UNDERSTANDING THE MINDSET OF ISRAELI TERROR ATTACK ON TURKISH LED PALESTINIAN AID FLOTILLA

[dhoruba Bin-Wahad]

Both white supremacy, and Zionist exceptionalism have the same roots -
Europe's atavistic relationship to itself. Unfortunately for majority of
the world's people of color European atavism translates into an inability to
reconcile Europe's foul behavior with the rest of humanity. Indeed, modern
Europeans have translated the ideological "white mans burden" into
the notion of socio-economic "benefits of western freedoms" for which we all
are to be thankful. Only ingrates, haters and fools wouldn't be thankful. Western Europe's evolution from an amalgam of Barbarian tribes into nation-states - its ethical atavism, and cultural legacy of melanin determinant genocide, economic imperial
rapaciousness, and the spiritual degradation of native culture all combine to
inform contemporary geopolitics. While western historians tend to assuage the barbaric atavism that runs throughout European civilization, preferring to emphasize the heritage of Greece, and the Latin Tribes as foundations of modern western culture. aesthetics, ethics, government and philosophy, the facts of history tell a much more compelling tale of war like Clans forged into brutal nations and empires.

Zionism as an ideology share a common historical racist distortion of egalitarian socialism with Italian Fascism and Teutonic (German) National Socialism as propounded by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Both German Nazism and Italian Fascism propounded racist white supremacist ideologies as justification of empire, subjugation of "inferior peoples" and to disempower genuine working class movements at the pinnacle of the post WWl crisis of global capitalism euphemistically defined as the "great" depression. Theodore Herzel, the iconic patriarch of European Zionism interacted extensively with British Imperialism to establish a Jewish state in the strategic cross-roads of the "middle-east". Herzel, supported by powerful Jewish industrialists and international banking interests colluded with British statesman and Foreign Secretary (1917), Lord James A. Balfour, to create a Jewish state on lands occupied by Muslims and Arabs - Palestine. The then secret collusion, which has come to be known as the "Balfour Declaration" marks the earliest intersection between racist European Zionism and British imperial policy in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire. Given this history, Israel performs as a European proxy settler state and a creature of European imperial policies, and imperial domination (as are many of the Arab states in the so called "middle-east").

The collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate at the end of WWI, left the territories once administered by Turks up for division between the British, French, Americans, and their Arab surrogates. Arab hatred of the Osmanli Turkish hegemony was exploited by the British before, during, and after WWI and coincided historically with Europe's fear and hatred of Muslim Turkey, and Europe's smoldering resentment of 400 years of Muslim Turkish annexation of significant portions the Christian Balkans. Ironically, the forbearers of European Ashkenazi, are ethnic cousins of the Osmanli and earlier Seljuk Turks, having migrated to Europe long after the Turks had converted to Islam and began their conquests of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. Indeed, There is considerable history behind Israel disproportionate use of force on a peaceful Turkish vessel during an act of state sponsored piracy (attack on peace activists in international waters) than meets the eye. Moreover, the major reason why Turkey finds itself entwined in Western military alliances such as NATO, and find themselves as a crucial military ally of America and Israel is directly connected to what Arab Muslims describe as "the disgrace" of the last century when Arab elites vouchsafed their fortunes and livelihoods to British, American, and French state sponsored oil companies at the expense of the Muslim Ummah, the majority of whom were non-Arab. Additionally, the emergence of the Soviet Union as the geopolitical competitor to Western Finance Capitalism often referred to as the East-West "cold war" compelled Turkey, then run by Kemalist Generals to ally Turkey with the West to acquire a "nuclear shield" against Slavic Russia, a regional nuclear power, and out maneuver Western oriented Greece, Turkey's historical nemesis in the Aegean.

Africans and peoples of color living in the West should begin to fully appreciate why European nations seem to grant Israel a license to ill, while systematically proscribing the Palestinian's right to resist occupation, or Muslim's right to defend the integrity of the Ummah. The hypocrisy of the U.S. when it comes to support of so called "democratic values" is legendary, e.g., CIA conspiracy with Belgium and France to Murder Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba,: or Argentina and CIA murder of democratically elected President, Salvador Allende; or CIA - Pahlavi era overthrow of elected Prime Minister Mussadeq in Iran; or U.S. quiet support of the nullification Algerian elections won by Islamic political parties by the military; and U.S. support for boycotting and isolating the duly elected representatives of the Palestinian people. Finally, the undemoractic composition of the United Nations Security Council, with its permanent member states comprised essentially of the former Imperial powers that ravaged the planet does not trouble white America's permanent elite (except when the UNSS fails to rubber stamp United States foreign policy). In the case of Israel, the US has vetoed or voted against every resolution unfavorable to that Zionist entity the US and Europe help create. Moreover the US and its European allies have blocked every effort by the majority of its members States to democratize an institution that neither represent the majority of the worlds nations, or reflective of the planet's racial and religious composition. In my view, it is important for "African-Americans" electorate to understand how their tax dollars are spent to underwrite a racist settler state, subsidize its economy and allow privileged immigration status and dual citizenship for white American Jews to colonize and occupy stolen Arab territory, but shoots Mexican immigrants at the border, and subject American citizens of African and Arab ancestry to Police terror and malevolent surveillance.

