De Israelische Terreur 854

Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

The End of Free Speech?


by Paul Craig Roberts 

CounterPunch
7 May 2009

On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s 
bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US 
Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide.

To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? 
Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to 
any criticism of Israel or Jews.

Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House. As 
soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become 
a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of 
Palestinians and theft of their lands.

It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s account 
of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.

It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel Lobby 
on the White House and Congress, such as the AIPAC-written resolutions 
praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza that 
were endorsed by 100 per cent of the US Senate and 99 per cent of the House 
of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel for its 
barbarity.

It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.

It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews 
in the media, finance, and foreign policy.

In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the First 
Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast aspersion upon 
Israel will simply be banned.

Given the hubris of the US government, which leads Washington to apply 
US law to every country and organization, what will happen to the 
International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, 
and the various human rights organizations that have demanded 
investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population? Will 
they all be arrested for the hate crime of “excessive” criticism of Israel?

This is a serious question.

A recent UN report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames Israel 
for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the United Nations 
premises in Gaza. The Israeli government has responded by charging that the 
UN report is “tendentious, patently biased,” which puts the UN report into 
the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel 
sentiment.

Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to 
silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have 
exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated murder of 
women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis. These acts 
are clearly war crimes.

It was the Israeli press that published the pictures of the Israeli soldiers’ 
T-shirts that indicate that the wilful murder of women and children is now 
the culture of the Israeli army. The T-shirts are horrific expressions of 
barbarity. For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a 
crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, “One shot, two kills.” These 
T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is one 
of extermination.

It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s 
mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli 
peace groups. For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of 
ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist 
in the Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even 
praised.

Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper? 
Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report 
what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of 
Israel, an anti-semitic act”?

Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that 
Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel. These Americans 
will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror. They 
will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts 
about Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding 
and abetting terrorists.

A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel. American 
university professors have fallen victim to the well organized attempt 
to eliminate all criticism of Israel. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a 
Catholic university because of the power of the Israel Lobby. Now the 
Israel Lobby is after University of California (at Santa Barbara,) professor 
William I. Robinson. Robinson’s crime: his course on global affairs included 
some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice (sic) 
Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, 
Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying. The Israel Lobby succeeded in 
getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric 
Holder has dropped charges. Yet, Larry Franklin, the DOD official accused of 
giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7 
months in prison.

The absurdity is extraordinary. The two Israeli agents are not guilty of 
receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to them! 
If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving 
secrets to a spy?

Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an 
independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American 
rather than Israeli interests. It eliminates any prospect of Americans escaping 
from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.

To keep American minds captive, the Lobby is working to ban as anti-semitic 
any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel. It is permissible to 
criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-semitic to criticize 
Israel, and anti-semitism will soon be a universal hate-crime in the Western 
world.

Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust. It is a 
crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6 
million Jews were murdered.

Why is the Holocaust a subject that is off limits to examination? How could 
a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and 
anti-semitics? Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by thought control.

________________________________________________________________

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan 

                   administration. He is coauthor of “The Tyranny of Good Intentions”. 

Zie:  http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05072009.html