Apologist for apartheid masquerades as human rights activist

Submitted by David Cronin on Tue, 04/23/2013 - 13:09

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Joëlle Fiss, a pro-Israel lobbyist who poses as a defender of human rights. 

 (European Parliament)

Last night I witnessed an attempt to cover Israel’s crimes against humanity with a veneer of respectability.

Joëlle Fiss is a pro-Israel lobbyist who masquerades as an anti-racist campaigner with Human Rights First, a group dedicated to “American ideals.” Based in New York, she is visiting Brussels this week to promote her new book Tiptoeing on Minefields.

The first speaking engagement of her trip wasorganized by D&D Consulting Services, an outfit headed by Dimitri Dombret, former secretary-general of European Friends of Israel. It took place yesterday.

As Fiss’s job title describes her as a “senior associate” with a “fighting discrimination” program, I felt it would be appropriate to solicit her views on Israel’s systematic discrimination against Palestinians. So I asked her during yesterday’s talk if she agreed that Israel was an apartheid state. Fiss replied that my question was “illegitimate.”

Evasion

“I don’t have discussions with my Palestinian friends” about whether or not Israel is an apartheid state, Fiss said, claiming that they prefer to discuss “checkpoints, refugee issues, the specifics, not generalities.” Her unnamed friends “don’t throw around that word [‘apartheid’]; they are extremely pragmatic, not dogmatic.”

Unwilling to tolerate this evasion, I then asked Fiss if — as a campaigner against discrimination — she was familiar with the UN’s official definition of apartheid, which refers to the domination of one racial or ethnic group over another. It is beyond dispute, I contended, that Jews are accorded more rights by the State of Israel than Palestinians. Fiss said she had no opinion on this matter.

Ironically, her book alludes to the lynchpin in Israel’s apartheid system: the Law of Return. Yet she merely mentions that this 1950 legislation declares that “every Jew has the right to return to his homeland.” Despite all the chats she has apparently conducted with “my Palestinian friends” on “refugee issues,” she does not explicitly acknowledge that Palestinians uprooted by Zionist forces two years earlier are denied the right to return to their homeland. This blatant injustice elicits no response from this purported expert on discrimination.

The 111-page book is influenced by Fiss’ previous job as an official in the European Parliament and her stint chairing the European Union of Jewish Students. Brief and readable, it is nonetheless more a work of propaganda than of intellectual exploration. Fiss, who holds British and Swiss citizenship, is moist-eyed about her devotion to both Israel and the EU. “Just like the EU, Israel represents a utopia to yearn for, as well as a concrete reality to live in,” she writes.

The main argument in her essay is that the Jewish diaspora should consider having a “citizen’s initiative.” It would be modelled on a provision in the EU’s Lisbon treaty, which theoretically allows ordinary people to shape the Union’s agenda if 1 million signatures are collected on a particular topic.

Hogwash

Fiss draws a clumsy parallel between how the Zionist movement “translated a covenant between the Jewish people that led to statehood” and a “constitutional process” in the EU that attempted to “create a tighter connection between its members and its peoples.”

This hogwash overlooks how the EU’s constitution has been rammed down the throats of the EU’s citizens. When French and Dutch voters rejected this blueprint for a militarized and neo-liberal Europe in 2005, it was repackaged and renamed the Lisbon treaty. Ireland was the only country which held a referendum on the revamped treaty; the Irish rejected it in 2008 but were bullied into voting “yes” when a second poll was held the following year.

(The title Tiptoeing on Minefields is, to put it mildly, unfortunate. Fiss concerns herself with metaphorical minefields — the prospect of the tame political ideas she toys with “exploding in your face.” Her beloved Israel, however, has created literal minefields — by, for example, littering large parts of Lebanon with cluster bombs in 2006).

Tomorrow Fiss, will be back in her old workplace, when she will address a breakfast meeting hosted by Frédérique Ries, a Belgian member of the European Parliament (MEP). Ries is a vice-chairwoman of European Friends of Israel, a cross-party alliance of MEPs.

I asked Ries why she was teaming up with a purported champion of human rights like Fiss, when she (Ries) routinely defends a state that denies an entire people its elementary rights. Ries did not reply.

Divide and Conquer: The Anglo-American Imperial Project

Note: KERKUK, the Turkmens' capital city and northern Iraq's oil-rich city is not indicated on the map.

Andrew G. Marshall

July 11, 2008

Establishing an "Arc of Crisis"

Many would be skeptical that the Anglo-Americans would be behind terrorist acts in Iraq, such as with the British in Basra, when two British SAS soldiers were caught dressed as Arabs, with explosives and massive arsenal of weapons.[1]

Why would the British be complicit in orchestrating terror in the very city in which they are to provide security? What would be the purpose behind this? That question leads us to an even more important question to ask, the question of why Iraq was occupied; what is the purpose of the war on Iraq?

If the answer is, as we are often told with our daily dose of CNN, SkyNews and the statements of public officials, to spread democracy and freedom and rid the world of tyranny and terror, then it doesn’t make sense that the British or Americans would orchestrate terror.

