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As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, there are competing views about the meaning of these tragic events.

On this 9/11 weekend, we invite all persons and communities of faith, spirit and goodwill everywhere to lift up their prayers, voices and thoughts to spark a new attitude and sense of urgency, and to enkindle a different flame:

• a spark that will ignite in us again the impetus to bring comfort to those who lost loved ones on that terror-filled day, and in the violent conflicts and wars that followed from it;
• a spark that will ignite in us again to stand calmly and firmly against the forces of violence, distrust, hostility and cruelty;a spark that will ignite in us again to stand with those who find themselves on the margins of our society – the homeless and those losing their homes, the documented and undocumented immigrant, the unemployed and financially insecure;

• a spark that will ignite in us again the commitment to seek healing and reconciliation at home and abroad, in the cause of justice and peace.

Ever since 9/11, readers keep asking me my views on these attacks. I have been barraged with emails until my head spins with engineering studies about melting steel, controlled explosions, claims about nefarious plots, and wreckage analysis.

One of the most colorful theories comes from Gen. Hamid Gul, former director of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI. He insists that 9/11 was staged by Israel’s Mossad and a cabal of rightwing US Air Force generals.

I inspected the ruins of the New York’s Twin Towers, atop which I often dined, right after the attack. Downtown Manhattan was enveloped by a hideous, stinking miasma from the attack. I have never smelled anything so awful. It took me days to scrub the foul odor off my body. As a native New Yorker, I was shaken to the core by 9/11 – but hardly surprised, as I had predicted a major attack on the US nine days earlier.

In 1993, I was hijacked over Germany on a Lufthansa flight bound for Cairo. The Ethiopian hijacker took us all the way back to New York City. The hijacker was threatening to crash our A310 jumbo jet into Wall Street.

Our flight was shadowed by US F-15 fighters that had orders to shoot, if necessary. Where, then, was US air defense on 11 Sept. 2001?

A day after 9/11, I was asked on CNN if Osama bin Laden was behind the attack. ‘We have yet to see the evidence,’ I replied. I maintain this position today.

Bin Laden denied he or al-Qaida was behind 9/11 and the death’s of nearly 3,000 people. The plot was hatched in Hamburg, Germany and Madrid, Spain, not in Afghanistan. A Pakistani, Khaled Sheik Mohammed, claimed he was the mastermind – after being tortured by near-drowning 183 times by the CIA.

While denying involvement, Osama bin Laden did say he believed the attack on New York was in part motivated by Israel’s destruction of downtown Beirut during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon that inflicted some 18,000 civilian deaths.

Tapes that appeared to confirm bin Laden’s guilt were clumsy fakes. They were supposedly “found” in Afghanistan by the anti-Taliban Afghan Northern Alliance, which was created and funded by Russian intelligence.

I had met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and told CNN viewers that he was not the man in the tapes.

After 9/11, Secretary of State Colin Powell promised Americans the State Department would issue a White Paper detailing bin Laden’s guilt. Afghanistan’s Taliban government asked for this document before it would extradite bin Laden, as the US was demanding. The White Paper was never produced, and the US ignored proper legal procedure and invaded Afghanistan. We still wait for evidence.

I remain uncertain that Osama bin Laden was really behind the attacks. Much circumstantial evidence points to him and al-Qaida, but conclusive proof still lacks. One thing is certain: the attacks were planned and mounted from Germany, not Afghanistan. Of the 19 hijackers, 15 were Saudis, two from the United Arab Emirates, one an Egyptian and a Lebanese.

By the way, I’ve said ever since 9/11 that the danger and size of al-Qaida has been vastly exaggerated – as an explosive report this week by the London’s esteemed International Institute for Strategic Studies has just confirmed. Al-Qaida, dedicated to fighting the Afghan Communists, never had more than 300 members at its peak.

Today, according to CIA chief Leon Panetta, there are no more than 50 al-Qaida men in Afghanistan. Yet President Barack Obama has tripled the number of US troops in Afghanistan to 120,000 because of what to calls the al-Qaida threat. What is going on?

