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Hatred of Israel was reported motive for CA attack, but US press politely ignores the story

One of the San Bernardino killers hated Israel. Israeli newspapers and foreign papers are making much more of this story than the mainstream US press.  The Jerusalem Post has the story:

The father of one of the San Bernardino killers told an Italian newspaper on Sunday that his son, Sayed Rizan Farook, had an obsessive hatred of Israel that underscored his Islamic radicalism and allegiance to the ideals of Islamic State….

The senior Farook, in an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa, … confirmed that his son spoke of Islamic State (noting, “Who doesn’t these days?”) and “prescribed to the ideals outlined by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” which included hating Israel.

“‘Be patient,'” he tried to tell his son. “In two years, Israel won’t exist anymore. Geopolitics is changing in Russia, China and America too.”

“Nobody wants the Jews. What use is it to fight? We have tried it and we lost. Israel does not fight with weapons, but rather with politics.'”

[The original in Italian is translated: “Nobody wants the Jews there.”]

Why isn’t this story getting more attention in the U.S.? Because it leads to the inevitable statement, “America is being attacked because of its support for Israel.” That interpretation can get a reporter fired. And so the accounting of the damage this hatred causes in the United States is never done.

That link was denied after the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden himself said that Palestine was an important motivation for him. Mickey Kaus said the press was downplaying this truth because it might hurt the US-Israel relationship:

It’s obvious–that Israel is partly the issue–yet a lot of effort seems to go into appearing to deny it, or into obscuring it, or at least into not saying it plainly. More than aversion to cliché seems to motivate these contortions. And this motive seems obvious too–it is the fear that admitting the truth might lead to an attempted appeasement of radical Islamic terrorists through abandonment of our ally. Yet, as far as I can see, nobody anywhere near the political mainstream, aside from Robert Novak, is talking about abandoning or weakening the US-Israeli alliance.

Later the 911 Commission also downplayed the motivation, though it did acknowledge it. JTA, 2004:

[The report] shows that several of the hijackers, as well as Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, were motivated in part by hatred of Israel and anger over the support it receives from the United States…

“In his interactions with other students,” the leader of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, “voiced virulently anti-Semitic and anti-American opinions, ranging from condemnations of what he described as a global Jewish movement centered in New York City that supposedly controlle! d the financial world and the media, to polemics against governments o f the Arab world,” the report says.

Bear in mind that Robert Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles 47 years ago while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for the presidency also in some measure because a crazed killer did not like American support for Israel. Associated Press, 1989, based on a David Frost interview of the killer:

Sirhan Sirhan, in his first television interview, said he felt betrayed by Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s support for Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and said he killed Mr. Kennedy out of concern for the Palestinians.

Again: We never get an accounting of the damage the special relationship causes. All these killers are unhinged, but they are focused on a real issue.

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Sirhan was from a Palestinian Christian family . His role in the assassination of Robert Kennedy is shrouded in the myriad workings of Dulles’s CIA despite Dulles being out of office .
He denied though he never said he loved Robert as Oswald clearly had said about his postive feelings to and loving the president Kennedy .

These two killers in CA had arguments with a messianic Jews who maintained Islamophobic rants on Facebbok . I wonder if it broke the back of the camels.

Well, just because one person used Israel as a cause cannot make much difference – not in principle (the US cannot be frightened to change policy due to a terror incident) – but mainly because of the many other fronts that the US itself is involved in wars and conflicts that also involve Muslims.

Thank you for the courage to publish these plain facts. These are clear and well documented facts which are centrally relevant to America’s most pressing foreign policy problem. And they are being rigorously omitted from mainstream media discussions. The absolute irrationality of this by any reasonable standards of objectivity and honesty is CONCLUSIVE proof that the mainstream media is being suppressed on behalf of the Israelis. Because there is simply no other reasonable, alternative explanation in this physical world.

USA will not change policy from one attack; or from many. Because the arms industry makes $$ by selling arms to (the USA which buys them for) Israel.

But the analysis of the press is instructive: we are in so many ways denied information that is relevant to the real world. Even if you LOVE Israel, you may still understand that the occupation does not make Israel safer and the settlements do not make Israel safer. So you can love Israel and see the utility of news reports to promote peace (not possible until occupation and settlements are ended).

And we are denied those news reports.

It is good that you highlight this. It seems strange that this should need to be explained to any American. If it was not widely understood before 9/11 (despite attacks on American interests overseas, despite clear statements by OBL and others), then surely, one would think that it would be well-known afterwards. Yet many Americans remain ignorant about this. Of course, large segments of the media and most elected officials have worked to maintain that ignorance.

It is noteworthy as well, how Israel’s advocates speak as if the choice were between “abandonment” of Israel and the status quo: our unqualified defense of Israel’s continuing dispossession and oppression of Palestinians. Israel’s defenders want nothing less than complete freedom for Israel to continue its agenda, with no concern for the Palestinians. It’s a silly rhetorical ploy. With its army and nuclear weapons and strong economy Israel isn’t endangered, and would not be endangered by treating Palestinians with justice.