AS EVER, BUT ESPECIALLY in our present state of civilizational malaise, there is a need for figures with the power to inspire — men who in less confused and cynical times would have been unabashedly described as heroic. One such figure is Corporal John Alan Coey, a young soldier who has perhaps not yet fully received the tribute he deserves though he has been dead these past 37 years.

In March of 1972 Coey, a young American from Ohio, boarded a flight to white-ruled Rhodesia, a country then facing United Nations sanctions and very soon to find itself beleaguered by the forces of communist-backed black nationalism. Only a day prior to his departure Coey had graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in Forestry. He had also recently been released, at his own request, from the Marine Corps NROTC program he had nearly completed, thereby declining a hard-earned commission as an officer.

Coey’s motives for seeking to enlist in the Rhodesian Army rather than continue his service in the U.S. Marine Corps are probably more readily understandable in retrospect than they were at the time. Like many, he was repulsed by the emergence of the New Left on college campuses and saw nihilism clearly lurking behind its messages of free love and pacifism. Coey also concluded that the newly ascendant radical Left represented neither an authentic grassroots movement nor a bona fide countercultural alternative to the old liberal order. “The left wing has recognized the dehumanizing trends of industrial society,” he wrote, “but its activism to change society has been channeled by the real revolutionaries of Internationalism.”

Though a confirmed Cold Warrior, Coey was not a reflexive supporter of the Vietnam War. He discerned in the handling of that conflict, as well as that of the Korean War before it, the seeds of American overreach and eventual dissolution, a trend that seems to continue unabated today. As Coey’s older brother, Edward, would later write of American involvement in Vietnam, the American people had been given “The Choice Between False Alternatives,” made to choose “between a protracted no-win slaughter and a humiliating surrender.” The younger Coey did not believe this state of affairs could be attributed merely to incompetence or negligence on the part of those prosecuting the war either. The primary threat to the West, Coey concluded, was not Soviet or Chinese Communism but malevolent forces that emanated from within. Coey somewhat quaintly referred to these forces, which he considered more or less amenable to communism, simply as “the Conspiracy.”

While he was an apparent reader of Oswald Spengler and keenly aware of the depth of the civilizational crisis facing the West, Coey was not given to despair. He insisted those of European descent must struggle to the bitter end to save their inheritance, a deeply held conviction that determined his own choices. Coey well understood that “the fight for Western Civilization is not in the battlefield, but in the realm of the intellectual, spiritual, and psychological.” He lamented also “that under present conditions one cannot be a soldier without furthering the aims of the Internationalists, the liberals, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Zionists, or other alien groups.” Still, Coey longed above all else to do his part as a warrior in defense of what remained of his beloved civilization. Rhodesia, he believed, provided him the best and perhaps only opportunity to be of service in a worthy cause. Again, this is in spite of the fact that Coey already new the likely outcome:

“In the eyes of the mass media the black man can do nothing wrong and the white man can do nothing right, for even his sacrifices and help are discredited. The world cares nothing for Rhodesia, not even America, England, or the sister colonies. Rhodesia is to be sacrificed; they will not help Rhodesia. It has already been written off.”

Coey in Africa

Having successfully gained a position with the Rhodesian Special Air Service or SAS (an elite unit approximately equivalent to U.S. Army Special Forces), Coey attempted to communicate — perhaps imprudently — his concerns to the general public in a series of magazine articles and letters to newspapers in Rhodesia and South Africa. One article in particular, provocatively titled “The Myth of American Anti-Communism” and published in the Rhodesian Army journal Assegai, would land him in trouble with Rhodesian authorities despite, or perhaps because of, its appearance in an official publication. As a result, Coey was kicked out of the Rhodesian Army’s officer training program and eventually the SAS, placements he had received only after excelling at a grueling selection and training process. As Coey himself reflected:

“It was brought to my attention today that the article I submitted to Assegai magazine is considered ‘subversive,’ not because it is anti- Rhodesian or criticizes the State here, but because it ‘destroys misconceptions about America being pro-Western, and may lower morale if read by the general public.’ Although what I have written is true, it is feared that the public may not be able to stand the truth. The facts I have presented may make the article appear anti-American to those who do not yet understand how America is ruled by the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] oligarchy, whose interest is total world power.”

Despite this and other setbacks, Coey would persist in his writing. Throughout his time in southern Africa he kept up an extensive correspondence as well as a journal which would eventually be published posthumously as a book. This book, A Martyr Speaks, would have undoubtedly proven an even more interesting historical document had not vast segments of Coey’s original journals been redacted by Rhodesian authorities following his death. Despite this censorship, Coey and what was left of his writings remained controversial enough that it would take his mother 13 years to find a willing publisher.

Though no longer being considered for a commission and forced to choose another unit to serve with, Coey would also persist in attempting to make a contribution militarily to Rhodesia. Even as he experienced moments of serious doubt and self-recrimination following his unceremonious expulsion from the SAS, Coey completed a medic course and transferred to the Rhodesian Light Infantry. There, despite resistance from some of his superiors, time and again he insisted on accompanying infantrymen into combat at great personal risk to himself, effectively introducing the role of combat medic into the Rhodesian Army:

“When I finish this tour of duty, I think that at least in this battalion [1st Battalion, The Rhodesian Light Infantry], which does the bulk of the fighting, that the medics will become like the Medical Corpsmen in the U.S. forces. I am the first of what are now called ‘Combat Medics’ here. There will be others; so I have accomplished something.”

Again though, Coey’s efforts were not always understood or appreciated. Some — though certainly not all — of his fellow foreign volunteers seem to have been merely adventurers or opportunists who did not share in his motivations or commitment. Among the Rhodesians, Coey’s older brother later wrote that the younger Coey “found some few Rhodesians awake, but generally…found a people too narrowly provincial to fully appreciate the worldwide implications of the savage attack being unleashed against their small country.” Coey himself wrote of the Rhodesians, for whom he came to have a special affection (indeed, he sought and was granted dual citizenship): “Most white Rhodesian families have been here for several generations and have nowhere else they can call home. They will stay and fight, I’m pleased to say. They understand their position racially and historically, but come short politically.”

An additional source of conflict for Coey — even with fellow believers — were his religious convictions. From a reading of his journals, it is evident that Coey’s faith was the primary source of his strength and allowed him to persevere where others often gave up. It also provided a source of comfort to him in his darkest moments — moments which were plentiful in combat in the African Bush. Many on the true Right have abandoned Christianity for a multitude of reasons, citing among other things its universalist pretensions and the tendency toward a dangerous and unhealthy cultural and racial self-effacement prevalent among contemporary Christians. Still, Coey possessed a vital and muscular understanding of the Faith similar to that which must have underlain much past Western dynamism. Coey, a Lutheran, attempted to share his belief with others through quiet example rather than a boorish evangelism and was dismayed at the errors into which many of his fellow Christians had fallen:

“I’ve been going to Baptist church services. The Gospel is preached there, but I have decided to go elsewhere because these Baptists are convinced that the Zionist takeover of Palestine is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. They believe that the Second Coming of Christ is near, and think that they have the Revelation figured out completely. They expect to be ‘raptured’ away from the coming terror to help Christ rule in the Millennium. I remind them of Christ’s words, ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ and ”No man knoweth the hour when the Son of God shall come again.’ But they choose to ignore that. . . .”

Neither, of course, did Coey abide the paralytic sentimentality of liberal Christians:

“Last night I talked with a Christian man who is convinced that he must never resort to violence to defend himself or fight in any way, even for his life and liberty. He feels that communism should not be opposed by arms, and that the Second Coming of Christ will occur before they could take over the world. He believes that all governments, no matter how evil or corrupt, are ordained by God. Christianity for this man has destroyed his instinct for survival, his will to resist evil. If every Christian were to think this, we would be doomed.”

The Significance of Coey

Coey was only one of a number of foreign volunteers who came from a variety of countries to fight for the lost cause of Rhodesia. Likewise, he was only the first of a total of seven Americans who would eventually die there. Of these foreigners, however, Coey was probably the most driven by principle, as well as the one most successful at communicating to the general public his motives for joining the Rhodesian forces.