However, if the answer to the question of why the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq occurred was not to spread democracy and freedom, but to spread fear and chaos, plunge the country into civil war, balkanize Iraq into several countries, and create an "arc of crisis" across the Middle East, enveloping neighboring countries, notably Iran, then terror is a very efficient and effective means to an end.

An Imperial Strategy

In 1982, Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist with links to the Israeli Foreign Ministry wrote an article for a publication of the World Zionist Organization in which he outlined a "strategy for Israel in the 1980s." In this article, he stated, "The dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front.

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run, it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel."

He continued, "An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and Lebanon."

He continues, "In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul and Shiite areas in the South will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north."[2]

The Iran-Iraq War, which lasted until 1988, did not result in Oded Yinon’s desired break-up of Iraq into ethnically based provinces. Nor did the subsequent Gulf War of 1991 in which the US destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure, as well as the following decade-plus of devastating sanctions and aerial bombardments by the Clinton administration. What did occur during these decades, however, were the deaths of millions of Iraqis and Iranians.

A Clean Break for a New American Century

In 1996, an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, issued a report under the think tank’s Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000, entitled, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." In this paper, which laid out recommendations for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they state that Israel can, "Work closely with Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll-back some of its most dangerous threats," as well as, "Change the nature of its relations with the Palestinians, including upholding the right of hot pursuit for self defense into all Palestinian areas," and to, "Forge a new basis for relations with the United States—stressing self-reliance, maturity, strategic cooperation on areas of mutual concern, and furthering values inherent to the West."

The report recommended Israel to seize "the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon," and to use "Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon." It also states, "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions."[3]

The authors of the report include Douglas Feith, an ardent neoconservative who went on to become George W. Bush’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2001 to 2005; David Wurmser, who was appointed by Douglas Feith after 9/11 to be part of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and served as a Mideast Adviser to Dick Cheney from 2003 to 2007; and Meyrav Wurmser, David’s wife, who is now an official with the American think tank, the Hudson Institute.

Richard Perle headed the study, and worked on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004, and was Chairman of the Board from 2001 to 2004, where he played a key role in the lead-up to the Iraq war. He was also a member of several US think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for the New American Century.

The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is an American neoconservative think tank, whose membership and affiliations included many people who were associated with the present Bush administration, such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Richard Armitage, Jeb Bush, Elliott Abrams, Eliot A. Cohen, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Peter Rodman, Dov Zakheim and Robert B. Zoellick.

PNAC produced a report in September of 2000, entitled, "Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century," in which they outlined a blueprint for a Pax Americana, or American Empire.

The report puts much focus on Iraq and Iran, stating, "Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests in the Gulf as Iraq has."[4] Stating that, "the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security," the report suggests that, "the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification," however, "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime change of Saddam Hussein."[5]

Engineer a Civil War for the "Three State Solution"

Shortly after the initial 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, the New York Times ran an op-ed piece by Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus and Board Member of the US-based Council on Foreign Relations, the most influential and powerful think tank in the United States. The op-ed, titled, "The Three State Solution," published in November of 2003, stated that the "only viable strategy" for Iraq, "may be to correct the historical defect and move in stages toward a three-state solution: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south."

Citing the example of the break up of Yugoslavia, Gelb stated that the Americans and Europeans "gave the Bosnian Muslims and Croats the means to fight back, and the Serbs accepted separation." Explaining the strategy, Gelb states that, "The first step would be to make the north and south into self-governing regions, with boundaries drawn as closely as possible along ethnic lines," and to "require democratic elections within each region." Further, "at the same time, draw down American troops in the Sunni Triangle and ask the United Nations to oversee the transition to self-government there." Gelb then states that this policy "would be both difficult and dangerous. Washington would have to be very hard-headed, and hard-hearted, to engineer this breakup."[6]

Following the example of Yugoslavia, as Gelb cited, would require an engineered civil war between the various ethnic groups. The US supported and funded Muslim forces in Bosnia in the early 1990s, under the leadership of the CIA-trained Afghan Mujahideen, infamous for their CIA-directed war against the Soviet Union from 1979-1989. In Bosnia, the Mujahideen were "accompanied by US Special Forces," and Bill Clinton personally approved of collaboration with "several Islamic fundamentalist organisations including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda." In Kosovo, years later, "Mujahideen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia were recruited to fight in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998-99, largely supporting NATO's war effort." The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the British Secret Intelligence Services (MI6), British SAS soldiers and American and British private security companies had the job of arming and training the KLA.

Further, "The U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden," and as well as that, "the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Jihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict."[7]

Could this be the same strategy being deployed in Iraq in order to break up the country for similar geopolitical reasons?

The Asia Times Online reported in 2005, that the plan of "balkanizing" Iraq into several smaller states, "is an exact replica of an extreme right-wing Israeli plan to balkanize Iraq - an essential part of the balkanization of the whole Middle East.

