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Israeli Tail Wags U.S. Dog

compiled and edited by Michael R. Burch, an editor and publisher of Holocaust poetry

If Americans want peace rather than never-ending acts of terrorism and war, it is past time for them to stop subscribing to myths, and begin facing and confronting painful truths. The simple, obvious truth is that 9/11 was not the result of "irrational religion" on the part of Islamic extremists, but that 9/11 was a terrible but reasoned response to earlier and far greater acts of terrorism by the governments of Israel and the United States. If we want to avoid future acts of terrorism and more unwinnable wars, we, the American people, need to end our government’s acts of terrorism — now, today.

It is important to understand that the victims of 9/11 were innocent, but that their government was not. When the government of Nazi Germany committed crimes against peace and humanity, many innocent German individuals suffered and died as a result. When we live in collective societies with collective governments, we cannot escape the fact that the sins of our societies and governments can have terrible consequences for innocent individuals. When the governments of Israel and the U.S. elect to perpetrate all sorts of horrors on completely innocent Muslim women and children, how can we fail to understand that the men who love them will act to defend them?

The most comprehensive examination of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was conducted by the 9/11 Commission, co-chaired by Thomas H. Kean, a former governor of New Jersey, and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Indiana congressman. The 9-11 Commission was chartered to "prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks." [My italics.]

Together Kean and Hamilton have written Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission. So we are privy to an "inside view" of the proceedings and can hear what the men who led the investigation discovered and thought themselves.

Before I continue, providing information "from the horses’ mouths," so to speak, please allow me to state my main premise, which I will then attempt to prove with simple, verifiable facts. My main premise is this: 9/11 and the subsequent wars were caused primarily by U.S. government support of the terrible racial injustices of Israel, which include apartheid, ethnic cleansing, Jim Crow laws and kangaroo courts, torture, extrajudicial assassinations, home demolitions, and the arrest and imprisonment of minors.

In effect, the Israeli tail wags the U.S. dog, costing Americans thousands of lives, national security, and trillions of dollars. I am an editor and publisher of Holocaust poetry, not an anti-Semite. What I conclude and say has nothing to do with racism against Jews. It has everything to do with the racism and injustices of the government of Israel, which are aided and abetted by the government of the United States.

I largely agree with Ron Corvus, who wrote: "I define ‘terrorism against America’ as stateless, individual, Islamic criminal acts designed to free Islamists/Palestinians from decades of U.S.-Israeli foreign policies of illegal occupation, murder and systematic abuse. We shouldn't be breaking our laws and violating our constitution in 'huntin' em down and killin' 'em all;' instead, we should eliminate the motivation of terrorists targeting America for terrorism. But first we must identify and collectively realize the motivation of terrorists seeking to attack America. The 9/11 Commission did achieve this feat. [But] both the Democratic and Republican parties believe that the solution to terrorism against America is to kill all the terrorists—present and future tense. Both the Democratic and Republican parties do NOTHING to eliminate the motivation of the terrorists who target America for terrorism. Both the Democratic and Republican parties believe the best ‘solution’ is to kill anyone physically opposing U.S.-Israeli policies. Both the Democratic and Republican parties promise to keep troops in numerous nations to ‘fight terrorism.’ Both the Democratic and Republican parties believe they have the right to invade sovereign nations at will, commandeer their schools and dictate the lessons taught [to] children in their classrooms. Both the Democratic and Republican parties suffer an incredible arrogance of power, subsidized by a blatant disregard of our U.S. Constitution and laws. The reason the Democratic and Republican parties refuse to address the issue of eliminating the motivation of terrorist is because both parties do not want the American people to understand the motivation of the 9/11 hijackers and other terrorists targeting America. This would mean voting our pro-Israeli Congress OUT of office! The FBI testified to the 9/11 Commission that the motivation of the 9/11 hijackers was U.S. support of Israel; however, the FBI's statements were left out of the 9/11 Commission Report. You can see a video of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n9_EwIQBYE."

