What Are the Prospects for Peace in the Middle East?

Commentary

By Matthew Taylor


With President Jimmy Carter coming to town Wednesday to speak to UC Berkeley students about his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, it’s an appropriate time for us to reflect on the current prospects for justice and peace in the Middle East.

As Carter accurately states in his book, a system of enforced apartheid reigns in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. It is systemic Israeli policy and practice to demolish Palestinian homes, uproot millions of olive trees, build roads that only Israeli colonizers are allowed to access, implant Israeli colonies on Palestinian soil in violation of international law, use an illegal wall to steal Palestinian land, and enforce two entirely different sets of legal standards for Israeli colonizers and the indigenous Palestinian population. Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians is both apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and is the further enactment of a long-standing desire for territorial expansion that has permeated Zionist politics since before the 1948 war.

At this past weekend’s Jewish Voice for Peace conference in Oakland, several speakers demonstrated that the situation is getting worse all the time. According to Nobel Peace Prize nominee Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (www.icahd.org), Israel has managed to confine Palestinians who live inside the illegally-occupied West Bank to 72 disconnected ghettoes within only 42 percent of the West Bank area, leaving the rest to Israel’s illegal colonization as well as military installations and hundreds of movement barriers—a “matrix of control.” When Israel’s current colonies and land grabs are taken into account, the future contours of the so-called Palestinian “state” does not look like the map of a country, but a piece of Swiss cheese.

Readers of Carter’s book are largely aware of the above challenges. However, what Carter’s book never reveals is that Apartheid can be said to prevail even inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel. Professor George Bisharat of the Hastings College of Law reports that over 100,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel live inside villages that are officially ‘unrecognized,’ appear on no maps, and are denied basic services such as electricity and garbage collection (www.assoc40.org). Israel has demolished the homes of tens of thousands of Bedouin Arabs in order to create Jewish-exclusive housing. Israel insists that its Palestinian citizens relate to Israel as a “Jewish state”—in other words, an ethnocracy that privileges one ethnic group over another in both blatant and subtle ways.

And then, there’s the elephant in the room: the refugees. Millions of would-be citizens of the state of Israel—the Palestinians who were forcefully exiled in 1948, as well as their children—are denied the ability to return to their homes in peace, despite international guarantees and repeated U.N. resolutions affirming their right to do so. (Meanwhile, as an upper-class American Jew in Berkeley I have the unrestricted right not only to move to Israel, but to purchase a home that once belonged to a refugee.) Apartheid, at its core, is about “apartness” or “separation,” as well as the domination of one group by another. What could be a more extreme act of separation and oppression than forceful expulsion coupled with the denial of a people’s right to return to their homes?

The formula for a resolution to this disaster can take many different directions. Some advocate for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories to be reconstituted as a ‘single state’ between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River with equal rights for all its citizens. However, this is a non-starter for most Israelis who insist on a Jewish-majority state. Other proposals include a EU-style regional confederation.

The international community is in near unanimous agreement that the only proposal with a modicum of justice and equity that is practically possible is a ‘two state solution’ (official U.S. policy), where Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 borders (possibly with agreed upon, equitable, minor border adjustments) and a viable, demilitarized, sovereign Palestinian state is created in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip—the territories occupied in the 1967 war. In fact, last month the entire Arab world re-affirmed its commitment to establish normal relations with Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a just, ‘mutually agreed’ resolution to the Palestinian refugee crisis. Israel rejected the Arab Peace Plan without consideration in 2002, and has shown few signs of taking it more seriously now. It is a tragedy of unspeakable dimensions that the Israeli political elite has for decades preferred colonization to peace. What future are we all doomed to when greed and ambition outweigh coexistence?

According to Halper, the intensity of Israel’s colonization of the occupied territories has de facto eliminated even the possibility of a “viable Palestinian state”—one with territorial contiguity and control over its water, economy, resources, and borders. If so, then Israel’s colonization project may backfire and create a chorus of voices demanding a ‘single state’ solution in the face of ever-worsening Apartheid.

Perhaps Halper is right, perhaps not. Either way, if the international community does not want to let go of the two-state plan, it must act quickly and decisively to explain to Israel in no uncertain terms that its colonization of the West Bank must be fully reversed. It is at least theoretically and logistically possible—France withdrew far more than 500,000 colonizers from Algeria.

So long as U.S. taxpayer dollars fund Israel’s continued colonization and occupation of the West Bank, the United States will continue to exacerbate the conflict rather than resolve it. How can we help? Perhaps it’s time for U.S. taxpayers to demand that the United States cease financial aid to Israel that pays for its occupation and colonization and instead channel funds into activities that would create a viable two-state solution. The United States could fund the resettlement of Israeli settlers back into the pre-1967 borders, and pay to rebuild Palestinian homes demolished by Israel (both in the West Bank and within Israel proper).

As for Carter, his book may well play a significant role in shifting the U.S. discourse and international consciousness. However, Professor Bisharat’s comments show an important place where Carter’s book is silent. Someday, equal rights for all the peoples of the holy land must prevail, no matter whether they reside in a state known as Israel or Palestine.

Matthew Taylor is a fifth-year peace and conflict studies major at UC Berkeley, co-editor of PeacePower magazine (www.calpeacepower.org), and Jewish.

Overcoming Zionism

Book Review by Beccy Reese, May 2007

Joel Kovel, Pluto Press, £15.99

Kovel's book is not the first of recent times to argue that the current situation of Bantustans, security walls and Jewish-only roads has no possibility of laying the basis for an autonomous Palestine.

He argues that Zionism has created an Israeli state that is prone to racism, a lack of democracy and ecological disaster. The only hope for a peaceful outcome is to create a single democratic state in the whole of what is currently Palestine, Israel and its occupied territories.

In the first section a concise overview shows how Zionism emerged and took on a direction that focused on taking hold of a land whose native population would pose a constant problem for the establishment of a state with a democratic and Jewish character.

The idea that creating a national identity for Jews would solve anti-Semitism drove Zionism to the conclusion that it had to manufacture "a land without a people for a people without a land". This led to the ethnic cleansing so clearly described in Ilan Pappé's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and the terrorist endeavours of groups like the Stern Gang, who wiped out a good proportion of the British high command in the 1946 King David Hotel bombing.

Most of this is not particularly new ground, having been covered in many excellent critiques of Zionism. A closer examination of how the Jewish state behaves is given in the second part and more eye-opening section of the book.

The balance sheet of what Israel has achieved sits firmly in the negative. Kovel starts by picking apart the often repeated idea that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. While accepting that many states which proclaim to be democratic are a pale reflection of true democracy, the lack of a constitution and the fact that there isn't full equality for all Israeli citizens mean that there is a legitimate questioning of Israeli democratic claims.

Zionists also claim that they have made the desert bloom, while in fact Israel's ecological record is disastrous. Nearly all of Israel's rivers are polluted to lethal levels while asthma rates among children stood at 17 percent in 2002, and a quadrupling of nitrous oxide emissions has been observed since 1980.

Overall the arguments put across are compelling and some of the insights are indeed shocking. In some places there is a tendency for the author to move away from historical and factual analysis towards a more psychological approach, making the book a more complex read at times.

The conclusions are that a society that rests on expropriation and occupation on racist grounds does not benefit either the occupiers or the occupied. To go beyond this is to overcome the ideology and myths of Zionism and imagine what a single secular state would look like.

In arguing to struggle for such a state Kovel is keenly aware of the role that Israel plays within a wider capitalist sphere in terms of its relation to the US, and that there is an invisible hand shaping history that needs to be dislocated.

This detailed description of what a single secular state could look like is fascinatingly useful.

Comments? Email letters@socialistreview.org.uk

Tricky Dicky Transfer

Related
Hasbara - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia(written by Zionists)
Welcome to Hasbara - Israel Reaction Center(Zionist)
hasbara+propaganda
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A reader responds to, "A Case Against Cheney".
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Tricky Dicky Transfer

You can tell Richard Cohen is educated in hasbara techniques.

One is called "transfer", this is where you take prestige and authority from one concept and apply it to another.

In this case, Cohen knows that if he comes out guns blazing in opposition, he'll damage his credibility. Instead, he takes the idea of impeachment and transfers it to "unforgivable".

Another very telling sign, is how he saves the "transfer" for the very end of his propaganda, so it's the last thought the reader is left with, knowing that that is the one that counts, along with the beginning.

Again, in the beginning, Cohen sets us up, another tactic found in the hasbara handbook, where capturing the readers attention is most important. He does this by trying to minimize the alledged crimes of Cheney by comparing them to simple "lies". He reveals why he suggests this in the first paragraph by, "transferring" his argument to Clinton rhetoric in the second.

Cohen is pretty good, looks like we have more then one tricky dicky in the neocon house of Cheney.

In a similar fashion, two can play this game, because we have now transferred Richard's propaganda, to the tactics used by militant zionist propagandists.

The only difference, unlike Richard Cohen, I am being honest about the technique I'm using and telling you the truth. May 2, 2007 8:51:00 AM MDT
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Related
The Hasbara Playbook

This is Zionism

April 30, 2007

Very soon this elderly Palestinian won’t be alone in passing through a passage at the separation barrier, as Israel plans to seize 57 acres of Palestinian farmland in the occupied West Bank to continue building the separation barrier.