Curiously, Henry Kissinger was selling the same idea even before the 2003 invasion of Iraq." It continued, "this is classic divide and rule: the objective is the perpetuation of Arab disunity. Call it Iraqification; what it actually means is sectarian fever translated into civil war."[8]

In 2006, an "independent commission set up by Congress with the approval of President George W Bush," termed the "Baker Commission" after former Secretary of State, James Baker, "has grown increasingly interested in the idea of splitting the Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish regions of Iraq as the only alternative to what Baker calls 'cutting and running’ or 'staying the course’."[9]

It was also reported in 2006 that, "Iraq's federal future is already enshrined within its constitution, allowing regions to form, if not actually prescribing how this should happen," and that, "the Iraqi parliament (dominated by Shi'a and Kurds) passed a bill earlier this month [October, 2006] allowing federal regions to form (by majority vote in the provinces seeking merger)."

Further, "The law, which unsurprisingly failed to win Sunni support, will be reviewed over the next 18 months in a bid to bring its opponents round." The article, however, stated that instead of a three state solution, "a system based upon five regions would seem to have more chance of succeeding.

A five-region model could see two regions in the south, one based around Basra and one around the holy cities. Kurdistan and the Sunni region would remain, but Baghdad and its environs would form a fifth, metropolitan, region."[10]

The author of the article was Gareth Stansfield, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House think tank in London, which preceded, works with and is the British equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Ethnic Cleansing Works"

In 2006, the Armed Forces Journal published an article by retired Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters, titled, "Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look." In the article, Peters explains that the best plan for the Middle East would be to "readjust" the borders of the countries. "Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s "organic" frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected." He states that after the 2003 invasion, "Iraq should have been divided into three smaller states immediately."

However, Iraq is not the only country to fall victim to "Balkanization" in Peters’ eyes, as, "Saudi Arabia would suffer as great a dismantling as Pakistan," and "Iran, a state with madcap boundaries, would lose a great deal of territory to Unified Azerbaijan, Free Kurdistan, the Arab Shia State and Free Baluchistan, but would gain the provinces around Herat in today’s Afghanistan."

Further, "What Afghanistan would lose to Persia in the west, it would gain in the east, as Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren." Peters states that "correcting borders" may be impossible, "For now. But given time — and the inevitable attendant bloodshed — new and natural borders will emerge. Babylon has fallen more than once."

He further makes the astonishing statement that, "Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works."[11]

The map of the re-drawn Middle East, initially published alongside Peters’ article, but no longer present, "has been used in a training program at NATO's Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, has most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles."[12]

Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed wrote of Peters’ proposal, that "the sweeping reconfiguration of borders he proposes would necessarily involve massive ethnic cleansing and accompanying bloodshed on perhaps a genocidal scale."[13]

Federalism or Incremental Balkanization?

A month before Peters’ article was published, Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Joseph Biden, a Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, in which they stated, "America must get beyond the present false choice between "staying the course" and "bringing the troops home now" and choose a third way that would wind down our military presence responsibly while preventing chaos and preserving our key security goals." What is this third option? "The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group—Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab—room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests."

They describe a few aspects of this plan. "The first is to establish three largely autonomous regions with a viable central government in Baghdad. The Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions would each be responsible for their own domestic laws, administration and internal security. The central government would control border defense, foreign affairs and oil revenues." Then, "The second element would be to entice the Sunnis into joining the federal system with an offer they couldn’t refuse. To begin with, running their own region should be far preferable to the alternatives: being dominated by Kurds and Shiites in a central government or being the main victims of a civil war."[14]

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2007, Leslie Gelb stated that his plan for "federalizing" Iraq, "would look like this: The central government would be based on the areas where there are genuine common interests among the different Iraqi parties. That is, foreign affairs, border defense, currency and, above all, oil and gas production and revenues." And, "As for the regions, whether they be three or four or five, whatever it may be, it’s up to—all this is up to the Iraqis to decide, would be responsible for legislation, administration and internal security."[15]

The Senate subsequently passed a nonbinding resolution supporting a federal system for Iraq, which has still yet to be enacted upon, because it stated that this resolution was something that had to be enacted upon by the Iraqis, so as not to be viewed as "something that the United States was going to force down their throats."

Further, "when Ambassador Ryan Crocker appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he testified in favor of federalism. In his private conversations with senators, he also supported the idea," yet, while in Baghdad, the Ambassador "blasted the resolution."[16]

Could this be a method of manipulation? If the American Embassy in Baghdad promotes a particular solution for Iraq, it would likely be viewed by Iraqis as a bad choice and in the interest of the Americans. So, if the Ambassador publicly bashes the resolution from Iraq, which he did, it conveys the idea that the current administration is not behind it, which could make Iraqis see it as a viable alternative, and perhaps in their interests. For Iraqi politicians, embracing the American view on major issues is political (and often actual) suicide. The American Embassy in Baghdad publicly denouncing a particular strategy gives Iraqi politicians public legitimacy to pursue it.

This resolution has still not gone through all the processes in Congress, and may, in fact, have been slipped into another bill, such as a Defense Authorization Act. However, the efforts behind this bill are larger than the increasingly irrelevant US Congress.

