Rampaging Israeli Settlers - Call for
"Death to Arabs" in Jerusalem
By Philip Giraldi
May
05, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" -
- "The
Unz Report
"
-
Last week there
were some interesting stories that were
very definitely underreported partly due
to the fact that the mainstream media
was heavily into the distraction
provided by its beatification of George
Floyd. For example, the tale of how a
mob consisting of hundreds of Israeli
Jews, composed mostly of settlers and
the extremist so-called Kahanists,
rampaging through Jerusalem and
calling for “Death to Arabs,” was
largely ignored. Right-wing Israeli
lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir sent a message
to the settlers, encouraging
participants to “hang Arabs.” One member
responded to the advice to bring their
firearms with them with “We’re burning
Arabs today, the Molotov cocktails are
already in the trunk.”
In spite of the
extreme violence and racism behind the
attacks, the story did not seem to
interest the disproportionate number of
Zionists among American news editors and
reporters. Along the way, the angry Jews
beat Palestinians and attacked their
homes and businesses in one of the Old
City’s remaining Arab neighborhoods
Sheikh Jarrah.
Attacks on
Palestinians, to include their homes and
livelihoods have been increasing in
Jerusalem and on the occupied West Bank
over the past several months without any
intervention by Israeli police. The
settlers were
reportedly part of a right-wing
Israeli group called Lehava
which organized the violent
demonstration with the objective of
“restoring Jewish dignity” by “breaking
the faces of Arabs.” Lehava
claimed it was only avenging alleged
attacks on Jews by Palestinians in and
around Jerusalem, but most reports
indicated that recent violence was
instead caused by small groups of Jewish
teenage boys looking for trouble.
During the
rioting, Israeli soldiers and police
made some arrests but primarily attacked
the Palestinian civilians, including
children, and some Jewish
counter-protesters, with ‘skunk water’
sprayed from trucks, water cannon, tear
gas and rubber-coated steel bullets. 105
Palestinians were injured and 22 remain
in the hospital. One Palestinian was
shot in the head by an armed border
policeman who fired into the
counter-demonstrators and there are
unconfirmed reports that at least four
more Arabs died.
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In a normal world
and if the United States had a normal
government that adhered to some kind of
moral compass, there might have been a
protest coming from the President Joe
Biden administration or from the
“people’s house” Congress, but there was
nary a whimper. On the contrary, though
the Congress was thinking about Israel,
it was looking in a different direction,
towards those whom Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has declared to be
the enemies of his country. The attacks
took place on April 22nd,
ironically the same day that Congressmen
Ted Deutch and Michael McCaul
released a letter that they had
sponsored. The letter was intended to
stop dead any consideration that the
United States just might condition its
billions of dollars in largesse to the
Jewish state annually based on Netanyahu
and his band of war criminals
restraining themselves just a bit.
Such a
possibility has been raised by Senators
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders,
along with a handful of other brave
legislators, who expressed concern that
Israel will act without restraint as
long as it knows that its money from
Washington will continue to flow. In
particular, Israel is currently
pressuring Congress and using its media
clout to oppose any re-entry by the US
into the multilateral agreement to limit
and inspect Iran’s nuclear development
program, which Biden is just possibly
intending to do. The previous agreement,
which was being observed by Iran, became
largely a dead letter when President
Donald Trump, acting on behalf of major
Jewish donors to the GOP as well as his
neocon advisers, withdrew from the
existing plan, the JCPOA, in 2017.
The letter was
signed by 330 Congressmen, roughly half
Republican and half Democratic, which is
nearly two-thirds of the House and
Senate. It begins with “As the United
States meets pressing global challenges,
we strongly believe that robust U.S.
foreign assistance is vital to ensuring
our national security interests abroad.
One program that enjoys particularly
strong bipartisan backing and for which
we, Democrats and Republicans, urge your
continued strong support is the full
funding of security assistance to
Israel.” The usual balderdash follows,
about how “Israel continues to face
direct threats from Iran and its
terrorist proxies… Our aid to Israel is
a vital and cost-effective expenditure
which advances important U.S. national
security interests in a highly
challenging region.”
Sure it does,
just ask the victims of the Israeli
attack on the US naval vessel the USS
Liberty in June 1967, which killed 34
sailors and injured 171 more. But no
matter. The only things missing from the
letter was the boilerplate assertion
that Israel is America’s best friend in
the whole wide world, which is
obligatory in such documents, probably
because everyone in Congress has already
agreed to that. One also has to wonder
why the other 205 Congressmen didn’t
sign the letter, which is also
obligatory, and one has to assume that
their mothers had just died or something
similar.
