From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Sun May 17 2009 - 15:01:34 EDT
The End of Free Speech? Criminalizing Criticism of Israel
By Paul Craig Roberts
Op Ed News
Saturday, May 9, 2009
On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s
bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US
Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide.
To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition?
Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to
any criticism of Israel or Jews.
Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House.
As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will
become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s
treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.
It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s
account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.
It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel
Lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the AIPAC-written
resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in
Gaza that were endorsed by 100 per cent of the US Senate and 99 per cent of
the House of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel
for its barbarity.
It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.
It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews
in the media, finance, and foreign policy.
In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the
First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast
aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned.
Given the hubris of the US government, which leads Washington to apply US
law to every country and organization, what will happen to the
International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and
the various human rights organizations that have demanded investigations of
Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population? Will they all
be arrested for the hate crime of “excessive” criticism of Israel?
This is a serious question.
A recent UN report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames
Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the United Nations
premises in Gaza. The Israeli government has responded by charging that the
UN report is “tendentious, patently biased,” which puts the UN report
into the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong
anti-Israel sentiment.
Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to
silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli
soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated
murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis.
These acts are clearly war crimes.
It was the Israeli press that published the pictures of the Israeli
soldiers’ T-shirts that indicate that the willful murder of women and
children is now the culture of the Israeli army. The T-shirts are horrific
expressions of barbarity. For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian
woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, “One shot, two
kills.” These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward
the Palestinians is one of extermination.
It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s
mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli
peace groups. For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of
ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the
Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even
praised.
Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper?
Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report
what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of
Israel, an anti-semitic act”?
Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that Palestinians
are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel. These Americans will see the
censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror. They will accept
the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts about
Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding and
abetting terrorists.
A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel. American
university professors have fallen victim to the well organized attempt to
eliminate all criticism of Israel. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at
a Catholic university because of the power of the Israel Lobby. Now the
Israel Lobby is after University of California (at Santa Barbara,)
professor Wiliam Robinson. Robinson’s crime: his course on global affairs
included some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice (sic)
Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials,
Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying. The Israel Lobby succeeded in
getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric
Holder has dropped charges. Yet, Larry Franklin, the DOD official accused
of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7
months in prison.
The absurdity is extraordinary. The two Israeli agents are not guilty of
receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to
them! If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving
secrets to a spy?
Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an
independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American rather
than Israeli interests. It eliminates any prospect of Americans escaping
from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.
To keep American minds captive, the Lobby is working to ban as anti-semitic
any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel. It is permissible
to criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-semitic to
criticize Israel, and anti-semitism will soon be a universal hate-crime in
the Western world.
Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust. It is a
crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6
million Jews were murdered.
Why is the Holocaust a subject that is off limits to examination? How could
a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and
anti-semitics? Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by thought
control.
Imprisoning people for doubts is the antithesis of modernity.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan
administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be
reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Op Ed News