While the EU slams the Zionist regime, the Zionists can predict the unbridled support of the US. Aid to the Israeli occupation government must cease and Israel must be forced to stop limiting immigration rights to Jews only, which deprives Palestinian people (Christians and Muslims) the right to return to their homeland. Therefore, it is the responsibility of all relevant countries to stop aiding Israel until it ends its occupation of the Arab territories. We must defend the Palestinian causes, denounce the Israeli/Zionist crimes and criticise the disastrous Israeli policy of expansion and oppression in Palestine.

In order to pre-empt the expected comments of any Zionist supporters that may wish to respond to the above, please note that the Holocaust DOES NOT justify the occupation or genocide of Palestine.

Report: Anti-Zionist Israeli to direct movie for Israel's 60th birthday

Last update - 15:16 29/04/2007

By Haaretz Service

An Israeli director who is a self-proclaimed "anti-Zionist" has been hired by an Israeli television channel to direct a film marking the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state, Army Radio reported Sunday.

According to the report, Eyal Sivan will be given a NIS 650,000 grant, paid for by Israeli taxpayers, to direct a film for next year's Independence Day, Israel's 60th.

The film will be part of the "Past and Present in Israel" project, meant to promote Israel's "Jaffa" brand citrus fruit. It will be produced by Channel 8 television, together with the Jerusalem Cinematheque and the Rabinovitch Fund.

Sivan, who has resided in Paris for the past 15 years, directed the 1999 film "The Specialist," which used footage from Adolf Eichmann's trial to portray the architect of the Final Solution as just a Nazi party bureaucrat, the radio said. The film also attempted to present Sivan's view that Eichmann's Jewish victims could have done more to prevent themselves from being murdered, it said.

In an interview in 2001 in the French newspaper "Le Monde," Sivan famously referred to the UN's 1947 partition plan, which called for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, as a "historical mistake." He also said that the rise of anti-Semitism in France is in large part due to the support for Israel by French Jews.

Sivan co-directed with Palestinian director Michel Kleifi the 2007 documentary "Route 181," which deals with life along the seam line, which formed the pre-1967 West Bank border.

According to the radio report, French Jewish academic Alan Finkelkraut called the movie "incitement to murder" for the comparisons it draws between the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government and the experience of European Jews during the Holocaust. Sivan sued Finkelkraut in French court in 2007 over the remark, but the lawsuit was thrown out.

The radio report stated that during the Second Lebanon War last summer, Sivan joined a group of Israeli filmmakers in signing a petition pledging support to Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. The petition read: "We the signatories are absolutely against the brutality and cruelty of the State of Israel as shown in the news from recent weeks."

Polite discussion on Zionism: Is it possible?

April 28, 2007

By Karin Friedemann

I found the website http://www.realisticdove.org/ very interesting because it is the first time I have come across a progressive Jew so honest about his racism. Usually when confronted, these confused souls just get indignant and refuse to speak to you for a few months. I always wondered how a person could think that Israel has a "right" to "security" and shrug off this amazing assumption with the accusation that anyone who has questions about your definitions is accusing you of being an evil murderer. Why would any sane person think that he has the right to live unharrassed on someone else's stolen property? Even the cute kids waving Israeli flags are participating in a criminally insane political ideology.

Progressive Jews want to make the bottom line "Jews are nice people." But that is not the bottom line. As Hillel mentioned, the bottom line is that you don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you. What would we expect if our neighbor, with or without warning, bulldozed our house?

First, we would call the police. If the man with the bulldozer failed to stop bulldozing the house, the police officer would have the duty to disable the vehicle and he might even shoot him. I'm talking about American law. The bulldozer man would be stopped. He would be considered a criminal. He would be put on trial. He would go to prison. If he had killed people in the process of bulldozing the house, he might even be executed. The owner of the house that was bulldozed would be entitled to damages plus extra for pain and suffering. The law requires that his property be restored to the original state that it was in. That includes replanting the trees and fixing the pavement around the house.

The emotional defensiveness of Jews is actually quite amusing, where they want to argue that the bulldozer man was not evil, he was not a murderer. The family that moved into the stolen property are just innocent idealists. They may be misguided, or mistaken, but for some reason Jews want to argue that they are not evil. What they are really saying is that they don't want Jews to be held legally accountable for their actions. They want to enjoy the privilege of being "protected" from the laws that apply to other people.

A law does not cover the "evilness" of a criminal. It covers actions and consequences.

If international law were followed, the Israeli "government' would never have kicked out any Palestinians. The entire existence of Israel is based on the condition made by the U.N. that Palestinians would remain in their homes and receive equal citizenship in the new nation state. That condition was not followed. Therefore, there is no legal basis for any assumption that Israel has a right to exist, according to the U.N. In fact, Israel does not really exist. It is a figment of imagination, the defensive mechanism of the neurotic Jewish collective consciousness. I agree that we need to stop arguing about isms but the next step is to follow the laws that already exist to solve the problems. Don't wait for the world community to force Israel to do it. Why don't we, as Jews, just do it? Why are progressive Jews wasting their time feeling emotionally threatened by a one state solution? The real problem is that we are feeling emotionally threatened by any solution. Because a solution means that a lot of Jews need to be prosecuted.

The refugees need to be given back their property with extra for damages. Even if they fled their homes because Arab leaders told them to get out of the fighting zone in 1948, they have the legal right to return to their homes as soon as the fighting stops. Small wonder why Israel continues to attack people day after day.

The refugees need to be given full civil rights. Full water rights, full road rights, and the full right to criminally prosecute. Every Jewish family in America that has any property in the Holy Land needs to be prosecuted as part of an organized criminal network. Especially if both the Palestinian and the Jewish persons are American citizens. For example one friend of mine, after her family was forced off their land by gunpoint, New York Jews bought the land, bulldozed everything, and planted orange trees. She knows where they live. She knows their names. Anyone who buys or sells stolen property is a criminal. They need to be prosecuted. Any Jew who owns stolen property in the Holy Land should have his property seized including their U.S. assets and progressive Jews should insist on it instead of doing these mental "I'm not evil" gymnastics.

The Jews need to give back what they stole. I am not sure why that is so confusing to people. There needs to be a world tribunal like the Nuremburg trials to determine what was done and who was responsible, and to put an end to this nonsense. But failing that, the U.S. legal system could solve the problem within a year if they just prosecuted this obnoxious real estate mafia. Why are progressive Jews not lobbying for criminal penalties on Jews who invest in property that was cleared of its original owners by force in the Holy Land? There is enough room in all of Bush's new prisons for all these shady real estate agents. This is a simple matter of holding people legally accountable for the harm they cause others.

It is exactly the same issue with dispute over the Roxbury Mosque. Some shady white Jewish real estate dealers were furious that the black community benefited from this piece of land next to the subway station that they wanted to develop, so now they are engaging in extra-legal trickery and character assassination to try to get that piece of real estate away from the people who own it.

Once the Palestinians get their land back and all the Zionist organizations' assets are confiscated to repair all the damage they have done, then we can talk about whether or not "the Jewish people" have the right to "self-determination" in the form of an ethnocentric nation state.

I learned when I was a kid that the way to get self-determination — ie, the ability to do what you want when you want how you want — is to behave yourself. The Jews are not behaving themselves, and there is nothing okay about it. When a progressive Jew starts whining, "You think I'm evil!!" he or she breaks the heart of the human being who is trying to have peace with this person. It ends all rational discussion. It ends all hope for peace.

Sometimes Palestinians find it easier to deal with right wing Zionists than left wing because at least they are honest. A Palestinian can say to a right wing Jew, "You stole my property." The right wing Jew will say, "Yeah, and what are you going to do about it? My religion says I can steal your property." Then the Muslim can with dignity say, "Well my religion says that God curses the man who puts another man out of his home, and that I have the right to fight you." So that actually can be done in the context of a polite dialogue. A peace plan is even potentially possible. Because then the Jew can say, "Well, I don't want you to kill me and I can see why you would think that I deserved it, because if you did the same thing to me I would certainly kill you. So let's make a deal. I'll let you live in the garage." This is still insulting behavior, but it's in the process of being made less sadistic.

On the other hand, if a Palestinian says to a progressive Jew, "You stole my property!" the progressive Jew will usually shut down entirely. I have seen a fifty year old man start crying and insisting he's not evil. This is the behavior of someone who is guilty as sin. Like when you accuse your husband of adultery and he starts guilt-tripping you about how you don't believe in him (hypothetical but common scenario).

The other reaction is to get maliciously angry and start doing character assassination via gossip so that none of the other progressive Jews will greet that person who brought up the "touchy" subject. But they will be told that this person is an "enemy of peace" — so that it will be politically correct to shun them the same way that we avoid eye contact with skinheads and Bible thumpers. Progressive Jews are the most amazingly idealistic people on the planet. They want to be able to continue to sit on someone else's stolen property (or at least vacation on it) and not only think they have a "right" to travel around unharmed, ride the buses, shop and eat pizza while the people they made homeless have no water or food — but they want their victims to LIKE them. The Jews are the only conquerors in the history of the planet that expect the conquered people to LIKE them! If they don't like us, we feel offended and outraged. And what Jews consider as "liking behavior" is never mentioning the property they stole.

It's amazing. I've discussed some of this with Avigail Abarbanel, an ex-Israeli psychiatrist in Australia. She views Zionism as a mental illness that can be treated. But Zionism is just a symptom of a deeper problem, the delusional belief that you have "rights" which do not exist. Like a kid thinking he has the right to hit his sister. It's a failure to apply the Golden Rule to one's personal sense of responsibility in certain situations. The inner conflict that arises from these "situational ethics" certainly does create a clinically diagnosable mental inability to process certain types of information that trigger the neurotic or sometimes even psychotic defensive reaction.

