OUR
MORAL UNIVERSE, AND THEIRS
Sullivan
is a bloated bag of wind begging to be punctured, and his
delusions about Israeli benevolence certainly have been pricked by the news that
the 60 or so Israelis being held by the US since 9/11 are
what Fox News calls "part of a long-running effort to
spy on American government officials." And that's not
all: while "there is no indication the Israelis were
involved in the Sept. 11 attacks," we are told, "investigators
suspect that they may have gathered intelligence about the
attacks in advance and not shared it." If the Israelis
had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and failed to inform
us, then just what moral universe are they living in? Surely
one many light-years from our own.
YOU
READ IT HERE FIRST
When
the news first broke that not only Arabs are being held in
the wake of 9/11, to my knowledge I was the only columnist
to deal with the subject of the mysterious Israelis in custody:
"Israel
and 9/11 – Feds holding 60 Israelis in connection
with 9/11 – Why?" While the Washington Post
assured us that the Israeli detainees were only "observing
a time-honored tradition in their country – touring the world
after their mandatory service in the Israeli military,"
I was more than a little skeptical:
"Something
tells me these guys are no ordinary tourists, but since the
US Government is keeping mum about everything connected with
this investigation, we just don't know."
THE
PLOT SICKENS
Ah,
but now some government officials are talking, and we know
a lot more. We know that some of the detainees have been identified
as Israeli military or intelligence agents, and that some
failed polygraph tests when asked whether they had engaged
in covert operations "against and in the United States."
We also know, courtesy of Fox News, that as many as 140 Israeli
agents may have been rounded up in the US before 9/11:
the extent of Israel's covert action operation is described
as "sprawling."
A
GOOD GUESS
What
were they doing here? Besides infiltrating a whole laundry
list of government agencies, including the DEA, the FBI, military
bases, and even targeting the private homes of government
officials, they were also conducting surveillance on a group
of Arab immigrants in California that authorities believe
have connections to the 9/11 plot. I'll admit that the following
was sheer speculation on my part, but it looks like I was
dead right. As I wrote in November:
"In
rounding up untold hundreds of mostly Arab Muslim men, and
interviewing thousands more, the Ashcroft Sweep is clearly
designed to gather information that might lead them to the
remaining conspirators. It could be that the Israelis, or
at least some of them, fall into this category: while not
being directly involved, maybe they know something."
RETALIATION
PLUS
What
did they know, and when did they know it? That is the question
that must now be answered, and pronto. For remember what the
President said: "You are either with us, or you are with
the terrorists." If the Israelis had advance notice of
9/11 – via their spy network in the US, which kept the hijackers
and their associates under surveillance – then this is "harboring"
terrorists, by any definition of the term. Look what happened
to the Taliban when they harbored bin Laden. If Israel did
indeed betray us, and let 3,500 people die at the World Trade
Center, then they deserve what the Afghanis got – plus
a little bit more.
WITH
FRIENDS LIKE THESE…
At
least Mullah Omar and the Taliban never made any bones about
the depth of their contempt for the US. Israel, on the other
hand, pretends to be our staunchest ally, more royalist than
the king when it comes to confronting the declared enemies
of the West. Yet an undeclared enemy, posing as a friend,
is in many ways a greater potential threat – as, perhaps,
we are beginning to learn.
CLASSIFIED
AND CONFIRMED
When
asked for details about the detention of the Israelis, a highly
placed investigator huffed that "Evidence linking these
Israelis to 9-11 is classified, I cannot tell you about evidence
that has been gathered. It is classified information."
Aside from affirming that such evidence exists, this same
source admitted to the Los Angeles Times that there
were certain "tie-ins" with 9/11. Some patriotic
law enforcement officials seem to have leaked just enough
information to practically confirm our worst suspicions. As Brit Hume put it in his
lead-in to the first of Carl Cameron's four-part investigative
report, top US law enforcement officials now believe the Israelis
"may have known things they didn't tell us before September
11."
THE
UNFORGIVEN
After
funneling over $90
billion into the Israeli settler state, making enemies
of the entire Arab world, and sticking by Israel through thick
and thin, is this our reward – a stab in the back?
If true, this story is a devastating blow to the Israel First
crowd in the US, one from which it may never recover. Americans
quickly forgot the sinking
of the USS Liberty, and those who remembered were for
the most part willing to forgive. The average person has probably
never heard of Jonathan Pollard, the CIA
agent who spied for Israel. Pollard severely compromised US
intelligence sources and methods, which eventually wound up
in Soviet hands – and yet our alliance with Israel survived.
But this – the withholding of information that could
have prevented the 9/11 mass murder – is well nigh unforgivable.
