Criminalizing Criticism of Israel
The End of Free
Speech?
By PAUL
CRAIG ROBERTS
Counter
Punch
7 May
2009
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05072009.html
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 |