Also in 2007, another think tank called for the managed "break-up of Iraq into three separate states with their own governments and representatives to the United Nations, but continued economic cooperation in a larger entity modeled on the European Union."[17]

In a startling admission by former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, stated in 2007 that the "United States has "no strategic interest" in a united Iraq," and he also suggested "that the United States shouldn't necessarily keep Iraq from splitting up."[18]

Conclusion

Clearly, whatever the excuse, or whatever the means of dividing Iraq, it is without a doubt in the Anglo-American strategy for Iraq to balkanize the country. Saying that what is being proposed is not balkanization, but federalism, is a moot point. This is because reverting to a more federal system where provinces have greater autonomy would naturally separate the country along ethno-religious boundaries. The Kurds would be in the north, the Sunnis in the centre, and the Shi’ites in the south, with all the oil. The disproportionate provincial resources will create animosity between provinces, and the long-manipulated ethnic differences will spill from the streets into the political sphere. As tensions grow, as they undoubtedly would, between the provinces, there would be a natural slide to eventual separation. Disagreements over power sharing in the federal government would lead to its eventual collapse, and the strategy of balkanization would have been achieved with the appearance of no outside involvement.

NOTES[1] Global Research, Iraqi MP accuses British Forces in Basra of "Terrorism". Al Jazeera: September 20, 2005: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050920&articleId=983
[2] Linda S. Heard, The Prophecy of Oded Yinon. Counter Punch: April 25, 2006: http://www.counterpunch.org/heard04252006.html
[3] Richard Perle, et. al., A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies: June 1996: http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm
[4] PNAC, Rebuilding America’s Defenses. Project for the New American Century: September 2000: Page 17
[5] PNAC, Rebuilding America’s Defenses. Project for the New American Century: September 2000: Page 14
[6] Leslie Gelb, The Three State Solution. The New York Times: November 25, 2003:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/6559/threestate_solution.html?breadcrumb=%2Fbios%2F3325%2Fleslie_h_gelb%3Fpage%3D3
[7] Michel Chossudovsky, "Osamagate." Global Research: October 9, 2001:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html
[8] Pepe Escobar, Exit strategy: Civil war. Asia Times Online: June 10, 2005:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GF10Ak03.html
[9] Sarah Baxter, America ponders cutting Iraq in three. The Times: October 8, 2006: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article664974.ece
[10] Gareth Stansfield, The only solution left for Iraq: a five-way split. The Telegraph: October 29, 2006: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/10/29/do2904.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/10/29/ixopinion.html
[11] Ralph Peters, Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look. Armed Forces Journal: June 2006: http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899
[12] Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a "New Middle East". Global Research: November 18, 2006: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3882
[13] Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, US Army Contemplates Redrawing Middle East Map
to Stave Off Looming Global Meltdown. Dissident Voice: September 1, 2006: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept06/Ahmed01.htm
[14] Leslie Gelb and Joseph Biden, Jr., Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq. The New York Times: May 1, 2006: http://www.cfr.org/publication/10569/unity_through_autonomy_in_iraq.html?breadcrumb=%2Fbios%2F3325%2Fleslie_h_gelb%3Fpage%3D2
[15] Leslie Gelb, Leslie Gelb before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The CFR: January 23, 2007: http://www.cfr.org/publication/12489/leslie_gelb_before_the_senate_foreign_relations_committee.html?breadcrumb=%2Fbios%2F3325%2Fleslie_h_gelb
[16] Bernard Gwertzman, Gelb: Federalism Is Most Promising Way to End Civil War in Iraq. CFR: October 16, 2007: http://www.cfr.org/publication/14531/gelb.html?breadcrumb=%2Fbios%2F3325%2Fleslie_h_gelb
[17] Robin Wright, Nonpartisan Group Calls for Three-State Split in Iraq. The Washington Post: August 17, 2007: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/17/AR2007081700918.html
[18] AP, French report: Former U.N. envoy Bolton says U.S. has 'no strategic interest' in united Iraq. International Herald Tribune: January 29, 2007: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/29/europe/EU-GEN-France-US-Iraq.php Andrew G. Marshall contributed to breaking the Climate Change consensus in a celebrated 2006 article entitled Global Warming A Convenient Lie, in which he challenged the findings underlying Al Gore's documentary. According to Marshall, 'as soon as people start to state that "the debate is over", beware, because the fundamental basis of all sciences is that debate is never over'. Andrew Marshall has also written on the militarization of Central Africa, national security issues and the process of integration of North America. He is also a contributor to GeopoliticalMonitor.com He is currently a researcher at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal and is studying political science and history at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia.
:: Article nr. 45625 sent on 11-jul-2008 19:30 ECT
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=45625Link: globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9451

McCarthyism Comes to Europe and the Levant

The Zionist Targeting of Lebanon's Dr. Ibrahim Mousawi

By Franklin Lamb in Beirut and Ann El Khoury in Sydney


"You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? "

Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy, April 1954

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19113.htm

20/01/08 "ICH" --- - In a US Senate hearing just over fifty years ago, Boston lawyer Joseph Welch famously rebuked Senator Joseph McCarthy with these now immortal words.