Unfortunately, when it comes to Israel, Jews are defensive in the sense that they cannot process the type of information that is necessary to create peaceful behaviors. For example, if a Jew and a Palestinian live next door to each other in New Jersey, the Jew being the "owner" of a condo built on the Palestinian person's property, don't you think the Jew should offer to give it back, if he expects the other's friendship? If the Palestinian, as is normal, invites the Jew over for tea and politely doesn't bring up the subject, does the Jew feel that this means it's OK what he did? That he can forgive himself? That is what Jews want after all. We want to be forgiven without apology for everything we have done AND everything we are about to do. Is this a rational approach to peace? Is it working?

‘AL QAEDA’: A FIGMENT OF THE FEAR- AND WAR-MONGERING PROPAGANDISTS IMAGINATION

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Yesterday the Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his band of fearmongering lunatics warned Australians gathering at Gallipoli for ANZAC Day to be aware of a ‘terrorist threat’. In the UK Guardian today it is reported that the ‘head of Scotland Yard's counterterrorism command said yesterday that al-Qaida had survived the six-year long "war on terror" launched by President George Bush and Tony Blair, and its central leadership had retained the ability to order devastating attacks on Britain.’ As well as Gallipoli that is. And in Iraq, where it seems the Iraqi franchise of ‘al Qaeda’ has claimed responsibility for the deaths yesterday of nine US troops.

So good is the ‘al Qaeda’ franchise business that even the Israelis have tried to set up an ‘al Qaeda’ shop in Palestine. Unfortunately the locals soon discovered that the business wasn’t genuine (apparently Mossad hadn’t paid bin Laden the franchise fee) so the business was quickly shut down.

Of course al Qaeda exists, or at least existed, (indeed, it was set up with the assistance of the CIA as part of their covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan before the Taliban took over there) but it doesn’t exist in the way that the western neocon-dominated press would have us believe. Despite the continued references to ‘al Qaeda’ everyday as we are told that they are responsible for every conceivable atrocity that occurs on our planet, there has not been any evidence whatsoever that ‘al Qaeda’ per se has ever been responsible for anything beyond the borders of Afghanistan and the remoter parts of Pakistan.

The western propagandists have presented to the world a picture of an ‘al Qaeda’ as being a massive and extremely well disciplined international organisation that has branches everywhere. Yet nowhere is there any prima facie evidence to suggest that they even exist, let alone in such an organised and disciplined way. As the piece in today’s UK Guardian demonstrates, we are expected to simply believe what we are told with the total lack of evidence being conveniently explained away as; ‘for security reasons we can’t divulge the source’.

In Iraq the US and their allies are currently busy trying to wedge the Sunni and Shi’ite factions by blaming ‘al Qaeda’ for the friction between the two groupings. This is nothing new; they’ve tried it before, but now they are putting more effort into their blame game because they see it as away of polarising the rest of Islam in the Middle East and beyond thus diverting attention away from the Israelis and their efforts to subdue Palestine, Hamas and Hizbollah but, at the same time, demonising further an Iran that has a predominately Shiite population (as against the rest of the Islamic world which is around 80% Sunni).

The problem for the US, Israel, and their western allies, is that all this propaganda is for consumption in the west only. The Middle Eastern peoples, Sunni or Shia, are very much aware that their relationships with each other are quite secure and have been for decades. For them the myth of ‘al Qaeda’ remains just that – a myth, and that the struggles that exist between various Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq are mainly a combination of political and criminal secular differences in a post-Saddam lawless era and that such violence, as bloody as it often is, is contained within Iraq and has nothing to do with the battles that Islamic peoples and Arabs generally are fighting against Israeli right-wing Zionism in Palestine and US hegemonic colonialism in the Middle East and Central Asia.

‘Al Qaeda’ remains, as it has since the US decided that they were to blame for the events of 9/11, a myth that exists solely to perpetuate fear and the illusion that there is always an enemy to justify the continued ‘Global War on Terrorism’.

posted by Damian Lataan at 12:50 PM

The Dramatic Story of thePACT Between The Third REICH and Jewish PALESTINE

Related

Edwin Black - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The author is a highly respected Jewish-American historian.

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THE TRANSFER AGREEMENT: The Dramatic Story of the PACT Between The Third REICH and Jewish PALESTINE

by Edwin Black

On August 7, 1933, leaders of the Zionist movement Concluded - a Secret and Controversial Pact with the Third Reich which in its various forms transferred some 60,000 Jews and $100 million to Jewish Palestine.

Hardcover: 430 pages
Publisher: Brookline Books; Updated edition
(October 5, 1999)
ISBN: 157129077X
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches

URL

The Myth Of Jewish Refugees From Arab Land

April 23, 2007

By Dr. Elias Akleh


Victimizing the Jews has been the successful old political trick Zionists have been using to gain international political sympathy for the Israeli cause, and to justify all aggression and terror the Israeli army perpetrates on Palestinians and on the neighboring Arab countries. Whenever the international views turn against Israel, due to its aggression, a new Jewish victimizing story pops up.

One such late story I happened to come across on page 106 of March 19th. 2007 issue of U.S. News Magazine, was titled “You deserve a factual look at… The Forgotten Refugees. Why does nobody care about the Jewish refugees from Arab lands?” The article was published as an advertisement by FLAME (Facts and Logic About the Middle East), who claims to “publish the truth about Israel and the Middle East conflict in advertisements and letters to editors nationwide.”

The advertisement claims that there exist what it called Jewish refugees from Arab countries, and makes some comparison between these Jewish refugees and Arab refugees in an attempt to point to alleged international injustice when the UN spends “... many billions of dollars” on the Arab refugees while forgetting the Jewish refugees. The advertisement tries to avoid calling the Arab refugees by their true name: Palestinian refugees, in an attempt to deny any moral and legal responsibility of Zionist Israel in violating Palestinians’ human rights and creating Palestinian refugee problem.

The advertisement attempts to refute “A myth that Jews had an easy life in Muslim/Arab countries”. It claims that Jews under Islam were treated worse than second class citizens “governed by a system of discrimination intended to reduce Jews … to conditions of humiliation, segregation and violence”.

The truth is that Jews were treated, under Islam in the Arab World, better than any other place they had lived in the whole world at the time. They were treated like any other ethnic groups, e.g. Christians, with full citizenship that included freedom and rights like the rest of the citizens. They were allowed to live and worship freely in Jerusalem, where they were barred entrance by ancient Romans and European Christian Crusaders. When European Jews faced persecution since the start of Crusaders campaigns, they did not find any safe haven for themselves except in Islamic and Arab countries in North Africa and in the Middle East. Many of those Jews fought along side Muslim and Christian Arabs against the Crusaders, who called for the slaughter of every Jew for crucifying Jesus. In his book “Bitter Harvest” Palestinian scholar Sami Hadawi described this Jewish haven as follows:

“During the Middle Ages, North Africa and the Arab Middle East became places of refuge and a haven for the persecuted Jews of Spain and elsewhere… In the Holy Land they lived together in harmony, a harmony only disrupted when the Zionists began to claim that Palestine was the ‘rightful’ possession of the ‘Jewish people’ to the exclusion of its Moslem and Christian inhabitants”

The Jewish writer Dan Peretz described this situation in his book “The Arab Israeli Dispute” as follows: “Most Jews in Palestine belonged to old Yishuv, or community, that had settled there more for religious than for political reasons. There was little of any conflict between them and the Arab population. Tension began after first Zionist settlers arrived in the 1880’s”

Although given freedom like any other citizens a group of the Jews, believing themselves to be the elite God’s chosen people, who should not mix and mingle with the others, “Goyims”, as been taught by their prophets, had isolated themselves into ghettos the same way they had lived throughout Europe. Those, who had the courage to venture out of the ghettos, had flourished and reached high employment positions in Arabic governments and societies. Many had become the financial and trade centers of the Arab World. This fact contradicts the advertisement claims that Jews “… were excluded from society, from government, and from most professions ... They were barely tolerated and often… were victimized by vicious violence” Some extremist fundamentalist Jews, who had their noses up in the sky believing themselves to be the chosen people and better than all other nations, had invited rejection and intolerance from all nations, not just from Arabs, to such snobby racist attitudes.

The advertisement goes on further to claim that Jews in the Arab World were subjected to systematic violence and persecution after the establishment of Israel in 1948 and after Six Days War in 1967. “When Israel declared its statehood in 1948, programs broke out across the entire Arab/Muslim world. Thousands died in this violence… The vast majority of those Jews fled from where they had lived for centuries. They had to leave everything behind. Most of those who were able to escape found their way to the just-created state of Israel”

The programs, the advertisement does not clarify, were terrorist acts perpetrated by Zionists against Jewish communities in the Arab World, as well as throughout European countries to coerce the Jews to immigrate to Palestine to establish the alleged safe haven; Israel, on usurped Palestinian land. Zionist zealots and some mercenaries had fire-bombed Jewish synagogues and shops, damaged Jewish cemeteries, and painted hate graffiti to create anti-Jewish climate. Zionist offer of free transportation, free housing, and free salaries had encouraged a lot of Jews to surrender their fate to the Zionist plan. Those, who immigrated, had plenty of time to sell their properties before leaving.

The Arabs, contrary to the claims, did not subject their long-time neighboring Jews to violence since they distinguished between a Jew and a Zionist. Yet those Jews, who were disillusioned by Zionism and became “enemy combatants” and spies within the Arab World, had to be dealt with as such.

