Harsh criticism, historically, has been directed at the USA’s “love it or leave it” horde by those considering themselves on higher planes of enlightenment who, rather eloquently at times, reason that ‘tis better to enact changes from within than to abandon problem-solving for the miring institutional dilemmas that caused the initial declarations of patriotic certitude.
The same standard of critical reasoning is rarely, if ever, applied to the actions of Israel’s government.
It remains possible to have empathy for the victims of the Holocaust while also retaining the objectivity to lambaste modern day genocidal policies and military actions by the descendants of victims and survivors of the Shoah. Both things can be true.
Yes, the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 was horrific. But do we really believe that the Mossad had no foreknowledge of motorized hang gliders and missile strikes in relation to its capabilities for explosive pagers eleven months later?
Jews do not possess a historical monopoly on being targets of atrocities, but don’t tell that to neocons like John Bolton and similar lunatics who will not be satisfied until the entire world is in flames. And don’t tell that to the henchmen and women in Israel’s government who, like barking chihuahuas, know that their helicoptering dobermann protector (read: the USA) will allow for any malfeasances regardless of the potential consequences.
Fact: John Bolton has never been awarded The Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism.
Standing with Israel is the Middle East’s version of love it or leave it, yet there are significantly greater—and more disastrous—consequences. We often deride, with overtly humorous tones, the threats by celebrities in the USA to move overseas if a certain political candidate is elected. But these vacuous Hollywood attention-whores have only mistaken self-importance as a raison d'être; they certainly are not dangerous to others, only dangerously stupid.
The claim is repeatedly made by American and Israeli politicians that the nations are best friends and inseparable. Doing so helps to whitewash events like the Jonathan Pollard (see photo above) spy case plus the many other instances of espionage directed at the USA by Israel since 1948 and vice versa, the attack on the USS Liberty (34 Americans dead) in 1967, and the “dancing Israelis” on 9/11 who, despite being so enthusiastically described as innocent victims of conspiratorial hype to this day, were also summarily deported. In this particular instance, both things cannot be true: the five men cannot be wholly innocent if they were also interrogated and held for two months before being returned to Israel. Why bother deporting them if there were no causal connections?
Those less sanguine might describe the relationship between the USA and Israel as puppeteer and Pinocchio which might, in fact, be even more relatable than the dobermann-chihuahua depiction.
And what do mentions of historical facts like these portend for objective journalists, even those who are 1/8 Jewish?
Accusations of anti-Semitism, of course, not unlike other baseless claims by those obsessed with their own cultural victimhood from centuries and millenniums past when anyone dares bring up accurate depictions of real occurrences.
At some point, people need to decide to stop being victims.
And, in turn, sympathy and blind allegiance should not be extended for eternity to those who choose past victimization as pretexts for their own abominable acts in the now.
It is far from inaccurate to describe the tactics of joint USA/Israel operations as little different from the playbooks of The Schutzstaffel and The Geheime Staatspolizei from 1933-45.
But that is the course of history: crimes against humanity perpetrated by bullying powers, then the eventual revenge that begets an unending fission reaction of the same pattern.
The defeated study and implement the lessons-learned by the victors with great ardor. And, to be redundant from an earlier applicable sentence in this post, vice versa.
The argument can be made that the world is more on the brink of a cataclysmic catastrophe now, especially after Israel’s attack on Iran, than it was during The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.
There were only two superpowers (USA, Soviet Union) and two proxies of the USA (UK, France) with nuclear weapons then. China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea all possess those capabilities at the present time. It is more than apparent that Israel is a member of this club, too, but good luck ever getting anyone to go on the record with that confession.
And, despite this staggering proliferation for potential destruction, we should also remember that only one nation has ever actually used atomic bombs. That the same nation could display such arrogance in disallowing Iran from developing its own nuclear weaponry is quite absurd.
After last night, impartially, maybe Iran actually has good reasons to have them.
The complexities of history are absurd enough…
The USA was allied with the anti-Israel dictatorship of Iraq in its war with the anti-Israeli dictatorship of Iran (1980-88). The military support was not even covert in form, just as the funding and hardware for the Jew-hating mujahideen of Afghanistan in their fight against the Soviet Union (1979-89) was equally blatant.
All of these alliances, of course, existed concurrently with the USA’s sycophantic (and ceaseless) chumming around with Israel and Pollard’s arrest in 1985!
Soon thereafter, and less than a blink of an eye in terms of history’s timeline, the USA was itself at war with Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan while fighting against much of the very weaponry it had previously supplied and many of the enemy troops it had trained.
Which brings us to Gerald Bull.
It would be a grievous injustice to the memory of this Canadian genius to summarize his life here. All attempts would fail, but there are several excellent books that provide concise snapshots of his impact. Please take this as a recommendation to commence your own research. Hopefully, the following will inspire curiosity.
Gerald Bull was assassinated by the Mossad in Brussels, Belgium (March 1990) because of Israel’s fears regarding the Project Babylon “supergun” he was developing for the then-ally of the USA, Saddam Hussein.
But wait? Why would Israel assassinate an engineer on our/their side who earned his PhD at 23 from The Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment (a joint military development center between Canada and the UK), worked with the US Army at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, was instrumental with Project HARP (the High Altitude Research Program), and had established a company called Space Research Corporation that actually sold its artillery shells to Israel in the 1970s?
Bull had also been granted USA citizenship by an Act of Congress, such was his value as an innovative developer of modern weaponry.
The Israeli government had no problem purchasing weapons from Gerald Bull, just as it had no problem disposing of him some seven months before Iraq even invaded the non-democratic, far from Jew-loving royal dictatorship of Kuwait.
Confused? We all are.
We can appreciate Judaism and love Israelis despite grave concerns about a rapacious government. We can appreciate Islam and love Muslims despite the intemperate and volatile who risk their collective peace.
We must also examine the continuing duplicity of the USA’s foreign policy in relation to shifting alliances and profiteering. Overcoming confusion here seems improbable.
But we cannot deny the facts of history that have led to the edge of WWIII now that Israel has finally, and unilaterally according to every press report, attacked Iran.
Or that John Bolton sure does resemble Geppetto.
