"I'll be a mirror, reflect what you are. In case you don't know..." (Lou Reed)Gone are the days when the West could smugly lean back and claim to be the defender of democracy and free speech, while the Middle East and North Africa represented a backwards and insular culture, determined to undermine Western freedom.
Never mind that Washington took the first steps to end the integrity of Western media during the war against Iraq, applying the principle of embedded journalism and laying down a ban against photos of fallen US soldiers. That wasn't freedom of speech.
But the West maintained its view of the Western press as fundamentally "fair and balanced", revealingly the tagline for the most unfair and most imbalanced news outlet in the "free world", American Fox News.
The Arab Spring, regardless of how its success may be judged right now in terms of actual political change, has buried the notion of people devoted to totalitarianism and impervious to the virtues of modernity.
Most of the world supports the Palestinian cause, except for the West. You may argue that freedom of speech has generally poorer conditions outside the West, but in the West there is one area, where freedom of speech has poorer conditions, reflecting the inability of the imperialist countries to rid themselves of their historical baggage, and that is the Middle East Conflict.
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| Countries that support an independent Palestinían nation-state |
"Islam-criticism can rapidly rocket you into a major position in strategic think tanks and media punditry, criticism of Israel is likely to send your career spiralling downward"From staged anti-Islamism to Western censorship
To understand the depth of the moral corruption, the racism and white supremacism that underlies the Western attitude towards Palestinians, we need to paint an objective picture of how readily the West condemns all things Arab while at the same time endorsing Western oppression of dissent.
During the Mohamed Cartoon controversy, the West painted it as a clash between the values and methods of the Christian and the Islamic world.
The globalization of the controversy completely sidetracked the local problem with a radically racist population of Denmark, where 83 percent of the Caucasian population admits to being "a little or somewhat racist", according to a 1997 EU study, and where extreme right wing parties have dominated the political arena since 1973, where the first white racist populist party was formed and gained a landslide victory in Parliament.
The Mohamed Cartoon crisis was essentially the product of a media stunt, where neocon individuals strongly influenced by American neoconservatism, due to employment on a Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, was able to produce a mega-event to form the perceptions of millions in the world, rather than conduct objective reporting.
Back then it was the argument that anything goes in the West: Freedom of speech must prevail.
But that noble ideal only counts, as long as it is convenient. The latest and most damning evidence to the Western media blackout when comes to anything relating to the Arab world is the way the Middle East conflict is being portrayed.
"Free Palestine" has become a frequent post on BBC's online articles on Facebook and beyond, mocking the mythical Western freedom of speech, ever since it was discovered that BBC censored a rapper on the radio show BBC 1Xtra. He couldn't say "Free Palestine".
Another rapper, only months later, could not even mention the word "Gaza Strip" as a metaphor.
“Come on Joe, who you know as hard as this? Bringing more fire than the -”The rest was killed. Censorship.
Indifference to a Genocide
How serious is this censorship? Already in 2004, the Glasgow University Media Group published a major study on contemporary TV coverage of the Middle East Conflict and its impact on public. The group analysed about 200 programmes and surveyed more than 800 individuals.
Their conclusion was that reporting was dominated by Israeli accounts, and that the views of the audience directly reflected the tint.
In a recent article on The Guardian's Comment is Free, Greg Philo, the research director of Glasgow University Media Unit, proclaims a complete Israeli PR victory:
"...we have been contacted by many journalists, especially from the BBC, and told of the intense pressures they are under that limit criticism of Israel. They asked us to raise the issue in public because they can't. They speak of "waiting in fear for the phone call from the Israelis" (meaning the embassy or higher), of the BBC's Jerusalem bureau having been "leant on by the Americans", of being "guilty of self-censorship" and of "urgently needing an external arbiter". Yet the public response of the BBC is to avoid reporting our latest findings."The BBC media blackout rather accurately reflects the general position of Western media when comes to the Palestinian side of the conflict.
Between 1.5 and 2 million Palestinians have been killed since 1948, making some commenters dub it "the accidental genocide".
Only since 2000, where the Second Intifida or Al Aqsa intifada broke out, an estimated 6,430 Palestinians have been killed, of which 1,463 are children.
Most recently Israeli troops opened fire as hundreds of Palestinian protesters and supporters from Syria tried to cross the frontier with the Israeli-held Golan Heights, killing 23 people and injuring more than 350 injured.
Reports like these aren't censored by Western media, but they're routinely misrepresented, depicted in the context that suits Israel.