They have been immortalized because they have helped furnish what we understand McCarthyism to mean: extreme, mean and unreasonable persecution of people by means of witch-hunts and other tactics including guilt by association or through simple prejudice. This is done in order to achieve a political objective of silencing dissent and preventing the public from learning inconvenient truths.

In the human drama of Middle East theaters and in the wider context of the current Bush administration-spearheaded endless war, the New McCarthyism involves the mobilization of the global 'war on terror', in which we see once again the manipulation of fear and the corruption of public discourse in pursuit of narrowly partisan gain – chief among them, the Likudnik Israel-first hawks of the neoconservatives in the US and Israel.

The foot-soldiers of the Likud lobby around the world are applying pressure to stop people from attending academic and activist conferences. As with the McCarthyism of half a century ago, today's Middle East Studies McCarthyism perpetrated by the Likud Lobby is also a threat to our liberty, to academic freedom, and to basic, fundamental democratic rights and responsibilities.

A network of right-wing Zionist activists has intensified its online campaign based on a melange of distorted or provably false charges against critics of Israel. Zionist media 'megaphone' the charges, stoking the furor. When mainstream media ultimately notices, it generally focuses its coverage only on the furor rather than investigating and reporting the truth about the false charges.

McCarthyism 2.0: The War On Terror

After the collapse of the USSR, there were expectations in many quarters that there would be a 'peace dividend'. The military industrial complex had burgeoned during the Cold war, and vested interests therein were not going to give up their power, privilege and profit from war so readily, if at all. Yet after the WTC attacks on Sept 11, 2001, a generalized 'war on terror' was sold to a stupefied electorate.

Right out of the Red Scare playbook of the Cold War morphed the War on Terror playbook, with 'terrorist' substituted for communist as the new post cold war evil. With the scope widened, the demonization of the Arab/Muslim as the new monolithically conceptualized enemy commenced, and extended to the criminalizing of dissent and charity-giving: even social activists have been called terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.

Cynical campaigns to confound and confuse and whip up hysteria and ratchet up racism have abounded. Israeli-financed websites like Act of America, by their propagandist, the former Saad Haddad and Antoine LaHood operative, the Maid of Darkness, Bridgette Gabriel, spew obscene racist hatred against Americans and others of Arab or Muslim origin that would likely give even McCarthy pause.

During the current administration, Bush has amplified an explicitly anti-Muslim message by repeatedly using the term "Islamic fascism" to describe America's purported enemies (including both the Hezbollah-led resistance in Lebanon and that of Hamas in Palestine). The demonizing campaigns and venal ideological assaults of the Likudniks have involved bullying, intimidation and mistreatment of those who dare to contest the Israeli hawk worldview and version of the Middle East. In many cases they involve active government and lobby harassment to ensure a climate that is forcefully conducive to the Israeli version of events.

One method of silencing involves the all-purpose slander of the anti-Semitism accusation that has been elasticized to non-sensicality. A new 'working definition' promoted by some Israel lobbyists seeks to confuse anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, such that today it would also apply to Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, and Albert Einstein. According to Arthur Neslen in 'When an anti-Semite is not an anti-Semite', the definition would even apply to Israel's own PM:
What do Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Ehud Olmert and myself all have in common? We could each be censured for racism according to the European Union Monitoring Centre's "working definition of anti-Semitism" which was recently adopted by the National Union of Students as official policy.

Only recently, a Spanish forum launched in July last year from the Madrid Social Forum has been subject to a hijacking of its agenda by underhanded means as a result of Zionist pressuring of the Spanish government. Initially, the Spanish Foreign Ministry pledged organizational and financial support for Forum for a Just Peace, which was to be held in Madrid from the 14-16th December, enabling the participation of Spanish, Palestinian, Lebanese, Jordanian, Iraqi and Israeli civil society representatives who had endorsed the conference.

A refusal by the International Committee to accept the Foreign Ministry stacking of the Conference with ideological zionists was met with the Spanish government response to shut down the conference venue and to send the police to evict the participants. This has effectively shut down the Forum for a Just Peace.

Challenging censorship of Middle East realityAcademia is an important and potentially powerful sphere within which to challenge power, and to posit alternatives. Successful, effective and popular academics are particularly targeted by the Israeli-hawk Likud Lobby in the USA and Europe because they succeed with bringing more people to ask why only one side of the Middle East conflict is being presented as the only side.

As Robert Fisk notes, the scare-mongering conveniently justifies occupation and feeds into war-mongering in service of resource theft and land expropriation in the Middle East:
Because it's really all about shutting the reality of the Middle East off from us. It's to prevent the British and American people from questioning the immoral and cruel and internationally illegal occupation of Muslim lands. And in the Land of the Free, this systematic censorship of Middle East reality continues even in the country's schools.