Admittedly, at times in his journals Coey comes across as a somewhat fanatical figure — albeit one who is never truly unlikable. Though he presents a fairly consistent worldview in his writings, it is also helpful to remember that Coey did not style himself as an intellectual but instead a man of action. He considered it necessary to complement his words with deeds, and his short life was lived as one of selfless sacrifice in defense of not only a country that he considered to be at the very frontier of the West — but of all peoples of European descent and their shared civilization. Coey, importantly, always sought to lead by example and never played the sectarian:

“…I am helping to unify the Europeans, simply by my presence and association with these people. For they are coming to realize that there is no important difference between Americans, White Africans, or Europeans. The accents, dialects, and languages are superficial; the customs, religion, styles of government, and thinking are the same. I believe that only when all European peoples are unified, can communism and the alien conspiracy be smashed.”

There would be no such triumph of course, either in Rhodesia or elsewhere. Perhaps it was for the best that Coey didn’t live to experience the heartbreak of witnessing his adopted homeland fade into history.

In the final analysis, it was the very things that drove Coey to excel as a soldier that led to his early demise. He was possessed of that fatal combination of youthful idealism and, what is rarer, the will and strength of character to actually put that idealism into practice. As his older brother Edward recalled, Revilo P. Oliver of the University of Illinois had written Coey a letter prior to his death in which Professor Oliver had lauded him for having made “‘…the Choice of Achilles.'” That is, Coey had opted to die with glory in combat rather than to live a long but unremarkable life. Then again, Coey may have simply been following the dictates of fate. “I feel that I have found my historical role here,” he wrote, “and, once that is finished, I don’t know what I will do. . . .”

The anticipated moment came swiftly and unexpectedly. On July 19, 1975, as he was descending into a dry river bed in an attempt to aid two fallen Rhodesian Light Infantry troopers, Coey was struck and killed by terrorist bullets. One wonders if it can really be only a strange coincidence that he was hit in the head and in the heel? Whatever the case may be, his shining example of total selflessness stands in marked contrast to the widespread moral corruption of the modern military of his native United States, a military whose senior leaders obediently serve the alien and transnational forces that Coey believed he was fighting.

Though he is decades gone now, Coey’s timeless words continue to resonate. Yet it is fearful to think that they might outlast the civilization to which they immediately pertain, and perhaps might only serve as a warning to some future people:

“The basis of race, culture, and nation is vital for the survival of Western Civilization. Blood and soil, conservation and nationalism are what make a country and civilization sound, strong, and healthy. But faith is needed, faith in our way of life, our civilization, and faith in a Higher Destiny and the Divine Sanction of God….

“This generation of the West must believe when there is apparently no hope; it must obey, even if it means death; and it must fight to the end, rather than submit. Against the Spirit of Heroism no material force can prevail. Nothing can defeat that except inner decadence.”

Ultmately, Coey’s significance probably resides in whatever ability his memory has to inspire. As Dr. Anthony P. DiPerna, a professor of African history, observed in a letter to the Coey family: “I do not think John’s sacrifice was in vain. There are many episodes in history where those who gave their lives in a losing cause served as an inspiration to others who eventually carried the banner to victory.”

If Coey could join us today, he would not lose hope over the rapid deterioration of Western societies that has occurred in the decades since his death. He would doubtlessly implore us to redouble our efforts at self-preservation, however modest or even futile we may believe our individual contributions to be.

* * *

Reference:

Coey, John Alan. (1988). A Martyr Speaks: Journal of the late John Alan Coey.
CPA Books.

AS MAYOR Pam Powers approached the downtown exit she wondered again if the Sign Man lived in the two acres of woods that the off ramp curved around. As she inched along in the morning rush hour traffic she also wondered how many people in cars behind her and in front of her were thinking the same thing.

After she yielded to the right and was creeping into the dark, cool underpass she thought maybe when the weather was bad the Sign Man slept up there under the overpass. To Pam, this interchange was like the Sign Man’s home because almost every morning he would be at the off ramp, and almost every afternoon he would be at the on ramp.

She laughed at herself when she realized she was a little excited as she looked forward to seeing him. His signs were always close to the street and easy to see, but he was usually about twenty feet away, back by the fence that encircled another wooded area just after the underpass. His signs were Magic Marker on cardboard nailed to a board that was bolted upright in a five gallon plastic bucket. There was a chunk of concrete in the bottom of the bucket to keep the wind from blowing it over. She powered down the passenger window as she waited in line. The cars ahead of her would flash their brake lights and money would fly out the passenger windows into and all around the bucket.

Today his sign read CONTEMPLATING ETERNAL THEMES.

Finally her turn came. She threw a handful of change out the window, and looked over at him. He was sitting on the ground, leaning back against the fence with his boots flat and his forearms on his knees. His head was tilted back as he faced the sky, as if he were… contemplating eternal themes.

He had on his usual jeans, flannel shirt, and straw hat with green plastic in the front part of the visor. The sun, shining through the visor, created a soft band of green across the upper half of his face, and lit up the red and blond highlights in his beard and hair. She guessed he was about her age, thirty something, and not bad looking. His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, but after she threw the money she gave a little wave, and he gave a little wave back. She was smiling as she drove downtown.

All day in offices in the city, people looked for an opportunity to use it:

“What is Mr. Jones doing?”

“I don’t know, but it looks as if he’s contemplating eternal themes.”

“Are you busy?”

“No, I was just contemplating eternal themes.”

In just a few weeks the Sign Man had become a local celebrity of sorts. His first sign had read, THIS IS MY JOB!

In the days that followed he brightened everyone’s mornings with:

HOMELESS BY CHOICE … BUDDY CAN YOU SPARE A C-NOTE? … MIDGET RODEO … SWANKING AROUND THE OFFICE.

Soon a tipping point was reached with a sign that read HOMELESS ROADKILL. That day the Sign Man sprawled beside the road and lay there all day looking for all the world like… homeless roadkill. The most popular morning radio program informed everyone about the sign, and took calls from listeners who were fans of the homeless celebrity. The Sign Man was building a following, so of course one rush hour morning a city cop stopped beside the sign (DON’T GLUMP…), turned his flashing lights on, got out of the squad car, and started toward the Sign Man. He got about halfway when cars started slamming on brakes and bumping into one another. The cop turned around as the cars began their rear-end cascade, and when he looked back the Sign Man had slipped through the fence and disappeared into the woods.

Mayor Pam Powers liked the Sign Man from the first time she saw him; she thought he added a little local color to downtown. When she heard about the cop incident she called the Chief of Police and they had a private talk resulting in an understanding that the Sign Man would not be bothered again. The Sign Man had no way of knowing that the Mayor had stood up for him, but a few days later he put up a sign saying MAYOR PAM IS A HOTTIE. That weekend she tried a new, more flattering hair style. No one had ever called her a hottie. Yes, she liked the Sign Man.

One morning the sign was USED JEWELRY DROP OFF. This sign brought the usual looks and money, however that afternoon with the same sign, but beside the on ramp, was a different story. Women in their cars waiting in line could be seen removing earrings, ankle bracelets and assorted body jewelry. Gold chains draped the rim of the bucket; silver trinkets littered the ground around the bucket. People laughed at the loot and at themselves as the Sign Man sat by the fence reading a newspaper.

On Friday afternoon the sign was PARTY TIME, garnering horn tooting and hand waving. Monday morning brought YOU LOOK NICE TODAY. Later in the week saw THE 8 BALL SAYS, then PORTABLE GRAFFITI and FEARLESS OF ILLOGIC.

One morning commuters were told NEED MAGIC MARKERS. That afternoon the bucket was filled with pilfered magic markers of every color imaginable. The next morning workers were treated to a huge, multi-colored mural that looked like something Peter Max would do. Around the words THANK YOU were wingfooted messengers, rainbows, shooting stars; it was beautiful. Late that afternoon a silver-haired man in a new Lexus stopped, lowered his window, leaned over, and yelled, “I’ll give you twenty bucks for the sign.”

The Sign Man yelled back, “I’ll take a hundred.”

The art lover laughed, got out of his car, and walked around to the sign. He looked at the picture more closely, then pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and counted out five twenties. He held the money up and the Sign Man pointed to the bucket. The buyer laughed, shook his head, dropped the bills into the bucket, and carefully pulled the sign from the board.

