despite the dire warnings of George Marshall, George Kennan, Robert Lovett, and Kermit Roosevelt. The abrupt creation of Israel that resulted was soon followed by the 1948 war, whose most salient event was the Israeli Stern Gang’s execution of 500 inhabitants in the village of Deir Yassin in order to induce the flight of Palestinians into adjacent countries.

Afterwards came the first sixty years of Israel’s history as told by Noam Chomsky, George and Douglas Ball, Seymour Hersh, Geoffrey Aronson, and Andrew and Leslie Cockburn as well as Paul Findlay’s trilogy that discloses the Zionist responsibility for the wars of 1948, 1967, and 1973. Later came the useful exposés of James Petras and Meersheimer & Walt relevant to the current situation, as well of course as Tracking Deception, by William Cook.

So what is the point? Simply enough, that there is a lot of dirty laundry in both closets – that Zionists have as much to be ashamed of in their collective history as Americans do. Just as Americans flatter themselves as benevolent paragons of freedom useful to the rest of the world, Zionists flatter themselves as unique historic victims whose occasional excesses in the creation of Israel can be justified on this basis. Not so, not so. The unspeakable narrative is more complicated in both instances.

Of course William Cook cannot be faulted for his neglect of the full history of Zionist transgressions. However, the linkage he justifiably features between current Zionist and American excesses necessitates an acknowledgement of the excesses in earlier Zionist history equivalent to those he mentions of the United States and Western Civilization as a whole. Aside from this modest oversight, his book remains a powerful read.

But what was most bothersome about McCain’s speech was his chauvinistic rapport with the audience that incessantly chanted “USA USA USA” as if they were spectators at a victorious basketball game. This enthusiastic crowd participation rose to a crescendo as McCain culminated with the following words:

I’m going to fight for my cause every day as your president. I’m going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank him, that I’m an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on Earth. And hard work — with hard words, strong faith, and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight with me. Fight for what’s right for our country. Fight for the ideals and character of a free people. Fight for our children’s future. Fight for justice and opportunity for all. Stand up to defend our country from its enemies. Stand up for each other, for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America. Stand up, stand up, stand up, and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We’re Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history. Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America.

No matter that “blessed, bountiful America” is now in serious economic difficulty as much as anything because of the conduct of war against presumed enemies abroad. No matter that the adjacent sentences, “Nothing is inevitable here” and “We’re Americans and we never give up,” are utterly contradictory. How can anybody half-educated insist in the same breath the blatant paradox that nothing is inevitable, but that something is, e.g. Americans never giving up?

Contrast McCain’s belllicose extravagance with Obama’s final words at the end of his speech just days earlier:

America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done, not with so many children to educate and so many veterans to care for; not with an economy to fix, and cities to rebuild, and farms to save; not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. American, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise, that American promise, and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

As to be expected, both speeches become highly rhetorical at the end, but Obama’s final words offer a sense of shared hope as well as the admittedly tired metaphors of not turning back and not walking alone. In contrast, McCain’s final exhortation seems almost deranged in its incessant call for combative patriotism. Significantly, the word “fight” is used nine times before McCain shifts to “stand up,” which he uses five times, culminating with “stand up and fight.” This superimposition merges the images of troops standing in formation while going to battle. Perhaps a more suitable image would be of somebody knocked down who gets up to resume fighting. This would be suggestive of McCain’s early experience as an amateur prizefighter. He also assures his audience that America makes history and never quits, suggesting in this context the sustained pursuit of military conflict.

When spoken with great passion in front of a sympathetic audience fiercely chanting “USA USA USA,” McCain’s language produces an extraordinary effect, though with a different impact on different audiences. For enthusiasts swept up in the cause of a glorious Imperial America, it might seem truly inspirational, but for others who are primarily concerned about the maturity and good judgment needed in the White House, the martial rhetoric instead becomes frightening. I can imagine similar rhetorical excesses by Hitler addressing a huge crowd of Nazi enthusiasts back in 1933 or by Mussolini even earlier in Italy.

What intensifies this concern is McCain’s widespread reputation for his volcanic temper that clouds his judgment. He is also said to jump to conclusions and act impulsively without taking the situation into full consideration. He himself grants this shortcoming in his co-authored memoir, Worth the Fighting For, in which he acknowledges, “Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.” This simple admission might seem refreshingly confessional, but the President of the United States ought to avoid hasty decisions with consequences that might later be regretted.

Like Obama, McCain has not yet had any genuine executive experience for his entire career beyond his initial choice of a VP running mate a week ago, and he seems far less likely than Obama to succeed in the task of acquiring executive skills. An old dog confronted with new tricks, he won’t know what to do. Or, more appropriately, how does a dog that barks at the mailman deliver the mail. If it is McCain’s penchant to challenge authority, how does he expect to exert authority once in power.

Since his childhood McCain has preferred gut instinct to dispassionate inquiry, but this bias can be dangerous, especially with more complicated issues. McCain has also prided himself on his status as a maverick, but a genuine maverick challenges authority as compared to a seasoned president who exerts authority with both care and fair-mindedness. These are two entirely complementary tasks, and it seems questionable that McCain will be able to make the necessary transition from one to the other. How can a confirmed maverick in his mid-seventies suddenly do a 180-degree turn and become an effective administrator?

More specifically, how can McCain contain his impulsiveness. Throughout his entire career his “haste” has often crossed the line into outright recklessness, a dangerous trait especially for those obsessed with perceived enemies. He freely admits in his biographies having been a reckless driver and generally reckless in his behavior throughout his teens. Recklessness also seems to have been involved when he destroyed as many as four jet fighters during his active service in Vietnam. He was never quite at fault, but the accidents kept happening.

The worst incident was on the carrier Forrestal, when he somehow dropped one or both of the bombs attached to his fighter plane onto the deck of the carrier Forrestal after his fighter was struck by a rocket accidentally fired from another plane. Fuel from his plane poured out over the deck and caught fire, so McCain quickly left the cockpit and crawled the length of his fuselage, then dropped ten feet into flames and rolled away just before the bombs exploded. Miraculously, he escaped the resulting conflagration that engulfed most of the deck. However, 132 others were killed, and some of the survivors questioned just how and why McCain’s bombs had dropped onto the deck in the first place.

McCain would also seem to have been reckless when he identified himself to his North Vietnamese captors as the son of Admiral McCain, the commander-in- chief of the U.S. Pacific Command. McCain did this in order to receive medical attention for his broken leg before it would need to be amputated. However, according to some reports (see, for example, Douglas Valentine’s CounterPunch article, “Meet the Real John McCain”), he went on to provide a good deal more information than required and actually cooperated with his captors as much or more than any of the other prisoners.

McCain was also reckless when he finally returned home and almost immediately ditched his first wife Carol and their children for Cindy McCain, a wealthy young woman who paid for his divorce and all the legal expenses incurred in obtaining his new freedom. Cindy also provided the financial resources to launch him into a new career, this time in national politics. And he was reckless soon afterwards when he became involved in the Keating scandal that almost terminated his career before it even started.

McCain was reckless throughout his career in the Senate, especially during the current Bush administration, when, according to Frank Rich in his excellent NYT column, “Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage,” he engaged in “cynical flip-flops” relevant to the most important issues. McCain savored his opposition to many of Bush’s policies at the very beginning of his term in office, but suddenly shifted to become one of Bush’s staunchest supporters. He later took pride in having gone along with at least 90% of Bush’s initiatives that reached the Senate floor. As mentioned by Rich, McCain repeatedly advocated the invasion of Iraq because Saddam Hussein had been involved in 9-11 (which was not true) and because he was developing WMD potentially harmful to the rest of the world (which was also not true). McCain also estimated that fewer than 100,000 troops would be needed to capture and occupy Iraq, then fell into revising his estimate, finally advocating this last year an occupation army big enough to obtain a “surge” that finally brought the war to its present level.

McCain was reckless when he spoke of occupying Iraq for another hundred years and of solving our problem with Iran with the bloodthirsty expedient, “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb.” Just a few weeks ago, he was reckless when he declared all his fellow citizens in the United States to be Georgians in the struggle against Russia that began when Georgia launched a surprise night attack on South Ossetia despite the presence of 9,000 Russian troops kept there by treaty as peacekeepers (see my Dissident Voice article, “How War Began in Georgia”). Unaware of the full complexity of the situation, McCain almost seems to have wanted to renew the Cold War against Russia. Not only would we sustain our misbegotten crusade against all Muslim enemies of the American dream but also restart the hostilities with Russia that kept our economy afloat for almost half a century.

As already indicated, McCain was particularly reckless last week with the very first executive decision in his administrative career, when he offered the vice presidential nomination to Sarah Palin, Alaska’s freshman governor, without having fully vetted her. As best can be determined, her vetting did not begin until a day before he met her preceding the Convention. Why such procrastination followed by such haste? It seems McCain had to make a quick substitution once he was warned off his first choice for VP, Senator Lieberman of Connecticut as demanded by his fundamentalist Republican base. So he risked the choice of Palin, once again illustrating his remarkable penchant for recklessness.

If McCain is elected, as remains an excellent possibility, Palin would be truly a heartbeat from the presidency for the next four years. In the event of his death while in office, as is quite possible given the life spans of both his father and paternal grandfather (who died respectively at the ages of 70 and 61), our nation would be led by an Alaskan hockey-mom (in her words, “a pit- bull wearing lipstick”) with little background in politics and no familiarity with economics, foreign relations, or the history of our nation. In obvious contrast, Obama’s choice of Senator Biden as his running mate was entirely appropriate. It was a tactical success, but it is also obvious that Obama could only profit from Biden’s experience in foreign offsetting his own deficiencies. In contrast, McCain’s choice of Palin was a desperate campaign tactic with few obvious benefits once he is elected to office. How many other such abrupt decisions can be expected of him once in the White House?

It turns out that Palin has pursued a career just as reckless and irresponsible in her own way as McCain’s. Once elected mayor of Wasilla, with a population of 5,000, she immediately fired a number of local officials, including the town’s finance director, city planner, and police chief, the latter because he “intimidated her,” as she explained to the press. She also tried to impose censorship on the local library, actually having sent a letter the head librarian threatening to fire her if she did not cooperate. As the mother of a teenage hockey player, Palin obtained at least $15 million in funding to build a sports complex with a hockey rink before the property rights to the land were secured, costing the town many extra thousands of dollars. The town had been free of debt when she became mayor but was $22 million in debt when she left office to become Governor of Alaska — hardly the legacy of a fiscal conservative.

As both mayor and governor, Palin worked with Senator Ted Stevens to obtain a large variety of congressional earmarks beneficial to her constituents, thus taking full advantage of Alaska’s unique role as our nation’s most insatiable welfare state. Fiercely dedicated to the sanctity of free enterprise, Palin nevertheless helped to promote Stevens’ “bridge to nowhere” as a federal project until it became obvious that Congress would refuse to subsidize it, whereupon she suddenly rejected it as an obvious boondoggle without returning to the federal government the $223 million already allocated. She proclaimed herself a fiscal reformer, but she could only do this because of her alacrity in having distanced herself once Senator Stevens began to take the heat on corruption charges.