The wording of the press always reinforces the perception of Israel as being somehow justified when killing Palestinians, and Palestinians having no right to protest in any form - peaceful protests and children throwing rocks is treated as similar to Hamas firing Qassam rockets and Hezbollah conducting suicide missions.
"We've finally located the Western equivalent to the Quran, the one thing you cannot speak ill of: Zionism is the sacred cow around which the West has formed a consensus so monolithic it renders any notion of conspiracy redundant."From Latent Racism to Complicity in Ethnic Cleansing
The robotic nature of reporting reflects the indifference of Western media, a product of its inherent bias towards Israel as a Western ally with "shared values."
It reflects also the prevailing anti-Arab racism, the latest rendition of an ethnic superiority complex as endemic to the West as religious fundamentalism is to South Asia.
I say anti-Arab, but it also involves Turks and Persians, and Africans, but let's not fool ourselves and think it is merely a product of "Islamophobia" or "anti-Islamism". Islam does factor in, but the fear of contact extents beyond Muslims - a significant percentage of affected Palestinians are, for instance, Christians.
Western contempt, ranging from emphatic block to rambling xenophobia, has to do with not only religious beliefs and cultural habits, but extents to skin tone, facial expression and mannerism. Anything peculiar to Caucasian customs places you in the out-category, where it becomes a task, a challenge and a project of its own to earn the legendary Western "tolerance."
The callousness of Western reporting somewhat resembles the reporting of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, or suicide bombings in Pakistan, or US drone attacks in Northern Pakistan.
It's something that happens all the time, and the media deals with it mechanically, and in a detached manner.
The implication is that the sum and diversity of Palestinian suffering is unavoidable, or selfinflicted, or that it is a sad but somehow acceptable "collateral damage" in a vast cultural conflict, where Israel represents Western values and Western interests.
As such the Palestinian rights become subordinate to a larger, collective agenda of the West, and the media bias and media blackouts become a license to kill for the Israeli Defense Forces.
Every attempt to portray the Palestinian side is combated vigorously and quite frequently viciously by Zionist interest organizations in the West, always following a fixed and predictable line of argumentation: At first the journalism is imbalanced, favoring the Palestinians against the Israeli, and eventually it becomes "anti-semitic."
If "anti-semistism" is contained in Godwin's Law, the Middle East conflict is a discourse to be avoided by all means, since it is unproductive from the beginning, and that is also largely how it is treated in the West: As a set of given facts, a syllogism where neither the premises nor the logical leaps can be questioned.
Massively destructive Israeli attacks on Palestinians are always presented as inherently justified and carried out in retalition for a Palestinian attack, and at best criticized for being an overreaction or for not sufficiently taking precautions against civilian casualties.
Apparently, it doesn't strike anybody to question the motives of Israel, even if there is ample evidence of the country masterminding a plan for ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is not, mind you, the same as genocide; ethnic cleansing simply means any way of aggressively removing un undesired ethnic group from a territory.
"The Israeli masterstroke of complete media victory in the West relies on this false bookkeeping, where they present one version of events to the world and reserve the truth to themselves."Western journalist simply refuse to consider the possibility that Israel, who kills eight times as many Palestinians as the other way around, is carrying out a carefully crafted plan that involves strategic settlement, diplomatic deception and slow but systematic displacement.
It is against such wilfil ignorance the Palestinian terrorism has developed, conditioned to rebellion by a combination of oppression by brute force and a sophisticated structure of ideological denial.
The Sacred Cow of the West
Israel exercises absolute control of the narrative to the point, where Western media is ready to betray all principles of reporting. But the blackouts, in themselves, are revealing.
The worse it gets with the media, the more apparent it will become that there is a flaw in the logic built up around Israel's exceptional position, a blind spot in our perception.
If there was nothing to be ashamed of, it would not be necessary to cover it up. If Israel's conduct was justified, and her motives clearly benign, there would be no need for censorship. Everything could be sorted out in a fair and systematic analysis of the conflict.
Just as the exteme reactions to the Mohamed Cartoons exposed extremist attitudes among some Muslims, an undeniable tendency to fundamentalism, the censorship and bias of the Western press reveals how little truth and justice and freedom of speech matters when compared to the inherent racist and imperialist attitudes.
When the truth is not convenient to the West, it becomes imperative to bury it, and it is done under a landslide of anti-Palestinian reports.