The letter also
recalls how “President Biden has stated,
‘I’m not going to place conditions for
the security assistance given the
serious threats that Israel is facing,
and this would be, I think,
irresponsible’” before adding that
“Reducing funding or adding conditions
on security assistance would be
detrimental to Israel’s ability to
defend itself against all threats.”
The American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),
regarded as the most visible component
of the Israel Lobby, was very pleased
with the letter. Its spokesman Marshall
Wittmann told the Jewish Insider website
that the letter is “a very strong
bipartisan statement that full security
assistance to Israel – without
additional conditions – is in the
national security interest of the United
States.”
Just once it
might be nice to see someone in Congress
or the White House concede that tying
one’s security arrangements to a nation
that most of the world considers “rogue”
is not exactly a smart thing to do, but
it all depends on how one defines smart.
Smart for a congressman on the make is
to have the Jewish dominated media and
the invincible Israel Lobby on one’s
side. Smart is to receive a pat on the
head from AIPAC. It should be noted, of
course, that the letter and the
commentary surrounding it make no
reference to the behavior of the
rampaging Jewish mobs in Jerusalem that
were out for blood, even though that was
taking place as the document was being
released to the media.
In addition to
the “threat” posed by legislators like
Sanders and Warren, the letter was
clearly intended to meet a challenge
coming from Congresswoman Betty
McCollum, who has twice sponsored
legislation forbidding the Israeli use
of American financial aid to torture
Arabs and, in particular, to beat and
imprison Palestinian children.
Her legislation the Promoting
Human Rights for Palestinian Children
Living Under Israeli Military Occupation
Act
H.R. 2407 amends a provision of the
Foreign Assistance Act known as the
“Leahy Law” to prohibit funding for the
military detention of children in any
country, including Israel. McCollum
argues that an estimated 10,000
Palestinian children have been detained
by Israeli security forces and
prosecuted in the Israeli military court
system since 2000. These children
between the ages of 11 and 15 have
sometimes been tortured using
chokeholds, beatings, and coercive
interrogation.
The Deutch-McCaul
letter not coincidentally appeared less
than a week after McCollum joined by 15
progressive Democrat co-sponsors
submitted her bill, which admittedly is
unlikely ever to emerge from committee
for a vote. As of September 2020
there were an estimated 157 children
still detained in Israeli prisons and,
though it would be difficult to break
down the money to Israel which is
advanced in a lump sum, one would think
the objective to be an admirable one to
anyone but the always on-alert and
powerful Israel Lobby.
The pledge by
Congress together with its clear message
that behind it there are enough votes to
override any White House attempt to cut
the aid, is also intended to send a
warning to another perceived threat to
Israel, that of the growing non-violent
Boycott, Divestments and Sanction
movement (BDS). The movement, which is
particularly strong on college campuses,
is being de facto criminalized
in states all over the country, 26 at
least and counting, and there are also
Congressional bills that would possibly
make the issue of boycotting Israel a
felony with serious jail time and fines
attached.
The overriding
message is that Israel’s friends in the
United States, and also in countries
like Britain, France and Canada, are too
strong to confront. In this case, the
obvious racism and resort to lethal
violence by the large component of the
Israeli population should be resonating
with a congress and media due to the
recent convulsions being experienced
here at home. Indeed, most of the
“opinion makers” are jumping on the BLM
bandwagon. This cheerleading for BLM is
ironically highly visible in the actions
taken by leading Israeli advocacy groups
like AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation
League (ADL), but that does not mean
that there is any empathy to share for
the plight of the Palestinians. Indeed,
they are steps taken to get close to
blacks to contain any possible pro-Arab
sentiment.
A humane response
to the suffering of the Palestinians
does not surface much in the US because,
frankly, Israel and its supporters have
assiduously bought control of the US
media as well the White House and
Congress to such an extent that they can
get what they want and never be
challenged. That, of course, must end
but the real question is how do we
accomplish that when we the people have
been effectively disenfranchised on the
issue. When your government has been
bought and your free speech limited by
the oligarchs who control what passes
for news and information, where do you
go? Indeed, that is the dilemma.
Philip M.
Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of
the Council for the National Interest, a
501(c)3 tax deductible educational
foundation (Federal ID Number
#52-1739023) that seeks a more
interests-based U.S. foreign policy in
the Middle East. Website is
https://councilforthenationalinterest.org
address is P.O. Box
2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its
email is
inform@cnionline.org