One especially hot day the sign read SUNHAMMERED. That night on the local television news program the weather man used the word ‘sunhammered’ in the weather report. People who didn’t have to were taking the downtown exit so they could say they had seen the sign, and the man.

They were never disappointed: SLOW DOWN INSIDE … DISENTHRALLED … PLAY THRU IT … YOU CAN CHANGE THE WORLD … CLAWING MY WAY TO THE BOTTOM. One night the local television news feature “On The Scene” opened with a shot of the sign (CREATE A NO WAKE ZONE) with a female reporter standing beside it. She was all smiles as she explained, “We came down here to interview the Sign Man but it seems he would rather let his signs speak for him.” This was followed by a short video clip of the Sign Man looking over his shoulder at the camera as he slipped through the fence and disappeared into the woods. The reporter kindly voiced over with, “Maybe the story here is the messages – not the messenger.”

This was followed by a clip of signs that had been seen over the last several days: DONATE: YOU’LL FEEL BETTER … IN THE FULL GRIP OF… DON’T GET TETCHY… HIGHER ORDER ABERRATION… ARE YOU UNDERACCESSORIZED? … TREASUREABLY BAD …BUMPER STICKER PHILOSOPHY. His reluctance to be interviewed endeared him even more to many of the viewers.

The next morning the sign read, OHNE MICH, which is German for “leave me out.” Soon after that the Sign Man did something he had never done before. He posted a political message: NO $ FOR ISRAEL. The reaction of his fans ran from encouragement to disappointment; from thumbs up to middle finger up. There was elation, but also shock, confusion, and anger. It was all anyone wanted to talk about on talk radio.

The next morning there was no sign. But there was yellow crime scene tape, squad cars, and policemen everywhere. By noon everyone had heard: The Sign Man had been found at first light hanging by his neck from the overpass with his hands tied behind his back, beaten and bloody.

Mayor Pam took the afternoon off and went home. That night she called her father, Senator Powers, and told him the story.

Senator Powers was about to retire from public service after a long and distinguished career. He was one of the most popular and admired men in the country. A few days after talking to Pam, he stood in the Senate and delivered an iconoclastic speech. He started by saying, “Gentlemen, a few days ago a man was killed in my home town because he publicly stated that America should stop giving aid to Israel. Osama Bin Laden once publicly stated that the World Trade Center was destroyed because America supports Israel. Other terrorists around the world have stated that they hate America because we support Israel. Gentlemen, it doesn’t have to be this way…

“If America used the billions of dollars it now squanders to arm the world to instead implement a foreign policy based on benevolence rather than violence we could eventually bring peace to the world. America has the resources to go into any country that requested aid, and inventory what that country really needs; clean water, hospitals, roads, schools, whatever, and then just give it to them. No strings attached. No hypocritical demands that they become democracies, when half the countries in the UN are not democracies. No bullying about what kind of weapons they can or can not have, when Israel has more weapons of mass destruction than anyone except us. Unless we change the way we spend our ‘foreign aid,’ we shouldn’t be doing it at all.”

The members of the Senate were mesmerized when near the end of his speech he said, “The only way to accomplish a change of this magnitude is to first pass meaningful campaign reform legislation, with real teeth in it; reform that will make it impossible and illegal for any foreign lobby or multinational to buy or influence our legislators. We can do it, and when we do we will be on our way back to a government that truly represents the people, and not just the people with the most money. And we’ll put an end to innocent people being killed in America for expressing their opinion.”

As the audience rose to loudly applaud and cheer Senator Powers, the few Jewish senators, their underlings, and those known to be owned by the Jewish lobby, stood up and walked out.

On the one-year anniversary of the Sign Man’s death there was a ceremony at the underpass. The Sign Man’s identity had not been discovered, nor had the identity of whoever had killed him. The Department of Transportation had moved the fence back, and the City Parks Department had created a rugged little park where the Sign Man used to station himself. The right lane was blocked off for parking and the media were there.

Hundreds of downtown workers walked to the site at noon and listened as Mayor Pam said a few heartfelt words about the Sign Man, then introduced her father. Ex-Senator Powers was being courted by his party and the public to run for President since his moratorium on foreign aid had passed, but he didn’t mention that. He just said a few words about the power of the individual before unveiling the life-size bronze statue of the Sign Man.

The unveiling was met with applause and tears. On a slab of concrete two feet high and eight feet square, purposely left rough and unfinished, sat, literally, an exact replica of the now world famous Sign Man. The artist had created a backdrop with a curtain-like section of fence behind the statue, and had installed an old antique-looking street light off to one side. The Sign Man sat appearing to lean back against the fence with a rolled-up newspaper in one hand, his head tilted back as if looking heavenward. A crescent of green plexiglass had been worked into the brim of his hat, and a cool green band of light covered the top half of his face. The replica of his bucket was by the street, but instead of a cardboard sign there was now a brass plaque that read YOU CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.

Every morning people still stop, toss money at the bucket, and throw a little wave to the Sign Man.

by John Mitchell Henshaw

From the Spring, 1968 issue of The American Mercury. John Henshaw wrote this article shortly after Israel’s conquests in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

THE METAMORPHOSIS OF TINY Israel from a midget to a giant is in the making. The grand design of Judaic-Zionist expansionist doctrine is to seize all the oil-rich lands from the shores of the Euphrates to the banks of the Nile.

In defining the aims of Zionism, Hebrew scholar Levnoch Osman recently said: “In our eternal Book of Books (the Torah), the lofty ethical teachings of which are cherished by all mankind, the land of Israel is described not as a long, narrow strip of land with wavy, crooked borders, but as a state with broad natural borders. God has promised to Patriarch Abraham the following:

“I give unto them the land where they have sown their seed, from the river of Egypt unto the great river of Euphrates’ (Genesis 15:18). And so, in order to realize the words of this prophecy, the Israeli state had to continue, not in the borders it has today but within its broad historical boundaries.”

And as far back as 1952 Moshe Dayan, the present Israeli defense minister, declared:

“Our task consists of preparing the Israeli army for the new war approaching in order to achieve our ultimate goal, the creation of an Israeli empire.”

The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, who served as an adviser on Near Eastern affairs to the British delegation at the Versailles Conference, in a newspaper article published in June last year stated the Zionist aims in these words:

We are Jews, the living representatives of Judah, one of the 12 tribes of Israel that conquered most of Palestine in the 13^th century B.C. We held Judah’s share of the conquered territory for seven centuries, till we were deported by Nebuchadnezzer in 587 B.C. We were back again within less than half a century, and we then held Judea, once more, for the next 773 years, till we were evicted by the Romans in A.D. 135. We have never renounced our claim to the land of Israel. We have always hoped, believed, and proclaimed that we shall get this land back again. It is our land, we contend.

After another 1,883 years we did recover a foothold there in 1918, and during the half-century since then, by devoted hard work, ability and military valor, we have built up our present national State of Israel, and have inflicted three smashing defeats on the Arabs, who have been trying to evict us again.

We want to have a country of our own again, like other peoples and like our own ancestors. We also need to have a country of our own, because, since the conversion of the Roman empire to Christianity in the fourth century A.D., we have been penalized and persecuted by the Western Christian majority among whom we have had to live.

The persecution has culminated in the unprecedented crime of genocide, which has been committed against us in our lifetime by a Western people, the Germans, in Europe. We are not going to let the Arabs commit the same crime of genocide against us here, in our own land of Israel.

Genocide in Six-day War

Apologist Toynbee omitted mentioning the fact that the Jews themselves are currently engaged in genocide. During the Six-Day War last summer, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered Brig. Gen. Yesha’ahu Gavish, the Israeli commander of the Sinai campaign, to ruthlessly drive the hapless Egyptian troops into the Sinai Desert to die of thirst, hunger and heat. Temperature on the arid Sinai rise to more than 100 degrees during the day. For over two weeks thousands of wretched Egyptian stragglers wandered over the swirling wastes finally drop dead in their tracks.

