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"We're
all Israelis now!" This was the cry that went up
from the War Party in the wake of 9/11, and as a prophecy
regarding our treatment of Middle Easterners in America, it
is certainly coming true. Amid reports that Israel has as
many as 5,000
Palestinians in custody comes the news that hundreds
of Middle Easterners have been rounded up in California
and detained. Are certain sections of Southern California
coming to resemble the occupied territories?
It
was actually a pretty clever ruse that lured them dumb Ay-rabs
into INS offices: the Immigration and Naturalization Service
instituted a new rule that required all male resident aliens
over the age of sixteen – from a list of twenty Arab
or Middle Eastern countries – to register with the authorities.
Monday was the deadline for Iranians, Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans,
and Sudanese, and, in Southern California, where many thousands
of Iranians fled the repressive regime, they came in droves
to comply with the law – and soon found themselves behind
bars.
Welcome
to America, buddy, the land of the formerly free. Welcome
to our "colorblind" society, where the same people
calling for the scalp of a man who dared whistle "Dixie"
are applauding the mass internment of Arab residents. Welcome
to America, which is fast morphing into Israel writ large,
at least in this one particular area.
We
are often told, by Israel's apologists, that we must side
with "the only democracy in the Middle East": we
are natural allies because their society bears such a resemblance
to our own. Now, as the Israelization of America proceeds,
we are beginning to see that the differences are far from
subtle – even as they disappear.
Israel
may have democratic elections, a relatively free media, and
its founders may trace their legacy back to the European Enlightenment,
but there is nothing enlightened about their treatment of
the Palestinians. Israel's "democratic" rules don't
apply to their helot class, and this permits them to treat
the Palestinians like dirt under their feet, to be swept up
and disposed of. In Israel, about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners
are being held indefinitely, without trial, and as suicide
bombings increase so has the repression. Associated Press
points out that "at the peak last summer, troops ordered
Palestinian males, from teenagers to the middle-aged, to gather
in public places for questioning and locked up anyone arousing
suspicion."
What
happened to Abdel Karim Barghouti, a 38-year-old entrepreneur
from Ramallah, is part of everyday life for all non-Israelis
in the Promised Land. Stopped at a roadblock last year, he
was kicked and beaten by Israeli soldiers and detained at
a military base. Transferred to Ashkelon prison, Barghouti
was grilled for eight hours daily, blindfolded and bound to
a chair:
"'The
interrogators spit in my face and said, 'No one leaves this
place healthy,' Barghouti recalled. At night, guards would
bang on the doors to keep the detainees from sleeping, saying,
'Why should you sleep while we have to work?'"
Meanwhile,
in Southern California:
"'My
father, they just took him in,' one young man told reporters.
'They've been treating him like an animal. They put him in
a room with, like, 50 other people and no bed or anything.'"
After
all, why should the detainees get to sleep when a bunch of
fat-ass INS prison guards have to work?
According
to human rights activists, prisoners in Israeli custody are
tortured, in spite of the recent prohibition on physical abuse
promulgated by Israel's Supreme Court. Deprived of sleep for
days on end, Palestinian detainees are "forced to stand
for hours as their feet swell with pain," as interrogators
tell them their families have been slaughtered. They are told
they must confess, or else the bulldozers poised to demolish
their homes will be given the go-ahead.
But
at least the Israelis make no bones about their behavior,
and don't try to hide the nakedness of their repression behind
the see-thru gauze of liberal "democracy" and the
rule of law. In Israel, they set up roadblocks and haul away
anyone who looks "suspicious" – in America, we have
them come in and "register." In this way, people
who have lived here and paid taxes for years are simply hauled
away, stripped of their rights, and deported back to the murderous
tyrannies they fled.
"It
is a shock," said Sabiha Khan of the Southern California
chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. "You
don't expect this to happen. It is really putting fright and
apprehension in the community. People who come from these
countries – this is what they expect from their government.
Not from America."
"I
think it is shocking what is happening," says ACLU executive
director Ramona Ripston, "It is reminiscent of what happened
in the past with the internment of Japanese Americans. We
are getting a lot of telephone calls from people. We are hearing
that people went down wanting to cooperate and then they were
detained."
Yes,
even I'm shocked. My opinion of the U.S. government has always
been quite low, but whomever in the federal bureaucracy thought
up this rancid scheme to rope in the unwary-but-law-abiding
has got to be the lowest form of filth on earth. Is it really
necessary to explain why terrorists in our midst wouldn't
come in to "register" with the authorities? Some
idiot supervisor had to bring in his or her quota of detainees,
to impress the top brass in Washington and give the appearance
of a crackdown on illegal immigration – and we are none the
safer for it.
Meanwhile,
our "colorblind" President has just agreed that
some illegal aliens are more equal than others by adding
Mexican citizens in the U.S. to the Social Security rolls,
as the Washington Post reports:
"Pushed
by the Mexican government, the Bush administration is working
on a Social Security accord that would put tens of thousands
of Mexicans onto the Social Security roster and send hundreds
of millions of dollars in benefits south of the border."
Our
southern border with Mexico is so porous that the Mexican
government can demand – and get – massive subsidies from the
U.S., lest an even more massive invading army of Mexican illegals
is incited to cross the Rio Grande. Instead of fortifying
the border, and protecting the lives and property of Americans
who live near it, the U.S. is ethnically cleansing Southern
California of Middle Easterners, under the guise of the "war
on terrorism."
I
have long been an immigration restrictionist on the grounds
that an influx of foreigners is bound to increase the power
and weight of pressure groups that lobby for U.S. intervention
on behalf of the "mother country." Furthermore,
I remain unconvinced that, in a free society, there wouldn't
be any restrictions on travel to and through private property.
In such a society, all property would be private, by definition,
and therefore the right to "free immigration" advocated
by some libertarians is, at best, a misnomer, since no such
"right" can be derived that is consistent with the
idea of private property rights.
However,
in this case, the U.S government is not treating all illegals
alike. Some illegals (or former illegals), namely those of
Mexican descent, are to be welcomed with open arms (i.e. government
subsidies), thanks to the delusions of Republican strategists
who believe they can convert "Hispanics" into another
Republican constituency, like Cuban-Americans only more numerous.
Other illegals are treated like – well, like Palestinians
held captive in their own land.
"This
is what they expect from their government. Not from America."
It's
the ultimate joke on the neoconservative ideologues who prate
about how they want to "liberate" Iraq and export
"democracy" to the Middle East at gunpoint. Instead,
the U.S. is exporting thousands of people whose dreams of
freedom have been smashed by pitiless bureaucrats. The INS
is sending them back to spread the story of how they were
betrayed, how Americans are lying hypocrites who hate all
Middle Easterners – except Israelis – and single
them out for abuse.
So
much for those ads the U.S. bought
on Arab television worldwide, depicting happy Arab immigrants
without a care in the world. Nobody
believed them, anyway.
But what's up with the deliberate cruelty of luring Arabs
to this country with such bait as Radio
Sawa, which entices the Middle Eastern masses with the
careless hedonism of Madonna and the siren song of Western
prosperity, only to imprison and deport them when they take
the bait?
–
Justin Raimondo
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