Campaigns against academics are often coordinated or facilitated through such groups as Campus Watch, FrontPage, CAMERA and various think tanks (tank-thinks) that validate the Likudnik-Zionist doctrinal framing of the Middle East. They have been mounted with mixed results against Professors Nadia Abu El-Haj (she was granted tenure at Barnard College this year), Joseph Massad, Debbie Almontaser, Tariq Ramadan, Juan Cole, Rashid Khalidi, Norman Finkelstein, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, Hamid Dabashi, Sami al-Arian and Israeli academics Ilan Pappe and Tanya Reinhart, who both chose exile from Israel in protest to their former country's policies.

"There certainly is a sense among faculty and grad students that they're being watched, monitored," says Zachary Lockman, president of the Middle East Studies Association. "People are always looking over their shoulder, feeling that whatever they say--in accurate or, more likely, distorted form--can end up on a website. It definitely has a chilling effect." Campaigns have typically involved intimidatory tactics and defamatory allegations, demonstrably proved baseless.

The scurrilous attacks on Norman Finkelstein, for example, have laid bare the desperate lengths the Likud Lobby and such representatives as Alan Dershowitz are driven to smear and slander challengers. Finkelstein was ultimately denied tenure.

Ultra-zionist Israel Lobby groups are attempting to intimidate publishers of Joel Kovel's book Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine and to cripple its distribution. Tariq Ramadan, who Time magazine listed as one of the 100 most likely innovators of the 21st century, was repeatedly denied a visa for entry to teach in the US on spurious grounds.

Freedom of expression in media and even academe does not apparently include the freedom to duly and freely criticize Israeli policies. Zionist hijacking of these spaces, like the McCarthy trials, has all too often been dishonest and abusive. In the past year, lobby groups such as Campus Watch have been behind the so-called Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (IFAW) from October 22-26.

Other campaigns have included vitriolic smear campaigns against the Khalil Gibran International Academy. The slander and intimation ultimately worked: Debbie Almontaser resigned, all on the flimsy accusation of a t-shirt that had the Arabic word intifada on it---worn by someone else.

The Targeting of Dr. Ibrahim Mousawi
Recently the Zionists have been targeting Lebanon's Ibrahim Mousawi, trying to prevent him from speaking or traveling to other countries.

Who is Dr. Ibrahim Mousawi?
Born in Lebanon's picturesque and fertile Bekaa Valley village of Nabysheet, Mousawi is a student of Politics, English Literature and Religion. A former school Headmaster, Ibrahim received his MA in English literature from The Lebanese University, his BA in Journalism from The Lebanese University, and earned his MA in Political Science from The American University of Beirut in 2003. He earned his PhD in Political Islam from Birmingham University-Britain 2007. The title of his dissertation was Compatibility between Islam and democracy; Shiism and democracy under Wilayat Al-Faqih, Iran as a case study.

During the July 2006 War with Israel, Mousawi held the position of editor in chief of Al-Intiqad (Criticism), a weekly Hezbollah newspaper, and was much sought after by international reporters for information and his insights. He appeared widely in the international media and was critical of the destruction of Lebanon and the Bush administration providing Israel with a green light to continue the slaughter while the international community was calling for a ceasefire.

Following the cessation of hostilities, the Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM) invited Mousawi to address peace activists in Belfast, Dublin and Galway about the summer conflict. This October he was invited back but was refused a visa without explanation. When Irish Justice Minister Brian Lenihan denied Mousawi entry to Ireland, it followed Lenihan's meeting with a delegation from Ireland's zionist lobby.

In addition, the Bush administration had pressured Ireland into rejecting his visa application, according to reports in the Irish media. The IAWM issued a statement last month denouncing the decision as "an outrageous act of political censorship" and a "disgraceful attack on the anti-war movement" in Ireland.

"The ban makes nonsense of the frequent claims by this [Irish] government that they favor dialogue and international diplomacy to resolve the problems of the Middle East," Richard Boyd Barret, the head of the IAWM, said at the time. "Anyone even remotely concerned with free speech and the right to engage in open political debate in this country should be very alarmed that the US government is now deciding what viewpoints can and cannot be heard in Ireland," he added. "I'm only involved in academia and media," Mousawi avers, adding that the only "crime" he has ever committed is to openly express his political views, which he insists remain within the boundaries of legitimate intellectual discourse. "We should allow for open debate," Mousawi told the Daily Star. "After all, I come and I only say words. If my words are worth hearing, people should give me the opportunity to speak. If my words are rubbish, it's worth the opportunity to refute what I say, and to undermine my logic if what I say is not logical." "I'm a staunch defender of political freedoms and freedom of speech," he adds.

In February 2005, just one week after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, he invited five Rabbis to a conference in Beirut and hosted them as guests on his political talk show. He also points out that Hezbollah was among the first to condemn the 9/11 attacks as 'terrorism' as well as to condemn the murder of Lebanon's PM Rafik Hariri."I believe governments and politicians have failed to address the problems of the people," he explains. "I believe there is another role that we have to play at the grassroots level, as NGOs and as members of civil society.