If you don’t believe me or Ron Corvus, please at least consider the thought processes and findings of Lee Hamilton. Lee Hamilton is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University. He represented Indiana in Congress for 34 years and served as chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He also chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. As a member of the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee, he was a primary draftsman of several House ethics reforms.
In other words, Hamilton is a senior statesman, and very knowledgeable about U.S. foreign policy, intelligence and affairs in the Middle East.

The 9/11 Commission was charged with explaining what happened on 9/11, and why it happened. [My italics.] While the most popular explanation for the motivation of the 9/11 terrorists is Islamic fundamentalism (i.e., irrational religion), the 9/11 Commission discovered that religious orthodoxy was not a common denominator, since some of the hijackers used alcohol and drugs, while others engaged in casual sex. Instead, hatred of American foreign policy in the Middle East seems to have been the prime motivation.

Another popular explanation is that Islamic terrorists "hate American values," but in reality it seems the 9/11 terrorists actually embraced a swinging American lifestyle.
On September 20, 2001, George Bush famously (or infamously) told a joint session of Congress and the American people that the men responsible for 9/11 "hate our freedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

According to a charismatic moron, "they" hate us because "they" hate our freedoms and values. But is this really true?

We may not care for the values of people in the Middle East, but how many of us would go out of our way, much less sacrifice our lives, to murder thousands of innocents over a difference in values and lifestyles? Do it make any sense to believe that other people are killing Americans over differences of opinion?

Thus, a prime question becomes: is the hatred of the men we call "terrorists" in any way warranted? Do Muslims, perhaps, have legitimate grievances against the governments of Israel and the United States? If Muslims lack the military wherewithal to combat the governments of Israel and the U.S. directly, does this explain the use of guerilla tactics? Is it possible that the men we so easily label "terrorists" see millions of completely innocent Muslim women and children as the victims of terror, and are trying to defend them, with very limited means?

There is also the troubling question: was either war justified? As Terry McDermott, writing in the Los Angeles Times, said: "Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man who conceived and directed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was motivated by his strong disagreement with American support for Israel, said the final report of the Sept. 11 commission. Mohammed conceived the initial outline of the attack six years before its execution and brought the plan to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden because he thought he did not have the resources to carry it out on his own. The Sept. 11 report contains the fullest accounting of Mohammed's overarching role from original conception to supervision of details. Bin Laden, too, was fully involved, selecting all or most of the participants, ordering the substance and the location of their training, and contributing to the timing of the attacks and the selection of targets, the report says. [But] the report makes a strong case that al-Qaida accomplished the attacks without any hint of state sponsorship. [My italics.] The report also appears to lay to rest the notion, long alluded to by administration officials including Vice President Dick Cheney, that hijacker Mohamed Atta traveled to the Czech Republic to meet an Iraqi intelligence operative in the spring of 2001. In addition to repeating evidence that Atta was in the United States at the time, the report revealed that the Iraqi agent was not in Prague either when the meeting was alleged to have occurred."

Should the U.S. invade and destroy entire nations because of the actions of small numbers of individuals who have legitimate grievances against our government? Should thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of completely innocent women and children be killed, mutilated and/or left homeless and destitute, because Israeli robber barons want to acquire "free" land from Palestinian farm families, at the expense of American taxpayers?

Furthermore, on August 13, 2006 there was a very interesting exchange between a reporter for the Institute for Public Accuracy and 9/11 Commissioners Hamilton and Keane, outside the NBC studios in Upper Northwest Washington ...

Reporter: "I'd like to ask a foreign policy thing, gentlemen. You spoke about the motivation of the terrorists and how to decipher them. This is Bin Laden's statement from October 2004, and he's talking about his – what he says his initial motivation is — in seeing the Israeli [and the U.S. Sixth Fleet] bombing of Lebanon, back in 1982. To quote: ‘When I saw those destroyed towers in Lebanon it sparked in my mind that the oppressors should be punished in the same way and that we should destroy towers in America so that they can taste what we tasted and so they will stop killing our women and children.’ [My italics.] Now, now, his stated and his real goals — just like other politicians stated goals and real goals — might be different. But those are his stated motivations, that he says to the people of the region and to us ..."