No less problematic was Palin’s choice to serve as governor while keeping her residence as much as possible in Wasilla. She accordingly spent more than half of her first nineteenth months in office at home. The problem was that she took the opportunity to augment her salary with full travel expenses with the excuse that the time was spent away from Alaska’s capital city of Juneau. Perhaps her most outrageous act was in having fired Walt Monegan, Alaska’s Public Safety Commissioner, because he refused to comply with her demand that he fire the Alaska state trooper, Mike Wooten, her former brother-in-law.

Many other examples of both public and personal recklessness can be attributed to Palin — so many, in fact, that it is inconceivable she could have been selected for the VP nomination were she properly vetted. In the simplest terms, then, a very reckless presidential candidate recklessly chose a very reckless neophyte as his running mate, and now the most powerful nation in the world stands an excellent chance of being ruled very recklessly by the two of them, perhaps in tandem sequence, first both of them arm in arm and then Palin alone.

Bush is widely considered to have been a bad president, by many accounts the worst in American history. As maintained by Bob Woodward in The War Within, (cited by Michiko Kakutani in the NYT), Bush’s failure can be attributed to his “impatience, bravado and unsettling personal certainty about his decisions.” According to Woodward, “The result has too often been an impulsiveness and carelessness and, perhaps most troubling, a delayed reaction to realities and advice that runs counter to his gut.” Today, McCain seems even more vulnerable to these limitations, of course favoring impatience, bravado, and carelessness at the expense of delayed reaction in his pursuit of an effective response. Like Bush during the 2000 election, McCain is fully able to “sweet talk” the American public with assurances of a “blessed, bountiful America.,” However, he seems even more likely to draw upon ill-founded “personal certainty” in the pursuit of dangerous and ill-conceived policies relevant to both our nation’s economy and foreign policy. And with potentially dreadful results. When everything explodes, McCain himself might be able to jump through fire and roll away unscathed, but others might be less fortunate, and still others would be needed to clean up the debris.

However, McCain himself has serious difficulties in his grasp of foreign relations–forgetful that Iraq and Afghanistan do not share a boundary but are separated by is the entire nation of Iran, unaware that Shiite Iranians aren’t particularly friendly with Sunni al Qaeda, etc. All that Obama needs to neutralize McCain’s claims to superior experience in foreign policy would be to nominate Senator Biden as his Vice President, somebody who both supercedes McCain in the Senate’s foreign policy establishment and effectively avoids the numerous lapses in both memory and foreign policy knowledge that McCain repeatedly displays.

Nevertheless, the image of McCain’s steely aspect as he exhorts America to man the barricades against yet another threat against our nation’s cherished freedom has great appeal among low-information voters, and his effort should be confronted with the facts. For example, it should be clarified that the current Georgia debacle has resulted not from a Russian invasion of Georgia, but from Georgia’s surprise attack on South Ossetia (at the time occupied by 9,000 Russian peacekeepers described as such by all parties involved) [see the 8-18 NYT Schwirtz article, p. A10]. This was followed by a massive counterattack by Russian troops who went on to occupy additional portions of greater Georgia that they seem unwilling to leave for the present.

The NYT and other U.S. publications have ignored the actual timing of these two invasions as much as possible, undoubtedly, whether they realize it or not, to obscure the responsibility of Georgia for launching an attack that produced such a devastating counterattack. Amazingly, there has been no specific reference to this sequence of events in the NYT to clarify the fact that Georgia’s attack began in the evening of August 6. Readers are led to think that the two attacks were somehow concurrent, with the bigger Russian army obviously taking advantage of its size. However, a close examination of the press reports from the region over the two days during which the attack occurred suggests otherwise.

An Aug. 6 UPI report dated 1:17 P.M. makes no mention of warfare beyond an escalation the previous weekend when Georgian forces shelled Tskhinvali, killing six South Ossetians. Emphasized, however, is the optimistic announcement that a top Georgian government official has said his country would hold direct talks on August 7 with South Ossetian leaders “within the context of Russian peacekeeping efforts in the region, known as the Joint Control Commission.”

An Aug. 7 Voice of America News report cited the confirmation by Russian officials that talks between Georgians and South Ossetian separatists would be held, but on Friday, August 8, and it reported that Georgian President Saakashvili called for an immediate ceasefire. The report also mentioned the offer of Saakashvili to give the separatists full autonomy within Georgia with Russia helping to guarantee that status. Also, the report indicates the U.S. called for both Russian and Georgian officials to halt the violence and begin talks. South Ossetian were cited for having insisted on their struggle to gain independence from Georgia since the 1990s, and Georgians were cited as having accused the [Russian] peacekeepers of backing and aiding the separatists.

An Aug. 7 UPI report suddenly indicated an entirely new and different state of affairs: an attack by Georgian troops on late Thursday (Aug. 6), that engulfed Tshkhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. According to the BBC, “Georgia began moving troops toward Tshkhinvali a few hours after the South Ossetians agreed to a Russian-mediated cease-fire.” “The storming of Tshkhinvali has started,” South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity told the Russian news agency Interfax. A British newspaper, The Independent, reporting from Moscow, specifically quoted a South Ossetian web site that the “assault is coming from all directions.” Georgian officials tried to excuse themselves with the argument that they were trying to restore legal order. However, Iakobashvili, Georgia’s minister for Reintegration, said the government wants “to finish a criminal regime.” Significantly, Russian officials predicted mounting violence and requested an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting. Russian news agencies indicated that men from Russia and Abkhazia were rushing to join in South Ossetia’s defense and couldn’t be stopped. These seem to have been individuals rather than organized contingents.

An August 7 AP report indicated that Tskhinvali came under heavy fire early Friday, “just hours after Georgia’s president declared a cease fire.” The fact that the Thursday UPI report said the attack occurred during the late evening of Aug. 7 while the Thursday AP report said it occurred during the early morning hours the next day suggests the invasion was conducted throughout the night. If so, this could only have been a surprise attack! According to the AP report, “South Ossetia’s leader accused Georgia of treachery, but the Georgian government claimed its troops were responding to rebel attacks on Georgian villages.”

It is important to note that 9,000 Russian troops employed as peacekeepers at the same time Georgia seems to have been trying to incorporate South Ossetia into its borders as it had already done with Ajaria in 2004. This was an obvious challenge to the Russians, an effort to “steal” Ossetia’s capital in a nighttime blitzkrieg right under the noses of Russian troops. According to an Aug. 7 Radio Free Europe report cited by the AP report, Eduard Kokoity, the leader of the Russian-backed region, specifically accused Georgian forces of starting the fighting. “Russian peacekeepers did everything to make the Georgian side stop firing mortars, grenade launchers, and large-caliber weapons on the city of Tskhinvali,” Kokoity said. “But the firing didn’t cease, and we were forced to return fire. We will now do our best to suppress this.” On the other hand, Temur IIakobashvili, Georgia’s Reintegration Minister, was reported as having blamed South Ossetia for initiating hostilities: “They came up with a new method. They shoot at us from civilian objects, from schools and hospitals, so that in case of return fire that causes damages, they can present it as a barbarian act by the Georgians.” What Iakobashvili described, however, would seem a tactic that was in play preceding the sequence of events that happened in the thirty-hour span between Aug. 6 and 7.

All in all, news reports for these two days (all of those included in Lexus-Nexis cited here) indicate no concerted large-scale effort of this sort. According to a NYT report of August 18 by Helena Cooper, Georgians later claimed separatists of having fired on several Georgian villages, while Russian Defense Ministry and South Ossetian officials said that Georgians provoked this escalation by shelling Russian peacekeeping positions in the region of Tasakhinvali as well as civilian areas. However, there was no indication of these activities in any of the press reports from South Ossetia on this particular day. Instead, what seems to have occurred was a feigned agreement to begin negotiations followed almost immediately by a major nighttime surprise attack. It should also be noted that neither Cooper nor any of the daily reports indicated that an even bigger Russian counterattack was in the works at least until the following day The 9,000 Russian troops in South Ossetia undoubtedly played a major role in mounting this attack, supported by additional troops from North Ossetia as well as air power that totally dominated the skies.

Significantly, Cooper’s final paragraph in her NYT report illustrates the extreme confusion in the western media about what actually happened during the Georgian invasion. Cooper seems to have advanced events a full day from what actually happened as explained in all the local reports cited above: According to Cooper, “Georgians said the separatists shelled them [Georgian villages] all day on the 7th,” so its Foreign Minister Eka Tkeselashvili called the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Fried, to tell him her country was under attack and had to protect its people. Fried supposedly replied, “not to go into South Ossetia,” In a totally inaccurate kicker Cooper laments, “The Georgians moved in on August 8.” Not true. Everything happened on the night of August 6-7, with Georgians promising negotiations, then launching a surprise attack that apparently lasted the entire night. The mortar attacks on the 7th mentioned by Tkeselashvili were undoubtedly counterattacks in response to the invasion that had already taken place.

What Saakashvili apparently sought was a fait accompli, a quick, almost instantaneous victory that incorporated South Ossetia into Georgia before the Russians could take the needed steps to prevent it. Of course Russian troops posed a major threat to the operation, but Saakasvili seems to have felt that the timing was perfect. Putin (and indeed the entire world) was distracted by the Olympics in China, and U.S. and NATO pressure could soon be brought to bear to prevent the major counterattack that would be needed by Russian troops in order to deprive him of his victory. Condaleeza Rice might have warned him privately not to launch a major attack, but all her public statements were fully supportive, and his communications with his Washington lobbyist, Randy Schoenemann, McCain’s top foreign policy advisor, seem to have confirmed his sense that such an attack would succeed if carried out with blitzkrieg precision. Western Europe’s cautious leadership of Brown, Merkel and Sarkozy would pose no difficulties, and all the emancipated Soviet states could be counted on for enthusiastic knee-jerk support. It turns out Saakashvili was wrong. His only major accomplishment was in having given McCain his warmed-over Cold-War campaign strategy that just might win him the November election. This would be a world-class disaster, setting the stage for comparable scenarios justified by skewed misinformation in Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela, and god knows how many other countries once McCain gets situated in the White House. We would have four more years to go.

American citizens were gravely misled into a devastating war in Iraq by the Bush administration’s incessant use of misinformation. This should not be allowed to happen again with McCain’s use of Georgia as a campaign issue.

Historians supportive of negotiations have also pointed out that most, if not all, of the major diplomatic accomplishments since World War II have been the result of negotiations with putative enemies. Kennedy negotiated with Khrushchev, Nixon negotiated with Mao, Kissinger negotiated with North Vietnam, Carter used negotiations between Israel and Sadat to resolve the Sinai issue, and Reagan negotiated with Gorbachev to end the Cold War. During the last several weeks of his presidency, Clinton brought to the very final stages of negotiations an agreement with North Korea that would have terminated its development of the atomic bomb in exchange for a variety of benefits. Once in office, Bush abruptly terminated this effort much to the surprise of Secretary of State Colin Powell. As a result, Bush ended up seven years later with a much less advantageous agreement that conceded North Korea’s possession of the atomic bomb.

Their memories refreshed about the history of negotiations since World War II, Bush and McCain diverted their argument with Obama to a basically different consideration, the pursuit of negotiations without sufficient preparations. But this had not been their original stance when they used Ahmadinejad to illustrate the impossibility of negotiations with truly evil enemies (not the ordinary version such as Mao and Khrushchev). Moreover, Obama had repeatedly conceded the necessity of sufficient preparations, so their argument was both uninformed regarding Obama’s stance and a dishonest shift in debate from total rejection to a presumably more defensible approach to negotiations.

