WHY DO THEY HATE US SO?

by Chuck Richmond

August 2006

Why do they hate us Americans when we are so warm and fuzzy? How could they do it - attack us on American soil and blow up our beautiful buildings? What makes conservatives [1] and the Left especially [2] say that the US is a global tyrant, an evil empire in need of dismantling and that the American police state is already here? [3]

Well the US preaches about democracy, liberty and freedom while killing millions of people, toppling governments and installing fascist-military regimes which do the bidding of the US. Three million people were killed in the Vietnam War - that was a blow for democracy. Democratically elected governments (sure, they may not be to our taste, but so what?) were toppled in Latin America to suit American interests - another blow for democracy. For democracy's sake it has been necessary for us to bomb the following countries since the end of World War II :
China 1945-46; Korea 1950-53; China 1950-53; Guatemala 1954; Indonesia 1958; Cuba 1959-60; Guatemala 1960; Congo 1964; Peru 1965; Laos 1964-73; Vietnam 1961-73; Cambodia 1969-70; Guatemala 1967-69; Grenada 1983; Libya 1986; El Salvador 1980s; Nicaragua 1980s; Panama 1989; Iraq 1991-99; Sudan 1998; Afghanistan 1998; Yugoslavia 1999; Afghanistan 2002 and Iraq 2003.
Often it is necessary to gun down "innocent" women and children to bring about the same magic state of "democracy" that flourishes in all the above bombed countries. [4] To achieve democracy in some countries it is also necessary to use depleted uranium munitions even though such weapons have been classified by the UN as illegal "weapons of mass destruction". [5] Afghanistan's underground water has been polluted by these nuclear weapons, and the US military has permanently poisoned Kuwait, southern Iraq, Bosnia, the Kosovo highlands of Yugoslavia and much of the Yugoslavian Danube River Basin. [6]
Over 300 tons of depleted uranium was left in Iraq after the first Gulf War, and at least 1,100 tons after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and large areas will remain radio active for the end of human history at least. The inhabitants during that time will be at risk of cancers and congenital deformities. Much of Iraq has been transformed into a radio-active monument.
Gulf War syndrome may be due to exposure to depleted uranium. The urine of some Gulf War veterans has 1,000 times higher than normal values of Uranium - 235 and 238. Hell, what are the lives of a few American GIs: we cooked 200,000 civilian people alone in one night in Dresden, to teach them to respect the American way, and we will do it again and again if necessary!
US diplomat John Brady Kiesling said in his letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin Powell:
"Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?" [7] John Kaminski in an internet essay puts it like this: "The United States of America is a profit-making criminal enterprise that already plundered much of the planet and will not stop until it ravages even its own territory." [8]
There are other reasons why "terrorists" hate us apart from professional competition. The US supports Israel come-what-may. What's wrong with that: isn't Israel a democracy in the heart of lands of psycho-fascists who cut off the hands of thieves? Well, that is done in Saudi Arabia and that is a regime the US backs. As Abu Mohammed an Islamic Jihad official put it when commenting on the over-supply of Palestinian suicide bombers: "Killing [Israeli] civilians is a reaction to the massacre of Palestinian civilians. We are trying to establish a balance of terror." Bin Laden's complaint against the US is its support of Israel's occupation of Palestine, especially East Jerusalem where Muslims have their third holiest shrine. [9]

Palestine-Israeli conflict at core of conflict
Political scientist Dewi Fortuna Anwar, who was chief foreign policy adviser to the former Indonesian president BJ Habibie wrote in The Jakarta Post in October 2001:
"We know for a fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has dragged on for nearly six decades, lies at the core of many terrorist threats and attacks against American interests worldwide, as well as acting as the primary irritant in American relations with Islamic countries as a whole.
The US has always supported Israel, even when the latter attacked and killed innocent lives in the Middle East, in Sudan and in Afghanistan. All of these created many enemies for the US, which may have motivated terrorist attacks against American interests. Unless the US is willing to address these fundamental problems, there is little chance these forms of terrorism can be dealt with effectively."