Hamilton: "Osama bin Laden is a very skillful propagandist. He weaves all kinds of possible appeals to the radicalized Muslim world. Some of it is religious, theological, philosophical. Some of it relates to American policy. The original thing that set off Osama bin Laden was the presence of American forces in Saudi Arabia." [Please note that even Hamilton seems to refuse to address the main concern of many Muslim men: that the governments and militaries of Israel and the U.S. are killing Muslim women and children. Is this propaganda, or simply the truth?]

Reporter: "Which have been removed ..."

Hamilton: "Which have now been removed, that's correct, but ..."

Reporter: "So he [inaudible] ..."

Hamilton: "I think it is, I think it is — well — we withdrew those, I think, for our own interests. You can argue whether he would claim it's a victory, we would not, of course. But the point is that he cleverly weaves a lot of different appeals to get this radicalized Muslim world ..."

Reporter: "But don't make matters worse? Now we're backing another Israeli invasion of Lebanon — aren't we planting the seeds of further terrorism? Aren't we putting out the fire with gasoline here? And you can do all the security measures, all the law enforcement, but if that continues isn't that a fundamental argument ..."

Hamilton: Foreign policy gets very complicated. When you take certain actions to support a friend, the security of Israel, as we did, it has consequences. No question about it.

This is what I mean by "the Israeli tail wagging the U.S. dog." Why should American taxpayers pay trillions of dollars, and thousands of American citizens and soldiers die, in support of an insane plan for Israeli Jews to "cleanse" all Palestine of Palestinians? Aren’t Palestinian women and children every bit as human as Jewish women and children?

But in any case, shockingly, perhaps the most important testimony and the commission’s most important conclusion were stricken from the commission’s final, written report! Let us closely and carefully examine what happened on the last day of the commission’s public proceedings ...

TWELFTH PUBLIC HEARING
The 9/11 Plot and National Crisis Management
National Transportation Safety Board Conference Center, Washington, D.C.
June 16-17, 2004

During the twelfth and last public hearing conducted by the commission, Vice Chair Hamilton asked FBI Special Agent James Fitzgerald, "You’ve looked [at] and examined the lives of these people as closely as anybody . . . What have you found out about why these men did what they did? What motivated them to do it?"

Fitzgerald replied, "I believe they feel a sense of outrage against the United States. They identify with the Palestinian problem, they identify with people who oppose repressive regimes, and I believe they tend to focus their anger on the United States."

Reinforcing Fitzgerald’s analysis, the commission also discovered that the original plan for 9/11 envisioned an even larger attack. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the main strategist of the 9/11 plot, "was going to fly the final plane, land it and make a speech denouncing U.S. policies in the Middle East."

The commission also discovered that the terrorist pilots shared the same motivation. Both Mohammed Atta, the pilot who crashed into World Trade Center 1, and Marwan al Shehhi, the pilot who crashed into WTC 2, were angry about what Israel was doing to the Palestinians. According to the commission’s report, "when someone asked why he and Atta never laughed, Shehhi retorted, ‘How can you laugh when people are dying in Palestine?’" The report also showed that the architect of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, shared the same motivation. "By his own account, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel."

According to James Barnford, the conflict between Israel and Palestine was always at the heart of 9/11. "It's central', he said. "It's not the only thing, but it's the central thing." [Page 248, A Pretext to a War.]

In his own book, Hamilton says that he "felt that there had to be an acknowledgment that a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was vital to America’s long-term relationship with the Islamic world, and that the presence of American forces in the Middle East was a major motivating factor in Al Qaeda’s actions."
But shockingly this conclusion, and Fitzgerald’s testimony were stricken from the official record.