U.S. reconnaissance planes flying on the perimeter of the Sinai Desert took hundreds of pictures of the stragglers and reported there were 50,000 Egyptians dead or dying on the desert at the time. The U.S. Air Force loaded 60,000 gallons of water in five-gallon jerry-cans on pallets and prepared to drop them in the area where stragglers were observed. However, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ordered the projected mission of mercy halted after he received phone calls from White House foreign policy-planner Walt Rostow and UN Ambassador Arthur Goldberg.

This flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war amounted to genocide, designed to destroy a whole nation.

Newspaper reporters visiting the war zones in Syria and Jordan, reported that if one sniper in a village fired on Israeli troops, the whole village was destroyed including the women and children. Napalm is frequently used.

This systematic extermination is an ideological doctrine of Zionism. The leading exponent of genocide is the chauvinist Moshe Dayan, whom the Zionists have proclaimed a Biblical “messiah” on a white horse. Arrogant, boastful Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, chief of the Israeli General Staff, who plotted and executed the Six-Day blitzkrieg last June, is in direct charge of the projected expansionist program from the Euphrates to the Nile.

The scope of this ambitious scheme of territorial seizures and exploitation has been recognized by at least a few of our American military strategists for years. This writer recalls that a dozen years ago an Army lieutenant colonel, who was a student at the War College, confined that some of his instructors believed the Zionist expansionist policy would provide the spark to ignite World War III.

(Incidentally, the then lieutenant colonel is now one of the top commanding generals in Vietnam.)

By guile, treachery and bloodletting, the Zionists plot to annex all of Jordan, virtually all of Syria, half of Iraq and a large part of Saudi Arabia and all of the rich cotton lands of the Nile Valley. It would be a simpler matter then to grab Yemen, Aden, Muscat, Qatar and Oman with their rich oil development. Israel is already well advanced in the development of its first nuclear warhead.

According to the Zionists’ schedule of operations, within a decade the Israeli empire be the master of the Middle East and take its place as a nuclear superpower on equal footing with the Soviet Union and the United States. David Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company will pay its royalties to the Israeli military usurpers instead of the Arab sheiks.

Fabulous Oil Reserves

The stakes are high in this traditionally British-protected region. The Persian Gulf and adjacent countries hold 70 percent of the non-communist world’s oil reserves and produce half of its oil output. British withdrawal from Aden creates a power vacuum that will inevitably be filled by Israel and the Soviet Union.

The British have expressed the pious hope that their withdrawal would galvanize the Arab rulers into dropping their feuds and really unite in a mutual defense pact. However, the spreading oil boom is intensifying the territorial ambitions of rival kingdoms, sultanates and sheikdoms. Iran is selling oil to Israel, another aggravating factor in Mideast tensions.

Like the tentacles of an octopus the Israeli armed forces struck out in all directions into Jordan, Syria and Egypt in Israel’s Six-Day aggression last June. Even when encountering no resistance, the Israeli armored forces abruptly halted at predetermined strategic terrain points; they had accomplished their mission in the first phase of the Zionist Grand Design of imperialistic conquest. It was time to stop and consolidate their gains rather than risk spreading their forces too thin.

Israeli leader Menachem Begin says:

“The return of even one bit of earth to the Arab would be a betrayal of the nation.”

The grandiose idea of an Israeli empire controlling the Middle East is now for the first time arousing great popular enthusiasm among Jews everywhere in the world.

Officially Israel is continuing the pretense of keeping the door open to negotiations that might result in return of the conquered territory, in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel and a peace treaty.

Jordan’s King Hussein has reportedly already made a secret and desperate offer to Israel: In exchange for the return of the West Bank of the Jordan River, Hussein agreed to demilitarize it, negotiate border adjustments and even waive his insistence upon regaining the Old City of Jerusalem. Israel rejected the offer. Israeli Minister of Labor Yigal Allon bluntly stated:

“The natural border of the country is the Jordan River — a border that would be established only if Israel kept the West Bank areas it took from Jordan.”

Gen. Aluf Ezer Weizmann, second highest-ranking officer in the Israeli army, is even more adamant: “We shall stay where we are and bring in Jews. We now have the unusual opportunity to consolidate the state for the Jewish people and help prevent future wars.”

“If there is a fourth war,” Defense Minister Moshe Dayan gloats, “we are in a position to win more decisively than ever.”

And he warned that in the “fourth war” the great cities of Cairo, Damascus and Amman will be annihilated. This is in conformity with the genocidal plan.

Eretz Israel

Israelis bitterly complain that along with the occupied territory that is three times the size of Israel, they have inherited its population of 1,330,000 Arabs.

Aliyah — voluntary relocation to Israel — has been a flop as far as Western Jews are concerned — few of them want to go to the Holy Land of their forefathers. The majority of Jews now in Israel are from Asia and Africa.

The System of government in Israel is a mixture of theocracy and gerontocracy. Full citizenship requires membership in the Jewish religion and Jewish ancestry. Israeli authorities refuse to accept Arabs or “Gentiles” (non-Jews) as full citizens with equal civil, political, and economic rights. Militant Zionists frankly admit that Israel and neighboring Arab nations cannot coexist. They claim that the incompatibility is due to ideological fanaticism. However, the Arab oil lands are fabulously rich.

“We must take steps leading to a long-range consolidation, lest we be considered a temporary, transient factor in the occupied areas,” declares Israel Galili, minister without portfolio in the Israeli Cabinet.

The Zionists have invented the term “coercive noninterference” in explaining how they force the subjugated Arabs to cooperate with their conquerors. When the mayor of Nablus announced that he would resign rather than front for the Jews, the Israeli military officers told him that no one would be appointed to replace him, which would result in utter chaos. They mayor had second thoughts, stayed and obeyed the Jewish military commanders. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

Arabs Fear Genocide

“The Middle East today is dominated by raw, naked, savage, animal fear. The Arab nations are driven by the fear of mass death, by the fear of Israel’s genocidal intentions toward them. Israel, by bringing in immigrants from all over the world, has upset the demographic balance of the Middle East.

“The first basic fact about populations is that they multiply. They population of Israel is increasing, and the populations of the Arab nations are increasing. In the conflict between populations, either Arabs or Jews must someday end up being driven into arid desert wastes which will not support them, where they will find relief only in the oblivion of death. Israel means to kill the Arab populations and to occupy their lands. The Arabs, driven by fear of death, react powerfully. They seek the protection of a powerful nation, Russia, to which they will become tributary in return for protection…

“For the free world, this is a practically irretrievable disaster,” says Benjamin H. Freedman.

We might well rationalize all this as strictly none of our business except that hundred of millions of American foreign aid dollars are being spent for the enrichment of the international Zionist network extending from Tel Aviv to Paris, London and New York. The Israelis are already pumping oil from Egyptian wells and splitting the profits with Rockefeller’s Standard Oil combine. This is only the prelude.

Now for the first time Soviet Russia is successfully penetrating the oil-rich Mideast countries. The Russians have made agreements to explore for oil in Iraq, Iran and Egypt. They have extended bids for cooperative ventures to Algeria, Syria and Kuwait. The agreement with Iraq provides for development of oil reserves in an area taken away from Western companies.

Most of the Arab oil countries are starting oil firms to give them a stronger hold on their petroleum reserves and a bigger percentage of profits. They have also recently hiked their royalties they get from the big Anglo-American oil firms.

The Soviets furnish the technical know-how to the Arab oil industry and work out world marketing agreements with the Arab rulers. The Soviet naval fleet is standing in the Mediterranean. The Kremlin has launched an aggressive campaign to establish a protectorate over the Mideast oil lands. Russia finally has a firm grip on Egypt. Syria is now totally dependent on Soviet weapons and the protective arm of Moscow. The Soviets have a facility in Latakia.

Yemen is receiving Soviet arms, Russian advisers are training its army, and Soviet armed forces are establishing base facilities in Yemen. After all the millions the U.S. gave Iran in foreign aid, the ungrateful Shah (who has $300 million stashed away in Swiss banks) is cooperating with the Soviets in construction of a natural gas pipeline that would feed Iranian gas to parts of Russia not easily served by Russian gas.

The sub-rosa partnership between Zionism and communism is still a fact. As Israel drives the Arabs into the arms of the Kremlin, Israel expands, fulfilling a grand design and an aggressive plan agreed upon years ago. And like the Arabs, Americans are helpless victims in this international crime.

