PA Feedback: U.S.-Israeli Barbarism and Neo-Fascism
Press Action
Thursday, December 25, 2003
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/feedback12252003/
The Real Violators of ‘International Law’
Dear Abu Spinoza,
Thank you for pointing out this glaring similarity between U.S. actions in Iraq and Israeli atrocities in occupied Palestine. It is noteworthy that both are the biggest violators of ‘international law,’ for which concept both have shown outright contempt. Both regimes’ understanding of human relations is derived from a pure form of barbarism found among no other animal species on the planet.
Reza
Japan
Abu Spinoza’s Response:
Reza is correct in that United States’ and Israel’s violations of international law and human rights are quite significant. However, let me add that these states are by no means the sole violators of international law and human rights. The record of atrocities committed by most current states and former imperial countries is a dismal one and suggests that there is no monopoly in the application of the state’s violence in oppressing human beings. It happens to be the case that at this time the United States is the world’s most powerful state. The exposure of its crimes can be stopped if its citizens act and organize to prevent it. Thus I write about this.
Understanding the American Mind
“Underlying the ‘new’ Anglo-American strategy, which replicates Israeli methods in occupied Palestine, is a deeply racist ideology typified by Capt. Todd Brown’s remarks about Arabs: ‘You have to understand the Arab mind. The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face.’”
Is the remark really deeply racist? I’m not entirely sure. It essentially acknowledges: “Those Arabs are just like us Americans”!!
John P.
Lebanon, Ore.
Endorsing Israel’s ‘Security Fence’
Dear Abu,
Another great article. What a way to “occupy” and “liberate” a country! I was also saddened to hear that eight countries did not condemn Israel because of its “security fence” at the UN and Australia was one of them. They could have abstained at least!
Thanks again.
Helga F.
Melbourne, Australia
Please note that collective punishment is above all an illegal act. Teaching others to obey the rule of law, accept democracy and freedom and at the same time subjected to cruel and unusual punishment without any possibility of self-defense suggest to me that we have finally arrived at a neo-fascist state. I believe that those who support this Bush’s insane foreign policy in Iraq should take their anthrax shot and volunteer to go over and help. Don’t depend on surrogates to do the job when you can do it better yourself. A little more blood from innocents won’t be noticed I’m sure.
Stephen
Portland, Ore.
Scholars for Israel
Mr. Akram makes many very good points on scholarship, and his response to Mr. Dershowitz’ response would be better if those points actually applied to Dershowitz’ book. Having read the Peters book as well as Dershowitz’ and having made an examination of scholarship of both, tracing sources from both as far back as I could, there is no plagiarism. There is only a very skillfully put together and effective case for Israel that Mr. Akram wishes to (but cannot) defeat with a similarly scholarly rebuttal. More’s the pity since this subject deserves such a debate at such a level as Mr. Akram cannot seem to afford it.
Art M.
Charlotte, N.C.
Tanweer Akram’s Response:
Art M., is right in that Dershowitz’s “book” has been “very skillfully put together.” Those skills were surely well applied when it come to lifting quotes from Joan Peters’ hoax. Norman Finkelstein has already exposed Dershowitz’s plagiarism. For further confirmation and a truly outstanding and rather entertaining example of Dershowitz’s (and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel’s) “scholarship,” have a look at Finkelstein’s recent exposure of their concoctions regarding the alleged Yiddish translation of Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason. Ever the whiz kid Wiesel boasted to have read this masterpiece when he was a teenager. In his attempt to rebut Finkelstein, Dershowitz graciously stated: “The Critique of Pure Reason was translated into Yiddish and published in Warsaw in 1929. The Harvard Library has a copy and Wiesel did read it.” Finkelstein reports that his investigations showed that no such translation of the book in Yiddish exists in either the Harvard Library system or in any other collection of Yiddish books in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. Separately, a librarian from the U.S. Library of Congress also informed this writer that to her knowledge there is no Yiddish translation of Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason.
It is perhaps not accidental that a super rich and famed lawyer who purports to have presented the case for Israel needs to mimic the Israeli Occupation Army’s tactics of fabrications, distortions, name-calling, and attacks on innocent people. It is a pity that in spite of solid evidence of plagiarism that cowards like Dershowitz and his apologists shamelessly go about parroting the standard AIPAC propaganda.