The advertisement brags about “Israel received every one of those Jewish refugees from Arab countries with brotherly open arms; it housed, fed and quickly integrated them into Israeli society”. It is true that Zionist Israel had received immigrant Jews, paid all expenses including transportation, rent, and monthly salaries until they were integrated in Israeli society. Yet this reception was not out of brotherly love. Those immigrant Jews were, deliberately, drowned into financial debt so that they could not leave Israel, after discovering the trap set for them, without repaying all the expenses plus interests. Young Jewish immigrants, and every new generation of their offsprings, have been conscripted into the Israeli terrorist army to kill and to be killed for the interests of rich pro-Zionist corporations of the West.

The advertisement repeats the old myth, that had been told and refuted so many times, that Palestinians had fled from Palestine after the Israeli occupation “... following the strident invocations of their leaders …so as to make room for invading Arab armies”, who according the advertisement will kill all the Jews so that Palestinians “could return to reclaim their properties and that of the Jews, all of whom would have been killed ...” by Arab armies.

Palestinians, like any other people, would never leave their homes voluntarily, and Arab leaders had never invoked them to leave. Sami Hadawi refuted this claim in his book “Bitter Harvest” stating the fact that “British Broadcasting Corporation monitored all Middle Eastern broadcasts throughout 1948. The records, and companion ones by a US monitoring unit, can be seen at the British Museum. There was not a single order or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine in 1948. There is a repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to the civilians of Palestine to stay put”.

This myth aims to erase guilt and moral responsibilities off Jewish shoulders for perpetrating the cruelest and ugliest massacres against mostly unarmed Palestinian villagers, and parading their women and children in the streets of Jerusalem to terrorize the rest of the Palestinians into fleeing out of their villages for their lives and for their honor when Zionist terror organizations, such as Irgun and Hagana, spread the rumors of their plans to attack Palestinian villages. Jewish historian Ilan Pappe, in his book “The Link”, mentions this fact: “The Israeli forces expelled the Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some cases, this expulsion was accompanied by massacres of civilians as was the case in Lydda, Ramleh, Dawimiyya, Sa’sa, Ein Zietun and other places. Expulsion also accompanied by rape, looting and confiscation”.

During wars people panic and flee their homes searching for safety. Yet they have always been able to return to their homes when danger subsides. Military conquest does not abolish private rights to property, nor does it entitle the victor to confiscate properties of civilian population. Even if the claims were true that Palestinians left their homes on the commands of their leaders, they still have the right to return to their homes and properties that had been stolen by Zionist immigrants. This right is protected by international law as noted by the noted Jewish writer and thinker Professor Erich Fromm “In international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his right of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the Jews”.
Israel’s rejection of Palestinians’ right of return has been on the top of their political agenda, which led them to break all UN resolutions regarding this matter, break all international laws, violate Palestinians’ human rights, and reject all Arab peace initiatives.

The advertisement continues with its allegations “… the Arab countries resolutely refused to accept Arab refugees into their societies. They confined them into so-called refugee camps …to keep them as a festering sore and to make solution of the Arab/Israel conflict impossible. These refugees, whose number has by now miraculously increased from their original 650 thousands to 5 millions, are seething with hatred toward Israel, and provide the cadres for terrorists and suicide bombers”

The Arab countries, mainly Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon, had received the majority of Palestinian refugees, who became a burden on the already impoverished economy of these countries, who, unlike Israel, were not receiving three billions of Dollars annually from the US. The majority of these refugees (now numbers about 7.5 million and not only 5 million) want to go back to their own homeland and their homes that were illegally occupied by terrorist Israelis. They fight to regain what is rightfully theirs, unlike the terrorist Israeli army, who fight to usurp lands of other people.

As for the solution of the Arab/Israeli conflict, the Arabs had offered Israel many peaceful solutions, yet Israelis categorically rejected them because without the conflict they could not keep usurping more lands to build “Greater Israel”. The latest Arab peace initiative of last month, March 2007, offered Israel to keep 78% of Palestine for permanent peace and normalization of diplomatic relationships with all Arab countries. Yet Israel, as usual, rejected this offer.

The advertisement acknowledges that “since 1947 there have been over 100 UN resolutions concerning Palestinian refugees, but there has not been one single resolution addressing the horrible injustice done to the nearly one million Jewish refugees from the Arab states”

This paragraph refutes the advertisement’s claim by showing that the international community has recognized and acknowledged the existence of a genuine Palestinian refugee problem, and the non existence of the false called-for Jewish refugees from Arab countries. That is why “a special branch of the United Nation (UNRWA) exists for the maintenance of those refugees” (created by Israelis) as the article notices. Israel, backed by successive American administrations, had ignored those UN resolutions that aimed to solve the Palestinian refugees’ problem, rather than spending billion of Dollars “contributed by the US” as the advertisement objects. It, also, totally ignores the attention the world had focused on the issue of the Holocaust, the compensation in hundreds of billions of Dollars to Israeli Jews, making even the study of the Holocaust an international crime, and sentencing, fining and imprisoning all the renowned historians, who questioned some of its details.

The advertisement criticizes the Arab’s justifiable right to ask for compensations, and the Palestinian refugees’ legitimate right to return to their homeland, “what has been Israel for almost 60 years”, where Palestinian tribes had lived for over than three thousand years. It concludes by stating “But if there is to be any compensation, those forgotten Jewish refugees are certainly entitled to such compensation as much as the Arab refugees. Anything else would be an outrage and a great injustice”

The advertisement neglected to mention the most important point in this refugee issue, namely that the Palestinian refugees were forcefully ejected from their homes according to the Zionist ideology that is based on the idea of “people substitution”; the expulsion ‘transfer’ of Palestinians out of Palestine, and the implanting of Jews in their place. The idiom of “Jewish state is unthinkable without compulsory transfer of the Arabs to the Arab states” had been adopted since the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, and had been repeated by notorious Zionist leaders such as British Zionist Israel Zangwill, Haim Weisman, Theodor Herzl, Nahman Syrkin (founder of Social Zionism), Selig Soskin (director of Jewish National Fund), and many others.

On the other hand the so-called Jewish refugees (Zionist Jews) from Arab countries had plenty of time to plan their leave and to liquidate all their properties, and to be fed, resettled and compensated directly by American tax money, where the annual three billion Dollars financial aid pays almost $3,000.00 monthly for every Israeli, not mentioning all the economic aid and tons and tons of military equipment that are given freely to the terrorist Israeli army to inflict terror on Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis and Iranians.

Finally the advertisement gives a comparison between bogus numbers of the Jews in some Arab countries before and after 1948; countries where Zionists had successfully transferred their Jewish population to occupied Palestine (Israel). It ignores to mention the large number of Jews, who are still living, flourishingly, in Northern African Muslim Arab countries, in Turkey, and even in Iran (the so-called extremist Islamic and terrorist supporting country), that houses the largest Jewish population, 25,000 of them, in the Middle East outside Israel, and are represented by a Jewish MP, Maurice Mohtamed.

The publishing organization (FLAME) of this so-called “factual look”, whose claimed purpose is the research, publication of facts, and exposing false propaganda about the Middle East, seems to do the exact opposite; it distorts the facts and spreads false propaganda instead.

The simple truth of the Arab/Israeli conflict had been reflected by Indian leader and peace teacher Mahatma Ghandi when he stated: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English and France belongs to the French”

''There is no such thing as an occupation''

Monday, April 23, 2007

By Raphaël Kempf

As a European volunteer working in Israel and Palestine, I sometimes take the bypass road north of Ramallah to go to Nablus with a Palestinian service bus. Such an experience is always tough because of the check-points, which are the very symptoms of the Israeli occupation.

Anyone who comes from abroad can feel what the Palestinians are living everyday by going into an Arab taxi. It is quite a different and bewildering experience to take the very same road in a settlers' bus, one of those famous Israeli green buses that we can see on the West Bank's roads. I took one of these buses from Jerusalem to the Ariel settlement, which is located in the middle of the Northern part of the West Bank. On a map, the settlement of Ariel is shaped like a finger, which looks like a thorn in Palestine's heart.

Because this bus is going from one Israeli city to another, while stopping on the way at some Israeli villages (settlements) located between both cities, we cannot feel that this territory is an occupied one. Had I not been aware of the problems facing Palestine, I would have thought that I was in Israel during the entire journey. From the viewpoint of an Israeli traveling from Jerusalem to Ariel (a journey which costs 11.50 NIS), there is no such thing as an occupation.

Once in Ariel, I felt like I was in any Israeli city. There are a lot of similar houses, a kind of modern and ugly but pleasant promenade with a few restaurants and shops. The students are dressed like those in Tel Aviv, and there is a cultural center managed by Elias, a really nice young father who is proud of his son. To say it clearly, I was quite shocked not to see ultra-orthodox Jews or settlers with big skullcaps and wires along their legs, as I saw in Tel Rumeida in Hebron. I just saw normal people managing their lives in a very boring and usual way.

Despite Ehud Olmert's statement that "Ariel is Israel", and will remain part of it in any future agreement; despite what the director of the Ariel Development Fund, Dina Shalit, who is fundraising abroad to develop the settlement, saying that "According to international law, no one has a better claim on this land than we do", I think that Ariel's normality will be a very difficult problem to resolve in a future global settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is one thing to fight on a moral and legal level against a government and some officials quoting the Bible or some mythical existential threats, it is another thing to fight against normal people who came to live in Ariel mainly because it is a cheap city. When it will be the time for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, the likelihood of these settlements being dismantled is slim, because the government will have to fight against this feeling of normality anchored in Israelis' minds.