Now the New York Times publishes an article supportive of Bush and McCain’s revised argument, “Kennedy Talked, Khrushchev Triumphed,” by Nathan Thrall and Jessie James Wilkins. Here they emphasize the failure of Kennedy to hold his own in negotiations with Khrushchev in 1961. His embarrassment, in their opinion (and with some justification), was because he was unseasoned and insufficiently informed of diplomatic possibilities.

However, in their litany of harmful effects resulting from Kennedy’s failure, they include the Cuban missile crisis, probably the most dramatic example of successful negotiations since World War II, despite the lack of adequate preparations. Aware that the USSR was beginning to stockpile Cuba with nuclear missiles, a large White House contingent of professional Cold Warriors spurred by General LeMay (who could boast of having incinerated a hundred thousand Japanese in a single air attack on Tokyo) wanted to bypass negotiations and simply bomb all the missile sites before the missiles could be armed with nuclear warheads. In a crucial White House meeting, only one participant among dozens present continued to advocate negotiations instead, and he did so based on his personal experience with Khrushchev. Fortunately, he won the argument and one last feeler was extended to Khrushchev. This resulted in negotiations that led to the USSR’s withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Cuba in exchange for the U.S. promise not to invade Cuba.

Some consider this outcome to have been a defeat for the U.S., but it turns out to have been absolutely important for our survival as a nation as we know it today. What LeMay and his enthusiastic Cold War friends did not know at the time — nor anybody else connected with the White House — was that many dozens of Cuban missiles were already loaded with nuclear warheads and that Castro and Khrushchev had decided that IF an air attack were launched against Cuba by U.S. bombers, Castro would retaliate with a missile attack on ALL major U.S. cities on the eastern seaboard, probably from Miami to Boston. How many of these missiles would have reached their U.S. targets? Nobody knows, but a major catastrophe was very likely prevented through negotiations rather than the use of a surprise attack that would not have been much of a surprise.

My suggestion to Nathan Thrall and Jessie James Wilkins and everybody who takes heart with their argument is to view once again Robert McNamara’s brilliant account of what happened in the movie, The Fog of War, in which McNamara recounts his discussion of the episode with Castro many years later. During this crisis, as much as at any other time since World War II, diplomacy with a supposed enemy was of crucial importance. Our nation’s survival depended on it. I would suggest that we are up against a comparable situation right now in our relations with Iran. If a bunker-buster air attack escalates into full-scale warfare, for example resulting from the retaliatory destruction of one of our aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, regional warfare would be very possible throughout the entire Middle East from Gaza and Lebanon to the Khyber Pass and beyond. Not even Israel would benefit from the results.

For much of its history, the Jewish community has depended on the gratitude of kings and autocratic governments that were subsidized by Jewish bankers, but now and again this unique reciprocity has aggravated relations with the rest of society, especially during periods of war and extreme poverty. The resulting persecution of Jews has sometimes led to severe repression, even massacres, for example during the 15th century in Spain, during the 17th century in Poland, and during the pogroms preceding World War I. The Holocaust imposed by Hitler during World War II involved the systematic extermination of six million Jews justified by the contradictory arguments that Jews were an inferior race and, on the other hand, that they were greedy and manipulative, having somehow profited from World War I as well as the inflation and two depressions that followed.

Since the turn of the twentieth century, assimilation between Jews and the non-Jewish European population seems to have both aggravated and mitigated the prejudice against Jews. Many gentiles have been grateful for the plenitude of Jewish contributions to modern civilization, but others have felt threatened and were therefore more hostile. There has also been a substantial trend toward secularization among the Jewish population, with Jews excelling in virtually every calling they entered–journalism, education, medicine, law, art, fiction, music, entertainment, etc. Most Jews have accepted modern science and the materialist perspective without abandoning Judaism, but others have taken the hitherto unthinkable step of emancipating themselves from all orthodox belief. In various fields of inquiry such figures as Freud, Einstein, Bohr, Durkheim, Mannheim, Boas, and Popper have made significant theoretical contributions unencumbered by religious conviction.

Still other Jews have focused themselves on politics with enormous success, usually (but not always) supportive of a progressive agenda. Disraeli and much later Kissinger were conservative, but such figures as Marx, Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg played leadership roles in the pursuit of radical change, presumably toward the creation of societies free of racial and cultural prejudice. On the other hand, Jews who continued to retain their full adherence to Hebraic custom were more likely to join in with the Zionist cause inspired by such figures as Herzl and Weizmann. They preferred the creation of a truly Jewish state instead of trying to integrate themselves into more populous societies that have in the past been capable of extraordinary violence at their expense.

With the establishment of the state of Israel in 1947-48, Jews identified as Zionists sought to liberate themselves from anti-Semitism once and for all without compromising their Jewish identity. This was attainable, they felt, only by building their own nation, and what better site could be found for doing this than Israel, where they had been expelled nineteen hundred years earlier. Once again they could enjoy all the benefits of a landed society entirely their own and without fear of hostile persecution by others. However, it soon became evident that this was only possible if they could somehow neutralize, if not eliminate, the presence of Palestinians, whose remote ancestors, like ancient Jews themselves, had arrived in the Levant during the second millennium preceding Christ. Unlike the Jews, however, Palestinians had continued to populate this region without anybody having challenged their right to do so. Their number was small in 1947 — in the range of 1,300,000, but it was roughly twice the size of the Jewish community at the time, and just as deserving of a national identity as Jordan, Syria, and the other Near Eastern states that had been created from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

As David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, repeatedly insisted, Zionists who sought a genuine independent state were thus confronted with the unpleasant necessity to eliminate Palestinians as much as possible from the territory they themselves wanted to occupy. Brutality was not the primary issue. The singular concern was the establishment of a permanent Jewish state, whatever it took.

Unfortunately this task has been pursued with scant concession to the need for genuine accommodation. Palestinians who escaped for their lives in 1948 automatically forfeited their property and citizenship rights, and those able to remain in their homes were limited to second-class status with the threat of confiscation at a later time. Palestinians who lived outside Israel in Gaza and the West Bank were confronted with the same choice after the 1967 war, when Israel began to expand the construction of new Jewish settlements throughout the region. For the problem was simple enough. Unlike the U.S. and all other post-industrial states in the world today, Israel needed more territory, but with full citizenship limited to Jews alone. To challenge this unique aspiration has often treated as a violation of Jewish rights tantamount to the Holocaust.

Crucial to this effort has been the suppression of Palestinian demands at one time or another for (1) the restoration of Palestinian society preceding the two World Wars in an Arab state tolerant of its minorities, or (2) full citizenship for Palestinians in Israel, or, as a last resort, (3) full sovereignty for Palestinians in their own nation adjacent to Israel. The first choice has been the least realistic, but the second could also be rejected as a plan for the destruction of Israel, since the full citizenship of Palestinians would terminate the privileged status of Jews in a nation of their own. Moreover, the return of Palestinian refugees with the guarantee of full political rights would reduce the Jewish population of Israel to a minority. As for the third choice, it prevents the further expansion of Israel into the West Bank in order to provide the eventual settlement of Jews from elsewhere in the world. It would also establish a potentially hostile state at the edge of Israel, preventing full control of the border region for the better protection of Israel. All of these choices have therefore been unacceptable to Israeli leaders since the beginning.

To forestall, if not avoid, all these options, Israel has perpetuated conflict with Palestinians to such an extent that useful negotiations have been virtually impossible. In what seems an endless cycle of retribution, Palestinians have been provoked into mounting guerrilla operations that could be publicized to justify devastating retaliatory strikes, often with kill ratios highly favorable to Israel. Palestinian attacks could be featured in the media to justify counterattacks that led to further attacks and counterattacks. And when Palestinians have tried to withdraw from this cycle of violence, unprovoked attacks by the Israeli have bought new counterattacks quickly enough to renew the tradeoff in hostilities once again. As a useful byproduct of this strategy, reinforced by a steady use of political assassinations, a hostile, battle-weary Palestinian leadership has been kept in power, as best illustrated by Arafat, leader of the PLO, who presumably could not be trusted in negotiations.

The best and most obvious precedent for this strategy occurred in the United States during the nineteenth century, when Native Americans were driven from their lands supposedly because they did not possess the soil they occupied and could therefore be driven into barren reservations useless to American settlers. When Indians attacked to assert their rights, they could be described as savages; and when they themselves were attacked the effort was justified because, after all, they were nothing better than savages. The tautological justification for this asymmetrical strategy was specious at the time, and it is even less valid today relevant to the situation of Palestinians.

Because of a sustained pro-Israeli bias by the U.S. media, our government has been able to support Israel’s campaign against Palestinians over the past sixty years, most obviously by providing generous financial backing to Israel’s government, especially during periods of conflict with Palestinians and adjacent nations. For the most part our aid has seemed justified by the Arab threat to Israel’s continuing existence, though this perceived threat has now and again seemed no less useful in justifying our financial assistance, which has supported what has become a permanent wartime economy. Muslim societies in the Near East have been hostile against Israel since the beginning, and opposition has spread elsewhere in the world as indicated by the repeated use of the veto by U.S. delegates in the UN Security Council (at least 42 times since 1970) in order to thwart overwhelming votes of condemnation. None of the nearby states, including Greece and Turkey, has been openly friendly with Israel, and to offset its diplomatic isolation Israel has developed world-class military capabilities that dwarf those of everybody else in the region. However, the sacrifice incurred by doing this seems hardly justified by the acquisition of limited desert acreage unworthy of subsidization by U.S. taxpayers.

Here, then, is a brief chronology of what has happened to date in this extraordinary history of the Jewish people.

VITAL STATISTICS

Israel’s area: 8,019 sq. mi. (slightly larger than New Jersey).
Population: 6,352,117 (roughly three-fourths that of New York City).
Ethnic groups: 80% Jewish; 20% Arab and others.
Religions: 77% Jewish; 15% Sunni; 2% Christian.

Foreign Aid: appx. $3 billion per year from the U.S. ($500 per capita).
With an estimated $2 billion per year in private donations additional to grants, loan guarantees, and various perks, the total amount probably approaches $6 billion, approximately 3% of its 200 billion GDP. The 2007 GDP growth rate for Israel, as high as 5.2%, has been one of the highest in the industrialized world.

It is estimated that there are more than 13 million Jews throughout the world. Slightly more than 6 million live in the United States, slightly less in Israel, 1.5 million in Europe, and with the rest scattered elsewhere. On the other hand, approximately 10 million Palestinians live across the Near East: one million in Israel, 3.8 million in Gaza and the West Bank (1.4 million in Gaza alone), and approximately 3 million live as refugees in Jordan, over 400,000 in Lebanon, 1/2 million in Syria, etc.

HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGY

586-538 B.C. Babylonian captivity initiates the Diaspora as a dispersion of Israel’s Jewish population throughout the Mideast and beyond. This vast exodus culminates when the Roman emperor Hadrian bars Jews from living in Palestine in 135 A.D. Sephardic Jews migrate across Africa into Spain and Portugal, and ultimately the rest of Europe. During the 9th century, A.D., Ashkenazim Jews first settle in the Rhineland, then disperse, some to the west and others eastward into Poland and Russia. Oriental Jews remain in Arab lands, migrating to Iraq, Iran and even India.

1290 A.D. Jews are expelled from England, and in 1306 from France.

1492 In 1391 enforced conversions begin in Spain, and in 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella expel all Jews from Spain.