There is a lot of diplomacy that could go on at this level. We don't have to wait for officials to take the lead; we have seen what they have brought: nothing but disasters. So I want to highlight the need to interact at this level." Mousawi rejects the notion that there is a 'clash of civilization'. "I believe that all over the world, people want the same things. We all want to be with our families; we all want to come back to our kids at the end of the day and bring bread to their tables and give them a good education, to live in harmony and peace."

Addressing the World Against War International Peace Conference in London last December, Mousawi told the 1200 delegates from 26 countries that he had a two month old son named Issa (Jesus), and one named Muhammad. "If I have another one I will name him Moses", he added.

Mousawi occasionally writes for Beirut's English language Daily Star and has been a commentator for CNN, ABC, and CBS. For many years, Mousawi has also worked extensively with Americans and Europeans arranging and interpreting interviews and is considered one of the best-informed people on political events in Lebanon and Palestine. "I would say that we are in the midst of a war of terminology," Dr. Mousawi asserts. "It is a war of definitions that we should pay attention to".

Next Stop England

The Lobby next moved to bar Mousawi from England, with Henry Grunwald, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews as point man to lead the attack. Following the Zionist Lobby's advisory to its affiliates, apparently without bothering with fact checking, Grunwald repeated the error that went out internationally to pro-Zionist media outlets that Mousawi is 'Director of Al Manar, the Hezbollah News Service', or as the Jerusalem Post claimed, "a senior official of the Al Manar Channel". He in fact was never in that position and ceased working in the English language office nearly two years ago.

The Lobby also lined up Baroness Neville-Jones, the Shadow Security Minister and former Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. The Baroness, who has yet to criticize any of the atrocities committed by Israel in Palestine or Lebanon, apparently knows a threat to England when she is told by the Lobby about one--never mind the quality of her supplied facts. After meeting with leaders of the British Chamber of Deputies, she felt "Mousawi's presence is not conducive to the public good," and that he might "preach hate" if he were allowed in. Yet the Baroness claimed not to know much about Mousawi except that he was (once again!) the fantasy non-Director of Al Manar Television—hardly a promising basis for an informed decision to bar someone from a country! Unwilling to correct her misinformation, the Baroness' press release cascaded into headlines for other Zionist outlets internationally who were quite prepared to repeat it.

The Jerusalem Post ran a headline which blared 'Hezbollah television station editor's entry into Britain angers Jewish leaders' and the Jewish Chronicle and Forward followed suit with the Jewish Chronicle of 11/16/07 headlining 'Ban Hezbollah man from UK!'

The Baroness is known in Britain for her persistence. She enlisted her fellow Zionist Conservative Party Chairman David Cameron, who was already under Zionist pressure, to ask England's new Prime Minister Gordon Brown to deny Mousawi entry to Britain, apparently because he did "not trust the 'Arabists' in the Home Office to do a proper job". "Are you aware that the Irish government recently refused entry to Ibrahim Mousawi, head of Hezbollah's viciously anti-Semitic TV station, Al-Manar?", Cameron tsk tsked to the British premier during Question Time in the House of Commons. "And just what approach will Her Majesty's government take when Mr. Mousawi attempts to enter the UK to speak at a conference?" Cameron demanded. Brown demurred, apparently sensing that Cameron, not for the first time, had his facts wrong.

In 2002 AIPAC member and advisor Jeffrey Goldberg appeared in Beirut and interviewed Mousawi among others. Cloaking his extreme Zionism, Goldberg posed as a journalist and wrote a substantially false article for the New Yorker issue of October 14, 2002, implying that Mousawi was anti-Semitic. Caught in his lies, the record was clarified and Mousawi vindicated but the New Yorker never did apologize nor retract Goldberg's allegations.

Answering the Lobby charges of anti-Semitism, Mousawi categorically denies the accusation that he has even thought of promoting "anti-Semitic" views. "I would challenge anyone to provide evidence of any word that I have said that is hateful or anti-Semitic," he says, adding that he himself has been a victim of discrimination and has therefore made a special effort to eschew any form of prejudice. "I have nothing against Jews. I have nothing against any human being, whether because of religion, gender or political affiliation," he explains. "I'm a human being who believes in dignity, independence and freedom. I'm a bridge-builder and I've always been an advocate of dialogue and discussion."

Mousawi's Views

Mousawi affirms the view that in the Middle East the struggle is not with Judaism but with Zionism. Zionism is understood in much of the Middle East as an ideology that is the enemy of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, and an ideology that informed the theft of Palestine from its rightful inhabitants who are overwhelmingly Christians and Muslims.

And what of the views Cameron and his Zionist marionettes so strongly felt would not be conducive to the public good?Mousawi at the London Conference, as reported by the Daily Star:
Yes, we believe in religion, but this does not bring us to a place where we do not respect others or we do not recognize others If religion is not going to make me a better human being who cares for any human being, I don't need it. ... [Religion] is not to make me fanatic, irresponsible, or feel that I'm deemed to salvation while others are going to hell. No, this is not what we want. If you are really a true believer, you should care for any human being, whoever he is, wherever he lives.