Many people abroad believe al-Qaida is an American invention used to justify foreign military operations. I do not share this view. Osama bin Laden was never a US agent, though his group indirectly received funds from CIA to fight the Communists.

Back to 9/11. I still cannot understand how amateur pilots could manage to maneuver in low to hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As a Pakistani intelligence agent told me, “if they were really amateur Arab pilots, they would have crashed into one another, not the World Trade Center!”

The arrest of Israeli “movers” filming the attack and dancing with joy, and the subsequent arrest of groups of Israeli “students” supposedly tracking the would-be hijackers remains a deep mystery. So does the immobilization of US air defenses.

The US 9/11 Commission was a whitewash, as are all such government commissions. They are designed to obscure, not reveal, the truth.

A 2006, a Scripps Howard/Washington Post poll found that 36% of the 1,000 Americans sampled believed the US government was behind 9/11. Many Americans still do not believe the official version of 9/11.

Neither do many Europeans. The entire Muslim world believes 9/11 was the work of Israel and far right American neocons, led by Dick Cheney.

If the official story about 9/11 is true, the attacks caught the Bush administration asleep on guard duty. Bush’s incompetent national security advisor, Condoleeza Rice, brushed off serious warnings of the impending attack and actually cut spending on anti-terrorism just before 9/11.

The White House and media were quick to blame Muslims who hated America’s lifestyle and values, launching the concept of “Islamic terrorism” – i.e. that the Muslim faith, not political issues, prompted the attacks.

This dangerous canard has infected America, leading to a rising tide of Islamophobia. This week’s continued uproar over a Muslim community center in downtown New York, and a Florida preacher’s threat to burn Korans, are the latest doleful example of cultivated religious hatred.

The suicide team that attacked New York and Washington made clear its aim was: a. to punish the US for backing Israel’s repression of Palestinians; and b. what they called US “occupation” of Saudi Arabia. Though they were all Muslims, religion was not the motivating factor.

As the CIA’s former bin Laden expert Michael Scheuer rightly observed, the Muslim world was furious at the US for what it was doing in their region, not because of America’s values, liberties or religion.

These motives for the 9/11 attack have been largely obscured by the whipping up hysteria over “Islamic terrorism.” The planting of anthrax in New York, Florida and Washington soon after 9/11 was clearly designed to promote further anti-Muslim furor. The perpetrators of this red herring remain unknown. But the anthrax attack hastened passage of the semi-totalitarian Patriot Act that sharply limited the personal freedoms of Americans and imposed draconian new laws.

Faked bin Laden videos and audio tapes. Planted anthrax. An intact Koran implausibly found at ground zero. Evidence in a hijacker’s bag that had somehow failed to make his ill-fated flight. Immediate claims that al-Qaida was behind the attacks. Those amateur kamikaze pilots and collapsing towers.

Perhaps most damning, tapes taken in London of meetings between President George Bush and PM Tony Blair revealed a sinister proposal by the US president to provoke war with Iraq by painting US aircraft in UN colors, then buzzing Iraqi air defenses until they fired on them, thus providing a “casus belli.” Bush also reportedly told Blair that after Iraq, he would “go on” to attack Saudi Arabia, Syria and Pakistan.

In 1939, Nazi Germany dressed up soldiers in Polish uniforms to provoke a border fire-fight to justify Berlin’s ensuing invasion of Poland. Bush’s plan was of the same ilk. A president who would contemplate such a criminal operation might go a lot further to achieve his imperial dreams.

As a veteran journalist, to me, all this smells to high heaven. There are just too many unanswered questions, too many suspicions, and that old Roman legal question, “cui bono” – “to whose benefit?”

On 28 February, 1933, fire, set by a Dutch Jew, ravaged the Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag. While the Reichstag’s ruins were still smoking, Adolf Hitler’s government declared a war against “terrorism.” A “Decree for the Protection of People and State” was promulgated suspending all legal protections of speech, assembly, property, and personal liberties. The Reichstag fire allowed the government to round up “terrorism” suspects without due process of law and made police powers near absolute.