1878 The Ottoman’s census of the Jerusalem, Nablus, and Acre districts (including area beyond the present border of Israel) shows a population of 403,795 Muslims (87.3 percent of the total), 43,659 Christians (9.4 percent) and 43,659 Jews (9.4 percent), not including 10,000 Jews with foreign citizenship. By 1922, the Muslim population slips to 78 percent of the total), whereas the Jewish population has risen to 83,790 (11 percent of the total). A decade later, in 1932, the Jewish population has risen to 192,137 (18 percent of the total), and by 1942 it has risen to 484,408 (30 percent of the total).

1881,1905 The two peak years of pogroms (organized massacres) in Russia, the first of them after a female terrorist, Gesya Gelfman, is implicated in the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II. In response to the pogroms there is heavy Russian Jewish migration into central Europe as well as the United States starting in the early 1880s.

1894 Dreyfus Affair in France. Falsely accused of being a traitor, the Jewish military officer Dreyfus is finally (and fully) exonerated in 1906. Extreme anti-Semitism mounts in France at the time, largely fueled by publicity about the Dreyfus case.

1896 Der Judenstaat, by Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), advocates the creation of a Jewish state in response to hostile public opinion in France provoked by the Dreyfus Affair.

1897 Herzl organizes the First Zionist World Congress, which in turn creates the World Zionist Organization (WZO). The primary issue under consideration is the best location for an exclusively Jewish state in which anti-Semitism would no longer play a role. Several locations are considered, including Uganda, but the decision is finally made to return to Israel.

1917 Great Britain’s Balfour Declaration promises a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This is primarily advocated by Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), a chemist who has developed a synthetic acetone used in the manufacture of explosives. He is said to have provided his invention to England during World War I in exchange for its future support of Israel. He later serves as director of the WZO from 1920 to 1946 and becomes the first president of Israel in 1948.

1918 At the end of World War I the allies carve up the remains of the Ottoman Empire, giving Palestine and Iraq to Britain.

1920 In early July Britain appoints Sir Herbert Samuel as High Commissioner of Palestine with the task of overseeing the immigration of Jews into the country.

On July 24, the Zionist Conference meets in London to create a Jewish National Fund for purchasing lands for kibbutzim and the formation of Jewish villages in Palestine. This concerted effort to bring Jews to Palestine leads to Arab riots in 1921, 1929, and 1936-39.

After the 1920 Arab riots and 1921 Jaffa riots, Hagana, a Jewish paramilitary organization, is created to defend Jews in Palestine. In response to the Arab massacres of 1929, it enlarges to include almost all the men in Jewish settlements. In 1936, the Haganah fields 10,000 combatants as well as 40,000 reservists to help British troops to defeat the 1936-39 Arab revolt.

1929 Palestinian extremists massacre 60 Jews in Hebron, driving the Jewish population from the city, Judaism’s second holiest site.

1939 Britain issues the White Paper promising the independence of Palestine as an Arab nation within ten years.

1940 Zionists sink the Patria, killing 267 passengers, 250 of whom are central European Jews deported to Palestine. They have been rerouted by the British to Mauritius and Trinidad, and Zionists want to prevent this from happening. They later claim their intention was to disable the ship, not sink it.

1941-1945 The Holocaust is undertaken by the Nazis during World War II. Estimates vary, but as later confessed by Adolph Eichmann, chief of the Jewish Office of the Gestapo, roughly six million Jews are killed, two-thirds the total number of Jews living in Europe. Inspired by Houston Chamberlain’s prediction of a “struggle for life or death” between Jews and Aryans [vol. 1, p. 578], Hitler apparently seeks to “liberate” Europe from the Jews. When deportation is no longer possible because of the war, he resorts to organized slaughter in concentration camps as a ”final solution.” Paradoxically, Hitler himself might be partly Jewish by an unidentified paternal grandfather.

1944 The Irgun (sometimes described as the Etzel), an offshoot of Hagana in 1939, initiates an anti-colonial revolt against the British. Among its earliest feats is the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State for the Middle East, who is considered hostile to the Zionist cause.

1946 Zionist terrorists identified with the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, destroy the King David Hotel, killing 91 people. Their attempt to pin the blame on Palestinians fails, and five members of the Irgun are executed.

1947 President Truman promotes the creation of the State of Israel with the help and encouragement of Clark Clifford, Ed Jacobson, and David Niles despite the objections of Kermit Roosevelt as well as George Marshall, Robert Lovett, and George Kennan of the State Department. Encouraged by Truman, the UN votes to partition Palestine into Jewish, Arab, and international areas. Fifty-six percent of the territory is given to the Jews to provide them with their own homeland, though 1,350,000 Palestinians inhabit the territory at the time, almost twice the Jewish population of 650,000. Truman’s choice to promote the creation of Israel seems partly the result of his upcoming campaign strategy in the 1948 election against Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York. This tactic would be suggested by Truman’s speech supportive of the Zionist plan for Israeli partition in New York City on October 28, 1958, just ten days before the election. Truman loses the state of New York, but wins 75% of the Jewish vote nationwide as well as the election itself by a narrow margin. [see Ball, p. 22]

1948 Deir Yassin Massacre. On April 1, Zionists identified as the Stern Gang, led by Yitzhak Shamir, invade the village of Deir Yassin and kill more than 250 Palestinians. Soon afterwards Jacques de Ruyner of the Swiss Red Cross counts 254 dead, including 145 women, 35 of them obviously pregnant. Later, Israeli scholars later claim that only 110 have been killed. Zionist sound trucks actually publicize this massacre to induce the flight of refugees from Palestine. At least 250 towns and villages are abandoned, and the final number of Palestinians who flee the region totals roughly 780,000, over half the original population. Through what amounts to a terrorist version of compulsory transfer, as recommended by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, Israel is thus able to gain control of 77% of the Palestine territory.

On May 14, Israel declares its independence as a sovereign state, thus preempting the UN Security council resolution requesting the General Assembly “to consider further the question of future government of Palestine.” British troops complete their withdraw from Palestine on May 15. The State of Israel is thus created as a fait accompli to avoid reconsideration by the UN Weizmann becomes President and David Ben Gurion becomes the Prime Minister. Truman immediately gives Israel diplomatic recognition, followed by the Soviet Union.

Also on May 14 the armies of five Arab states invade Palestine supposedly to protect the Palestinian population from the Zionist invaders. Later most historians and journalists claim that Israeli troops are vastly outnumbered and outgunned by the invading troops. However, reports at the time by diplomats such as Harold Beeley, Pinckney Tuck, and George Marshall, among many others, indicate exactly the opposite, that Israeli forces enjoy an overwhelming 4-to-1 military superiority from the very beginning of hostilities [Ball, pp. 23-26]. Moreover, unlike their opponents, the Israeli substantially augment their supply of military equipment during the first cease-fire imposed by the UN Security Council, between June 11 and July 9, enabling them to defeat the Arab forces without difficulty afterwards.

On September 17, the Stern Gang assassinates Count Bernadotte, the official UN mediator in Palestine, just a day after he submits a progress report on the conflict that recommends granting Palestinians the right to return to Israel.

1949-1956 Palestinian Fedayin (“redeemers,” or “freedom fighters”) organize in Arab refugee camps and mount attacks on Israeli targets across the border, causing a steady escalation of Israeli reprisals.

1953 The Qibya Massacre. Israeli troops led by Sharon attack the village of Qibya, destroying 42 houses and killing at least 66 Palestinians. Three-quarters of the victims are women and children.

1954 The Lavon Affair. In Operation Suzannah organized by Colonel Binyamin Gibli, the chief of Israel’s military intelligence, Israeli agents carry out bombings and other acts of sabotage in Egypt in order to discredit Egypt with both Britain and the U.S. On July 2, these agents bomb a post office in Alexandria, followed within two weeks by a British-owned theater and U.S. Information Agency libraries in Alexandria and Cairo. The operation is soon exposed by an Israeli double agent Avraham Seidenberg. Secretary of Defense Lavon correctly denies any knowledge of it, but is forced to resign from his position. Before the investigation is over many months later, Moshe Sharrett and David Ben-Gurion are forced to resign as prime ministers.

1956 Suez War. Israel combines forces with England and France to capture the Suez Canal in a surprise attack that is unanticipated by the U.S. government. However, President Eisenhower forces them to withdraw their armies.

The Kafr Qasim massacre. Israeli border police set a new curfew for Palestinian farm workers at the time of the Suez attack, but do not inform them of it. When these workers unwittingly break the new curfew, Israeli police kill 48 of them, including 6 women and 23 children.

1959 Yasser Arafat founds the Fatah movement in Kuwait. It begins its first armed attacks in 1965.

1964 Palestinians establish the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) both to defend themselves and restore the homeland of the Palestinian people. Arafat becomes the chairman when Fatah gains control in 1969.

1967 The Six-Day War takes place in which Israel launches supposedly pre-emptive invasions of the Golan Heights, Gaza, the Sinai, and the West Bank, including Jerusalem. This three-pronged attack substantially increases the territory under Israeli control. Israeli apologists insist the attack has been a pre-emptive strike to thwart Israel’s invasion by surrounding nations. Actually, Soviet diplomats have tried to broker a ceasefire, assuring Nasser and his allies that U.S. diplomats working in conjunction with this effort have obtained the guarantee of the Israeli government that it would not attack as long as it is not attacked. Informed that the Arab states have accepted this modus vivendi, Israel is able to launch a surprise attack against surrounding armies with devastating effectiveness.

Destruction of The Liberty. Apparently to thwart U.S. intelligence of the war in progress, Israeli air attacks kill 34 American sailors and wound 170 more aboard the Liberty, a U.S. intelligence-gathering ship. It seems the strategy of the attack is to strafe the ship’s deck, forcing the crew inside, then to sink it with all aboard. Specifically, this seems intended to prevent the disclosure of an impending Israeli attack on the West Bank, the final stage of Israel’s multiple invasion.

Six months later, UN Security Council’s Resolution 242 calls for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territories and a just solution to the refugee problem. Nevertheless, Israel begins establishing Jewish settlements in captured territory, and these become a growing problem over the years. In 1980 Israel gives them top national priority, and by 2000 there are 225,000 settlers occupying about 10 percent of the occupied West Bank.

In December, George Habash, a 1948 Palestine refugee, founds the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In June 1968, the Front hijacks an Israeli El Al airline, then undertakes a series of bombings and hijackings of civilian targets. The Front might also be responsible for helping to organize a machine-gun attack at the Tel Aviv International Airport in May 1972 by Japanese Red Army terrorists, killing 26 civilians. And the Front hijacks an Air France airliner in June 1976, flying it to Entebbe, Uganda, where it is recovered by Israeli troops in a dramatic rescue mission with the loss of lives limited to four civilians. Habash steps down as the leader of the Front in 2000 and spends the rest of his life as an invalid in Jordan.

1968 Israel begins full-scale nuclear production at Dimona, producing more than twenty-five bombs by 1973. Israeli officials have insisted earlier that they had no intention of producing the atomic bomb. However, a variety of nuclear physicists, most notably Zalman Shapiro, the president of a small U.S. Nuclear Services corporation, provide it with needed help. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, an engineer at Dimona, reveals to the Sunday Times the existence of the secret Israeli nuclear program. He is lured to Italy by a female agent, then kidnapped, brought back to Israel, tried and convicted for disclosing the information, and imprisoned for 18 years. He is released from prison in 2004, then imprisoned once again because he breaks his agreement with Israeli authorities to avoid interviews.