The late John Henshaw was at one time chief “legman” for columnist Drew Pearson. He broke with Pearson after discovering that his own expenses were being paid by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a lobby for Israel, which had a “special relationship” with Pearson. Mr. Henshaw has seen Zionist power from both sides.

by Neve Gordon

Neve Gordon looks at how an evangelical Christian TV channel with a viewership of nearly half a billion people, including 20 million in the USA and 14 million in Britain, is funding a project to ethnically cleanse Israel’s Bedouin citizens from their ancestral land.

DESPITE THE FACT that it was the seventh demolition since last July, this time the destruction of the Bedouin village of Al-Arakib in the Israeli Negev was different. The difference is not because the homeless residents had to deal this time with the harsh desert winter; nor in the fact that the bulldozers began razing the homes just minutes before the 40 children left for school, thus engraving another violent scene in their memory. Rather, the demolition was different because this time Christian evangelists from the United States and England were involved.

I know this for a fact because right next to the demolished homes, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) put up a big sign that reads: “GOD-TV FOREST, a generous donation by God-TV made 1,000,000 tree saplings available to be planted in the land of Israel and also provided for the creation of water projects throughout the Negev.” GOD-TV justifies this contribution by citing the book of Isaiah: “I will turn the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into springs.”

The JNF’s objective, however, is not altruistic, but rather to plant a pine or eucalyptus forest on the desert land so that the Bedouins cannot return to their ancestral homes. The practice of planting forests in an attempt to Judaize more territory is by no means new. Right after Israel’s establishment in 1948, the JNF planted millions of trees to cover up the remains of Palestinian villages that had been destroyed during or after the war. The objective was to help ensure that the 750,000 Palestinian residents who either fled or were expelled during the war would never return to their villages and to suppress the fact that they had been the rightful owners of the land before the State of Israel was created. Scores of Palestinian villages disappeared from the landscape in this way, and the grounds were converted into picnic parks, thus helping engender a national amnesia regarding the Palestinian Nakba.

For several years, I thought this practice had been discontinued, but thanks to the JNF’s new bedfellows and the generous donation of Rory and Wendy Alec, who established the international evangelical television channel GOD-TV, within the next few months a million saplings will be planted on land belonging to uprooted Bedouins.

God-TV can afford such lavish gifts, since it boasts a viewership of nearly half a billion people, with 20 million in the United States and 14 million in Britain. The television channel regularly features evangelical leaders such as Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and John Hagee, at least some of whom espouse Christian Dispensationalism and believe that all Jews must convert to Christianity before the “Second Coming”.

The viewers are asked to open their wallets in order to “sow a seed for God”. In this case, the donations seem to have actually been allocated toward sowing seeds, but these seeds are ones of hate and strife. They are antithetical to Isaiah’s prophecy about the people beating their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Indeed, if Isaiah were alive today, he would probably be among the first to lie in front of the bulldozers in an effort to stop the destruction of the Bedouin homes.

Read the source article at Redress

by Malcolm P. Shiel

HELEN THOMAS is a veteran White House reporter who has been asking penetrating questions of every U.S. president since John F. Kennedy. She recently asked her first question to Barack Obama, and boy did it make him squirm and prevaricate. He never did answer it. It was a simple question. It could have been answered with one word. Helen Thomas knew the answer. Obama knew the answer. And Obama  knew Helen Thomas knew the answer. But the answer “could not be spoken,” and it wasn’t. The question was “Do you know of any country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons?”

See the video below:

A review of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine by Joel Kovel (pictured) (2007), Pluto Press, ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2570 5, Paperback $20.48 at Amazon.com

AMAZON.COM likes to tell its book-buying customers which books other customers also bought who purchased the same book, and I typically glance at this unsolicited information with bemused detachment (Oh really? But do they have my taste, interest and background?) but occasionally, when the subject matter is particularly controversial or arcane, with piqued interest (Well, maybe there is some great book on this subject that these other folks know about that I am missing out on!). One book that caught my attention this way is Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine by Joel Kovel. I didn’t know Joel Kovel from Adam when I ordered this book on a whim, but I have a keen interest in the single-state solution to the problem of Zionism, and so the way he worded his title caught my interest. I duly ordered it, expecting it to contain an apology for a single democratic state in Palestine, one that might fortify my own view and give me new ammunition to use against skeptics, and die-hard two-staters.

That old saw that you can’t judge a book by its cover (or its subtitle) certainly held true for this one: Of course, the author does unequivocally advocate a single democratic state of all its citizens for Palestine/Israel (“Palesreal” as he provisionally refers to it, but I personally prefer how some wags dub it: “Palestein,” which makes me laugh out loud.) But very little of his book is really about that. When I first began reading it, I quickly began to suspect that it was little more than an autobiographical account, yet another Jewish apology for Jewishness with lip-service criticism of Israeli behavior — my critical cockles were fully raised.

But I could not have been more mistaken: Never in my life have I read such a disarming book! Thanks to it, my seasoned distrust of so-called progressive Jewish intellectuals (who always seem to turn out to have a soft spot for racist Israel) has been resolved, for here, in this man and in this book, I have encountered the 21st century reincarnation of Israel Shahak, that first great (Jewish) writer to expose from within the perfidy and counterfeit nature of Zionist Israel, and its relation to Judaism and to a very checkered Jewish history. Joel Kovel takes up where that late, great scholar left off, but interestingly, while he holds absolutely no quarter for Zionism, he does lead the reader to a reasonably sympathetic understanding of how this pernicious ideology could have developed in the first place. This ability to appreciate Zionism from the inside out is invaluable in enabling us to learn how this pernicious belief system can be dismantled, and this, of course, is the author’s ultimate and unstinting purpose.

A more accurate title for this book might be “The Psychopathology of Zionism.” In the bulk of its 299 pages, Kovel meticulously deconstructs Zionism’s deranged psychology, and the reader very soon appreciates that this author’s long years of education in psychiatry and psychoanalysis were not spent in vain. Successfully dealing professionally with the mentally disordered prepared him, in a way no other profession could have, to analyze that sickest puppy of all: Judeo-Zionism. In his comprehensive deconstruction of this world menace, Kovel pulls no punches. Unlike many non-Jewish writers who tiptoe around some of the landmines that are sure to explode into charges of “anti-Semitism” against those who take things too far for the ADL-types (and the many publishers who censor in fear of them), this author does not pussyfoot around anything, and his straightforward, candid recounting of Jewish history, warts and all, and of Zionist perfidy, are as refreshing as they are rare in Jewish (or any other) authors.

But how did Jewish Joel Kovel slip through the fine sieve of Zionist indoctrination? Don’t all Jews imbibe it with their mother’s milk? Well, this particular Jewish lad seems to have had a “wet nurse” in the person of his Aunt Betty, who had rejected Judaism at an early age, so completely that she left strict orders not to be given a Jewish funeral, to the great consternation of her kin. She turns out to have been the significant other in his life, and her death during his formative years snapped the last thread of his already tenuous identification with Judaism.

His father was a wing nut — “almost a fascist” — who opposed Zionism “for all the wrong reasons.” He was a dyed-in-the-wool, all-American Cold Warrior, you see, so the socialist veneer of Zionism (which was not so clearly understood as mere window dressing in its earlier days) incensed him. So of these two significant others, both of whom were extremely strong-willed and unafraid to hold unpopular opinions, his male role model was rooted in America, not Israel, while his significant-other female had rejected the family religion. The budding Joel Kovel took the best of both worlds and in turn rejected both Judaism and Zionism (the latter for reasons opposite to those of his father: because Zionist particularism trashes socialist universalism, and because the grafting of Zionism to capitalist imperialism made it antithetical to the project of socialist liberation from this war-mongering death phase of capitalism).