The bias and the censorship and the hysteria all just reveal the lack of rationality behind the pro-Zionist attitudes, and the inability of Zionism to defend itself on a level battle-field. It needs the upper hand advantage of a brainwashed class of media workers perpetually selling the illusion of justification to the public and to politicans of the West, who serve as a shield, not against terrorism, but against the diminishing of the Greater Israel.
The terrorism is a product of despair, and long-standing hostility as a result of a people being constantly swindled by the cunning manipulation of Western power brokers.
There are few countries or regions left in the world but USA and Europe that do not recognize the Palestinian right to autonomy, which is the rationale for the Palestinian authority and the Arab League to bring the issue for a vote in the UN Security Council this September.
"A brief look at the maps conveying the territorial development of Israel is enough to prove that if anybody holds reptilian greed, it would be Israel."Everybody else gets the picture, except for the former and current colonialist powers. Why is that?
Could it be because the assessment of facts in Europe and America is dependent on the economic, strategic and political interests of the Transatlantic Alliance, and when feeling its supremacy threatened the truth is readily thrown under the bus?
One thing is certain: The press is not free. It is servile mouth piece of Western policy makers.
When biased it is simply shamed by its inability to carry out its duty to conduct independent reporting. But when, as in the case of BBC, the bias amounts to censorship, it becomes and attack on freedom of speech, similar to Muslims attempts to discourage media organizations from depicting the prophet Muhammed.
The fundamentalism and the hysteria is the same. We've finally located the Western equivalent to the Quran, the one thing you cannot speak ill of: Zionism is the sacred cow around which the West has formed a consensus so monolithic it renders any notion of "conspiracy" redundant.
When Dialogue Is Pointless
When the boycott of Israel was announced, defenders of Israel and those on the fence spoke frantically of the need for "more dialogue", a dialogue they do not find particularly necessary when Israel conduct raids and bombings, or when Palestinians are displaced by settlers, or subjected to the harrassment that is daily reality not only in the occupied territories, but also in the heartland of Israel.
Against such glaring hipocrisy communication has to take place by non-verbal means. Previously, terrorism has dominated the picture. One can only hope Palestinians will, as it seems to be occurring, turn ever more in the direction of non-violent protest, while at the same time gearing up their communication warfare with a strong and professionally conducted presence in the blogosphere and beyond.
That is the first step to a concerted effort to penetrate the absolutism of Zionism that rules the Western media and the public perception of a 63 year old conflict.
Under a general set of circumstances, where Israeli spin is taken as highest authority, and the highest authority is deemed to be Yahweh himself - as a majority of Christian Evangelicals in the West considering Israel a heavenly sign and any opposition against it a sin, there is little more point in dialogue - it makes no sense to talk about dialogue.
You can no more carry out a meaningful dialogue with a group of people who insist on lying through their teeth, as you can trust an organization sworn to eliminate you.
"Peace proposals with no sworn statements indicate a plot", Sun Tzu wrote.Israel is, at first glance, entitled to demand a sworn statement of acknowledging Israel's right to existence in return for concessions. But the indictment of plotting destruction goes both ways, as the truth lies buried much too deep for the superficial journalism conducted around the Middle East Conflict:
"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country", said David Ben Gurion in 1938.The Israeli masterstroke of complete media victory in the West relies on this false bookkeeping, where they present one version of events to the world and reserve the truth to themselves.
"I personally feel that in spite of all the oppression and murder and theft conducted by Western imperialism the world owes the West more than retribution, more than contempt."In spite of ample documentation that this has been the consistent policy of Israeli governments throughout its history, the West readily believes that Israel is largely benevolent and absolutely sincere in its attempts to achieve peace.
Rather, Israel provokes confrontation by all means, in order to utilize the conflict to conduct a massive and intransigent land-grabbing strategy designed directly to reflect the Anglo-American policy towards the native Americans.
"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more", Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel, complained in August, 2000.A brief look at the maps conveying the territorial development of Israel is enough to prove that if anybody holds reptilian greed, it would be Israel.
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| After the smoke settled, the settlers came pouring in. Today Israel controls 78 percent of the land. This perspective has been free for the Western press to investigate for over half a century. |
The Jewish Defense League, listed as a terrorist organization by both the FBI and EU, actively works on both continents to intimidate critics of Israel, and the organization has carried out several murders in recent time.
