[R-G] Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

[Anthony Fenton]

http://counterpunch.org/roberts05072009.html

  May 7, 2009
The End of Free Speech?
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel  
Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act.  This legislation  
requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide.

To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined.  What is the  
definition?  Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman,  
it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews.

Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House.
As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it  
will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s  
treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.

It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s  
account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.

It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel  
Lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the AIPAC-written  
resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the  
Palestinians in Gaza that were endorsed by 100 per cent  of the US  
Senate and 99 per cent  of the House of Representatives, while the  
rest of the world condemned Israel for its barbarity.

It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.

It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of  
Jews in the media, finance, and foreign policy.

In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the  
First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast  
aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned.

Given the hubris of the US government, which leads Washington to apply  
US law to every country and organization, what will happen to the  
International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human  
Rights, and the various human rights organizations that have demanded  
investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian  
population?  Will they all be arrested for the hate crime of  
“excessive” criticism of Israel?

This is a serious question.

A recent UN report, which is yet to be released in its entirety,  
blames Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the  
United Nations premises in Gaza.  The Israeli government has responded  
by charging that the UN report is “tendentious, patently biased,”   
which puts the UN report into the State Department’s category of  
excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel sentiment.

Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government  
to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and  
Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the  
premeditated murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli  
invaders by rabbis.  These acts are clearly war crimes.

It was the Israeli press that published the pictures of the Israeli  
soldiers’ T-shirts that  indicate that the willful murder of women and  
children is now the culture of the Israeli army.  The T-shirts are  
horrific expressions of barbarity.  For example, one shows a pregnant  
Palestinian woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan,  
“One shot, two kills.”  These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s  
policy toward the Palestinians is one of extermination.

It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s  
mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and  
Israeli peace groups.  For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and  
Jeff Halper of ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently  
does not exist in the Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are  
covered up and even praised.

Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff  
Halper?  Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but  
simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for  
“spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-semitic act”?

Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that  
Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel.  These  
Americans will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war  
on terror.  They will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who  
report unpalatable facts about Israel and agree that such people  
should be punished for aiding and abetting terrorists.

A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel.   
American university professors have fallen victim to the well  
organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel.  Norman  
Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Catholic university because of the  
power of the Israel Lobby.  Now the Israel Lobby is after University  
of California  (at Santa Barbara,) professor Wiliam Robinson.   
Robinson’s crime:  his course on global affairs included some reading  
assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice  
(sic) Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC  
officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying.  The Israel  
Lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now  
Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges.  Yet, Larry  
Franklin, the DOD official accused of giving secret material to Rosen  
and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7 months in prison.

The absurdity is extraordinary.  The two Israeli agents are not guilty  
of receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving  
secrets to them!  If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin  
convicted of giving secrets to a spy?

Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having  
an independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American  
rather than Israeli interests.  It eliminates  any prospect of  
Americans escaping from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.

To keep American minds captive, the Lobby is working to ban as anti- 
semitic any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel.  It is  
permissible to criticize every other country in the world, but it is  
anti-semitic to criticize Israel, and anti-semitism will soon be a  
universal hate-crime in the Western world.

Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust.  It is  
a crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less  
than 6 million Jews were murdered.

Why is the Holocaust  a subject that is off limits to examination? How  
could a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks  
and anti-semitics?  Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by  
thought control.

Imprisoning people for doubts is the antithesis of modernity.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the  
Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good  
Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com