Now, I realize that this last statement is not going to sit well with every potential reader of Overcoming Zionism, and so, while I cannot sing the praises of this book loudly enough, I also need to add that it is not for everyone. Do not order this book for that right-winger on your Christmas list… get him Jeff Gates’ Guilt by Association instead. But, for anyone to the left of, say, Barack Obama; for that progressive anti-war friend of yours who circumlocutes whenever you bring up the subject of Israel; and most importantly, for that Jewish acquaintance who thinks that Israel can do no wrong (or better yet, who has intimated a few unsettling doubts s/he has about Israel) — this book is tailor-made. To the progressive it demonstrates conclusively that Israel is a willing partner in the very imperialism s/he anathematizes… to the Zionist-oriented Jew it shows him how deep is the hole that has been historically dug for Jews by Israel, and convinces him that there is no way out of it except to reject Zionism root and branch. “The overcoming of Zionism is its dissolution.”

Here is a sampler of some of the more valuable insights I gained from this masterful work :

“Nationalism is bad enough, but it can be sublimated through devices like the World Cup. Nationalism by divine decree — whether Judaic, Islamic, Christian or Hindu — and exercised with state power, is a living nightmare.” (p. 6)

“For the Orthodox nationalist, G-d’s will trumps Man’s conscience. This lifts the burden of guilt, or more often, keeps it from arising in the first place. The land is ours because G-d said so: all is justified; case closed. The codicil attached to this is barely stressed though it is strenuously lived out: that the fact of ‘G-d telling us so’ means in practice the submission to Rabbi this or that telling us so on the authority of the Halakhah [the entire body of Jewish laws and traditions]. These Jews wish to live like their medieval forebears, in rabbinically supervised communities within a larger state — which, as it turns out, finds them very convenient for its purposes.

“This is an escape without transcendence, even if one is never going to convince a religious nationalist, engorged with the feeling of spiritual power, of the fact. Escaping the onerous strictures of bad conscience is to remove the restraints upon the will except for those legislated from within the tribe through its rabbinical chiefs. It is to set up a downhill path at the end of which stand Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein. For such people, conscience is directly turned into enmity, and its judgmental quality turns into paranoia.” (pp. 180-181) [The foregoing calls to mind that title of Erich Fromm’s famous study of the last generation: Escape from Freedom. Indeed, it seems to be Kovel’s subtext that Zionism represents exactly the Jewish rejection of Enlightenment values, together with the emancipation of Jews that they engendered.]

“All human beings are equivalently unique; and anybody who fancies himself chosen by God is by that measure fallen. It is impossible to ground the notion of exceptionalism in any spiritual value inasmuch as the ground of spiritual value is the universality of our being within nature….

“The finer minds of the [Jewish] faith have sought to inflect the Covenant so that it means that Jews are obliged to develop themselves spiritually and ethically. Well and good, but at some point this higher development has to lead to a jettisoning of the Covenant itself. For once it is fulfilled, the sense of specialness can no longer be maintained without corrupting the Jewish faith.” (pp. 200-201) [Here as elsewhere in his book Kovel seems not far from Christian catholic thinking.]

“Justice is grounded in truth, and truth inheres in the whole of things, which is not a homogeneous totality but the contradictory, dialectically moving ensemble of the real. There is therefore no single truth, but there are greater and lesser truths. The obligation for people of good will is to find the greater truth and to speak it to the power that would suppress it. And one of the greater truths is that there is such a power. For present purposes we may locate its surface in the tentacular Zionist lobby, extending from the upper echelons of the American and Israeli security apparatuses through the chambers of civil society. It follows that every particle of truth about Israeli violations of human rights should also be an exposure of the Zionist lobby. Every truth about Israel needs to be an exposure of the lie that keeps pumping up the leaky gas bag of its legitimacy.

“The Lobby intimidates, especially in the United States whose transformation must therefore be a goal of anti-Zionist politics. But once exposed, it can be confronted. Telling the truth about the Lobby is not mere recitation; it should be a guide, rather, to bringing down its corrupt and illegitimate power. We need a campaign to force the Lobby to register as an agent of a foreign power; and another to build data banks to expose those who collaborate with it; and to eliminate the special privileges enjoyed by Israel as tax breaks, technology transfers, indeed, the whole grotesque edifice of handouts, loan guarantees, technologies of death, and the like, which burden US taxpayers while bringing endless misery and destruction to Palestine and Lebanon; and to protest Israel’s nuclear arsenal and bring it under international control; and to keep bringing suits for violation of human rights against the likes of Avi Dichter and Moshe Ya’alon; and to insist that the media carry alternative views, and to build alternative media that do; and to expose the Israeli ‘spies’ who clustered around the events of September 11, and to re-open investigation into the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967.” (pp. 232-233) [Here we see how neatly Kovel’s Overcoming Zionism and Gates’ Guilt by Association , both anti-Zionist classics in their own time, reflect one another in their perspective, approach and conclusions, while the latter approaches the question of the Israeli-Zionist threat to America from the purely socio-political angle, while the former stays focused on its moral and psychopathological aspects: each is first an exposé and then a battle plan, like two valiant armies trapping the common enemy in a pincers movement; both might be said to be arguing that when it comes to anti-Zionism, faith without works is dead.]

Lest anyone should think that the ever-vigilant Zionist watchdogs gave the good professor a free pass for his trenchant criticism of their pathological belief system, rest assured that he has paid his dues: Just as Norman Finkelstein (author of The Holocaust Industry) was railroaded out of his academic position (even more incongruously by a Catholic university) for his anti-Zionist views, Joel Kovel lost his special professorship at Bard College, he reports, as a direct result of his anti-Zionist activism and publications. The decision to remove him was made by the College’s president, Leon Botstein, director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra since 2003, and by others with clear conflicts of interest. Those interested in the sordid details of Professor Kovel’s forced retirement can read the details on his Web site: http://www.joelkovel.org/archives.html

In the end, what must be said of Joel Kovel is that he is the real McCoy …a true mensch. This Yiddish term, connoting decency, uprightness, fortitude and firmness of purpose, has almost lost all reference to real individuals in modern times, but Joel Kovel has solidly demonstrated that this is not an archaic concept… there is at least one Jew today who deserves the sobriquet. Get this book and see for yourself!

China’s position on Iran has become a concern to pro-Israel elements in the U.S. government, while Russia has recently made some concessions to those same elements, who, through government spokesmen, say they are “pressing for swift, bold sanctions.” Critics claim that an alliance of Zionists and neoconservatives actually want war with Iran, with sanctions merely being a first step.

China did agree to to negotiate with other U.N. member states on possible sanctions against the Islamic Republic, but its skepticism of the whole process underlies the Chinese call for “a diplomatic solution.” China also insisted that any sanctions that hurt trade or the Iranian people would be unacceptable.

“The Chinese are obviously concerned about what ramifications this might have on the economy generally,” President Barack Obama stated yesterday.

Although under pressure to produce proof of an Iranian “nuclear threat,” even the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies admit that Iran is currently incapable of producing a single nuclear weapon, whereas Israel and Pakistan — among other conflict-ridden and unstable states — possess many atomic warheads, with the capability of making thousands more. There is no push by the U.S. or its clients for sanctions against Pakistan or Israel — or any other nuclear state.

Although it has received little publicity in the U.S. corporate media (an omission which we at the American Mercury aim to correct), Washington is threatening unilateral sanctions not only on Iran, but on any supplier of fuel to Iran. This has had the effect of causing many countries and oil companies to severely cut back on shipments to Iran to pre-empt any hostile actions by Washington.

But state-run ChinaOil remains firm, and will be shipping 600,000 barrels of gasoline to Iran immediately, according to market observers.

Iran, one of the world’s largest producers of crude petroleum, has become a net importer of gasoline because U.S. sanctions have caused financial and other difficulties in constructing refineries.

www.opinion-maker.org

WHO SAYS al-Qaeda takes credit for a bombing? Rita Katz. Who gets us bin Laden tapes? Rita Katz. Who gets us pretty much all information telling us Muslims are bad? Rita Katz? Rita Katz is the Director of Site Intelligence, the primary source for intelligence used by news services, Homeland Security, the FBI and CIA. What is her qualification? She served in the Israeli Defense Force. She has a college degree and most investigative journalists believe the Mossad “helps” her with her information. We find no evidence of any qualification whatsoever of any kind. A bartender has more intelligence gathering experience.

Nobody verifies her claims. SITE says Al Qaeda did it, it hits the papers. SITE says Israel didn’t do it, that hits the papers too. What does SITE really do? They check the Internet for “information,” almost invariably information that Israel wants reported, and it is sold as news, seen on American TV, reported in our papers and passed around the Internet almost as though it were actually true. Amazing.