In the months to come as we struggle for greater control over urban Public Safety policy, the relationship between African-American elected officials, and American Zionist funding will assume increased significance and impact on local and state politics. American Jewish organizations that back the racist settler state of Israel, along with their non-jewish white allies have consistently supported conservative and reactionary legislation, while paying only lip service to the "historical" alliance between American "liberal" Jews and Black civil rights" struggle. They have always painted Black radical activism into a corner designated "black racist" or "Black fascism" in order to enhance their control over Black elected officials, who for the most part are afraid of casting Black shadow over white partisan politics to begin with least they lose mainstream legitimacy. It is the realization that the notion of Israeli exceptionality is rooted in the Western European concept of Biblically sanctioned racial superiority (that same idea drove the Spaniards to exterminate native peoples and save the souls of Africans so their bodies could work the plantations of the Western Hemisphere).

White America's permanent ruling elites believes in their own "manifest destiny" as well, and that it has the military might to determine what is politically right for every nation, and all peoples.

It would seem practical to hold Black elected officials accountable for their actions, responsible for their affiliations, but instead, other forces antithetical to independent Black political empowerment hold Black officials accountable to their agenda, their interest. African-Americans need to figure out just where racist American jingoistic nationalism begins, and Black progressive politics end. In America, to Be Black is not sufficient. Black is only Beautiful when its empowered, otherwise its just another lifestyle..... another scam on "rotation" like an ignorant Rap tune on a commercial radio station with a "phat" beat - you bounce to the beat while the message (or lack thereof) subliminally seeps into the brain and influences behavior. Today, as in days of old, "if you dance to the music you have to pay to the piper" if you don't believe that - ask Obama.

DBW commentary regarding article the Roots of Israeli Exceptionality.

The roots of Israeli exceptionalism

by Mohamed El-Moctar El-Shinqit

An American academic once told me: “Many people in the Islamic world think America does not believe in human rights, but they are wrong; America believes in human rights indeed, the problem is the American definition of human.” In other words: the American definition of ‘human’ is not a universal one. This is not purely an American characteristic; every culture faces the challenge of broadening its cultural limits and universalising its moral norms.

But among all human cultures and ideologies, the Israeli case is unique in its double standard.

Criminality wrapped in self-righteousness and aggression immersed in victimhood are a few striking characteristics of the Israeli reality and discourse.

The Israeli Personality

The duality of “Israel’s insistent emphasis upon its isolation and uniqueness, its claim to be both victim and hero,” as Tony Judt wrote in Haaretz a few years ago, reflects the fragility and self-centeredness of the Israeli personality. This is not, unfortunately, exclusive to Israel’s political elite, but rather it extends to their Zionist supporters worldwide, including those, such as novelist Elie Wiesel and philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who portray themselves in humanistic and aesthetic images.

I was profoundly moved by the graphic description of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust in Elie Wiesel’s Night, which depicts his and his father’s experience of a terrifying process that violates
human life and degrades human dignity.

But I was struck by the tone of self-righteousness and self-justification in Wiesel’s fictional Dawn, particularly when he writes: “The commandment thou shalt not kill was given from the summit of one
of the mountains here in Palestine, and we were the only ones to obey it. But that all over ... in the days and weeks and months to come, you will have only one purpose: to kill those who have made us killers.”

When the Jewish South African judge, Richard Goldstone, exposed Israeli war crimes in Gaza, Wiesel called that “a crime against the Jewish people”. But this is simply an immoral use of past atrocities as a moral justification for present brutalities and oppression.

Moreover, one cannot but entertain two questions here: Firstly, what kind of moral claim does Wiesel, who was born of a Romanian father and a Hungarian mother, have over the divine call at Mount Sinai in the heart of a Middle Eastern desert? And secondly, by which moral or legal norm
are the Palestinians of today responsible for the wrongdoings of the Germans of yesterday?

The Israeli Personality

Israel uses past atrocities as a moral justification for present brutalities [GETTY]

The worst of this hypocritical language, however, can be found in Bernard-Henri Lévy’s article about Israel’s aggression against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla published in Haaretz on June 8, 2010.

Lévy presents himself in self-glorifying terms as being “someone who takes pride in having helped to conceive, with others, this kind of symbolic action ‏(the boat for Vietnam; the march for the survival of Cambodia in 1979)...”.

