by Paul Craig Roberts
June 1, 2010
from
GlobalResearch Website
|
Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, public
service, and journalism.
He served in the Congressional staff and as
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration.
From 1971
until 2004 he was associated with the Hoover Institution, Stanford
University.
A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and
columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he was a
nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles. |
As I write at 5pm on Monday, May 31, all day has passed since the early
morning reports of the Israeli commando attack on the unarmed ships carrying
humanitarian aid to Gaza, and there has been no response from President
Obama except to say that he needed to learn "all the facts about this
morning's tragic events" and that Israeli prime minister Netanyahu had
canceled his plans to meet with him at the White House.
Thus has Obama made America complicit once again in Israel's barbaric war
crimes. Just as the US Congress voted to deep-six Judge Goldstone's report
on Israel's war crimes committed in Israel's January 2009 invasion of Gaza,
Obama has deep-sixed Israel's latest act of barbarism by pretending that he
doesn't know what has happened.
No one in the world will believe that Israel attacked ships in international
waters carrying Israeli citizens, a Nobel Laureate, elected politicians, and
noted humanitarians bringing medicines and building materials to
Palestinians in Gaza, who have been living in the rubble of their homes
without repairs or medicines since January 2009, without first clearing the
crime with its American protector.
Without America's protection, Israel, a
totally artificial state, could not exist.
No one in the world will believe that America's spy apparatus did not detect
the movement of the Israeli attack force toward the aid ships in
international waters in an act of piracy, killing 20, wounding 50, and
kidnapping the rest.
Obama's pretense at ignorance confirms his complicity.
Once again the US government has permitted the Israeli state to murder good
people known for their moral conscience. The Israeli state has declared that
anyone with a moral conscience is an enemy of Israel, and every American
president except Eisenhower and Carter has agreed.
Obama's 12-hour silence in the face of extreme barbarity is his signal to
the controlled corporate media to remain on the sidelines until Israeli
propaganda sets the story.
The Israeli story, preposterous as always, is that the humanitarians on one
of the ships took two pistols from Israeli commandos, highly trained troops
armed with automatic weapons, and fired on the attack force. The Israeli
government claims that the commandos' response (70 casualties at last
reporting) was justified self-defense.
Israel was innocent. Israel did not
do anything except drop commandos aboard from helicopters in order to
intercept an arms shipment to Gazans being brought in by ships manned by
terrorists.
Many christian evangelicals, brainwashed by their pastors that it is God's
will for Americans to protect Israel, will believe the Israeli story,
especially when it is unlikely they will ever hear any other.
Conservative
Americans, especially on Memorial Day when they are celebrating feats of
American arms, will admire Israel for its toughness. Here in north Georgia
where I am at the moment, I have heard several say, admiringly,
"Them,
Israelis, they don't put up with nuthin."
Conservative Americans want the US to be like Israel.
They do not understand
why the US doesn't stop pissing around after nine years and just go ahead
and defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. They don't understand why the US
didn't defeat whoever was opposing American forces in Iraq. Conservatives
are incensed that America had to "win" the war by buying off the Iraqis and
putting them on the US payroll.
Israel murders people and then blames its victims. This appeals to American
conservatives, who want the US to do the same.
It is likely that Americans will accept Israeli propagandist Mark Regev's
story that Israelis were met by deadly fire when they tried to intercept an
arms shipment to Palestinian terrorists from IHH, a radical Turkish Islamist
organization hiding under the cover of humanitarian aid. This explanation is
crafted to allow Americans to sink back into their stupor.
Americans will never hear from the US media that Turkey's prime minister
Erdogan declared that the aid ships were carefully inspected before
departure from Turkey and that there were no terrorists or arms aboard:
"I want to say to the world, to the heads of state and the governments, that
these boats that left from Turkey and other countries were checked in a
strict way under the framework of the rules of international navigation and
were only loaded with humanitarian aid."
Turkey is a US ally, a member of NATO. Turkey's cooperation is important to
American's plan for world hegemony. Turkey now realizes that the Israeli
state is comprised of total evil.
Erdogan must wonder about the morality of
Israel's American protector. According to a report in
antiwar.com, the
Turkish government declared that,
"future aid ships will be dispatched with a
military escort so as to prevent future Israeli attacks."
Will the CIA assassinate Erdogan or pay the Turkish military to overthrow
him?
Murat Mercan, head of Turkey's foreign relations committee, said that
Israel's claim that there were terrorists aboard the aid ships was Israel's
way of covering up its crime.
Mercan declared:
"Any allegation that the
members of this ship is attached to al-Qaeda is a big lie because there are
Israeli civilians, Israeli authorities, Israeli parliamentarians on board
the ship."
The criminal Israeli state does not deny its act of piracy.
Israeli military
spokeswoman, Avital Leibovich, confirmed that the attack took place in
international waters:
"This happened in waters outside of Israeli territory,
but we have the right to defend ourselves."
Americans, and their Western European puppet states and the puppet state in
Canada, will be persuaded by the servile media to buy the story fabricated
by Israeli propaganda that the humanitarian aid ships were manned by
terrorists bringing weapons to the Palestinians in Gaza, and that the
terrorists posing as humanitarians attacked the force of Israeli commandos
with two pistols, clubs, and knives.
The ignorant Americans will swallow this story without a hiccup.