Do we know if the information reported comes from a teenager in Seattle or a terror cell in Jakarta? No, of course not; we don’t have a clue. Can you imagine buying information on Islamic terrorism from an Israeli whose father was executed as a spy by Arabs?

It is quite likely that everything you think you know about terror attacks such as the one in Detroit or whether Osama bin Laden is alive or dead comes from Rita Katz. Does she make it all up? We don’t know, nobody knows, nobody checks, they simply buy it, print it, say it comes from Site Intelligence and simply forget to tell us that this is not only a highly biased organization but also an extremely amateur one.

Is any of this Rita’s fault? No. She is, herself, selling her work. The blame does not belong to Site Intelligence, it belongs to the people who pass on the information under misleading circumstances.

Imagine if a paper carried a story like this: Reports that Al Qaeda was responsible for bombing the mosque and train station were given to us by an Israeli woman who says she found it on the Internet.

This is fair. Everyone should be able to earn a living and information that comes from Israel could be without bias but the chances aren’t very good. In fact, any news organization, and most use this service, that fails to indicate that the sources they use are “rumored” to be a foreign intelligence service with a long history of lying beyond human measure, is not to be taken seriously.

Can we prove that SITE Intelligence is the Mossad? No. Would a reasonable person assume it is? Yes.

Would a reasonable person believe anything from this source involving Islam or the Middle East? No, they would not.

SITE’s primary claim to fame other than bin Laden videos with odd technical faults is their close relationship with Blackwater. Blackwater has found SITE useful. Blackwater no longer exists, as they had to change their name because of utter lack of credibility.

What can be learned by examining where our news comes from? Perhaps we could start by being realistic and begin seeing much of our own “news” for the childish propaganda it really is.

Propaganda does two things: 1. It makes up phony reasons to justify acts of barbaric cruelty or insane greed. 2. It blames people for things they didn’t do because the people doing the blaming really did it themselves. We call these things “false flag/USS Liberty” incidents.

Next time you see dancing Palestinians and someone tells you they are celebrating a terror attack, it is more likely they are attending a birthday party. This is what we have learned. Perhaps this is what we had best remember.

From an AFP article on Site Intelligence:

Rita Katz and S.I.T.E. are set to release yet another “al-Qaeda” tape

WASHINGTON (AFP) The head of the Al-Qaeda network Osama bin Laden is expected to release a taped message on Iraq, a group monitoring extremist online forums said Thursday. The 56-minute tape by the hunted militant is addressed to Iraq and an extremist organization based there, the Islamic State of Iraq, said the US-based SITE monitoring institute, citing announcements on “jihadist forums.”

It said the release was “impending” but did not say whether the message was an audio or video tape. Despite a massive manhunt and a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head, he has evaded capture and has regularly taunted the United States and its allies through warnings issued on video and audio cassettes.

Source: ME Times

Despite a massive manhunt by the world’s intelligence agencies, bin Laden seems to evade their combined efforts, staying on the run. But he still has time to drop into his recording studio and cook up a fresh tape for the likes of Rita Katz and her outfit called SITE. SITE is staffed by two people, Katz and a Josh Devon.

Yet these two individuals manage to do what the ENTIRE combined assets of the world’s Western intelligence can’t: be the first to obtain fresh video and audio tapes from al-Qaeda with Bin Laden making threats and issuing various other comments. If BL appears a bit “stiff” in the latest release, that’s because he is real stiff, as in dead.

How is it that a Jewish-owned group like SITE can outperform the world’s best and brightest in the intelligence field and be the first to know that a group like al-Qaeda is getting ready to release another tape?

How is it possible that Rita Katz and SITE. can work this magic? Maybe looking at Katz’s background will help:

Rita Katz is Director and co-founder of the SITE Institute. Born in Iraq, her father was tried and executed as an Israeli spy, whereupon her family moved to Israel [the move has been described as both an escape and an emigration in different sources]. She received a degree from the Middle Eastern Studies program at Tel Aviv University, and is fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. She emigrated to the US in 1997.

Katz was called as a witness in the trial, but the government didn’t claim she was a terrorism expert. During the trial it was discovered that Katz herself had worked in violation of her visa agreement when she first arrived in America in 1997.

She also admitted to receiving more than $130,000 for her work as an FBI consultant on the case.

LAST WEEK a colleague who has been facing repeated and unfair attacks in the media and the blogosphere (for making arguments that cut against the conventional wisdom) sent around an email asking a number of friends and associates (including me) for advice on how to deal with the attacks. Having been smeared in similar fashion myself, I circulated a list of the lessons I learned from my own experience with “grabbing the third rail.” A few of the recipients thought the list was helpful, so I decided to revise it and post it here. If any readers are contemplating tackling a controversial subject — and I hope some of you will — you’ll need to be ready should opponents decide not to address your arguments in a rational fashion, but to attack your character, misrepresent your position, and impugn your motives instead. If they take the low road, here are ten guidelines for dealing with it. (The advice itself is politically neutral: it applies regardless of the issue in question and no matter which side you’re on.)

1. Think Through Your “Media Strategy” before You Go Public. If you are an academic taking on a “third rail” issue for the first time, you are likely to face a level of public and media scrutiny that you have never experienced before. It is therefore a good idea to think through your basic approach to the media before the firestorm hits. Are you willing to go on TV or radio to defend your views? Are there media outlets that you hope to cultivate, as well as some you should avoid?

Are you open to public debate on the issue, and if so, with whom? Do you plan a “full-court” media blitz to advance your position (an article, a book, a lecture tour, a set of op-eds, etc.), or do you intend to confine yourself to purely academic outlets and let the pundits take it from there? There is no right answer to these questions, of course, and how you answer them depends in good part on your own proclivities and those of your opponents. But planning ahead will leave you better prepared when the phone starts ringing off the hook and there’s a reporter — or even someone like Bill O’Reilly or Jon Stewart — on the other end. Don’t be afraid to listen to professional advice here (such as the media office at your university or research organization), especially if it’s your first time in the shark tank. It’s also a good idea to let your superiors know what’s coming; deans, center directors, and college presidents don’t like surprises.

2. You Have Less Control Than You Think. Although it helps to have thought about your strategy beforehand, there will always be surprises and you will have to think on your feet and improvise wisely. Sometimes real-world events will vindicate your position and enhance your credibility (as the 2006 Lebanon War did for my co-author and myself), but at other times you may have to explain why events aren’t conforming to your position. A vicious attack may arrive from an unexpected source and leave you reeling, or you may get an unsolicited endorsement that validates your views. Bottom line: life is full of surprises, so be ready to roll with the punches and seize the opportunities.

3. Never Get Mad. Let your critics throw the mud, but you should always stick to the facts, especially when they are on your side. In my own case, many of the people who attacked me and my co-author proved to be unwitting allies, because they lost their cool in public or in print, made wild charges and ad hominem arguments, and generally acted in a transparently mean-spirited manner. It always works to your advantage when opponents act in an uncivil fashion, because it causes almost everyone else to swing your way

Of course, it can be infuriating when critics misrepresent your work, and nobody likes to have malicious falsehoods broadcast about them. But the fact that someone is making false charges against you does not mean that others are persuaded by the malicious rhetoric. Most people are quite adept at separating facts from lies, and that is especially true when the charges are over-the-top. In short, the more ludicrous the charges, the more critics undermine their own case. So stick to the high ground; the view is nicer up there.

4. Don’t Respond to Every Single Attack. A well-organized smear campaign will try to bury you in an avalanche flurry of bogus charges, many of which are simply not worth answering. It is easier for opponents to dream up false charges than it is for you to refute each one, and you will exhaust yourself rebutting every critical word directed at you. So focus mainly on answering the more intelligent criticisms while ignoring the more outrageous ones, which you should treat with the contempt they deserve. Finally, make sure every one of your answers is measured and filled with the relevant facts. Do not engage in ad hominem attacks of any sort, no matter how tempting it may be to hit back.

