Prisoners, Friends and Enemies
For two weeks fifteen British navy personnel received intense media coverage. Iran paraded the prisoners before cameras for rehearsed apologies (achieved by duress) which created outrage in America and even in Britain. Since the British were close to but apparently not in Iranian waters their abduction was an act of war (recall the Barbary pirates) and their treatment violated international laws protecting prisoners. But England’s fellow EU states, obligated by law to come to her defense, looked away. Their commerce with Iran, principally Germany whose $6.2 billion in bank-credits backed ultimately by German tax payers supports German corporations in Iran and covers Iran’s trade deficit with Europe left their governments indifferent to the prisoners’ and to the issues at stake. Eurabia strikes again.
Perhaps this is part of the wages of the vague war on terror. Are we at war with Iran? Their leaders often say that they are at war with us while our leaders engage in an extended diplomatic process of obscure design. It seems that what Joseph Conrad called “the flabby weak-eyed pretending devil of rapacious and pitiless folly” has struck again.
But with American flotillas on the way and strong statements from President Bush, the mullahs released the Britons. This attention and the result highlighted contrasts to similar situations with other captured soldiers.
On June 24, 2006, an Israeli tank crew guarding its border with the Gazan terror entity (now cleansed of Jews per the “Disengagement”) was attacked. Two soldiers were killed and a third, Gilad Shalit was captured. This act of war did not prompt a genuine war in response but it’s been months since Israel began a unilateral ceasefire,Shalit remains captive and rockets continue to rain down within Israel’s 1949 borders.
On July 12, Israeli soldiers guarding their northern border with Lebanon were attacked by Hizbollah. Half a dozen were killed and two, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were taken prisoner. Like Shalit they have not been seen since, longterm violations of international law. But since they’re Jews it seems to be ok with the major media.
Are the three Israelis “with us or against us” to paraphrase the President from fall 2001? Is their nation, Israel with or against the American government? These are the questions raised by their continuing captivity. Exploring them leads to valuable distinctions, disturbing realities and points to a choice the west soon must make.
Agreeing to ceasefires without freeing these prisoners were failures of the leading political and military echelons in Israel. But their continued retentions are war crimes and violate international law. But American Secretary of State Rice visits ever more frequently as the US government increases its support of Mahmoud Abbas as chief of a Fatah-Hamas state in Judea and Samaria whose cleansing of Jews is the main policy objective of the Bush administration. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in some ways a competitor of Bush has met with Dictator Bashir Asad, giving a semblance of legitimacy to Syria which is one of the main jihadist bases in the world. So Pelosi and the State Department are kissing cousins; their target is the same.
There is thus a glaring discrepancy between the American responses to the Israeli-Jewish captives, seized inside their own nation, and to those Britons seized by Iran in the Persian Gulf. And there is the ongoing case of Jonathan Pollard whom America’s ruling echelons have buried alive because he shared with Israel satellite photos of Iraqi, Syrian and Libyan WMD aimed at Israel. Didn’t the USA itself attack Iraq twice? Didn’t it bomb Libya? Is the American government a friend or enemy of Israel? Uncomfortable questions will keep one out of the mainstream media.
The above discrepancies bid us ask “what is the United States of America?” It is important to define its constituent parts so Israel can be clear on whether it is a friend, enemy or both. Lack of clarity on this issue has been suffocating the Jewish state since 1969.
Many writers and publications blur the fact that “the United States” is the name of a nation and also a government; that this government consists of three branches, Legislative, Judicial and Executive that check and balance each other (though hardly to the degree intended by the Founders); that the Executive branch has become a vast bureaucracy and activist courts have usurped the legislative function. Both the Executive and Judiciary often war on the basic principles of the United States and the abiding beliefs of its people (58% of whom support Israel, for example, while 18% support the “Palestinians”; 85% of whom oppose “civil unions” or “marriage” for gays and lesbians while the courts and media continue to create precedents for them).
One could demonstrate that the self-aggrandizing size, pregrogatives and expense of the Executive and Judiciary have enslaved Americans and degraded the nation’s posture in the world.
Moreover, within the Executive Branch there are many fiefdoms the most powerful of which is the entrenched diplomatic-intelligence-financial departments which dominate the National Security Council (formed 1947) and whose membership itself is drawn from prestigious groups funded and indirectly directed by America’s ruling corporate interests who care no more for Americans than they do for Jews or Arabs or Africans.
The goal of the perennial regime that drives American diplomacy, military action or inaction, and monetary policies is and has been since 1938 totally hostile to Jews in Israel. The views of a given President, Republican or Democrat on this matter do little to change its thrust. The policies of the Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations all have focused on keeping Jews out of Judea and Samaria and turning it back into what it became under Britain and its proxies: an Arab entity, part of an Arab Federation or “New Middle East.” The perennial socialist regime in Israel is glad to oblige, for a ’seat at the table’ and the illusion of being ‘allowed to pass.’
Those who supply cadres and heads for the Departments of State, Treasury and the CIA come from the Trilateral Commission (recall Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski) and the Council on Foreign Affairs both under the sway of the Rockefeller empire whose main goals sincd 1913 have been eugenics (massive population reduction and Aryanization) and the “march toward a world government, [a] supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers” (David Rockefeller to a Trilateral group, June 1991). At that meeting, Rockefeller expressed his thanks “to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended out meetings and respected their promises of discretion for forty years.”
That’s how one gets and keeps control of public discourse: deflect, disinform, and deny the dirty agenda of the elite who can buy or replace you. The least truth-oriented are selected and promoted: the problems are excluded or crushed.
Noting media bias thus is like bailing a rowboat with a hole in its bottom: many points may be made but the boat will sink. Indeed, Israel and the free west have been sinking while the “world community,” its gangsters and biases are exalted by the major media and its infamous “discretion.”
So the United States of America consists of a government in three main branches, its executive branch ruled by a policy group whose views, methods and goals are at variance with the government’s original purpose and, still, with Congress. It also is at odds and, arguably at war with its own people as shown by the relentless push toward a North American Union, including integrating Mexico’s Social Security system with that of America’s; or by the declaration and fudging of a “war on terror” in which victory is not defined for its real face, the loss of civil liberties could not be defended.
Those who care about Israel and Jewish sovereignty there need always to remember and communicate with awareness of these distinctions. They need to strengthen and maintain their bonds with the American people with whom they have more and more in common (dangerously open borders, dissolving sovereignty and bonds to the Hebrew Scriptures) while dismissing those politicians who prattle about their “close friendship” with the American Executive Branch, especially its diplomatic-intelligence community.
America and Israel do and must continue to work together in military preparedness and economic growth on many levels. But Israelis and Americans must discern what aspects of these ties are for life, national integrity and victory for the American and Israeli people and what forces and individuals are to be kept at arms length, their pledges, guarantees and processes shunned as the poison they are. Then not only will the prisoners return to Zion but the American and Israeli people, who share so much that is basic to life will be free to return to their roots and strength: ordered liberty, settlement and vigorous defense of their land.
Instead of a new hi-tech pyramid model for civilization its alternative, the Temple Mount and teachings of Sinai can be the source of true victory, teaching and peace; instead of slavery to corporate socialists there will be true freedom, the gift of the Jewish people as expressed in Passover and the settled nation, a free people in its land.