Jewish Internet Defense Force, a group of Jewish hactivists, was formed as a response to the Second Intifada that broke out in 2000, and employing all manners of subversive information tactics under the guise of "combating anti-semitism and terrorism."
AIPAC is arguably the most influential political lobbyist group in USA, responsible for keeping Washington staunchly pro-Zionist and ready to funnel billions of dollars into the Israeli war machine, as well as offering moral support, but there are numerous other similar organizations.
The case of Jewish American scholar and Israel-critic, Norman Finkelstein, makes it quite apparent at what cost you open your mouth to criticize Zionism in the West.
Whereas Islam-criticism can rapidly rocket you into a major position in strategic think tanks and media punditry, criticism of Israel is likely to send your career spiralling downward, if not by actual berufsverbot then by subtle marginalization, discrimination and ostracization.
Again, under such circumstances it makes no sense to talk about a Zionist cabal or a conspiracy or a secret Zionist lobby. The enforcement of pro-Israeli policies and the combative attitude towards anyone questioning this consensus is glaringly obvious.
In several European countries there are laws prohibiting anybody from questioning the accounts of Holocaust, and in USA the Anti-Boycott Compliance Act prohibits individuals and companies from participating in boycotts of Israel.
"...after having caused the Middle East problem with aeons of anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust, Europe and America have now adopted the Zionist project, perpetuating their disastrous effect on world politics."While Holocaust denial may be repulsive, laws against it do not reflect a policy of freedom of speech, or even respect for academic virtues. Outlawing "genocide denial" marginalizes any attempt to seek physical evidence and documentation for historical claims.
Neither does the outlawing of a small group of right wing extremist reflect a reality-adequate risk of Nazism. Extreme views and attitudes can be freely expressed in Europe, when they are being directed against Muslims, and they frequently and consistently are.
The unhindered success of New Right populist parties seeking discriminatory legislation and targeting Muslims with hate speech from the very pulpits of the legislative chambers prove that right wing radicalization is not a concern for the political systems of Europe.
The only question is who the racism is directed again, and quite absurdly, after having caused the Middle East problem with aeons of anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust, Europe and America have now adopted the Zionist project, perpetuating their disastrous effect on world politics.
Palestine is only the broken lamp that illuminates the slaughter caused by hundreds of years of imperialism conducted by the Western powers, from the British gunships anchored outside of Hong Kong during The Opium War (1840-1895) over the carving up of Africa in the The Berlin Africa Conference 1884-1885 to the 21st Century invasions of the Middle East and North Africa.
What people exterminated 10-100 million of the native population to make room for a new civilization, while basing its industrial boom and subsequent world domination on mass import of slave labor from Africa?
What continent bred not only Zionism, but Communism and Fascism, sending the whole world into two consecutive world wars?
What continent conducted massacre upon massacre on the native population, when it was formed as a penal colony?
Neither of those things originated in the Arab world. These were the deeds of Europe and America and Austrialia, the very powers that now oppose freedom for the Palestinians in a similar act of displacement and ethnic cleansing.
The future will no more forget this fact than it will ignore the fact that they held their ground for as long as possible when it came to securing the rights of the Palestinians. It will go into history.
A Warning About History
America in 2011 is Rome in 200AD or Britain on the eve of the first world war: an empire at the zenith of its power but with cracks beginning to show.The words belong to Larry Elliott, Economics editor of The Guardian, a commentator who makes such statements at some professional risk. They were published on Monday 6 June 2011.
They say history is written by the victors. As the US empire collapses and other powers, the BRIC, slowly rise to take charge, history will be revised.
And here is my warning:
I sincerely hope democracy not only survives in the West, but penetrates every region of the Earth, and I believe that it will, and I believe it will do so even sooner, when the Anglo-American imperialism stops blocking all attempts at progress.
I believe the thirst for freedom is an energy that is pent up, in China as well as in the Middle East, waiting to be released, but unable to do so, because the world is under the thumb of Western hegemony.
As the lamp of democracy is lit in these far regions, and as their economic prosperity and political power overshadows the West, maybe the lives and the prospects of of those who were formerly the master race and the privileged class will depend on people of foreign origin defending their rights.
As the lamp of democracy is lit in these far regions, and as their economic prosperity and political power overshadows the West, maybe the lives and the prospects of of those who were formerly the master race and the privileged class will depend on people of foreign origin defending their rights.
I personally feel that in spite of all the oppression and murder and theft conducted by Western imperialism the world owes the West more than retribution, more than contempt.