But when it comes to Gaza’s plight, Lévy simply dismisses the tragedy by denying the existence of the Israeli blockade and attacking easy targets, such as “the
fascislamist government of Ismail Haniya” and “the Islamist gang who took power
by force three years ago”. Thus, he shamelessly dismisses the grand effort of the multiethnic, multinational and religiously diverse group of humanistic leaders
and activists on the Freedom Flotilla. Moreover, Lévy lacks the objectivity to address the fascizionist - to borrow from his own terminology - gangs who aggressively
invaded Palestinian land over six decades ago, and uprooted a whole population forcing them into the new Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps - Gaza and the West Bank. Indeed, for those who put their selfish desires above the moral principles of justice and compassion, their self-serving myths are better
in their eyes than the ugly truth.

Jewish humanistic intellectuals, such as Professor Tony Judt and musician Gilad Atzmon deplore Israel’s self-indulgence and lack of maturity. Judt writes: “Israel still comports itself like an adolescent: consumed by a brittle confidence in its own uniqueness; certain that no one ‘understands’ it and everyone is ‘against’ it; full of wounded self-esteem, quick to take
offence and quick to give it ... that it can do as it wishes, that its actions carry no consequences, and that it is immortal.” Atzmon writes: “We are dealing here with a uniquely and seriously disturbed immature nation. We are dealing with a self-loving
narcissistic child .... The more the Israelis love themselves and their delusional phantasmic innocence, the more they are frightened that people out

there may be as sadistic as they themselves proved to be. This behavioural mode is called projection .... Jews have a very good reason to be frightened. Their national state is a racist genocidal entity.”

"Holocaustianity"

What is most disappointing, however, is not the Zionist self-righteousness and narcissism; rather it is the Western acceptance and support of this attitude - an attitude that is better understood when placed in a historical context. The main theoretical basis of the acceptance of Israeli exceptionalism in Western culture is the diversion, mainly within the Protestant branch of Christianity, of the Christian incarnation of God in the person of Jesus to a new incarnation of God in the Jews as a people - the Chosen People. This tendency started with Martin Luther (1483-1546) who subdued Christianity theologically and morally to the Jewish factor in his
small epistle That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew. Luther wrote in that epistle: “When we are inclined to boast of our position, we should remember that we are but Gentiles, while the Jews are of the lineage of Christ. We are

aliens and in-laws; they are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord."

Through this Luther - who was paradoxically a staunch anti-Semite - inadvertently opened a theological window, that would centuries later allow the ‘cult of Israel’, as it has been dubbed by the American writer Grace Halsell, to replace Christianity in most Protestant denominations,
especially among American Baptists. After all, what they are doing is no more than a literal implementation of Luther’s deification of the Jews. Professor Yvonne Haddad of Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding calls this heresy ‘Holocaustianity’. And
within this new heresy lie the roots of the Israeli exceptionalism.

Trivialising The Holocaust

Israel is becoming a moral burden for those who value social justice [GETTY]

Professor Judt writes that: “What Israel lost by its continuing occupation of Arab lands it gained through its close identification with the recovered memory of Europe’s dead Jews.” But he knows well that the memory of the dead is the worse moral justification for murdering innocents: “In the eyes of a watching world, the fact that the great-grandmother of an Israeli soldier died in Treblinka is no excuse for his own abusive treatment of a Palestinian woman waiting to cross a checkpoint. ‘Remember Auschwitz’ is not an acceptable response.” But that is exactly the kind of moral justification we have from the Israelis today.

When an advisor to Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, tried to attack Helen Thomas’ remarks in which she said Israelis should “go home ... [to] Poland, Germany ...” all he did is remind her that some of his relatives were killed in Poland and Germany more than half a century ago, as if
that is a good reason to starve the Palestinians to death and to kill humanitarian activists in international waters today. After all, the Israeli politician was just confirming what Thomas said: you belong there; not here.

This is how the Holocaust memory, a memory of a human tragedy by any and every measure, is trivialised by Israeli criminality. Many political thinkers and politicians have recently realised that Israel is becoming a liability and a strategic burden for the US. It has always been a strategic burden. But the problem is much deeper. Israel is becoming a moral burden on all those who have an ethical conscience, including Jews who value human dignity and social justice. Even those who spent their lives advancing the Zionist cause are today realising the moral paradox of their life’s achievement. Henry Siegman, a German-born American writer who served as the executive director of the American Jewish Congress from 1978 to 1994, wrote in Haaretz on June 11, 2010: “A million and a half civilians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in inhuman conditions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews but Palestinians. Their jailers, incredibly,

are survivors of the Holocaust, or their descendants.”

All decent human beings must support the oppressed Palestinian against the Israeli oppressor.

The oppressed Arabs of Palestine (Muslims and Christians) are rendering through their suffering a great service to the entire body of humanity, by exposing the most self-centered and supremacist ideology in our world - an ideology that is wrapped today in a bloody sacredness.

Mohamed El-Moctar El-Shinqiti is an author in political history and history of religion. He is a research coordinator at Qatar Foundation.