Max Blumenthal writes about the political liability to Israel of Osama bin Laden's death. His full post is here.
But even before he had announced his upcoming trip to Washington, Netanyahu offered evidence that he would prefer for Bin Laden to be alive and kicking. In the immediate wake of 9-11, the New York Times’ James Bennett asked Netanyahu what the attacks would mean for Israel’s relations with the United States. “It’s very good,” Bibi replied before quickly correcting himself. ”Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.” Netanyahu said the attack would ‘’strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.”
Before an audience at Bar Ilan University in 2008, Netanyahu restated his belief that 9-11 was, as he said, “very good.” “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” Netanyahu said during a conference about re-dividing Jerusalem in the event of a peace treaty with the Palestinians.
Bibi’s logic was clear: as long as Americans could be duped into believing Israel was fighting its battle, the United States would support Israeli expansionism and intransigence. Bin Laden was useful indeed.
With Bin Laden gone, Netanyahu will likely try to sell Americans on new folk devils, from Hamas in Gaza to the nuclearized “new Hitler” in Iran. But these evildoers have expressed little, if any, interest in attacking the United States. And judging from Netanyahu’s past statements, he does not view this fact as “very good.”
Is AIPAC arm-twisting an insurance policy backing up American sympathy for Israel (those who suffer terrorism together stick together)? Or vice-versa? If OBL is dead, as claimed, is that the end of the USA’s GWOT?
This is all rather odd. USA supported Israel (especially from 1967 onward) w/o suffering first from terrorism. Was that support really so tenuous that Bibi needed 9-11 to keep it together? Is the USA’s decision to remain in the sink-hole of Afghanistan until 2014 (and Petraeus (the “urge to surge” guy) now going to the CIA, drone capital of the world, a sign of the USA tiring of its the-American-empire-will-fight-to-the-bitter-end syndrome?
No. The USA’s empire (or what it imagines as such) — bought and paid for by the USA taxpayers or by loans to USA from China — seemingly of such colossal value to all international corporations, and not just to American ones (whatever that means) — is a means of transferring money (third-world-corrupt-dictator-style) from money borrowed by the “nation” to the pockets of the oligarchs (here, the MIC); the project of endless war is incidental to the real goal — transfer of money into these pockets. “Defense” is a rousing slogan, and no red-blooded American would deny spending every last dollar on “defense”, even if there is not and has not since 1945 been a threat to the USA’s homeland, and since the fall of USSR, not a threat of any kind to USA’s interests abroad. it’s all a “con”.
And Israel is part of that larger “con”. Why? Probably to keep making money for the airplane and other defense h/w industries, who sell a lot of weapons to the M/E.
Was that support really so tenuous that Bibi needed 9-11 to keep it together?
Great questions, but really, post 9-11 was exactly the environment Zionists needed to bring Islamophobia and demonization of Arabs and Muslims into the mainstream, and Americans were more than receptive to such crude and racist propaganda. As Chris Matthews said, after 9-11, all [Americans] “were neo-cons.” Zionists and pro-Israel lobbyists fully exploited this reality and persuasion against Islam and Muslims to seed their hatred into them and launch wars against its enemies. I imagine whatever subtlety the Zionists would have had to previously employ to sell the American audiences their wars is now out the window as their latest target is not only marketed as Israel’s enemy but by extension, America’s.
This is exactly right, Max. A number of commenters on MW have said the same thing on recent threads here, including myself. But your short article brings it in tight focus. Thanks. Since the news of the death of OBL, all I’ve heard on TV cable news and talk radio is the cranking up of the war on radical Islam–”we’ve only just begun,” said the old song. The glaring missing lyric or dot is the connection between the Arab Spring and the US-Israel reason why it took so long to get sprung. But that’s been missing all along, even though the 9/11 terrorists themselves, as well as OBL expressly pointed it out, and this was acknowledged even in the tidy-upped 9/11 Commission Report. If only we can get some photoshopped pics of the Arab Spring burning the US flag, things would be great, and Bibi would really be on a roll! What to dread? A full op-ed in the NY Times & Newsweek about the Egyptians opening up of the gate to Gaza–by Finklestein.
Very perceptive. In three week time most Americans will not have forgotten about the end of Bin Laden.
A bit of optimism to be taken from the assassination of bin Laden is it might allow the president to use his new foreign policy legitimacy to reduce Israeli aggression. The death of this bogeyman will provide the president a lot of good will, and he should use it to advocate for the Palestinian cause.
American and Israeli geopolitical strategy is based entirely on the Machiavellian doctrine. To expect anything resembling “good will” to come of this, is to be a hopeless optimist (Is that an oxymoron?), to put it mildly.