This feeling comes from Zionism's blindness. One just has to read Herzl's book (the Jewish State) to understand that there is no Other in Zionism's thought. Never in his book, does Herzl think about the indigenous people living on the land where he wants to create the Jewish State.

Hence, because the Other does not exist, it is possible to settle and live normally as if there were no one on the land. Later in the history of Zionism, former Prime Minister Golda Meir said that "There is no such thing as a Palestinian People." On this point, Israel changed, but it is not willing to recognize that there is an occupation. Otherwise, the buses from Jerusalem to Ariel would not go through West Bank, and the Israelis' feeling that "this land is ours" would collapse. The most urgent task for the Israeli government is to destroy this feeling of normality if it really wants to achieve a global settlement of the conflict.

* Raphaël Kempf is a European volunteer in Mada al-Carmel, the Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa, Israel. Mada al-Carmel is an independent research institute, which aims to promote theoretical and applied social research on the Palestinian national minority in Israel. mada-research.org

Is George W. Bush Planning To Trigger Apocalyptic War ?

April 23, 2007

By Bruce Wilson
talk2action@earthlink.net

Given that neoconservatives close to the Bush Administration have articulated visions for the Middle East that involve the replacement of numerous existing governments in the regions, not to mention the replacement of the atrocious North Korean regime, how could we distinguish, in practice, that plan in action from moves to bring on the apocalypse ? The two projects would tend to look quite similar. Both would involve increasingly expanded theaters of war : maximal mayhem.

IN fact, some prominent neoconservatives have stated their desire for maximal mayhem, maximal war:

"One can only hope that we turn the region [the Middle East] into a cauldron [of war], and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today." -Michael Ledeen

Is George W. Bush a real Christian ? Is it just a manipulative act ? This post considers evidence that George W. Bush has genuine religious belief and, in fact, believes that the Apocalypse is immanent... even that he might have a divine mission to bring it on.

Yesterday I did a story on the heavy Evangelical penetration of the US military. The concern wasn't about Evangelicals but, rather, religious coercion in the military and troubling questions Weinstein has raised about possible compromises in the US military's chain of command.

Reading this post, please bear in mind that belief, or the absence of belief, is extremely difficult to demonstrate although modern MRI brain imaging techniques can demonstrate activity, or the lack of that, in areas of the brain associated with religious belief. But it is unlikely George W. Bush would submit to such scrutiny, and so we must consider proxy evidence.

If you're concerned about possible war with Iran, Wes Clark is too - you can sign his petition and get a free button ]

"The classical pattern of apocalypse, comprising in its active form, an initial phase of savage destruction followed by a phase of messianic rebirth, can be recognized in individual psychosis and in the Nazi type of destruction, persecution and virtual suicide." - Mortimer Ostow, "The Psychodynamics of Apocalyptic: Discussion of Papers on Identification and the Nazi Phenomenon," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1986

"God wants me to be President." - George W. Bush, 19 January 1999

[UPDATE: Some critics of this post have objected that there are few, if any, apocalyptic Christian Zionists within the Bush Administration. That point, even if correct, does not negate the impact of beliefs George W. Bush might hold. Further, neoconservatives widely held to have had considerable influence, within the Bush administration and in propelling the US towards war with Iraq, talk in terms eerily similar to those of apocalyptic Christian Zionism. Much neoconservative rhetoric is in fact indistinguishable from the rhetoric of apocalyptic Christian Zionists:

Neoconservatives For Maximal War

"[Richard] Perle told journalist John Pilger in 2002 that "if we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war ... our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

"Israel is part of a global war, the war of radical Islam against civilization. Right now Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world by taking on the terrorists. It is not only for Israel's sake that we must get the facts out -- it is for ourselves, America, for every free country in the world, and for civilization itself." - David Horowitz

"One can only hope that we turn the region [the Middle East] into a cauldron [of war], and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today." -Michael Ledeen

"I think an explosion is long overdue and turning the whole region into a cauldron [of war] is a necessary step toward reforming it." - Mark Steyn

"Norm Podhoretz ranks among the most prominent American editors of the 20th century. And he's doing pretty well in the 21st. (Laughter.) Never a man to tailor his opinions to please others, Mr. Podhoretz has always written and spoken with directness and honesty. Sometimes speaking the truth has carried a cost. Yet, over the years, he has only gained in stature among his fellow writers and thinkers. Today we pay tribute to this fierce intellectual man [sic] and his fine writing and his great love for our country." - George W. Bush, presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Podhoretz in June of 2004

"God willing, Judgment Day is coming to the Middle East." -Michael Ledeen

"Prof Ledeen is...believed to have the ear of the White House's current Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and has regular conversations with him. ...His view on the war on terror is clear, he said: 'Iraq is just one battle in a larger war, bringing down the regime in Iran is the central act...' "
-BBC News

"Whether or not the White House listens, it seems that they’ve listened to a lot of things about Iran, that I will say. I mean, some of the language and some of the speech is very familiar to me, and really reflects the sort of thing that I’ve been pushing for." - Ledeen, April 2003

"The regime must go." - [Richard] Perle and [David] Frum, on Iran

"All of Korea will be united in liberty." - Perle and Frum, on North Korea

"We should force European governments to choose between Paris and Washington." - Perle and Frum, on Europe

This post concerns the possibility that George W. Bush holds apocalyptic religious views and believes God has commanded him to attack Iran in order to bring on the Apocalypse.

"It was in his first campaign for governor that George W. began to preach the gospel according to Bush. He literally gave sermons in Houston's mega-churches, laying the blame for America's "failed culture" on the excesses of his generation in the 60s. "The culture of my generation, our generation, has clearly said, ‘If it feels good, do it, and be sure to blame somebody else if you have a problem.'" " - Gail Sheehey, Vanity Fair story on George W. Bush's religious beliefs.

When I woke this morning and made a pot of coffee, the sun was already up, cresting the hill behind my house amidst a din of birds and a riotous explosion, sudden and exuberant, of Spring. It was beautiful, and I think that's why I chose to wrote this now ; so that, in the words of Richard Brautigan's final book, ...The Wind Won't Blow It All Away.

***

About a month ago, a team of Japanese journalists visited Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, to do a story on Weinstein and his fight against religious coercion in the US military. The journalists told Weinstein they saw a pattern, now in the US, of religious militarism very similar to that which had arisen in Japan prior to World war Two.

"...a short video on faith and diplomacy made in the aftermath of September 11,2001, by Christian Embassy, a behind-the-scenes ministry for government and military elites. It almost seems to endorse deliberate negligence of duty, Dan Cooper, an undersecretary of veterans' affairs, announces that his weekly prayer sessions are "more important than doing the job." Major General Jack Catton says that he sees his position as an adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a "wonderful opportunity" to evangelize men and women setting defense policy. "My first priority is my faith," he says. "I think it's a huge impact.... You have many men and women who are seeking God's counsel and wisdom as they advise the Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs] and the Secretary of Defense." Brigadier General Bob Caslen puts it in sensual terms: "We're the aroma of Jesus Christ." There's a joyous disregard for democracy in these sentiments, for its demands and its compromises, that in its darkest manifestation becomes the overlooked piety at the heart of the old logic of Vietnam, lately applied to Iraq: In order to save the village, we must destroy it.
Weinstein, a former Air Force lawyer and Reagan White House counsel, saw not just some disturbing theology, but a potential violation of military regulations regarding separation of church and state." - Jeff Sharlet, Jeff Sharlet - Ten Things I Learned from the Pentagon's Prayer Team ( emphases mine )

War, especially religious war, is not a glorious affair. Images in this story are of the outcomes of real war on real humans. Please be advised.

Also, a few days ago, as you've probably heard, US Senator John McCain sang "Bomb Iran, Bomb Bomb Bomb" to the tune of the Beach Boys' hit "Barbara Ann", before an audience of hundreds at a VFW hall.

Back in April 2006, John McCain said, on "Meet The Press", to Tim Russert, that war with Iran could lead to "Armageddon". Now, McCain's singing about bombing that country as if it were some sort of joke. GOP House Minority Whip Roy Blunt Jr. flew out to Texas, early in 2007, to meet privately with John Hagee as well. The Apocalypse seems to be a popular subject these days in the GOP.

To the right is a picture, by a survivor of the bombing, of victims of the Hiroshima nuclear blast.

***

( image, right: skulls of Hiroshima victims )

Over the course of the last few months, I've been studying what George W. Bush may believe, and what people who are accorded as having been major religious influences on Bush say they believe.

Almost to a man, and they have all been men, those who are held to have shaped George W. Bush's religious beliefs have been apocalyptic Christian Zionists. George Bush speaks in the idiom of Christian apocalyptic premillenial dispensationalism, in common parlance the language of the end-times, of the coming Apocalypse, Rapture, and Armageddon. "Madman" theory does not suffice, from all that I can tell, to explain George W. Bush's numerous statements, that he speaks to God, is on a mission from God, that he is part of a divine plan.

By most evidence, George W. Bush appears to hold a personal, messianic belief that he, personally, must usher in the Apocalypse. And, he might just be able, as the last gasp of his dying presidency, to pull it off. In 2004, David Domke and Kevin Coe did a study of presidential language and come to the troubling conclusion - George W. Bush's language is very different from language used by past presidents:

( image - from archival footage of "The Rape Of Nanking" )

"The religious outlook of George W. Bush has been the focus of recent stories by several major news media. In these pieces White House officials and allies consistently have made the case that Bush’s faith and language are no different from past presidents. In the words of the Rev. Richard Neuhaus in The Washington Post, "This is so conventionally Christian piety and Christian faith" that Bush’s faith is "as American as apple pie."