A
McCAIN MOMENT
This
story is also a devastating blow to the War Party and its
plans for an all-out attack on Iraq. To understand why, we
have only to listen to Senator John McCain – the most
belligerent and tireless of the warmongers – going up
against a skeptical Chris
Matthews, who wanted to know if the Senator thought we
should conquer Iraq and set up a military occupation. McCain
looked pained, and replied: "I don't pretend to prescribe
the exact strategy." Scott McConnell captured this
McCain Moment well in a column for Antiwar.com:
"Then
he fell back to what he believed to be his Maginot Line, the
argument that trumps all arguments. My nightmare – I have
several nightmares about Saddam Hussein, but one of them is
the that SCUD missile which he has. . . that's in the view
of most, aimed at Israel. Aimed at Israel."
Well
then, said Matthews, why doesn't Israel take them out?
McCain,
stunned, hemmed and hawed for a moment, and finally said:
"Because
I'm not sure we should ask the Israelis to do – to take care
of a threat to the United States of America."
Matthews:
"But you just said it was a threat to Israel."
McCain:
"Well to world peace, I think."
Matthews:
"No you said it was a threat to Israel. Why should the
United States deal with a threat to Israel? Why don't we let
Israel – we've been giving them $3 billion a year to defend
themselves. Why don't we say, ‘Defend yourselves. You've got
a clear fight. Go take Saddam out'?"
McCain:
"Because I think it's our job. I think we're the world's
leader and I. . ."
Matthews:
"Our job is to defend Israel?"
Equating
our "national interest" with the defense of Israel, McCain's
answer was, essentially, yes. But no one said this
was a mutual defense pact. Israel wants us to defend them:
yet who, pray tell, will defend us from the Israelis?
BETTER
LATE THAN NEVER
It
was Pat Buchanan, during the first Gulf war, who dared speak
truth to power, and was smeared for it: the war on Iraq, he said,
serves the interests of the Israeli Defense Ministry and its
amen corner in the US, while the US has nothing to gain. We
are glad to see that Chris Matthews has finally caught on.
NOW
I GET IT!
Back
in November I made note of a
rather curious news report about the arrest of five Israelis
who were caught videotaping the World Trade Center as it burned,
all the while laughing and joking uproariously. This odd group
was turned in by suspicious neighbors, and all five were jailed
for two months, then deported
back to Israel. This story, when first reported, was baffling:
what, I wondered, were they laughing about? Today, the likely
answer seems all too horrifically clear.
TURNABOUT
If
and when it comes out that the Israelis stood by and watched
as the terrorists took down the twin towers and the Pentagon,
they are finished as our principal ally in the Middle East.
As Americans begin to realize the enormity of the Israeli
betrayal, and more details of the "sprawling" Israeli
spy operation are revealed, the Israeli lobby will be in roughly
the same position as the Arab-American community in the wake
of 9/11. The backlash will be a tidal wave of anger, and it
could get ugly. The same bullies who turned on their fellow
Americans of Arab descent could just as easily turn on Jewish
Americans, collectively condemning them as a "fifth column"
in classic anti-Semitic style – and a grave injustice
will be compounded.
PASSIONATE
ATTACHMENTS
From
all this, Americans will relearn an important lesson, one
originally taught to us by George Washington in his "Farewell Address"
and long since forgotten, especially where Israel is concerned:
"A
passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a
variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating
the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where
no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the
enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation
in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement
or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite
nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly
to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily
parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting
jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the
parties from whom equal privileges are withheld."
DON'T
SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU
Since
this is one of those "don't say I didn't warn you"
columns, I want to note that on the same day [December 11]
the report on the Israeli spy operation came out, we also
heard the news of Irv Rubin's arrest
in a plot to blow up a large Los Angeles mosque and the office
of Congressman Darrel Issa. Rubin is the self-styled "international
chairman" of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a group
of violent nutballs responsible for several bombings over
the years. The JDL was founded by the infamous racist and
fascist Meir
Kahane, whose Kach movement is outlawed as a violent hate
group in Israel.
Kahane
held that the Arabs are subhuman, and therefore it's okay
to expel them from the territory of a Greater Israel: indeed,
for Kahane and his followers, ethnic cleansing amounts to
a religious duty. When Rubin, who has been arrested more than
40 times, was touted by the Libertarian Party as its latest
recruit, and a big spread boasting of this glorious achievement
was featured on
the front page of the Libertarian Party News, I wrote a column partially
devoted to warning of the possible consequences: "This
guy is a walking time bomb," I opined, "just waiting
to go off."
Don't
say I didn't warn you – and, remember, you read it
here first….
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