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Mohammed in October 2004 said in an open letter to the American Muslim community:
"In Palestine, Israeli gunships and tanks razed villages and towns to the ground, killing innocent men, women and children. [This is done] with the approval of President Bush and his veto in the UN Security Council."
This is of course anti-Semitism writ large because as Benjamin Epstein the national director of the Anti Defamation League (ADL) said in 1974: "criticism of Israel reflects insensitivity to American Jews and constitutes a form of anti-Semitism." [10]

We need not review in any detail the human rights abuses committed against Palestinians to establish the State of Israel. Even a writer generally sympathetic to Jewish causes such as Arnold Toynbee, has said: "on the Israeli side, there was, in 1948, deliberate terrorization (the most flagrant single case was the massacre of the civilian population of Dayr Yassin) with the intention of stampeding the Palestinian Arabs into fleeing their homes." [11]
As a number of Jewish critics of Zionism have scholarly documented that the exercise in Zionist nation-building involved the expulsion of the vast majority of the Palestinian people from their country and the theft of their lands, homes and property. [12] Nathan Chofshi of Herzlia, one of the pioneer Jewish settlers in Palestine wrote in the Jewish Newsletter (New York), February 9 1959: "We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and trying to undo some of the evil committed… We justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them." [13]

The Swiss League for Human Rights, in September 1977 said of the Israeli violation of Palestinian rights:
"…the Israeli occupation of the West Bank caused repeated violations of the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights including numerous arbitrary arrests, prolonged cases of detention and deportations… enforced residence, serious restrictions on border crossing and prohibiting return… arbitrary expropriation, prohibiting of construction and demolition of buildings… common and systematic practice of torture… and the flagrant inequalities between Jews and Arabs in the West Bank." [14]

A Marxist/Fascist government
Along the same lines, the Jewish writer Jack Bernstein said in his book "The Life of an American Jew in Racist Marxist Israel":
"While in Israel, Jews and Gentiles alike are carefully watched so that they do not stray and happen to see the sordid side of Israel - the true Israel… kept from the eyes of the tourists are the ghettos, the prisons where political prisoners, mostly Arabs and Sephardic Jews, are subjected to the most inhumane forms of torture. The tourists do not see the widespread crime activities and the true corruption and co-operation between organized crime bosses and governmental police officials. The tourists do not learn of the true inner workings of Israel's Marxist/Fascist government; nor do they see Israel's racism." [15]
Jewish human rights abuses in the Middle East have been extensively documented. [16] For example Israel slaughtered thousands of Egyptian POWs during the 1956 Sinai campaign, but no prosecutions have occurred as the absurd 20 year Statute of Limitation for criminal acts has passed. Not so of course when Jews are pursuing alleged aging Nazis. The Israelis have arrested thousands of Palestinians and have not permitted them the right of a legal defense or to even know the charges against them - in Kafkaesque fashion and have held these detainees in maximum security prisons in Israel for periods of up to six months with a renewal permitted without any legal defense.
Torture of Palestinians, by breaking their hands, beatings, by shabah "stretching forth" (i.e., tied to a tilted stool with a sack over the head and with loud music blasting the ears permitted by Israel's Supreme Court in 1997 - is common. [17]
Torture is defended by Alan Dershowitz, the Jewish Harvard law professor who helped get O.J. Simpson acquitted in 1985 and I will discuss Dershowitz's work below. Numerous human rights groups both inside and outside of Israel have documented Israel's human rights abuses. [18]
To give one example, an 18-page report by John Dugard, UN representative for human rights in an annual UN human rights report said that Israel is guilty of severe human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including "wanton destruction" of houses and infrastructure. [19]

The Western media have shown graphic portraits of the terrible harm that Palestinian suicide bombers have inflicted upon Jewish people. The death and suffering of Jewish victims - often women and young children should not be minimized or waved away. That is real anti-Semitism to suppose that Jewish lives do not matter or that there should be some sort of hypothetical balance where human live scan be measured and equated. What makes the Middle East situation so heart-wrenchingly terrible is that one brutal act by one side leads to retaliation and in turn counter-retaliation in a seemingly endless chain of death, misery and destruction for both parties in this conflict.

Palestinian minds shocked at filmed murder
There is, for example, little doubt that the Palestinian mind was shocked by an episode captured on film by a French cameraman in 2000 and shown throughout the world. Mohammed as-Durrah, as 12-year old Palestinian boy, was shot to death by Israeli gunmen in Jerusalem. He huddled against a wall and begged for his life, with his father. Both the boy and his father was gunned down and then a Palestinian ambulance driver who arrived to give medical assistance was killed. On the other hand, the Israeli mind is traumatized by scenes of women and children, murdered or their bodies mutilated by terrorist suicide bomb attacks. Horror is met by horror. [20]
Israel was branded a "racist apartheid" state by thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) attending the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. The Forum accused the Jewish state of "systematic perpetuation of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing" in its treatment of the Palestinians. The Israeli delegates walked out, followed by the US delegates.