Who ordered the Osama Bin Laden hit?
link to bit.ly
Background for Bibi’s next speech to the American congress:
link to sajepress.com
Ron Paul is on CSPAN now tearing America’s foreign policy in the ME a new ass; too bad most Americans dismiss him as irrelevant, as locked in the old sentimental white male vision of America.
actually ron paul was a very popular candidate. the msm just refuses to include him in polls and debates and coverage. he has a huge fan base.
“Late at night, on the outskirts of a big city, they slipped in and got him. It was illegal, a breach of sovereignty, and the host country would later scream blue murder. But it was so compromised by its associations that little attention was paid. When news of the raid got out, and the result was seen for what it was, any cavils about international law were put to one side as the world rejoiced”.
“The operation of which I speak is, of course, the kidnap of Adolf Eichmann from Argentina by an Israeli squad in 1961 — an event whose initial audacity was quickly consumed by an even more extraordinary act, that of putting Eichmann on trial in Israel, complete with a defence counsel, and a process that many criticised at the time as achingly slow, overly deferential to a man whose identity and guilt was unquestionable, and whose accordance of the notion of possible innocence was a traumatic affront to survivors”.
“The distance we have gone in dealing with the problem of Eichmann to the problem of bin Laden is a measure of the profound shift in the West in relation to everything — to the West’s idea of itself, to its confidence in its own project, to its sense of bodying forth an expression of the universal, of the human in its doings. Those empires, movements, parties that have a belief in themselves as an expression of humanity, of the good — of a particular expression of a general aspiration — exercise it by trying to reach towards the universal in their doings”!
Yep, LeoBraun, we Americans have come along way in our de facto interpretation of the rights of any sovereign nation and its citizens or residents. Sovereignty principles don’t mean much today, certainly not what they meant when we hung those German leaders at Nuremberg and those Imperial Japanese leaders. Political assassinations are now pretty much commonplace. That’s the bonus when you fight a war on an abstraction named “terror.” Can’t beat it for Silly Puddy.
Incidentally, the Military Channel just told us the Germans, and for example, Elsa Koch, made lampshades out of Jewish skins. Watch it yourself next time “The Last Days of World War 11″ episode is repeated on the Military Channel. It happens about half way into the one hour program. If you don’t, I will assume you are a holocaust denier. If it makes you ponder the truth delivered to American adults of some substance (to afford that channel) who are history buffs, well, what can I say? Take a gander at the history books your 7th grader is issued? Yeah, you have to train them early; hence the importance of Education, which, after all, is not really as related to getting & keeping a decent job as it once was, eh? (Why blame the brownies streaming over the border, when you can blame Clinton for his setting up transfer of good jobs to India, for example? Sorry, that’s a different subject, except in the sense of general education by our leaders to us voters). Oh, I don’t know why the Military Channel didn’t tell us about how the Germans made soap out of Jewish fat, do you?
Daring piece of writing at crikey, versus relentless throttling voices of reason!
• Sadly and perhaps oddly, given an Aussie motto of a fair go, was to witness instead such a relentless sadism unleashed to silence moral Jew dissidents. As those attempting to make a stance for the better Australia, having their arms wrestled back. While the quarantined facts input marooned for days in crikey’s buffer. Eventually to be eliminated by the gagging-brigade in the treacherous era of universal deceit.
Invoked lately as a result of my claim that in reality Hitler relied on the like-minded Jews, such as his favourite filmmaker/director, Leni Riefenstahl; The chief ideologist, Alfred Rosenberg; Reich’s Propaganda Minister Dr Josef Goebbels; Mobilisation Minister Albert Speer; Chief of the SS Heinrich Himmler; The Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering; Dr Hans Frank, head of the Legal Dept; The Reichsleader, Dr Gregor Strasser; The Reichsminister von Ribbentrop (a close friend of Chaim Weizmann); A failed mission, peace flight casualty, Rudolf Hess; Plus a person of interest in the debated topic, Adolf Eichmann. SS Lieutenant Colonel (head of the Jewish Affairs Dept) in Reich’s Security Main Office. Liable for the Jewish refugees exodus to Palestine in reliance on the amicable rapport gained with the Haganah commander Feivel Polkes, who invited Eichmann to tour their ancestor’s land in Oct 1937.
Envied undoubtedly by the Security & Police General, Reinhard Heydrich. Who loved to play violin beside the passion to spot a Jew. Pinpointing even one Catholic Jew, born near Haifa, who spoke Hebrew, Yiddish and German. As a child he landed with his father in Solingen, and later in Linz. Long before the annexation of Austria he fought already for the Fuehrer. Ultimately, Eichmann fled to Germany and joined the SS. Not before Hitler’s anti-Semitic professor Leopold Poetsch who taught history at the Linz High School, enlighten Eichmann. A future SS-man (whose “birth certificate” was issued belatedly in Solingen), an upcoming architect of the “Final Solution“!