1969 Israeli war planes raid an Egyptian school Bahr al Baker in southern Egypt, killing 75 children and wounding over 100.

1970 The Black September. Armed conflict between Palestinian organizations and Jordanian troops lasts from September 1970 to July 1971, resulting in the expulsion of the PLO as well as thousands of Palestinian civilians from Jordan. Starting in 1968 there are frequent clashes between Jordanian security officers and Palestinian guerrillas. In June 1970, Habash’s Popular Front captures 60 foreigners as hostages in two downtown hotels, and in September it hijacks three Western jet airliners, taking them to an airstrip outside Amman. Several hundred passengers and crew members are eventually released, but all three planes are blown up. Assassination attempts against King Hussein fail in September, and, in order to restore his sovereign authority, he declares martial law. During the ten days or so of combat starting September 16, from 3 to 5 thousand combatants are estimated to die. In the entire conflict that follows, which costs from 7 to 8 thousand lives, King Hussein drives the guerrillas as well as numerous Palestinian civilians into Lebanon and Syria.

1972 In an operation also described as Black September, Palestinian terrorists kill eleven Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics. The next day Israel retaliates with Operation Spring of Youth whereby F-4 Phantom jets kill approximately 100 Palestinians and Lebanese. Also in retaliation, Operation Wrath of God involves an ongoing effort over a couple decades of assassinating all Palestinians involved in the Munich attack.

1973 On February 21, Israeli commandos attack two Palestinian refugee camps near the Lebanese city of Tripoli, killing 35. The same day Israeli war planes shoot down a Libyan airliner that accidentally passes over the Sinai Peninsula during a sand storm, killing 113 passengers.

On April 10, Israeli commando units invade East Beirut to kill three PLO leaders, Yusef Al Najjar, Kamal Adwan, and Kamal Nasser along with several dozen others.

The October 6 Yom Kippur War. Egypt and Syria launch surprise attacks against Israel in the Sinai and Golan Heights, but hostilities are suddenly brought to a close after a successful counterattack by Israeli troops, some of whom, under the command of Major General Sharon, penetrate Egypt within a hundred kilometers of Cairo. On October 22, UN Resolution 338 calls for an immediate cease-fire negotiated by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. However, with the excuse that Egyptians continue to attack Israeli tanks, Israeli troops finish their drive south, trapping the Egyptian Third Army east of the Suez Canal. Accused of betrayal by the U.S.S.R. and aware of possibilities for forcing peace negotiations among all parties involved, U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger insists the Israeli pull back their troops without destroying the Egyptian Third Army. On October 23, Syria also accepts the terms of the ceasefire, and Israeli troops can be withdraw.

1978 Arranged and hosted by President Carter, the Camp David Accords between Egypt’s President Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Begin result in Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza as well as increased U.S. financial support to both nations — more for the two combined than for all other foreign nations combined. Israel is thus compensated for the loss of Gaza and Egypt for abandoning the coalition of Arab nations opposed to Israel.

1981 Israel bombs an Iraq nuclear reactor 18 miles south of Baghdad in a surprise air attack. The reactor is near completion but has not yet been stocked with nuclear fuel.

1982 Invasion of Lebanon. On June 6, 60,000 Israeli troops led by General Sharon, Israel’s Defense Minister, mount Operation Pines (or “Peace for Galilee”), invading Lebanon supposedly in order to drive the PLO 40 kilometers from the border, thereby terminating its rocket attacks into Israel. Instead, however, Israeli troops continue their drive northward toward the city of Beirut. Apparently Sharon’s intention is to expel both Syrian and Palestinian combatants from Lebanon and install Bashir Gemayel of the Christian Phalange Party as president of Lebanon sympathetic with Israel.

From July 3 to August 21, Sharon conducts a Siege of Beirut, Beirut having become the de facto Palestinian capital in exile. Israeli troops cut off the city’s electricity and conduct seven-weeks of intensive shelling by tanks, artillery, fighter planes, and warships anchored offshore. On August 12 alone (“Black Thursday”), air attacks kill 128 inhabitants. Over 250,000 flee the city in response to this siege. After 70 days, Arafat accepts defeat, and beginning August 21, he, the PLO leadership, and 7,000 PLO fighters are shipped into exile abroad. Casualty estimates vary widely, but as many as 6,776 are killed in Beirut and as many as 18,000 altogether in Lebanon, not counting the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Israeli troops killed in action are 344, suggesting roughly a 20-1 kill ratio.

On August 23, Gemayel is elected President of Lebanon, but he is assassinated by Syrian agents on September 14. One day later, Israeli troops encircle the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps to permit a four-day massacre by 1,500 Christian militiamen identified as Falangists. All Palestinian refugees are killed, including women and children, with estimates ranging from 700 to 3,500 victims Palestinians who try to escape during this period are forced by Israeli troops to return to the camps in order to be with the rest. Sharon is later found personally responsible and forced to resign as Israel’s defense minister, but he is permitted to remain in parliament.

The militant Lebanese organization known as the Hezbollah is established by Shi’ites in response to the invasion. Its purpose is to provide self-defense against future attacks by Christian Falangists as well as Israeli troops. The Hezbollah also promotes an Islamic government of Lebanon, and it is organized to provide a variety of social services to its constituency, the Shi’ite population.

1983 President Reagan sends U.S. troops to Lebanon to help impose order on Beirut after the withdrawal of Israeli troops, but he withdraws U.S. troops after 241 American servicemen are killed by a suicide bomber on October 23. Israel mostly completes the withdrawal of its troops by mid-1985, retaining a 10 km security zone it can patrol on the Lebanese side of the border.

1985 Jonathan Pollard, a civilian naval intelligence analyst from an American Jewish family is arrested after three years of spying for Israel. He has acquired for Israel many thousands of pages of sensitive intelligence — estimated to be as much as 6 cubic feet of records. In 1986, he is sentenced to prison for life, but there is a substantial effort by the American-Zionist community since then to obtain his release and give him sanctuary in Israel.

Led by Abu Abbas, Palestinian terrorists seize the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and shoot and throw overboard a 69-year old Jewish passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, who is confined in a wheelchair. The excuse for doing this is that he has been trying to incite other passengers against the terrorists. The other 15 passengers are freed unharmed.

1987 In December, Palestine’s so-called “First Intifada” (uprising) erupts in the occupied territory and continues until March 1993, six years later. Its activities include civil disobedience, strikes, boycotts, graffiti, and, most effectively, stone throwing by teenagers. The kill ratio for this period has been estimated in the range of 7-1, with 1,162 Palestinians (including 241 children under 16 years of age) killed by the Israelis and 162 Israelis killed by Palestinians.

The militant Palestinian organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad take root and quickly gain popularity in providing leadership for the Intifada. The Palestinian Jihad has been formed in the Gaza Strip during the early 1970s as a militant branch of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Like Hezbollah, Hamas provides social services additional to military protection. Its founder, Ahmed Yassin, has had a checkered life. During the seventies and early eighties, Israel’s government tolerates him as a devout Islamic leader hostile to the secular agenda of the PLO. In 1984, he is sent to prison for a minor offense, then released in 1985, and in 1987, possibly with help and support of the Israeli government, he creates Hamas as an Islamist movement competitive with the Fatah. However, when the Hamas charter is drafted, calling for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, Israel outlaws the organization and once again imprisons Yassin in 1989, this time with a life sentence.

1990-92 Serving as Israel’s Minister of Housing, Sharon gives the highest priority to the creating of Jewish settlements in the west bank in order to enlarge Israel’s control of the territory, if not its total ownership. Sharon’s emphasis on the creation of settlements continues in 1996 when he becomes Minister of National Infrastructure, and it becomes a top priority in 1999 when he assumes leadership of the Likud Party.

1991 The three-day Madrid Peace Conference is held including Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, Russians, and representatives of the border states. This conference initiates the diplomatic effort to forge a peace treaty that might finally reconcile the differences between the Israeli and Palestinians.

1993 In April 1993, Palestinian militants begin resorting to the use of suicide bombers. By March 2004, slightly more than a decade later, 139 suicidal attacks occur against Israeli targets, accounting for 474 of 918 Israeli deaths, roughly half the total, though the suicide bombers account for only 1% of the total number of attacks. Over this decade, 46 percent of the attacks by suicide bombers are carried out by Hamas, 29 percent by the Islamic Jihad, 22 percent by Fatah.

Signed in Washington, D.C. on September 13, the Oslo Peace Agreement culminates with an agreement between Israel and the PLO for mutual recognition and a five-year plan to resolve all remaining differences according to guidelines already established. Unfortunately, the Agreement is never carried out. The expansion of Israeli settlements soon increases to five times its earlier rate and hostilities persist. 405 Palestinians are killed as opposed to 256 Israelis in the five years that follow.

1995 Israel’s Prime Minister Rabin is assassinated by an Israeli right-wing fanatic opposed to any compromise with Palestinians.

1996 Arafat wins presidential elections in January and conflict intensifies with Israel. Israel manages to assassinate Yahya Ayyash, who has perfected the use of the suicide bomb, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad retaliate with new bombings through February and March.

In April, Israeli army bombards South Lebanon in response to Katyusha rocket attacks. Its shelling of Qana on April 18 kills 106 Lebanese civilians who have taken refuge in a UN compound to escape the fighting. Israeli apologists argue that Hezbollah troops have been located as close as possible to this site, so the hits were accidental, but a later UN investigation indicates that the shelling was intentional. In 2006, ten years later, a single three-story building is destroyed in the same Lebanese town, killing 28 civilians, half of them children.

1997 In January, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu agrees to withdraw from four-fifths of Hebron, retaining a corridor of Israeli-held territory to give access to 500 settlers in the center of the city. The following month he initiates construction of a new Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, provoking riots and international criticism.

Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, is released from prison and exiled to Jordan. However, he is permitted to return to Israel as one of Israel’s concessions to Jordan in a brokered deal. This becomes possible after a botched attempt by Mossad, the Israeli secret service, to assassinate Khalid Mishal, the de facto leader of Hamas, by having a Mossad agent disguised as a Canadian spray poison in his ear while standing outside his house.

2000 President Clinton convenes the Camp David Summit to obtain a peace treaty between Israel and Palestine. This time negotiations are held between Arafat of the PLO and Israel’s Prime Minister Barak. Despite intense effort by Clinton, the summit turns out to be unsuccessful. Subsequently, scrutiny of the terms offered by Barak discloses such demands as the lack of full sovereignty in East Jerusalem for the Palestinians, the absence of control over borders, air space, and water resources, the retention of some Israeli settlements, and Israel’s continuing control over a wedge-shaped territory from Jerusalem to the Jordan River Valley, dividing Palestinian territory into two or three “cantons” isolated from each other.

Ariel Sharon visits the Palestinian zone of the Temple Mount surrounded by more than 1,000 Israeli police. This sets the stage for Sharon’s election campaign to become Israel’s next Prime Minister, but it also intensifies hostilities between Palestinians and Israelis.

The Second Intifada begins in response to Sharon’s visit to Temple Mount, and it persists through 2007. Its primary cause seems to be Arab dissatisfaction with the outcome of the 1993 Oslo Accords. Palestinians once again resort to suicide bombings, most notably of a crowded bus in Jerusalem on August 19, 2003, killing 23 Israelis, including 7 children. The overall kill ratio is nevertheless more than 4-1, with 4,300 Palestinians killed as opposed to 1,000 Israeli.