The Mearsheimer/Walt vs Dershowitz Debate
The human rights issue in Israel, among other issues has recently been re-raised by John Mearsheimer, Department of political Science, University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, John F. kennedy School of Government Harvard University, in a working paper and in an edited version published in the "London Review of Books". [21] They argue for a thesis that others, have previously argued for [22] namely that the United States policy in the Middle East "is due almost entirely… to the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'"(page 1: references to the working paper). This in turn has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized US security." They base their evidence upon the work of Jewish scholars and journalists, as well as international human rights organizations.

The US has given $140 billion in 2003 dollar-terms of direct aid to Israel, making Israel the largest total recipient of US economic and military assistance since World War II. About one-fifth of the US's foreign aid budget each year goes to Israel: some $3 billion annually. According to these authors, Israel is a "strategic liability": "the United States has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel." (p.5) As well, "rogue states" in the Middle East "are not a direct threat to vital US interests, apart from the US commitment to Israel itself." (p.5) The authors note that 52 former British diplomats sent British Prime Minister Tony Blair a letter stating that the policies of Bush and Ariel Sharon were "one-sided and illegal" and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had "poisoned relations between the West and the Arab Worlds." (p.6)

The authors Mearsheimer and Walt note that "the creation of Israel involved… crimes against… the Palestinians" (p.10) - primarily by, using the words of Ben-Gurion, "compulsion, and brutal compulsion" to expel Arabs from the land that would become Israel. They state that in 1947-48 Jewish forces compelled 700,000 Palestinians to face exile: "fear of violent death at the hands of the Zionist forces led most of them to flee." Israel then barred the return of the Palestinian refugees.

Relevant to our concerns on human rights violations
Mearsheimer and Walt say:
"Israel personnel have tortured numerous Palestinian prisoners, systematically humiliated and inconvenienced Palestinian civilians, and used force indiscriminately against them on numerous occasions. During the First Intifada (1987-1991), for example, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protestors. The Swedish "Save the Children Fund" organization estimated that "23,600 to 29,000 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada," with nearly one-third sustaining broken bones. Nearly one-third of the beaten children were aged ten and under."
"Israel's response to the Second Intifada (2000-2005) has been even more violent, leading Ha'aretz to declare that "the IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising, which is far from a measured response." Since then, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians for every Israeli lost, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7 to 1). Israeli forces have also killed several foreign peace activists, including, a 23 year old American woman crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in March 2003." (pp.12-13)

The bulk of the paper by Mearsheimer and Walt deals with the power of the Jewish lobby in America. The paper has generated enormous controversy and condemnation by this lobby, here in the United States. Alan Dershowitz, professor of Law at Harvard University was quick to put up on the web of Harvard University an opposing paper. [23] In his book, "The Best Defense," Dershowitz says: "Almost all criminal defendants - including most of my clients - are factually guilty of the crimes they have been charged with. The criminal lawyer's job, for the most part, is to represent the guilty, and - if possible - to get them off." [24]

Dershowitz says that Mearsheimer and Walt present a "conspiratorial view of history" where American foreign policy is in a Zionist "stranglehold". The charges made by these authors, he says, appear on "extremist websites". In particular, Dershowitz makes much of the claim by Mearsheimer and Walt that "none of the evidence represents original documentation or is derived from independent interviews." Dershowitz cites this to discredit Mearsheimer and Walt saying that "professors at great universities are judged by the originality of their research." But this is sophistry on Dershowitz's part. Mearsheimer and Walt made their statement in the context of saying that they were assembling evidence from non-controversial Jewish sources - because they wanted to present the strongest possible critique. Thus for example, they quote the founding fathers of Israel on Arab expulsion rather than Gentile sources. Originality of work can involve finding new meaning in old patterns.