Knowing that German Jews would never voluntarily leave their homeland, brutal pogroms were instigated against the assimilationists, whatever it takes to uproot the obstinate Jews. Ultimately terror campaign culminated in a bloody slaughter of the targeted Jews in nazi-occupied Europe, after the outbreak of WWII. Just as dehumanising propaganda facilitated hunted Jews deportation to ghettos and camps.
Obviously, Eichmann was instrumental to get rid of the nonconformists, old and infirm riff-raff. In fact inadmissible candidates for the Palestine immigration, unless loaded with cash. So why such a key collaborator to face the gallows three decades later, in 1962? Because he knew far too much, yet unlike the doomed bin Laden, Eichmann adhered to the taboo for discussion ethos.
Philanthropic Adolf Eichmann even offered a deal to the merchant facilitating escape of the Jews while bragging about the countries he had freed of Jews. “I will sell you the Jews of Hungary”, Joel Brand recalled Eichmann’s proposal made in March 1944, at the “Trial of the Century” in Jerusalem on May 29, 1961. “He said that he called to offer me a deal. He was willing to sell one million Jews in terms of ‘goods for blood’. Such was his proposal as he sought particulars still ringing in my ears: ‘What do you want? Men who are able to produce offspring’”?
“Surely, I was shocked by this offer while being in no position to decide who should stay alive”! Concerning, “getting in touch with my people, Eichmann asked me where I want to go: ‘Turkey or Switzerland’? I decided Turkey, because of the various delegations there: ‘Pioneer’ groups and the Jewish Agency. A few days later transaction negotiation focused on the ‘ten thousand trucks’! Meaning, one hundred fertile Jew males in exchange for each truck. Entirely new, straight from the factory with trailers and accessories. Properly equipped and ready for use in winter. Hopefully loaded with tons of coffee, chocolate, tea, soap etc”.
As a goodwill gesture, Eichmann let (Kastner hand picked) 1,700 prominent Jews to leave Hungary for Switzerland. Thus the chosen got onto six trains and taken out of Hungary to Strasshof in Austria (where most of them survived the War). The remaining of the ill-fated Jews in 100,000 lots were to be transported to the Spanish border in exchange for the successive trucks delivery”. If not for the human cargo merchant being arrested by Brits, who incarcerated him in the Cairo jail.
Years down the track, following a drawn-out cross-examination at the “Trial of the Century” in Jerusalem, Joel Brand died of a heart attack in 1961. Unlike the robust Eichmann whose defence lawyer Servatius demanded a medal in the Jerusalem Court as a recognition for Eichmann’s “sanctified deeds”, instrumental to the massive Jews resettlement in Palestine.
So, prior to exploring the parallels in bin Laden’s inadvertently played a pivotal role, leading to the colossal climax that galvanised zionist hegemony as a result of the 9/11 ploy — lest we forget WWI significant outcome, attainment a foothold in Palestine by the ruthless zionists, just as consecutive WWII finalised their primary objective — founding the State of Israel.
Indispensable for Jews of no alternative avenue to escape the calamity, other than flee to the “safe haven enclave“, following a largely orchestrated specter of anti-Semitism. Otherwise zionism was meaningless to the casteless Jews of Europe, until the staged pogroms relayed why should they leave the prosperous Europe and migrate to the usurped Palestine.
RE: “… in reality Hitler relied on the like-minded Jews, such as his favourite filmmaker/director, Leni Riefenstahl; The chief ideologist, Alfred Rosenberg; Reich’s Propaganda Minister Dr Josef Goebbels; Mobilisation Minister Albert Speer; Chief of the SS Heinrich Himmler; The Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering; Dr Hans Frank, head of the Legal Dept; The Reichsleader, Dr Gregor Strasser; The Reichsminister von Ribbentrop (a close friend of Chaim Weizmann); A failed mission, peace flight casualty, Rudolf Hess; Plus a person of interest in the debated topic, Adolf Eichmann. SS Lieutenant Colonel (head of the Jewish Affairs Dept) in Reich’s Security Main
LeoBraun, surely you don’t mean to say the individuals you named were Jews, do you? They were all Germans, not German Jews.
• As a matter of fact, the New York University physician and physical anthropologist Maurice Fishberg attested (what has been crystal-clear to the observant Jewish born individuals such as myself), that: “One can pick out a Jew from among a thousand non-Jews without difficulty“!