That simply is not so. Bush’s fusion of faith and politics is anything but conventional for the presidency.

The key difference is this: Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have spoken as petitioners of God, seeking blessing and guidance; this president positions himself as a prophet, issuing declarations of divine desires for the nation and world. Most fundamentally, Bush’s language suggests that he speaks not only of God and to God, but also for God. Among modern presidents, only Ronald Reagan has spoken in a similar manner -- and he did so far less frequently than has Bush." - Published in The Revealer October 11, 2004. ( David Domke is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. He is the author of God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing Press (Pluto Press, 2004). Kevin Coe is a doctoral student in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. )

George W. Bush, at a public appearance Thursday, laid it out for all to see and this should come as no surprise:

As the Republican National Committee reports on its website, President Bush has declared this April 19, 2007, that his "faith" and his family come first, while George W. Bush's loyalty to the United States comes last. ( thanks to Universal Health for the tip )

I wish I was traveling here with Laura. The best thing about my family is my wife. (Applause.) She is a great First Lady. I know that sounds not very objective, but that's how I feel. And she's also patient. Putting up with me requires a lot of patience. But she sends her best; she's in New Orleans today.

And I will tell you, one reason -- this may sound counterintuitive, but a good marriage is really good after serving together in Washington, D.C. It's been an amazing experience to be a husband and then a dad as President of the United States. I emphasize, that is the priority for me as the President. It's my faith, my family, and my country"

Faith, Family, then Country ?

Bush's declaration of presidential loyalty seems to run directly counter to the oath Bush, and all US presidents, have taken upon entering presidential office:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Am I making too much of this ?

Let's look at a recent flap concerning US Representative Keith Ellison's Islamic religious. Critics claimed that Ellison could not be trusted to honor his oath of office because some Islamicists say things like this:

Secularists in the West will agree with this, then they will point out that under Islamic law, people are not all equal. No non-Muslim, for example, could become the president. Well, in response to that fact, in turn, secularism is no different. No Muslim could become president in a secular regime, for in order to pledge loyalty to the constitution, a Muslim would have to abandon part of his belief and embrace the belief of secularism — which is practically another religion. For Muslims, the word 'religion' does not only refer to a collection of beliefs and rituals, it refers to a way of life which includes all values, behaviors, and details of living. ( Dr. Jaafar Sheikh Idris )

Indications are good that, for George W. Bush, religious belief trumps Bush's responsibility to American people who hold religious and philosophical beliefs that differ from his. Signs are strong that Bush wants Apocalypse and that, even though a large percent of American does not wish for Apocalypse, George W. Bush just doesn't care. If he has the power to bring it on, that's that ; he'll do it and damn us all to the hell on Earth he feels God wants him to set in motion.

Let me turn to Jeff Sharlet, to frame the backdrop to all of this:

John Hagee is likely one of religious leaders who helped shape Goerge W. Bush's religious beliefs. Until last Wednesday, John Hagee's "Apocalypse Lobby" website featured an image, of Jerusalem's Wailing wall and the Temple Mount, from which the 3rd Holiest Site in Islam had been airbrushed out. As a result of my blogging, it seems, CUFI last Wednesday replaced its website logo image with another image in which the Haram el-Sharif was visible. A number of observers considered the original, airbrushed CUFI logo image to be wildly provocative to the Islamic world.

In a recent Charisma Magazine issue John Hagee, in a piece entitled "The Coming Holy War", wrote : "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons."

On July 19, 2006, at a CUFI sponsored Washington DC event called "A Night to Honor Israel", with GOP Party head Ken Mehlman and US GOP Senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum ( President George W. Bush sent recorded greetings to the event ) , Pastor John Hagee declared :

"The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West... a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation [...] and [the] Second Coming of Christ."

Hagee's beliefs are actually part of mainstream Christian Zionist thought, which tends to hold that, after Christians are "Raptured" bodily up to heaven, most Jews ( 2/3 to be precise ) will die in a subsequent terrible conflict centered around Israel.

Fundamentalism is here, and even provided we can squeak by the Apocalypse we're going to have to learn to deal with it. As Jeff Sharlet writes:

"We keep trying to explain away American fundamentalism. Those of us not engaged personally or emotionally in the biggest political and cultural movement of our times—those on the sidelines of history—keep trying to come up with theories with which to discredit the evident allure of this punishing yet oddly comforting idea of a deity, this strange god. His invisible hand is everywhere, say His citizen-theologians, caressing and fixing every outcome: Little League games, job searches, test scores, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the success or failure of terrorist attacks (also known as "signs"), victory or defeat in battle, at the ballot box, in bed.... A divine love that speaks through hurricanes. Who would worship such a god? His followers must be dupes, or saps, or fools, their faith illiterate, insane, or misinformed, their strength fleeting, hollow, an aberration. A burp in American history. An unpleasant odor that will pass.

We don’t like to consider the possibility that they are not newcomers to power but returnees, that the revivals that have been sweeping America with generational regularity since its inception are not flare-ups but the natural temperature of the nation...

The Christian nation of which the movement dreams, a government of those chosen by God but democratically elected by a people who freely accept His will as their own, is a far country. The nation they seek does not, at the moment, exist; perhaps it could in the future. More important to fundamentalism is the belief that it did exist in the American past, not in the history we learn in public school and from PBS and in newsmagazine cover stories on the Founders but in another story, one more biblical, one more mythic and more true. Secularism hides this story, killed the Christian nation, and tried to dispose of the body. Fundamentalism wants to resurrect it, and doing so requires revision: fundamentalists, looking backward, see a different history, remade in the image of the seductive but strict logic of a prime mover that sets things in motion. The cause behind every effect, says fundamentalist science, is God. Even the inexorable facts of math are subject to His decree, as explained in homeschooling texts such as Mathematics: Is God Silent? Two plus two is four because God says so. If He chose, it could just as easily be five. ( Jeff Sharlet, from Through a Glass Darkly, Harpers Magazine, December 2006 )

What does George W. Bush Believe ?

What does George W. Bush believe ? And, given the embattled nature of the Bush Administration, does it even matter ? Isn't Bush a lame duck president ? Hasn't the tide of political cronyism and religious zealotry that swept in as the presidency of George W. Bush crested at last ? With the return of the Democrats in force to Congress, to control the House of Representatives and the Senate, haven't we witnessed, at long last, the crest of the wave, the high water mark of the Bush Administration's proclivity for packing the federal bureaucacy with religious ideologues ?

"While it is well-known that George W. Bush presents himself as devoutly Christian, and he is widely considered beholden to the fundamentalists who are at least a third of the U.S. population and the GOP’s core voting base, whether or not he is a dispensationalist has emerged as one the administration’s most closely held secrets. The White House even refuses to say if the president has read the Left Behind books. Among evangelicals, though, there is a widespread conviction that Bush shares the End Times vision and has been divinely appointed to lead the nation. ( from Glenn Weiser's What Does The President Believe ? )

(video clip: George W. Bush is known to have frequented, as Governor of Texas, John Hagee's Cornerstone Baptist Church. The video clip is set to a sermon, by Hagee, alleging a conspiracy of "international banking" interests to create a sinister, satanic "New World Order" through the United Nations)

Why have we seen, in the last year and in the face of rationality and amidst the failure of the Bush Administration's Iraq gambit, to the ruin of that nation, the same sort of PR buildup, aimed apparently at building a case for war with Iran, we witnessed prior to the invasion of Iraq ?

The administration of George W. Bush may be unraveling, coming apart at the seams, or imploding. But, Bush himself holds one trump card to overrule all trump cards ; war is its own logic, and US forces once committed to an attack on Iran will not be easily withdrawn. Once that Pandora's Box gets opened, whatever demons shriek out at the world will not go away but will be with us for decades or, in human terms, forever.

( image: detail from painting depicting the "St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre" )

The overwhelming bulk of available evidence points towards the likelihood that George W. Bush is a Christian Zionist who believes, really believes, in the need for maximal, catastrophic war in the Mideast. Over the past several months I have been conducting, by myself with the help of a few concerned friends, an exhaustive study of George W. Bush's likely religious beliefs, or his lack thereof. Gail Sheehey, at the onset of George W. Bush's presidential tenure, covered Bush's beliefs. But no one, as far as I can tell, who is familiar with Christian apocalyptic dispensationalism and with the intersection of religion and politics has made concerted effort to gather all available data bits on George Bush's religious belief.

Until now.

Evidence I have gleaned points in one troubling direction, and therefore towards a monumental bifurcation point in world history resting now in the hands, more than any human, of a man who appears to believe, in his heart, in the coming Apocalypse, in immanent, unavoidable Armageddon, in the "Rapture" of "Bible believing" Christians to heaven where they will, in safety, look down upon a world convulsing in hideous military conflict and the slaughter of hundreds of millions, billions of people even, by fire and sword, bullets and bombs, by nuclear incineration.

The Apocalypse, understood in either religious terms of merely viewed in secular terms, as catastrophic world war, would preclude meaningful action to address the penultimate world challenge of our time, Global Warming. Apocalypse would preclude meaningful action on AIDS and poverty, on preserving biodiversity, forests and ocean ecosystems. To significant action across a vast swath of imaginable world problems, even problems unrecognized as of yet, the Apocalypse would shut the door, perhaps forever.

At this moment in time, George W. Bush holds the keys to two radically different kingdoms ; two fates, one leading towards a constructive future and one leading towards catastrophe, towards terrible, destructive unraveling in the fabric of human and biological systems on Earth.