Sound familiar? Here’s another startling coincidence. Two years before 9/11, a series of mysterious apartment building bombings in Russia killed over 200 people. “Islamic terrorists” from Chechnya were blamed.

Panic swept Russia and boosted former KGB agent Vladimir Putin into full power. Russian security agents of FSB were caught red-handed planting explosives in another building, but the story was hushed up. A former FSB agent, Alexander Litvinenko, who tried to reveal this story, was murdered in London by radioactive polonium.

Similarly, the Bush administration’s neocons shamelessly used 9/11 to promote the invasion of Iraq. Just before the attack, polls showed 80% of Americans erroneously believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. Dr. Goebbels would have been proud.

So what, in the end, can we conclude? 1. We still do not know the real story about 9/11. 2. The official version is not credible. 3. 9/11 was used to justify invading strategic Afghanistan and oil-rich Iraq. 4. The attacks plunged America into wars against the Muslim world and enriched the US arms industry. 5. 9/11 boosted pro-Israel neoconservatives, formerly a fringe group, into power, and with them America’s totalitarian far right. 6. Bush’s unprovoked war against Iraq destroyed one of Israel’s two main enemies. 7. 9/11 put America in what may turn out to be a permanent state of war with the Muslim world – a key goal of the neoconservatives.

But I’ve seen no hard evidence to date that 9/11 was a plot by America’s far right or by Israel or a giant cover-up. Just, perhaps, the Mother of All Coincidences. In the end, it may just have been 19 angry Arabs and a bumbling Bush administration looking for someone else to blame.

By Eric Margolis

Eric Margolis [send him mail] is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website

The US-dominated World Mainstream media are legitimately remembering  the 3,000 dead in the 9-11 atrocity for which some top scientific and intelligence experts hold the US responsible. However, in marked contrast, World Mainstream media ignore the 8 million dead (mostly Asian women and children) in the post-9-11 US War on Terror (a war for Oil and Hegemony) driven politically by racist Zionist and neocon American terror hysteria, anti-Arab anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The world is marking the 9th anniversary of the 9-11 atrocity in which, (1) according to some top scientific and intelligence experts,  the US Government, with likely Israeli state terrorist support, killed 3,000 Americans on 9-11 to launch  the War on Terror for oil, US hegemony and US-Israeli domination of the Middle East  or (2) religious fundamentalists in Central Asian caves without state intelligence, armed forces, or military-industrial infrastructure achieved a devastating  attack on Metropolitan  United States that the Axis Powers failed to do in World War 2 and, furthermore, did so for no obvious cost-benefit reasons.

Two Swiss scholars, Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel of the University of Zurich, reported in the largest Swiss newspaper, “Blick”, have seriously questioned the “official Bush version” of what happened on 9/11 (see “Je mehr wir forschen, desto mehr zweifeln wir” [“the more we research the more we doubt”], Blick, 15 September 2006: http://www.blick.ch/news/ausland/9-11/artikel45057 ). Professor Ganser: “3,000 humans were sacrificed for strategic interests. The more we explore, the more we doubt the Bush version. It is conceivable that the Bush government was responsible. Bush has lied so much already! And we already know that the US government planned an operation in 1962 that was approved by the Pentagon that would have sacrificed innocent US citizens for the government’s own interests …We only ask questions” (see “US responsible for 9-11? Swiss scholars Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel doubt official Bush version” :   https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-responsible ).

Professors Ganser and Stahel presented 3 sensible hypotheses for 9-11: “There are three theories, which we should treat equally:

1. “Surprise theory” – Bin Laden and Al Qaeda implemented the attacks.

2. “Let it happen on purpose” – The US Government knew the Al Qaeda plans and did not react in order to legitimize a series of wars.

3. “Made it happen on purpose” – The attacks were actually planned and orchestrated by the Pentagon and/or US secret services.”