During his speech, Mousawi also had a response for those who would question the idea of inviting a Hezbollah media man to an anti-war event.
Who can talk about [the need to] stop the wars and [achieve] peace more than those who are suffering from the occupation and the atrocities and the massacres and the aggressions? We want genuine peace. We don't want compromises and we don't want to go again and again to the same vicious cycle every 10 years or five years, where you make a temporary settlement and you end up with another war coming. The roots of the problem, the roots of the cause of the problem, should be addressed.

Affirming Hezbollah's right to resist occupation and denying that the group engages in terrorism, Mousawi argues:
Hezbollah is a legitimate resistance group that is fighting to regain occupied land like the Shebaa Farms and to secure the return of prisoners held by Israel. Many people try to demonize the resistance, but resistance is the right of people under occupation.If there wasn't an occupation, there wouldn't be resistance. I would support any nation or people if they were occupied and exercising their right to resist an occupying force.

I don't believe anyone wants to have wars. But in this part of the world, we have for decades been the victims of occupation and war."
A durable peace, Mousawi argues, "cannot happen unless the core issues are addressed in a just way."

This is the same message Mousawi has presented to journalists and conferences all over the world. More than a decade ago at an international conference in Stuttgart, Germany in 1997, Mousawi demonstrated a grasp of the essence of the major religions and drew applause from the international audience when he spoke about what being a Muslim meant to him:
When I say that I am a Muslim, I am saying that I am a Christian and I am saying that I am a Jew, for we all believe in the same God, we are all the sons and daughters of Abraham and we are all of the Book and revere the wisdom of all the Prophets.

Mousawi tells his audiences that war is the biggest terrorism and that the central teachings of the three Abrahamic religions admonish all to build bridges not walls. His ideas are in the tradition of a long line of Shia scholars and human rights advocates including the Shia clerics Mohammad Mahdi Shamseddine, Imam Musa Sadr, and Sayeed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah — all known for their life's work for social welfare and their calls for dialogue and ecumenism work with Christians and all sects.

Overcoming Zionism

Challenging the bias (at best) and disinformation of the presented univocality of the Zionist narrative serves justice. In 1954 the tipping point came with Welch's rebuke. In our own era, Zionism is increasingly being criticized and spurned even by former adherents, with more Israelis questioning its ideological underpinnings. As has often been noted, debate is often freer in Israel than it is in the United States. Most notably, some of the children of the high-profile Zionist founders of the state of Israel have turned their backs on this legacy, including the grandson of the right-wing PM Menachem Begin, 32 year-old Avinadav Begin, seen regularly protesting at the West Bank side of the Apartheid Wall over the past few years.

In addition to Menachem Begin's grandson, we also have no less than the Irgun-steeped Ehud Olmert's daughter Dana attending a rally during the war on Lebanon. Avrum Burg, a former Knesset speaker, Shimon Peres' protégé, and Israel Agency director has also recently had his bombshell book released, Defeating Hitler, and left the country to take up French citizenship.

Burg is in favor of abrogating the Law of Return, compares Israel to Germany and sees the end of the Zionist enterprise. Many prominent international figures outside of Israel have been moved to speak up for Palestine and argue for sanctions. South Africans Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ronnie Kasrils and British doctor Colin Green, for example, cogently make the case for boycotting apartheid and supporting justice for all who live in the land of Canaan. Yet this free debate among advocates of peace and justice in the Middle East such as Mousawi is being muzzled.

While European law keep some Israeli generals and Ministers from visiting or grounded on runways lest they be arrested for war crimes upon alighting, visiting Lebanese, Palestinian and other scholars from the Arab and Muslim world are being denied entry, their voices stifled.

Howard Zinn has recently lent his support to set up The Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism http://www.codz.org/ , formed in response to the active stifling and suppression of alternative views on Israel/Palestine and Zionism in the United States and beyond. CODZ sees the IFAW as:
... a well-organized campaign to silence dissent on campus and to get people to look at all Muslims as "Islamo-Fascists," creating a dangerous atmosphere for Muslim students who have sustained so much hate and abuse since 9/11. IFAW seeks to solidify the "you're either with us or you're against us" call of the Bush administration, to equate any questioning of Zionism with support for terrorism, and to further beat the drums for war on Iran.

The Zionist attack on Mousawi in part of the general Zionist campaign against Hezbollah and its supporters, institutions, staff, as well as anyone who seeks discussions with the movement. It is not only about Dr. Mousawi. Many scholars who work for Hezbollah affiliated institutions has been subjected to harassment and campaigns to deny them the right to speak at Conferences, to hold interviews, engage in dialogue and to travel to the US and sometimes England and parts of Europe.

In the pursuit of justice, the growing debate on Zionism, both in the Middle East and beyond, is a much needed, urgent and legitimate one." All people of good will should support Dr. Mousawi's right to free speech, not least so that, in the words of John Berger, "Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one."


Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com. Ann El Khoury is a researcher in Sydney, Australia. Her site is at http://www.peoplesgeography.com/ .

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