***

Hasn't George W. Bush Been Defanged ?

But, hasn't George W. Bush been rendered toothless and fangless ? Hasn't the charging Texas cowboy been knocked from his horse ?

That seems to be the common consensus :

Recently, I was discussing, with an editor at a national magazine who I'll leave unnamed, a curious issue : the apparent airbrushing of the logo image for a new national Christian lobbying group that lobbies for the Apocalypse, for catastrophic war in the Mideast. The 3rd Holiest site in Islamic had been wiped from the logo image and, intentional or not, the symbolism could have been wildly inflammatory to the Islamic world. Talk of the logo led, of course, to Mideast, and the editor agreed with me that Bush probably wanted maximal Mideast conflict but believed that wiser heads would prevail ; there was fightback, in Republican ranks even, against the Bush Administration's lust to expand the theater of Mideast conflict, to "fail forward" and attack Iran. Wiser heads, he reassured me, would prevail.

I'm not convinced though, and perhaps that's an artifact of what I've been studying lately ; the hot zone of religion and politics, especially when the religious beliefs in question are apocalyptic and the political realm in question concerns the loyalty, or lack thereof, of United States armed services members to religious pluralism, American Constitutional Democracy, and simply to not provoke catastrophic war, can be a troubling realm to pay attention to. Once, at an national environmental activist conference, I happened to overhear the staff of the facility hosting the event quip, about the environmentalists present, "they're worse than people with eating disorders" and I think the realm I gesturing at elicits a similar manic intensity... but for good reason. Sober heads, even advocates for a new Pax Americana such as "The Grand Chessboard" author Zbigniew Brzezinsky, have warned that a US attack on Iran could open a gateway to catastrophe.

As I covered yesterday, the US military has been penetrated to an unknown extent but, arguably, extensively by American Evangelicals with apocalyptic dispensationalist beliefs. Wars are comparatively easy to provoke, and an influential faction in American politics, a coalition perhaps including George W Bush, many evangelicals in the US military, many in Bush's core fundamentalist base, the lobbying blocks of CUFI and to some extent AIPAC, and busy cadres of writers, publicists, and PR specialists, are concertedly pushing for war with Iran.

Such a possibility would have seemed insane six or seven years ago at the onset of the Bush Administration, but here are and the most likely reason we have come to this grim possibility can be expressed in two words:

Christian Zionism.

"Bush addressed the CNP ( Council On National Policy ) in 1999 (there is, of course, no public record of what he said) and begins every day poring over Bible commentary. Do he and Laura read themselves to sleep with LaHaye? That he is sympathetic to what LaHaye stands for, religiously and politically (assuming they can be separated), is a legitimate conclusion. In 1993, Bush unguardedly divulged that only Christians can get to heaven. He secured his base, at the beginning of his presidential campaign, by speaking at Bob Jones University - which he refused to criticise for its ban on interracial dating. At his inauguration, he chose Franklin Graham to deliver the ceremonial prayer - the son of the venerable Billy (the evangelist who saved Bush from the demon drink), who has become notorious for telling the world that Islam "is a very evil and wicked religion". " ( UK Guardian, June 12, 2003 )

"Bush's first real encounter with Jesus came about with the Evangelical Reverend Billy Graham. No problem there. Reverend Graham, though once a registered Democrat, has made a point of staying non-partisan. Since then, Bush has kept the company of some odd pastors, such as James Robison, the anti-abortion fanatic who likes to quote both sides of his conversations with God. Robison prayed with Bush in the Oval Office before the invasion of Iraq. Another is one of Texas' foremost fundamentalist preachers, the Reverend James [sic] Hagee of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio. Hagee is part of a more off-center form of Christianity tracing back to an Anglian priest who abandoned his church in 1820 to form his own sect. The beliefs Hagee brings from this, known as Dispensationalism, are too complicated to cover here, but basically revolve around Armegeddon and a literal reading of the Book of Revelation. This "end-times" theology can be seen in Bush's foreign policy.
In November of 2002, Hagee addressed his congregation of four thousand people, outlining a foreign policy strangely similar to Bush's policy set forth later. With then-House Majority Leader Tom Delay at his side, Hagee preached about regime change in Syria as well as Iraq, and about destroying the regime of Yasir Arafat. These were policies written six years earlier by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., and others who are now part of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Hagee stated, "Listen, Saddam, there's a Texan in the White House, and he's going to take you down."
On more than one occasion, Bush has claimed he takes his orders from God ... literally. Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003. Nabil Shaath relates the meeting: "President Bush said to all of us, 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq ..." And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"
Israel's most reputable newspaper, Ha'aretz, related a similar story from the same time. At the cease-fire negotiations between Abbas and faction leaders from the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular and Democratic Fronts, Bush said, "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

"What [Rev. Billy Graham] said sparked a change in my heart. We walked and talked at Walker's Point, and I knew I was in the presence of a great man... Reverend Graham planted a mustard seed in my soul... He led me to the path, and I began walking. It was the beginning of a change in my life." - Bush, A Charge to Keep, 1999

"...What are some of those signs we should be watching for?"

"Political unrest... Although Russia no longer is a threat as a superpower, many other nations have access to nuclear weapons and instantly could plunge the world into chaos with the push of a button..."

"Natural disasters... There have always been earthquakes, famines and other natural disasters in the world, but this century [the 20th] has witnessed more of them -- disasters with greater intensity."
"Social unrest... Jesus also said there would be an increase of wickedness and the love of many would grow cold (Matthew 24:12). Read the papers, we're already there."

"Religious apostasy... The 'faith which was once delivered unto the saints' (Jude 3) slowly has been eroded throughout this century to the point where the Word of God no longer has any authority in the minds of people."

"Economic instability... Many areas of the globe are experiencing this..."

"The rebirth of Israel. ...God has assimilated into one nation Jews of many cultures and languages and preserved them through five wars with their Arab neighbors. The people have reclaimed and rebuilt the old wastes of ancient cities, towns, and villages. All of this is a major miracle that points unmistakably to Israel's strategic role in the Lord's scenario for the last days."

"Evangelistic permeation... Never in history has there been such a concentrated effort to fulfill the Great Commission as in the days leading up to the start of the new millennium."

"The rise of the Antichrist... Antichrist is an apocalyptic figure that will rise to world power in the last days. He will control the world's economy and religion and will wage war against the church and Israel. Many have sought to identify him through the years with some contemporary figure, as some undoubtedly have resembled his qualities to some degree. Nevertheless, he may be alive right now and just waiting for the right moment to seize power." - Billy Graham, from Graham's last book, "The Beginning Of The End", 1999

"The Reverend Billy Graham taught Bush to live in anticipation of the Second Coming but it was his friendship with Dr. Tony Evans that shaped Bush's political understanding of how to deport himself in an apocalyptic era. Dr. Evans, the pastor of a large Dallas church and a founder of the Promise Keepers movement taught Bush about "how the world should be seen from a divine viewpoint," according to Dr. Martin Hawkins, Evans assistant pastor.

S.R. Shearer of Antipas Ministries writes, "Most of the leaders of the Promise Keepers embrace a doctrine of 'end time' (eschatology), known as 'dominionim.' Dominionism pictures the seizure of earthly (temporal) power by the 'people of God' as the only means through which the world can be rescued.... It is the eschatology that Bush has imbibed; an eschatology through which he has gradually (and easily) come to see himself as an agent of God who has been called by him to 'restore the earth to God's control', a 'chosen vessel', so to speak, to bring in the Restoration of All Thingss." Shearer calls this delusion, "Messianic leadership"-- that is to say usurping the role usually ascribed to the Messiah.

In Bush at War Bob Woodward writes, "Most presidents have high hopes. Some have grandiose visions of what they will achieve, and he was firmly in that camp."

To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil," says Bush. And again, "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great nation." Grandiose visions. Woodward comments, "The president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of Gods Master Plan."

"The lessons of the Bible were a reason for his decision to run for president. He feels that God speaks to him." - Texas megachurch preacher and personal friend to George W. Bush, Dr. Tony Evans

"As Texan preacher Tony Evans, one of his spiritual advisors, recalls: "The lessons of the Bible were a reason for his decision to run for president. He feels that God speaks to him." From then on, Bush defined his work as a mission: "I am convinced that we must fundamentally and permanently change our entire culture. We need spiritual renewal in America."

The occasional churchgoer had become a pious man, a man who continues to practice rigorous discipline in the White House and incorporates the appropriate passage from the Bible into his daily agenda. The insecure drinker has become a president with whom mainstream Americans can identify, precisely because of his mediocrity, fallibility and devoutness."

"Dr. Martin Hawkins, Evans’ assistant pastor, Evans taught Bush "how the world should be seen from a divine viewpoint." And Bush says in his book, A Charge to Keep, that he has been "spellbound" listening to Evans’ sermons'

"Bush learned from Evans a whole new approach—cultural rather than economic—to winning political adherents. "On July 4, 1998, Governor Bush listened to Dr. Evans lay out a whole philosophy about how the world should be seen from a divine viewpoint and adjusted politically," says Evans's assistant pastor Dr. Martin Hawkins. Evans, who is said to be a confidant of the man he helped to become governor—they have prayed over the phone together—was one of the builders of the new Christian men's movement known as the Promise Keepers. He has urged men to "take back" authority from their wives, and women to "let your man be a man."