Negotiations between Israel and Palestinians shift to a new site, Taba, on the coast of Egypt, and many new compromises are forged, for the first time making an acceptable resolution seem possible. However, Barak ceases participating in the talks because they obviously stir a public reaction supportive of Sharon’s election campaign in Israel.

2001 George W. Bush becomes President of the United States, and just a couple weeks later Ariel Sharon becomes Israel’s Prime Minister after having won a 62% landslide victory as opposed to 37% support for Barak. Sharon does not bother to resume Taba peace negotiations (he actually says in a radio interview that he appreciates their accomplishment but feels more can be obtained from the situation before imposing a final settlement). His intention to resume hostilities against Palestinians is signaled by an unprovoked air strike of Israeli helicopter gunships against a vehicle containing Massoud Ayyad, a major in a Palestinian security service.

On March 16, for the second time in three months, Palestinians press the UN Security Council to send troops into the occupied territories in order to keep the peace between Israeli and Palestinian combatants. The U.S. lobbies heavily against this resolution, and the 9 votes needed for its passage by the 15 member Council cannot be mustered.

Bush makes it plain that unlike previous U.S. administrations he intends not to intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict except in the expansion of foreign aid to Israel. He also brings many neoconservatives into his foreign policy establishment, including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams, James Woolsey, John Bolton, Abram Shulsky, and David Wurmser. All of these are dedicated to close ties between Israel and the U.S. on the assumption that Israel is our nation’s closest ally in the Near East.

On September 11, al-Qaeda terrorists attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing 3,000 Americans. The FBI captures five Zionists led by Sivan Kurzberg, who have been seen doing high-fives and photographing the burning World Trade Center buildings at the edge of a New Jersey highway on the other side of the Hudson River. When accosted by police officers, Kurzberg exclaims, “We are Israelis. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are your problem.” All five are held in custody for 71 days before being returned to Israel. Each is found to have two passports, Israeli and European, and two of them can be identified as Mossad agents. Their vehicle has been obtained from a front business for Mossad in New York City, whose owner, Dominick Suter, takes flight to Israel just a day or two after 9-11, suggesting the likelihood that Israeli intelligence has been aware of the attack before it was planned, letting it happen in order to increase U.S. support for Israel.

In his October 7 public statement on TV, Osama bin Laden features Palestinians among the Arab victims of western nations he claims to have revenged by means of the 9-11 operation: “As I speak, Israeli tanks and bulldozers are going in and wreaking havoc and sin in Palestine — in Jenin, in Ramallah, in Rafah, in Beit Jala — and other parts of the domain of Islam, and we do not hear anyone protesting or even lifting a finger to stop it. But when after eighty years the sword comes down on America [the 9-11 attack], the hypocrites rise up to lament these killers who have scorned the blood, honor, and holy places of Muslims.” [Messages to the World, ed. by Bruce Lawrence, p. 104].

Hostilities mount between Palestinians and the Israeli army in the Occupied Palestinian Territory on the West Bank. Palestinian suicide bombers resume their activities, and in December Israeli troops react by besieging Chairman Arafat’s Ramallah compound with troops and tanks. Isolated in his headquarters, Arafat remains unhurt, but an Israeli sniper kills a Palestinian security officer standing in his dining room through a window. Israeli troops destroy all other buildings and offices in the compound, and Sadat remains a virtual prisoner surrounded by rubble until his death three years later.

2002 An Arab League summit meeting endorses a Saudi Peace Plan. Largely based on earlier negotiations at Madrid, Oslo, Camp David, and Taba, the Saudi plan guarantees full trade and diplomatic acceptance of all Muslim states in the region in exchange for Israel’s compliance with UN Resolution 242 toward the restoration of the pre-1967 border between Israel and adjacent territories with minor adjustments. Both Israel and the U.S. ignore the proposal.

Israel begins building a Security Fence (otherwise described as a separation barrier or wall) that separates Israel from the West Bank. As much as 8 meters high and with a 60 meter exclusion zone at its edge, it is scheduled to be completed by 2010 more or less along the 1949 “Green Line.” It turns out to reduce Palestinian attacks on Israeli citizens by from 70 to 85 percent, but its construction also enlarges Israeli territory wherever this is found convenient, often by separating Palestinian farmers from their crops and hampering Palestinians in their travel on the traditional roads.

In early April Israeli troops attack the town of Jenin for having been a hotbed of terrorism. Israeli sources claim that not more than 50 Palestinians have been killed, but according to Palestinian sources the conflict has been a massacre (described as the Massacre of Jenin), in which more than 500 Palestinians have been killed, then either buried by bulldozers or trucked away to be disposed of elsewhere.

On July 22, a missile strike by an Israeli F-16 scuttles a proposed Palestinian cease fire by killing Sheikh Salah Shehadeh as well as 20 others including 13 children. The leader of the military wing of Hamas, Shehadeh has been held responsible by Israeli authorities for hundreds of terrorist attacks within the previous two years.

2003 On March 16, the 23-year old peace activist Rachel Corrie is killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to block it from destroying a Palestinian home on the Gaza strip. Her notebooks are later compiled to write a controversial play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, which is successful in London, New York City, and wherever else the pro-Zionist effort to suppress it can be surmounted.

On March 19, the U.S. launches its invasion of Iraq without the support of the Security Council as specified by Article 42 of the UN Charter. The Bush administration tries to justify the invasion with the argument that Iraq is trying to develop the atomic bomb and gas and chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and that Saddam Hussein has close ties with al Qaeda. The real reasons probably involve taking control of Iraq’s huge oil reserves and, perhaps most important of all, the effort to eliminate Iraq as a potential military threat to Israel. With convincing documentation, Mearsheimer and Walt emphasize the latter as having been the single most compelling reason [pp. 229-53]. Israeli public figures such as Avineri, Barak and Netanyahu actually publish editorials in the U.S. press advocating the invasion, as do American neoconservatives such as Krautheimer, Zuckerman, David Saperstein, Gary Rosenblatt, and Michelle Goldberg. Other neoconservatives such as Abram Shulsky, Michael Rubin, David Schenker, and Michael Makovsky serve on the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) under the leadership of Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. Apparently their purpose is to help justify the invasion by processing the misinformation provided by Chalabi, others of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), and the notorious liar “Curve Ball” in order to enhance its credibility with the State Department, the White House, and various international bodies, most notably the UN.

On April 30, the U.S. State Department announces the agreement of the Quartet Group (the United States, United Nations, European Union, and Russia) to promote a three-stage Road Map toward a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. As emphasized by England’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, the elimination of Iraq as a military threat to Israel would finally justify the pursuit of a genuine final solution to hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians. Once again, Palestinians pledge full support, but Israel rejects key points. Sharon later undercuts the Road Map by proposing his own strategy of Unilateral Disengagement.

On May 1, one day after the Road Map has been proposed, Israeli troops surround the home of Yusef Abu Ghin, a top Hamas leader, and in an extended exchange of gunfire with air support by helicopters they kill him, his two brothers, and ten others including two children. This is supposedly done in response to earlier rocket attacks from Gaza as well as three Israeli killed the day before at a bar in Tel Aviv. However, its significance as a hostile response to the Road Map cannot be ignored. Earlier, Israeli troops ambush and kill Riyad Abu Zayd, a senior leader of Hamas, and one week later, on May 8, an Israeli attack helicopter kills another top Hamas leader, Eyad Al Beik,

On June 2, President Bush attends an Arab summit meeting in Cairo and consults with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas among others about the possibility of a peace settlement. Shortly after Bush’s return to the U.S., Israel assassinates seven Hamas leaders over a period of five days. The first of these, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, one of the founders of Hamas, fails, but the significance of the attempt relevant to Bush’s diplomatic gesture is obvious to all.

2004 On March 22, an Israeli helicopter gunship assassinates Sheikh Ahmedd Yassin, the co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, along with six worshipers while they leave a mosque after early morning prayer. Yassin is 68 years old, a blind paraplegic who has been confined to a wheelchair since he was 12 years old. He is replaced by his co-founder, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who is in turn assassinated by a helicopter attack on April 17.

Arafat dies on November 11.

2005 On January 9, Abbas is elected the new president of the Palestinian Authority with 62 percent of the vote. His primary agenda is to end violence and work toward a peaceful settlement. Hamas boycotts the election, and on January 12 it launches an attack killing one Israeli. On January 13, it launches a suicide attack killing another 6 Israelis. Sharon himself refuses to negotiate with Abbas, making it impossible for him to take credit for any benefits to the Palestinian people. The Bush administration pays lip service to Abbas, but without taking any steps supportive of his peace efforts.

On January 23, Abbas is able to announce that Hamas and Islamic Jihad agree upon the imposition of a 30-day ceasefire, but nothing comes of it. On April 9, he complains to Israel about the gratuitous killing of three Palestinian boys playing soccer.

During a February 8 conference with Sharon, Abbas proclaims a formal end of fighting with Israel. However, Israeli and Palestinian militants still engage in skirmishes. On June 21, Israeli forces round up dozens of suspected West Bank militants, and on July 15 Israeli helicopters attack Gaza, killing four Palestinians after a Palestinian rocket attack on Israel killing one. The Israeli counterattack provokes fighting between militants and Palestinian police about the most appropriate response to Israeli aggression.

From August 17 to 24, Israeli troops force the evacuation of Jews from Gaza as obliged by Sharon’s strategy of Unilateral Disengagement despite the desperate resistance of Jewish settlers heavily publicized by the U.S. press. Israel also withdraws its troops from Gaza and partially terminates its control except for airspace, borders and ports. However, it does nothing else in compliance with the Road Map as earlier promised beyond dismantling four of its settlements from the West Bank.

On Sept. 26, Israel resumes missile attacks on Gaza in response to rocket fire from Palestinian militants. The next day Palestinian militants announce their renewed commitment to a truce, but Israel launches several air raids that knock out electricity in Gaza City, and it initiates cross-border raids to halt rocket attacks. Hostilities resume on the same scale as before.

In summer, 2005, Larry Franklin, a top Pentagon analyst on Iran, who works in Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), is arrested by the FBI in a Washington restaurant while in the act of passing classified information to two officials of AIPAC (the Israel Public Affairs Committee), Steve Rosen, its foreign policy director, and Keith Weissman, its top Iranian specialist. These prominent American Zionists apparently intend to send this sensitive intelligence about Iran to Israeli intelligence. Eighty-three other such documents have been found in Franklin’s possession, apparently for the same purpose. It seems, however, that Franklin has already been caught and is cooperating with the FBI in a sting operation at the expense of Rosen and Weissman. Many other agents and government employees also seem involved in the case, including Michael Ledeen and David Satterfield, the second ranking Middle East officer in the State Department as well as Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. Unfortunately, CBS’s public disclosure of the arrest thwarts further investigation, and the story is forgotten as soon as possible by the U.S. press.

2006 On January 5, Sharon suffers a massive stroke and remains comatose through the end of 2007. Ehud Olmert becomes acting Prime Minister, and after 100 days, on April 16, 2006, becomes Interim Prime Minister.