5. Explain to Your Audience What Is Going On. When refuting bogus charges, make it clear to readers or viewers why your opponents are attacking you in underhanded ways. When you are the object of a politically motivated smear campaign, others need to understand that your critics are not objective referees offering disinterested commentary. Be sure to raise the obvious question: why are your opponents using smear tactics like guilt-by-association and name-calling to shut down genuine debate or discredit your views? Why are they unwilling to engage in a calm and rational exchange of ideas? Let others know that it is probably because your critics are aware that you have valid points to make and that many people will find your views persuasive if they get a chance to judge them for themselves.

6. The More Compelling Your Arguments Are, The Nastier the Attacks Will Be. If critics can refute your evidence or your logic, then that’s what they will do and it will be very effective. However, if you have made a powerful case and there aren’t any obvious weaknesses in it, your adversaries are likely to misrepresent what you have said and throw lots of mud at you. What else are they going to do when the evidence is against them?

This kind of behavior contrasts sharply with what one is accustomed to in academia, where well-crafted arguments are usually treated with respect, even by those who disagree with them. In the academic world, the better your arguments are, the more likely it is that critics will deal with them fairly. But if you are in a very public spat about a controversial issue like gay marriage or abortion or gun control, a solid and well-documented argument will probably attract more scurrilous attacks than a flimsy argument that is easily refuted. So be prepared.

7. You Need Allies. Anyone engaged on a controversial issue needs allies on both the professional and personal fronts. When the smearing starts, it is of enormous value to have friends and associates publicly stand up and defend you and your work. At the same time, support from colleagues, friends, and family is critical to maintaining one’s morale. Facing a seemingly endless barrage of personal attacks as well as hostile and unfair criticisms of one’s work can be exhausting and dispiriting, which is why you need others to stand behind you when the going gets tough. That does not mean you just want mindless cheerleaders, of course; sometimes allies help us the most when they warn us we are heading off course.

One more thing: if you’re taking one a powerful set of opponents, don’t be surprised or disappointed when people tell you privately that that they agree with you and admire what you are doing, but never say so publicly. Be realistic; even basically good people are reluctant to take on powerful individuals or institutions, especially when they might pay a price for doing so.

8. Be Willing to Admit When You’re Wrong, But Don’t Adopt a Defensive Crouch. Nobody writing on a controversial and contested subject is infallible, and you’re bound to make a mistake or two along the way. There’s no harm in admitting to errors when they occur; indeed, harm is done when you make a mistake and then try to deny it. More generally, however, it makes good sense to make your case assertively and not shy away from engaging your critics. In short, the best defense is a smart offense, even when you are acknowledging errors or offering a correction. For illustrations of how my co-author and I tried to do this, see here: http://hbpub.vo.llnwd.net/o16/video/olmk/setting_the_record_straight.pdf , and here http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a908660944&db=all , and here http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0047.pdf.

9. Challenging Orthodoxy Is a Form of “Asymmetric Conflict”: You Win By “Not Losing.” When someone challenges a taboo or takes on some well-entrenched conventional wisdom, his or her opponents invariably have the upper hand at first. They will seek to silence or discredit you as quickly as they can, so that your perspective, which they obviously won’t like, does not gain any traction with the public. But this means that as long as you remain part of the debate, you’re winning. Minds don’t change overnight, and it is difficult to know how well an intellectual campaign is going at any particular point in time. So get ready for an emotional roller coaster-some days you might think you’re winning big, while other days the deck will appear to be stacked against you. But the real question is: are you still in the game?

The good news is that if you have facts and logic on your side, your position is almost certain to improve over time. It is also worth noting that a protracted debate allows you to refine your own arguments and figure out better ways to refute your opponents’ claims. In brief, think of yourself as being engaged in a “long war,” and keep striving.

10. Don’t Forget to Feel Good about Yourself and the Enterprise in Which You Are Engaged.Waging a battle in which you are being unfairly attacked is hard work, and you will sometimes feels like Sisyphus rolling the proverbial stone endlessly uphill. But it can also be tremendously gratifying. You’ll wage the struggle more effectively if you find ways to keep your spirits up, and if you never lose sight of the worthiness of your cause. Keeping your sense of humor intact helps too; because some of the attacks you will face ar bound to be pretty comical. So while you’re out there slaying your chosen dragon, make sure you have some fun too.

Read the full article

Alan Sabrosky considers the characteristics that differentiate Jewish nationalism from other nationalisms, highlighting in particular its intrinsic extremism, its xenophobia, racism and militarism, its undermining of civic loyalty among its adherents in other countries and its propensity to hatred and racial exclusivity.

ISRAELI PRIME Minister Binyamin Netanyahu once remarked to a Likud gathering that “Israel is not like other countries”. Oddly enough for him, that time he was telling the truth, and nowhere is that more evident than with Jewish nationalism, whether or not one pins the “Zionist” label on it.

Nationalism in most countries and cultures can have both positive and negative aspects, unifying a people and sometimes leading them against their neighbours. Extremism can emerge, and often has, at least in part in almost every nationalist/independence movement I can recall (e.g. the French nationalist movement had The Terror, Kenya’s had the Mau Mau, etc.).

But whereas extremism in other nationalist movements is an aberration, extremism in Jewish nationalism is the norm, pitting Zionist Jews (secular or observant) against the goyim (everyone else), who are either possible predator or certain prey, if not both sequentially. This does not mean that all Jews or all Israelis feel and act this way, by any means. But it does mean that Israel today is what it cannot avoid being, and what it would be under any electable government (a point I’ll develop in another article).

The differences between Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and that of other countries and cultures here I think are fourfold:

1. Zionism is a real witches’ brew of xenophobia, racism, ultra-nationalism and militarism that places it way outside of a “mere” nationalist context – for example, when I was in Ireland (both parts) I saw no indication whatsoever that the Provisional Irish Republican Army or anyone else pressing for a united Ireland had a shred of design on shoving Protestants into camps or out of the country, although there may well have been a handful who thought that way – and goes far beyond the misery for others professed by the Nazis;

2. Zionism undermines civic loyalty among its adherents in other countries in a way that other nationalist movements (and even ultra-nationalist movements like Nazism) did not – e.g. a large majority of American Jews, including those who are not openly dual citizens, espouse a form of political bigamy called “dual loyalty” (to Israel and the US) that is every bit as dishonest as marital bigamy, attempts to finesse the precedence they give to Israel over the US (lots of Rahm Emanuels out there who served in the Israeli army but NOT in the US armed forces), and has absolutely no parallel in the sense of national or cultural identity espoused by any other definable ethnic or racial group in America – even the Nazi Bund in the US disappeared once Germany and the US went to war, with almost all of its members volunteering for the US armed forces;

3. The “enemy” of normal nationalist movements is the occupying power and perhaps its allies, and once independence is achieved, normal relations with the occupying power are truly the norm, but for Zionism almost everyone out there is an actual or potential enemy, differing only in proximity and placement on its very long list of enemies (which is now America’s target list); and

4. Almost all nationalist movements (including the irredentist and secessionist variants) intend to create an independent state from a population in place or to reunite a separated people (like the Sudeten Germans in the 1930s) – it is very rare for it to include the wholesale displacement of another indigenous population, which is far more common of successful colonialist movements as in the US – and perhaps a reason why most Americans wouldn’t care too much about what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians even if they DID know about it, is because that is no different than what Europeans in North America did to the Indians/Native Americans here in a longer and more low-tech fashion.

The implications of this for Middle East peace prospects, and for other countries in thrall to their domestic Jewish lobbies or not, are chilling. The Book of Deuteronomy come to life in a state with a nuclear arsenal would be enough to give pause to anyone not bought or bribed into submission – which these days encompasses the US government, given Israel’s affinity for throwing crap into the face of the Obama administration and Obama’s visible affinity for accepting it with a smile, Bibi Netanyahu’s own “Uncle Tom” come to Washington.

The late General Moshe Dayan, who – Zionist or not – remains an honoured part of my own Pantheon of military heroes, allegedly observed that Israel’s security depended on its being viewed by others as a mad dog. He may have been correct. But he neglected to note that the preferred response of everyone else is to kill that mad dog before it can decide to go berserk and bite. It is an option worth considering.

Alan Sabrosky (PhD, University of Michigan) is a 10-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College.