Bush did seem to find direction and develop discipline in his habits through his personal religious revival. "For some people, when they discover a faith in their religion, in God . . . it is a prescription for self-respect," says Lacey Neuhaus. But religion is also an important political tool for him. His evangelical Christianity gives him solid standing as a social conservative. It is also useful in dismissing questions about his character. All he has to say is that his life has changed dramatically since he accepted Christ. He is a new person, and his earlier, irresponsible conduct is irrelevant.

In his political sermons he began calling religious people to become involved in politics, and described the Bible as "a pretty good political handbook." He championed religious groups as the best instrument to change social policy, in place of government or in partnership with it. Not only was that music to the ears of the Christian right, it meant money in their coffers. Here was a politician who would channel government money not into social programs such as welfare but into church partnerships with the state.

Dr. Hawkins says, "There is a strong possibility that we would be one of the faith-based organizations that partner with the federal government, under President Bush, to reach out in the community to take care of housing and jobs."

Unabashedly fired up by the rhetoric of the Christian men's movement, Bush forgot that not everyone accepts Christ as his or her savior. He told a reporter in 1994 that the New Testament teaches that only those who accept Jesus Christ will go to Heaven."

Franklin Graham is more than a long-standing friend of Bush. He is a significant theological mentor. Bush has written in Christian magazines that Reverend Franklin and his father were pivotal in renewing his faith and religious committment as a Christian after his bout with alcoholism. The American public choose to be blithley unaware of Graham’s hatred of Islam. After the 9-11 attacks, and around the same time Bush declared his war on Islamist terrorists a "crusade," Franklin Graham made a highly publicized blanket condemnation of Islam on the Christian TV show 700 Club calling it "a very evil and wicked religion." He has often written that Islam and Christianity will fight each other before the second coming of Christ. Franklin Graham, like his father, who has been the confessor of several American presidents, believes Christ’s coming is imminent.

Given the indelicate words of this prominent Islamaphobe, one might expect the president to distance himself, but no. Gumbel reports that the president invited Franklin Graham to preach at the Good Friday 2003 prayer service held in the Pentagon. I would add that he participated in the Holy Service just as the American invasion of an Islamic country was at its peak.

WOLF BLITZER: So what's your bottom line? Do you believe, based on the reporting you did for this article, that the president of the United States is now aggressively plotting military action, a pre-emptive strike against Iran?

SEYMOUR HERSH: The word I hear is "messianic." He thinks, as I wrote, that he's the only one now who will have the courage to do it. He's politically free. I don't think he's overwhelmingly concerned about the '06 elections, congressional elections. I think he really thinks he has a chance, and this is going to be his mission.

"Again, the White House Web site records that on March 3, Bush told a Los Angeles audience, "God loves you, and I love you. And you can count on both of us as a powerful message that people who wonder about their future can hear." After mentioning himself in the same breath with God, Bush then topped himself when the Lancaster New Era reported on July 16 that in a private meeting with an Amish group in Lancaster County, he told them, "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job." The White House has denied the statement."

"Five months later, in August of 2003, MSNBC reported claims by televangelist Jack van Impe that the White House had contacted him seeking an outline of apocalyptic events. Van Impe wrote on his website, "I am not sure whether he (Bush) knows all of the prophecies and how deep of a student he has been in God's Word, but I was contacted a few weeks ago by the Office of Public Liaison for the White House and by the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to make an outline. And I’ve spent hours preparing it. .. it’s in his (Bush’s) hands. He will know exactly what is going to happen in the Middle East and what part he will have under the leading of the Holy Spirit of God."... The White House has denied having made this request."

Mr Bush's Christian fervour only confirms suspicions that the looming war with Iraq is indeed a "crusade" against Muslims, exactly as Osama bin Laden suggests. For world-weary Europe the presidential language evokes mirth and queasiness in equal measure. A European leader who spoke in such terms would be laughed off the stage. An American one who speaks this way only increases the fear that simplicities of faith, and a habit of seeing a hideously complicated world in a black-and-white, good or evil fashion, are a recipe for disaster.

Chapter and Verse: Bush and the Bible

"Our prayer tonight is that God will see us through and keep us worthy. Hope still lights our way, and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it."

Speech on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks, 11 September 2002

"We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence. Yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May he guide us now."

State of the Union address, 28 January 2003

"In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'Lift your eyes and look to the heavens.'"

Address to the nation after the shuttle 'Columbia' disaster, 1 February 2003

"It is the greatest gift you can give anybody, to pray on their behalf."

At National Prayer Breakfast, 7 February 2003

"I welcome faith to solve the nation's deepest problems ... We're being challenged. We're meeting those challenges because of our faith ... We carried our grief to the Lord Almighty in prayer."

Speech to National Convention of Religious Broadcasters, 10 February 2003, referring to the 11 September terrorist attacks

"The Archive of Bush's Evil

I asked them the other day, would it be okay if I cut a 30-minute tape, a piece of propaganda, no questions, just here -- here it is, here's 30 minutes of me talking; please run it, not only across your airwaves but run it internationally, if you don't mind; I've got something to say about the conflict and our fight against evil.
President George W. Bush - 11/13

It is also a reminder of the great purpose of our great land, and that is to rid this world of evil and terror. The evil ones have roused a might nation, a mighty land. And for however long it takes, I am determined that we will prevail.
President George W. Bush - 11/12

Our nations share an urgent mission, which is to stop and defeat terrorism wherever it may exist. That mission is not directed against those who practice Islam. That mission is directed against evil people.
President George W. Bush - 11/10

The only thing I know certain about him is that he's evil. And I don't know what to believe about him, except that he wants to hurt Americans.
President George W. Bush - 11/10

In a second world war, we learned there is no isolation from evil. We affirmed that some crimes are so terrible they offend humanity, itself. And we resolved that the aggressions and ambitions of the wicked must be opposed early, decisively, and collectively, before they threaten us all. That evil has returned, and that cause is renewed.
President George W. Bush - 11/10

We're confident, too, that history has an author who fills time and eternity with his purpose. We know that evil is real, but good will prevail against it. This is the teaching of many faiths, and in that assurance we gain strength for a long journey.
President George W. Bush - 11/10

I think there is one universal law, and that's terrorism is evil, and all of us must work to reject evil. Murder is evil, and we must reject murder.
President George W. Bush - 11/9

America faces an evil and a determined enemy.
President George W. Bush - 11/9

None of us would ever wish the evil that has been done to our country, yet we have learned that out of evil can come great good.
President George W. Bush - 11/8

We know that we're fighting evil. And the American people are patient. They've heard the call.
President George W. Bush - 11/8

This is an evil man that we're dealing with. And I wouldn't put it past him to develop evil weapons to try to harm civilization as we know it.
President George W. Bush - 11/6

Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and, eventually, to civilization itself. So we're determined to fight this evil, and fight until we're rid of it. We will not wait for the authors of mass murder to gain the weapons of mass destruction. We act now, because we must lift this dark threat from our age and save generations to come.
President George W. Bush - 11/6

Our war that we now fight is against terror and evil... Our struggle is going to be long and difficult. But we will prevail. We will win. Good will overcome evil."

PARTIAL EXCERPT from archive of George W. Bush public statements on "evil"

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RESOURCES

Here are a number of stories on apocalyptic Christian Zionism

An Editorial Note:

That leading US politicians now happily appear at public events with, cheer on, and consent to share the stage with a man who advocates a fringe conspiracy theory some would call anti-Semitic and urges a "preemptive" use of nuclear weapons in order to cause widespread nuclear war indicates the extent to which US political and religious culture has lurched far right, towards what some call an "apocalyptic death cult", over the past four decades since the era in which Lyndon Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign devastated Barry Goldwater's presidential hopes by airing just one time a 30 second TV commercial, the "Daisy" ad, that effectively tarred Goldwater as eager for nuclear war. Now, for Republican politicians wooing a key bloc of evangelical GOP voters, public expressions of nuclear blood lust are no longer stigmatized or politically toxic ; they are an asset.

Friends Of Israel and AIPAC Envision "Israel's Final Holocaust" and "Jew Toast"

TTA contributor Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst for Political Research Associates, provides some background on the recent history of "New World Order" conspiracism among John Hagee's fellow Christian Zionists such as Tim LaHaye and Pat Robertson in The Age Old Conspiracy

Previous installments in an ongoing series, by Bruce Wilson, on John Hagee and Christian Zionism:

"Pro Israel" Christian Leader Blames Jews For The Holocaust


"Be Jewish In Five Easy Days", The Twelve Tribes Of Hagee

AIPAC Event Helps Mainstream Allegations Of "Satanic Liberal Jewish Conspiracy"


Holocaust For Zion : CUFI's Christian Zionism Made Simple


GOP House Minority Whip Roy Blunt To Help Nuclear War Advocate


What Secret "Other Matters" Did McCain Discuss With "Apocalypse Now" Hagee ?


Dick Armey Denies Bush Administration Trying To Provoke "End Times"

recent stories from other authors:

Frank Cocozzelli: Donohue Softpeddles Hagee's Catholic Bashing


Max Blumenthal : AIPAC Cheers an Anti-Semitic Holocaust Revisionist (and Abe Foxman Approves)

Sarah Posner: The Goy Who Cried Wolf: The Israel lobby gives America's leading Christian right warmonger a warm welcome

Max Blumenthal : Israel, the US, and the Christian Right: The Menage a Trois From Hell

Bill Berkowitz:Holy Warriors Set Sights on Iran

Esther Kaplan : Christian Zionism all juiced up

Richard Bartholomew : Armey: Bush Believes in Tribulation, but not Trying to Make it Happen

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