While the concept of "the white man's burden" was naive and arrogant, we must credit the Western countries for having developed and maintained as well as they were able the superior ideals of democracy, freedom and human rights.
"The parable of the unjust steward is about using money to gain friends, but it can also be seen as a parable about forgiveness, and writing off the metaphysical debt of guilt. But the universal core of the message, the focal point, is to prepare for the future."
The scientific progress with which the West has enriched the world has caused much damage to the environment, and it poses great risks and ethical challenges for, but rational thinking and technological progress are still our best options to create a sustainable future for mankind.
But the world is rapidly changing, as the songwriter put it.
"Soon, Israelis will find themselves global pariahs, much as white South Africans were for a time", says Robert L. Grenier.Again, this is not a casual statement by some marginal strategic analyst on a blog, but former Director of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center, a man who also coordinated CIA activities in Iraq from 2002 to 2004 and before that served as the CIA Chief of Station in Islamabad.
Grenier goes on to say:
"Within 25 years, Israel will have an Arab Prime Minister; and in 45 years, the Israeli military will have an Arab Chief of Staff."The Parable of the Unjust Steward
There are those developments in the world that are almost fixed, and then there are the political conditions that depend on what we do right here, right now. China is projected to eclipse the American economy by 2016, and at the rate the US economy is unravelling at this point, it could be sooner.
It is certain beyond reasonable doubt that BRIC will be the four dominant economies by 2050.
What is relative in this picture is what level of cultural and racial hostility is reproduced through the next generations in the various cultures affected by Western policies. If the post-imperial West is to hope for less than reciprocation, it depends on the grace and largesse with which these countries manage their exit from empire.
Let me go Biblical for a moment and share my favorite parable, one very relevant to the problem of false bookkeeping in the Western accounts of the crimes of Zionism:
Jesus told an intriguing fable of a manager, who was accused of fraud by the owner of the estate. It is called the parable of The Unjust Steward.
The owner tells the manager to settle his accounts, because he is not going to retain his position. The manager panics. He is not suited for menial labor, and he has no friends. He calls in the various debitors and halves their debt, one by one, hoping to secure their friendship, so he will have a network, when he is laid off.
In a surprising twist to the story the owner doesn't chastise the corrupted manager for having written off the debts. After all, half of something is better than all of nothing. Instead, the manager praises his shrewdness.
It is obvious from the context that the parable has to do with how you handle money, and it is directly applicable, eerily applicable, to the long-standing discourse about debt relief for the Third World.
“So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon..."The parable of the unjust steward is about using money to gain friends, but it can also be seen as a parable about forgiveness, and writing off the metaphysical debt of guilt. But the universal core of the message, the focal point, is to prepare for the future.
Westerners love prudence. They love prudence more than justice. That is one important reason, actually, why they prefer to side with Israel over Palestine. Israel is productive, innovative, modern and apparently liberal. It provides some hope of stability, and its violence is organized and cold-blooded, carried out by police and military forces, contrasted by the disorderly violence carried out by Palestinians.
"The bias and the censorship and the hysteria all just reveal the lack of rationality behind the pro-Zionist attitudes, and the inability of Zionism to defend itself on a level battle-field. It needs the upper hand advantage of a brainwashed class of media workers."It is not too dissimilar from the sentiments that accompanied the industrial and military build-up in Germany before second world war. Other countries, including USA, were disturbed by the armament, but also awed by German cultural and scientific and technological accomplishment.
Prudence, however, is also to prepare for the future, and in this regard the Zionist axis - the axis against recognition of the equal rights of Palestinians to life, freedom and national autonomy - displays less than prudence in their systematic denial of historical facts.
I am not advocating that the current Israeli bias is replaced with a Palestinian bias. I'm fairly sure the Palestinians would settle for equal terms and equal time, even after more than half a century of being deprived of a voice.
Today Palestine, more than any other place on Earth where oppression reigns, has become the epicentre of global conflict, and the symbol of an era of unbridled Western infringement on the rights of others.
Don't let it become another genocide to be added to the list of the sins of the Christian West.
If unable to be morally upright, at least be wise, and if unable to be wise, at least be shrewd. The future is upon you. Settle your accounts.
Also written about the Middle East Conflict: Christian Zionism is Not Biblical, The Case For Palestine and Why Does USA Support Israel?
Also written about the Middle East Conflict: Christian Zionism is Not Biblical, The Case For Palestine and Why Does USA Support Israel?
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