It is ironic that Dershowitz makes a claim about originality after the publication of a critique of his own work defending Israel ("Chutzpah, Why Terrorism Works, The Case for Israel) by Norman G. Finkelstein in his book "Beyond Chutzpah". Finkelstein argues that "The Case Fir Israel" is among the most spectacular academic frauds ever published on the Israel-Palestine conflict" [25] In particular Finkelstein shows in painful detail that Dershowitz has plagiarized vast quantities of material from Joan Peter's book "From Time Immemorial" [26]. This book published in 1984 had already been academically destroyed: the book falsely claimed that Palestine was deserted when Zionists colonized it. This book was shown by scholars to be based on falsified data and plagiarisms from Zionist propaganda tracts. Finkelstein dealt with this fraud in his book "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict". [27] "Beyond Chutzpah" sinks Dershowitz's work defending Israel, because Finkelstein shows that Dershowitz had appropriated "large swathes from the Peters hoax." [28]

Dershowitz claims that a lack of "originality" of research raises the issue of the motive of Mearsheimer and Walt in writing their paper - as if it is inconceivable that there could be a legitimate full bodied critique of Israel. Why publish a paper that could be "seized on by bigots"? The answer to Dershowitz is that the issues raised by Mearsheimer, Walt and Finkelstein have been suppressed by powerful interests and a debate about the issues raised by these critics in long overdue.
A last and just peace in the Middle East can only come about if truth is not suppressed.

References:

1. T. Fleming, "NATO's Dark Age," Chronicles March 2000, pp.10-12.
2. G. Monbiot, "The Logic of Empire," Guardian Weekly, August 15-21 2002, p.11. Also of relevance is W. Dalrymple, "How to Make Enemies," Guardian Weekly January 21-27 2005, p.25. US policies, according to Dalrymple helped "turn itself into al-Qaida's most effective recruiting agency."
3. M. Ratner, "Moving Towards a Police State (Or Have We Arrived)," Global Outlook vol.1, no.1, Spring 2002, pp.33-36. See also https://www.humanrightsnow.org.
4. R. Dowden, "US Troops Massacred 1,000 Somalis," Guardian Weekly March 29 1998, p.3.
5. Amy Worthington, "Death by Slow Burn - How America Nukes Its Own troops," The Idaho Observer April 16 2003.
6. N. Mackay, "Remember Bush Planned Iraq War before Taking Office," Sunday Herald (UK), March 27 2003. Here is another reference for conspiracy theorists: D. Milbank (et al), "Bush was Given Alert before 9/11 Hijacks," Guardian Weekly May 23-29 2002, p.35.
7. The New York Times, February 27 2003.
8. John Kaminski, "Our leaders Lie -Do You Lie Too?" https://www.serendipity.li/wot/our-leaders-lie.htm.
9. L. Grant, "Why Do the Terrorists Hate Us?" The Social Contract Fall 2001, pp.68-71.
10. In the early 1980s poor Sephardim Jews of Afro-Asian descent covered the homes of Ashkenazim Jews with swastikas and anti-Ashkenazim slogans urging revenge on the "Ashkenazic Jewish ruling class." Ethiopia's Falasher or black Jews protested in the early 1990s when medical authorities threw away the blood this group donated for fear of AIDS.
11. A. Toynbee, "Experiences," (Oxford University Press, London, 1969), p.245. In Deir Yassin, on April 9 1948, 254 women, children and men were killed and their bodies thrown down a well. Some pregnant women had their stomachs cut open with butchers' knives. This led to the panic flight of the remaining Arabs. See A. Koestler, "Promise and Fulfillment, Palestine 1917-1949," (Macmillan, London, (1949), p.160.
12. Alfred M. Lilienthal, "What Price Israel?" (Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1953), "There Goes the Middle East," (Devin Adair, New York, 1957) and "The Zionist Connection: What Price Peace?" (Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1978): M. Menhuin, "The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time," (Exposition Press, New York, 1965); E. W. Said, "Zionism From the Standpoint of Its Victims," in D.T. Goldberg (ed.), "Anatomy of Racism," (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1990), pp.210-246.
13. Quoted from Lilienthal, "The Zionist Connection," p.152.
14. Above pp.185-186.
15. Jack Bernstein, "The Life of an American Jew in Racist Marxist Israel," (Pro-American Press, Detroit Lakes, 1984) pp.13-14.
16. Issa Nakleh, "Encyclopedia of the Palestinian Problem," 2 volumes, (Intercontinental Books, 1991); L. Rokoch, "Israel's Sacred Terrorism," (Association of Arab-American University Graduates Press, 1980); N. Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians," (South End Press, Boston MA, 1983); D. Hirst, "The Gun and the Olive Branch," (Futura Publications, New York, 1977).
17. L. Derfner, "Prime-Time Torture," The Detroit Jewish News, July 1 1994, p.20; M.L. Gross, "Regulating Torture in a Democracy: Death and Dignity in Israel," Polity, vol.36, no.3, 2004, pp.367-388; Dr. Eyad Sarraj, "Why We are All Suicide Bombers Now," at https://www.middleeast.org/archives/newslet.1.htm.
18. An excellent overview is given by N.G. Finkelstein, "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History," (University of California Press, Berkley, 2005).
19. UN Commission on Human Rights "Question of the Violation of Human Rights in the Occupied Arab Territories, Including Palestine," (UN Commission on Human Rights, New York, September 2003).
20. There have been various claims made by Palestinian human rights and activist groups of organ harvesting and the use of poison gas. Thus it was claimed by some Palestinians that the bodies of three Palestinian boys aged 14-15 years, killed near Khan Jounis on December 30 2001, were found to have their vital organs missing when examined by Palestinian medical authorities. We have found no reliable evidence of organ harvesting by Israel. There have also been allegations that poison gas was used on civilians in occupied Palestinian territories in 2001, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (Weekly Report, February 8-14, 2001). Similar claims are made in a documentary by James Longley, Gaza Strip (February 2002). Victor Ostrovsky in "The Other Side of Deception," (Harper Collins, New York, 1994), pp.239-241 claims that at the Nes Siyyona weapons facility Palestinians were used as human guinea pigs in testing bacteriological and chemical weapons. These claims, in my opinion, have not been substantiated with adequate evidence.
21. J.J. Mearsheimer and S.M. Walt, "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy," (March 2006) and "The Israel Lobby," London Review of Books, vol.28, no.6, March 23 2006, on-line at www.lrb.co.uk/v28/no6/mearol_.html.
22. G.W. Ball and D.B. Ball, "The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement with Israel 1947 to the Present," (W.W. Norton, New York, 1992).
23. A. Dershowitz, "Debunking the Newest - and Oldest Jewish Conspiracy: A Reply to the Mearsheimer-Walt Working Paper," Harvard Law School, April 2006.
24. Cited from Norman G. Finkelstein, "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History," (University of California Press, Berkley, 2005), p.87.
25. As above p.17.
26. J. Peters, "From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict," 2nd edition, (New York, 2003).
27. At note 24, p.17.