On January 25, Palestinians hold their first parliamentary election in a decade. Despite millions of dollars spent on the election by the U.S. government, Hamas gains a surprise victory over Fatah, taking 76 of 132 seats by campaigning on the twin issues of security and corruption. Ismail Haniya becomes the new Prime Minister.

Hamas declares a unilateral cease-fire with Israel and calls for a temporary truce. It also advocates the establishment of an independent state with its capital in Jerusalem and offers a 10-year truce in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territories. In response, however, Israel continues to denounce Hamas as a terrorist group and demands that it renounce armed resistance and recognize the full sovereignty of Israel as a Jewish state. Israel also confiscates Palestinian tax revenues and, along with the U.S. and UK, imposes an embargo on Gaza and the West Bank. Hostilities intensify and 29 Palestinians are killed in February.

Thirty-one Palestinians are killed in April, 42 are killed in May, and 34 in the first two weeks of June. On June 8, Jamal Abu Samahadana, the general director of the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, is assassinated despite (or perhaps because of) his ability and willingness to serve in the negotiation of a ceasefire with Israel.

On June 9, Israeli artillery makes a direct hit on a Gaza beach party far from any significant military target, killing eight Palestinian bathers, all of them members of the Ghalia family. A day later, Hamas withdraws from its official cease fire, and initiates Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel. On June 13, the Israeli air force thereupon escalates the conflict by attacking Gaza City.

On June 24, for the first time since their 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, Israeli commandos break into a house in Gaza and take into custody two brothers, Osama and Mustafa Abu Muamar, as suspected terrorists. In retaliation Palestinian militants attack an Israeli defense post the next day. Two Palestinians and two Israeli troops are killed in the gunfire, and a third Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, is captured and brought back to Gaza to be held in captivity (Hamas’s single prisoner of war, as opposed to approximately 10,000 POWs held by Israel). The western press focuses on the kidnapping of Shalit, totally ignoring the kidnapping of two Palestinian students just the day before.

On June 28, Israel launches Operation Summer Rains, an attack on Gaza to secure the release of Shalit. Israeli aircraft destroy several bridges and bomb a power station, cutting off electricity to more than half of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents. On June 29, Israeli forces arrest 64 Hamas officials, including eight Palestinian Authority cabinet ministers and up to twenty Legislative Council representatives. On June 30, the Israeli army begins to bombard Gaza more fully with missiles, air strikes, and naval gunfire. More kidnappings and killings follow on both sides. At least 50 Palestinians are killed in the operation as opposed to one Israeli soldier.

On July 12, Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon who are sympathetic with Hamas create a second front with Israel by capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing three others in an operation on the border between Israel and Lebanon. In an immediate counterattack generally recognized to have been planned beforehand on a contingency basis, Israeli planes destroy much of Lebanon’s infrastructure (roads, bridges, electric power plants, etc.). They also saturate populated areas with a variety of bombs, including cluster bombs, despite restrictions imposed by the U.S. to prevent their use in populated areas. Cluster bombs are also dropped in great numbers within seventy-two hours before the ceasefire. More than a million bomblets are dispersed, and a significant number of them remain unexploded, easily detonated by accidental contact. By the end of 2007, eighteen months after hostilities have ended, more than 30 Lebanese have been killed by them.

Over 900 Lebanese are killed during the two-war as opposed to 36 Israeli soldiers and 18 Israeli civilians, the latter by means of rocket attacks across the border. In all, the kill ratio is between 18-1 and 20-1. Despite its disproportionate losses, Hezbollah is conceded to have conducted effective tactics and is considered the victor simply by having avoided defeat at the hands of the Israeli.

In late summer, Olmert abandons unilateral disengagement, arguing that it would be more effective to pursue a two-state solution through negotiations.

On November 1, a large force of Israeli tanks and troops invade the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun in retaliation for a single Israeli woman killed by a rocket attack. Hundreds of men are rounded up and imprisoned in Israel. Israeli troops occupy the town until November 7, and their heavy shelling the following day kills 18 Palestinians. Thirteen are from the same family, 6 of them children. Altogether perhaps 350 residents of Beit Hanoun are killed, and virtually every house is destroyed.

On December 16, Abbas calls for new legislative elections to end the parliamentary stalemate between Fatah and Hamas in forming a national unity government.

2007 On February 8, Hamas and Fatah agree to end their factional warfare that has led to the deaths of nearly 200 Palestinians. They form a coalition with the expectation that this step might encourage western powers to lift sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led government.

On March 17, a Palestinian National Unity Government is created combining Hamas and Fatah under the leadership of Haniyeh as the Hamas Prime Minister additional to the authority of Abbas as the Fatah President.

On March 29, the Riyadh Summit for the Arab League reissues its 2002 peace plan that couples Israel’s withdrawal from all territory occupied in the 1967 war with open trade relations and full recognition of Israel by all 22 members of the League. A just settlement for Palestinian refugees who seek a “right to return” is also called for but without imposing any specific demands. Olmert does not take interest in the plan, and specifically rejects the right to return for 3.7 million refugees who live in surrounding Arab nations.

The Battle of Gaza. Between June 7 and June 15 fighting occurs between Hamas and Fatah that results in Hamas winning control of the Gaza Strip. At least 116 are killed. On June 14 Abbas fires Haniya as the Prime Minister and dissolves the unity government formed only three months earlier. Palestinian territory divides into two separate entities–the government of Gaza led by Hamas and the government of the West Bank led by the Palestinian National authority. Abbas remains president of the West Bank and appoints Salam Fayyad as Prime Minister.

On June 18, Israel, the U.S., and EU resume their support to the West Bank under the leadership of the Palestinian National Authority and resume direct aid. Israel announces it will release $562 in tax revenue for this purpose, and the U.S. similarly promises to release tens of billions of dollars it has withheld since the election three months earlier. On June 19, Fatah cuts off all ties with Hamas pending the return of Gaza under the authority of the Palestinian unity government.

The Siege of Gaza. Once the Fatah has fled Gaza, Israel imposes severe restrictions that amount to a siege. Once again it demands that Hamas recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish nation, thus by implication reducing Arab inhabitants to second-class citizenship. Hamas refuses, and by October only one crossing (Karem Shalom) is open. Fishermen cannot leave the harbor. The supply of diesel fuel drops by 47 percent, and the amount of goods supplied from Israel decreases by 71%, from an average of 253 truckloads per day in April to an average of 74 in October. Food is running out, and the supply of electricity has been reduced by half, preventing water and sewage from being processed at acceptable levels. Per capita income has decreased by 40 percent over the last three years, and the poverty rate has reached 70 percent. There is insufficient medicine and hospitals are overflowing, a hardship worsened by continuing casualties, mostly from Israeli air and artillery strikes. On the average eight Palestinians are now estimated to be killed daily by these attacks.

The West Bank is not much better off. There continue to be 133 Israeli settlements almost all of which are illegal according to UN Security Council Resolution 242. Meanwhile, travel among Palestinian towns is impeded by 562 military checkpoints and an additional 610 “flying checkpoints.” The Israelis destroy Palestinian orchards and substantially reduce the water supply. On average, Palestinians are allowed to use no more than 50 cubic meters of water per year, while an occupant of an illegal settlement can use up to 2,400 cubic meters, almost fifty times as much. Palestinians also pay double the price for water as well as electricity. All in all, Israel takes possession of 800 million cubic meters of water out of 936 million cubic meters available to the West Bank. Moreover, the depth of Palestinian wells is limited, permitting Israeli wells to remove water at deeper levels. As an additional aggravation, the Palestinian government must transfer its tax income to Israel for its determination as to what can be spent on such services as health and education.

On November 27, a hastily convened Annapolis Conference is held so delegates from 40 nations can listen while President Bush declares that negotiations will be conducted for up to a full year in order to settle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute once and for all under the exclusive sponsorship of the U.S. government. Abbas and Olmert are both present, but conspicuously uninvited are representatives of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the state of Iran. Conveniently, deliberations would end just after the November, 2008, election, thus neutralizing the stigma of failure for the Bush administration if nothing comes of the effort once again. Also expedient is the limitation of sponsorship to the U.S. alone, replacing the Quartet Group that also includes the U.N., E.U., and Russia.

On November 28, a day after the Annapolis Conference, Israeli troops accompanied by approximately a dozen tanks invade southern Gaza, penetrating about two miles and killing at least 6 Palestinians. The signal seems plain that Israel is only willing to negotiate with Abbas, of the Palestinian National Authority, and will continue to deal with Hamas and the Gaza population as enemies. Israel’s announcement just days after the conference that a couple hundred new homes are soon to be added to one particular west bank settlement can also be interpreted as a willful limitation of the agreement from the very beginning, in this instance relevant to the West Bank.

2008 On January 8, President Bush arrives in Israel to spend two days in separate conferences with both Abbas and Olmert in order initiate negotiations toward a diplomatic settlement, supposedly one of his top priorities in the final year of his presidency. Bush offers extravagant financial incentives to both the Israeli and the Abbas governments: a $30 billion package of military aid to Israel over the next decade plus a $400 milllion package to the Palestinians for a variety of social programs.

On January 15, negotiations begin as requested by Bush, but before dawn the very next morning the Israeli army enters the Gaza strip to launch an unprovoked “routine operation” in which at least 18 Palestinians are killed, including Hussam Zahar, son of Mahmoud Zahar, a senior leader of Hamas. Hussam is apparently killed by an air strike while driving his vehicle toward the conflict. Palestinians quickly initiate a rocket attack in response to this raid, killing a foreign laborer on an Israeli kibbutz. The entire story of the Jan. 16 attack, buried on p. 8 in the next day’s issue of The New York Times, effectively obscures the sequence of events, thus minimizing Israel’s responsibility for the attack. The article ends with an Israeli spokesperson’s suggestion that the operation has been justified as a means of preventing future such “tragedies” as the death of the foreign laborer by rocket fire. The broader relevance of the attack to the prospect of successful peace negotiations is totally ignored. The reader has no way to determine whether Bush has already given the go-ahead for the operation in confirming his peace strategy to the exclusion of Gaza or the Olmert government has launched the attack to dramatize once again its insistence on the omission of Gaza.

By January16, it is obvious that sustained rocket fire has resumed between Israel and Gaza resulting from the January 15 attack. Over the next couple of days as many as 40 Palestinians are killed by bombs and rocket fire, compared to the single farm laborer killed on January 15. In fact, as disclosed in a NYT story the next day, only 13 Israeli have been killed by Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza since 2001, seven years earlier, an insignificant number compared to the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli for this period of time.

On January 18, Israel closes all border crossings to Gaza, totally sealing its one and a half million residents from access to all necessities beyond those they themselves can provide. This radical measure is repeatedly justified in the media, even on the floor of the U.N., as a necessary step to terminate rocket fire from Gaza and force Hamas to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

On January 22, Hamas destroys the wall constructed by Israel to separate Gaza from Egypt at the Rafah crossing, and as many as 350,000 Gaza resident (a fifth of its total population) flood into Egyptian territory within the next two days, desperate for food, fuel, medical supplies, and other necessities. Both Israel and the U.S. demand that Egypt restore the border, thus sustaining the siege. As quoted by the NYT, Olmert has the audacity to declare, “As far as I’m concerned, the residents of Gaza can walk if they don’t have gasoline for their cars, because they have a murderous terrorist regime that won’t let people in the south of Israel live in safety.” But a day later Israel promises to open the border crossings. As the Zionist spokesperson Sari Bashi explains in the January 28 NYT, “This is part of a stop-start game that continually pushes Gazan residents to the brink, pushing them over, then pulling back temporarily… For the last seven months, Israel has been slowly reducing Gaza residents to desperation.”