In Ivan Eland’s review, "9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the Cause of the Attacks" he makes the point that the book "usefully details the [Bush] administration’s willful misrepresentation of its incompetent actions that day, but makes the shocking admission that some commission members deliberately wanted to distort an even more important issue. Apparently, unidentified commissioners wanted to cover up the fact that U.S. support for Israel was one of the motivating factors behind al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Although Hamilton, to his credit, argued for saying that the reasons al Qaeda committed the heinous strike were the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and American support for Israel, the panel watered down that frank conclusion to state that U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. policy on Iraq are "dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world."

As another reviewer put it, "Some commissioners wanted to cover up the link between the 9/11 attack and U.S. support for Israel because this might imply that the United States should alter policy and lessen its support for Israeli actions. How right they were. The question is simple: if the vast bulk of Americans would be safer if U.S. politicians moderated their slavish support of Israel, designed to win the support of key pressure groups at home, wouldn’t it be a good idea to make this change in course? Average U.S. citizens might attenuate their support for Israel if the link between the 9/11 attacks and unquestioning U.S. favoritism for Israeli excesses were more widely known."

Congress is now threatening sanctions against Palestinians for seeking UN membership

The United States claims to support Palestinian statehood but Congress is now threatening sanctions against Palestinians for seeking UN membership.

The Independent recently reported that even before Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas submitted Palestine's UN membership application, members of Congress had quietly placed "holds" on spending already allocated for U.S. assistance to Palestinians.

And now, as if that weren't bad enough, Congress is considering additional far-reaching sanctions against Palestinians as punishment for seeking UN membership.

Palestine has waited more than 64 years to become a UN member. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: "For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!'... This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.'" The worst stumbling block to freedom's advance, King argued, is the person who "believes he can set the timetable for another" person's freedom.

Congress remains deaf to the demands of the people as the "Super Committee" meets behind closed doors to debate deficit cutting measures that are likely to bring additional cuts to the critical social services that should be guaranteed to all. Yet $30 billion in military aid to Israel remains untouched, a budgetary "sacred cow."

Ongoing massive ethnic cleansing in broad daylight happening now in the 21st Century!!!
by Zahi Damuni

Israel approves plan to relocate 30,000 Bedouin from "unrecognized villages."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet on Sunday approved a plan to relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin from their "unrecognized villages" into settlements with official state status.

The plan emerges from the Prawer Report, drafted to find a solution to the problem of unrecognized villages in the Negev.

As part of the plan, some 20,000 to 30,000 Bedouon will be relocated to recognized settlements including Rahat, Khura and Ksayfe. The plan also includes financial compensation for those relocated, as well as alternate plots of land. The program is estimated to cost the state NIS 6.8 billion.

Opponents of the plan have accusing the government of evacuating people from their homes for no justified reason and against their will.

Bedouin representative called the decision "a declaration of war," and some 150 members of the community gathered outside the prime minister's office in Jerusalem on Sunday to protest the decision.

"This stupid government will be responsible for a Bedouin Intifada in the Negev," said Arab MK Taleb al-Sana, who took part in the protest.

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, slammed the government's approval of the plan as a major violation of basic rights, pointing out that it would result in the uprooting of tens of thousands of people and the demolition of many Bedouin villages.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel in June submitted its objections to the Prawer Report and argued that the conditions it sets for recognizing Bedouin villages are prejudicial.

These include meeting minimal levels of population density, contiguity and economic sustainability. The criteria established, the organization maintains, flout principles of equality and justice in the distribution of resources. "If the same criteria were applied to the Jewish population, whole settlements— including community settlements, observatories, kibbutzim and moshavim—would be doomed," the association notes.

Moreover, according to its claims, Bedouin villages are planned without considering the needs of the population, which is largely agrarian and rural, not urban. The association also opposes making any planning for the Bedouin conditional on settling disputes over land ownership.

Why does the government of Israel continue to practice apartheid and ethnic cleansing in the 21st century?

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