SPECIAL NEW TIMES SURVEY
The July 2006 New Times Survey celebrates the life of Eric Dudley Butler. We believe there will be many New Times Survey readers wanting their own copies, therefore we are making available bulk copies: 3 copies for $6.00 including postage.
But don't stop there! What about sending a copy to the Editor of your local paper? What about copies to those who continually smeared and defamed Eric? And don't forget your local library. Surely there needs to be copies in our libraries! Let's see if we can encourage others to celebrate the life and achievements of this great man.
3 copies for $6.00 including postage. Send in your orders to: Heritage Book Services, Box 1052 GPO, Melbourne 3001.

DIGGING THEIR OWN GRAVES
by James Reed

The "Christian" Churches were out in force to condemn Professor Andrew Fraser's defence of the White Australia policy. The same tired old argument was trotted out : It is our moral duty to take in thousands (millions? billions?) of Africans (space aliens, etc.) because compassion demands it. What has been forgotten in all this is that morality is based upon a principle of reciprocation and impartiality. If the tables were turned, the needy should respond in the same way. But of course is the roles were reversed the African nations would not take in White refugees. Consider the following paragraphs in an article published in the London Guardian, 19 September 2005 by Andrew Meldrum and think about the role reversal argument:

A leading Zimbabwean cabinet minister vowed at the weekend to rid the country of the "filth" of white farmers. Didymus Mutasa, the minister for state security and land reform, said all remaining white farmers must be "cleared out".
About 400 white families are still farming in Zimbabwe, following the seizure by President Robert Mugabe's government of more than 4,000 farms. Mr Mutasa, one of Mr Mugabe's closest advisers, referred to Operation Murambatsvina ("Clean out the trash" in the Shona language) - the campaign in which the government destroyed the homes of hundreds of thousands of urban poor.

"Operation Murambatsvina should also be applied to the land reform programme to clean the commercial farms that are still in the hands of white farmers. White farmers are dirty and should be cleared out. They are similar to the filth that was in the streets before Murambatsvina," said Mr Mutasa, according to the state controlled Sunday Mail newspaper.

The government also announced it had annulled more than 4,000 court challenges by farmers to the expropriation of their farms. Last week Mr Mugabe signed a constitutional amendment taking away the farmers' rights to legally challenge land seizures. "All the challenges are now useless - they are all being nullified," said the chief law officer in the attorney general's office, Nelson Mutsonziwa.