And what do Israeli strategists now emphasize in addition to the avoidance of negotiations? As perhaps to be expected, their primary concern has shifted to the nuclear threat posed by Iran now that Iraq has been demolished as a potential enemy. Just as Israel’s insistence on a nuclear threat helped to initiate the 2003 invasion of Iraq, its similar concern about Iran focuses on the need for an air attack regardless of whether it might generate a full-scale escalation of warfare in the region. Zionists repeatedly demand such an attack despite no less repeated assurances by Mohammed ElBaradei, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), that Iran has no active program today to develop an atomic bomb. Prime Minister Olmert himself actually warns before a joint session of U.S. Congress on May 24, 2006, of the future crisis in the region if and when Iran possesses the atomic bomb. AIPAC lobbyists continue to press this argument with members of Congress, and Israeli officials warn that they might take preemptive action themselves if the U.S. does not launch the needed attack on Iran.

On December 3, a New York Times front-page article discloses that the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, is in agreement that Iran very probably suspended its nuclear weapons program as early as 2003, four years ago, and that it cannot produce enough uranium for an atomic bomb until 2010 at the earliest. This conclusion is heatedly denied by Zionist intelligence experts as well as journalists friendly to Israel, for example Thomas Friedman in his December 12 New York Times column. In an apparently hasty meeting brought about in Israel on December 10, a week after the NIE disclosure, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak tells Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Israeli intelligence indicates Iran probably resumed its effort to produce an atom bomb in 2005 and continues to enrich uranium to such an extent that this might be possible earlier than 2010. As reported in The New York Times, Mullen expresses his sympathy with Israel’s concerns, so a military venture might still be launched against Iran in the near future. As a perhaps useful precedent, Israel’s September 6, 2007, air attack on a potential nuclear facility in Syria has provoked little outrage in the international community. So perhaps a similar strike can still be launched against Iran within the next year or so.

* * * * * * *

Over the past sixty years, Israel has played a dominant role in the Near East thanks to the collaborative support of a news media able and willing to give voice to its non-stop shibboleth of victimization. Unfortunately, the cost has been too high for everybody involved. Most obviously, Palestinians have been racked by their ordeal, perhaps never to recover their full potential as a modern self-sufficient society. Likewise, Israel’s various frontier nations have been beset with numerous problems that would undoubtedly have been easier to cope with without having been dragged into the recurring Israeli-Palestinian hostilities. And of course the United States has paid an enormous price both in subsidizing this endless battle and in having antagonized an entire Muslim population stretching from Casablanca to Bali. Some of the world’s most productive oil fields are located across this region, and many of our nation’s difficulties with its oil supply can be traced to the lack of a consistent foreign policy because of its connection with Israel. Zionist apologists repeatedly emphasize the harmony and interdependence between Israel and the United States, but the relationship has been far more lopsided, dare one suggest parasitic.

In the long run, the biggest loser is Israel itself. Granted, its population has shaken off its history of ghetto survival preceding World War II, but only to create a new and bigger version of ghetto existence as a small nation with a very uncertain future, given the mounting animosity of most other nations in the region. Moreover, having served as scapegoats for Nazis resentful of Germany’s defeat in World War I, Israeli Zionists have victimized Palestinians to redress their own history of grievances, thereby intensifying their isolation that much further among nearby countries flooded with Palestinian refugees. As already indicated, most Americans continue to support Israel’s agenda, but few others do elsewhere in the world. The Israeli government is even beginning to antagonize the most enlightened segment of its public as well as concerned Americans including a large minority of secularized Jews who keep abreast with what is going on beyond the predictable story line promoted by Zionists. So the nightmarish aspect of ghetto existence persists after decades of conflict, and as much through choice as necessity. The question is how such a gifted population can extricate itself from its present role with the least damage to everybody involved.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mearsheimer, John, and Stephen Walt. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). Already the standard reference upon Israel’s control of American foreign policy.

Carter, Jimmy. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (Simon & Schuster, 2006). A lucid summary of the current situation based on personal experience.

La Guardia, Anton. War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land (Thomas Dunne Books, 2001). A pro-Israeli summary of events up until the book’s publication. Its 11-page bibliography includes none of the texts included in this bibliography.

Finkelstein, Norman. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (Verso, 2000).

Ball, George, and Douglas Ball. The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present (W.W. Norton, 1992). Really excellent, written by an experienced diplomat fed up by the lies and distortions.

Cockburn, Andrew and Leslie. Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the US-Israeli Covert Relationship (HarperCollins, 1991). Emphasizes the link between the CIA and Mossad (its Israeli equivalent).

Hersh, Seymour. The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (Random House, 1991). Explores the origins of Israel’s atomic program resulting from U.S. foreign policy.

Fisk, Robert. Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (Atheneum, 1990).

Ostrovsky, Victor, and Claire Hoy. By Way of Deception (St. Martin’s Press, 1990). Confessions of a Mosssad agent.

Neff, Donald. Warriors against Israel: How Israel Won the Battle to Become America’s Ally 1973 (Amana Books, 1988).

Geoffrey Aronson. Israel, Palestinians and the Intifada (Kegan Paul, 1987). How Harsh Israeli policies led to the Palestinian resistance.

Findley, Paul. They Dare to Speak Out (Lawrence Hill, 1985). The stories of U.S. politicians driven out of politics by Zionist pressure because of their refusal to go along with its demands.

Neff, Donald. Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days that Changed the Middle East (Linden Press, 1984). A thorough summary of the 1967 war.

Chomsky, Noam. The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (South End Press, 1983). An early but thorough assessment of the Israeli conflict.

Brenner, Lenni. Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal (Lawrence Hill, 1983). A highly controversial study of the relations between Zionism and Nazi Germany during the 1930s.

Timerman, Jacobo. The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon (Knopf, 1982). An account of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon that lays most of the blame on Israel.

Neff, Donald. Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East (Linden Press, 1981). A full account of the 1956 Suez crisis.

The intense anti-Semitism in currency at the beginning of the twentieth century is best exemplified by J. Cameron and Henry Ford’s series of articles published between 1919 and 1927 in The Dearborn Independent and later compiled under the title, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. Hitler’s early hostility to Jews is plain in vol. 1, chap. 11 of Mein Kampf, and he expresses his later views in passim. in Hitler’s Table Talk, ed. by Hugh Trevor-Roper. The most interesting defense of anti-semitism on an historic basis is to be found in Houston Chamberlain’s Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1911), vol 1, Division 2, chap. 5 — one of Hitler’s favorite books.

Useful website chronologies that are critical of Israel include:

(1) palestinehistory.com,

(2) “Who Invented Modern Day Terrorism”

(3) “Encyclopedia of the Palestinian Problem,” by Issla Nakhleh

Livia Rokach’s book, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism, with an introduction by Noam Chomsky (Association of Arab-American Graduates, 1980, 1982, 1986), is also available on the Internet in its entirety.

Names and dates are emphasized as much as possible to simplify the use of popular search engines such as Google, and websites such as Wikipedia to submit the data presented here to further investigation.

This connection between warfare and patriotism may be seen throughout our nation’s history, which has involved military combat at one level or another since the late eighteenth century. After World War II, the U.S. has been pitted in the Cold War against the U.S.S.R. as well as having participated in three major wars that necessitated overt combat — in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. We have also mounted substantial invasions in Panama, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, and we have conducted smaller operations across the globe from Grenada to Beirut and beyond. Altogether, these numerous military confrontations have given the American public more home-front experience with warfare than for the rest of the advanced industrial nations combined since 1945.

Of course many US troops have returned from military conflict disillusioned with the unavoidable excesses of warfare, but many others have been converted by the experience into an intense patriotism that lets them serve as cheerleaders supportive of future wars, whoever the enemy (or enemies) might consist of. Meanwhile, the biased media coverage needed to drum up support for each of these wars has left a residue of patriotic enthusiasm that could easily be revitalized in support of the next conflict. Anybody who dares to question this intellectual juggernaut risks social ostracism, especially in rural communities and across the so-called red-state region.

And thus the growing sense that patriotism can be taken too far, whatever its benefits on a moderate scale. Tabulated here are some of the more assertive judgments opposed to patriotism over the past three centuries.

Never was a patriot yet, but was a fool.

– John Dryden

A patriot is a fool in ev’ry age.

– Alexander Pope.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

– Samuel Johnson

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.

– Ambrose Bierce

Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen.

– Ambrose Bierce

That pernicious sentiment, “Our country, right or wrong.”

– James Russell Lowell

“My country right or wrong” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother drunk or sober.”

– G. K. Chesterton

Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and “My country never wrong” is an even more dangerous maxim than “My country, right or wrong.”

– Bertrand Russell

Patrioism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

– George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

– George Bernard Shaw

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

– George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

– George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

– Denis Diderot

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

– George Santayana

The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations.

– H.G. Wells

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. “Patriotism” is its cult. . . . Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.

– Erich Fromm

One of the great attractions of patriotism–it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat, Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.

– Aldous Huxley

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . . Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots.

– Gordon Allport

It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.

– Elbert Hubband

Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.

– William Inge

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism is the passion of fools and the most foolish of passions.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism corrupts history.

– Goethe

Into the cultural and technological system of the modern world, the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern mankind.

– Thorstein Veblen

The standardization of mass-production carries with it a tendency to standardize a mass-mind, producing a willing conformity, not merely to common ways of living, but to common ways of thinking and common valuations. The worst defect of patriotism is its tendency to foster and impose this common mind, and so to stifle the innumerable germs of liberty.

– J.A. Hobson

2. Patriotism and War:

At the bottom of all patriotism is war: that is why I am no patriot.

– Jules Renard

No other factor in history, not even religion, has produced so many wars as has the clash of national egotisms sanctified by the name of patriotism.

– Preserved Smith

Naturally the common people don’t want war . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.

– Hermann Goering.

That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them!

– Albert Einstein

3. Patriotism and Religion:

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

– Guy de Maupassant

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.

– Luis Buñuel

To be patriotic, hate all nations but you own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all pretenses but your own.

– Lionel Strachey

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!

– David Starr Jordan

4. The American Syndrome:

If you have a weak candidate and a weak platform, wrap yourself up in the American flag and talk about the Constitution.

– Matt Quay

How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be “American” before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? It is really too easy a disguise for our shortcomings to dress them up as a form of patriotism.

– Edith Wharton

The 100 percent American is 99 percent an idiot.

– George Bernard Shaw

Treason is in the air around us everywhere. It goes by the name of patriotism.

– Thomas Corwin

5. Three relatively positive assessments of patriotism:

A patriot is somebody who protects his country from his government. Or better yet: who has the guts to protect his country from its government.

– Piotyr Dirk

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

– George Washington

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

– Thomas Jefferson

* Sources for these quotes include Jon Winokur’s Portable Curmudgeon, Rudolf Flesch’s The New Book of Unusual Quotations, Laurence Peter’s Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time, Leonard Frayns’ Quotationary, Robert Andrews’ The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, George Seldes’ The Great Quotations, H.L. Mencken’s A New Dictionary of Quotations, Evan Esar’s Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, and Bertrand Russell, Dictionary of the Mind, Matter and Morals.