How do these 3 hypotheses about the 9/11 atrocity stack up when one considers Means, Opportunity and Motive (MOM)?

1. “Surprise theory” than “men in caves” did 9-11.

Unlike the US and Apartheid Israel, the “men in caves” (all former US-backed Muslim-origin terrorists) had no vast army, navy, air force, military-industrial complex, or state intelligence apparatus (no Means), did not have the ability to countermand massive anti-hijacking and other emplaced security systems (no Opportunity)  and had no rational reason to embark on a terrorist atrocity that would lead to the global decimation of their associates and the US Alliance killing of 7 million Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan alone (no Motive). In World War 2 the Axis Powers with their massive military, industrial and intelligence resources only managed to kill 6 Americans in Mainland United States (a clergyman saw his wife and 5 church children killed by a Japanese balloon bomb device in Oregon on 5 May 1945; see “Japanese balloon bomb deaths story”, Balloon Bombs: ”: http://www.japaneseballoonbombs.com/articles/balloonbombdeaths.html ).

2. US let 9-11 happen on purpose.

A particularly authoritative account of this hypothesis has been presented by Michael Meacher MP (UK environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003): “Massive attention has now been given – and rightly so – to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq . But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier. We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush’s younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush’s cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power… The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the “global war on terrorism” has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda – the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course. (Michael Meacher, “This war on terrorism is bogus”, The Guardian, 6 September 2003: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/06/september11.iraq ).

A petition signed by 100 prominent Americans and 40 9/11 family members demanded  a full, independent investigation of what really happened on 9-11. The statement’s list of signatories includes Presidential candidates Ralph Nader and Green Party candidate David Cobb, Catherine Austin Fitts, a member of the first Bush administration, Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern. Other signatories include former US Ambassador to Iraq Edward L. Peck and  environmentalists like Randy Hayes and John Robbins  (see “9/11 statement signed by 100 prominent Americans”, WantToKnow.info: http://www.wanttoknow.info/911statement ). The statement said in part: “ On August 31, 2004, Zogby International, the official North American political polling agency for Reuters, released a poll that found nearly half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of those in New York state believe US leaders had foreknowledge of impending 9/11 attacks and “consciously failed” to act. Of the New York City residents, 66% called for a new probe of unanswered questions by Congress or the New York Attornney General. In connection with this news, we have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war. ”

And of course the US had the Means (US military, intelligence and security domination of the US ), Opportunity (ditto) and Motive (to launch the War on Terror for US occupation of the Middle East and Central Asia for oil, gas and US and Israeli   hegemony).

3. The US made 9-11 happen “on purpose”.

A number of key scientific, military and intelligence experts have advanced this most compelling of the 3 hypotheses. As stated in item #2 above, the US had Means, Opportunity and Motive (MOM). There is compelling scientific evidence that a huge jet plane flown by experts could not have landed on a dime at the door of the Pentagon as asserted by the “official Bush version “ of 9-11 and that the 3 World Trade Center buildings were brought down by explosive demolition (proven by the discovery  by Professor Niels Harrit and colleagues of the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, that unexploded nano-thermite high explosive was present in all WTC dust samples examined). Some of these expert opinions  are presented below.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth has set out expert evidence that the US was involved in 9-11 (see: http://911scholars.org/ ).

Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice has set out a detailed series of links to the expert views of many other rational, eminent and technically expert people who reject the “official conspiracy theory” and who believe that the US was variously involved in the 9-11 atrocity (see: http://stj911.org/ ).

Many respected senior members of the US military, intelligence services, and government have expressed significant criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report. Some even allege government complicity in the terrible acts of 9/11 (see “9/11 Commission Report questioned by senior  military, intelligence and government officials”, WantToKnow.info: http://www.wanttoknow.info/officialsquestion911commissionreport ).

Swiss Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel of the University of Zurich, reported in the largest Swiss newspaper, “Blick”, have seriously questioned the “official Bush version” of what happened on 9/11 (see “Je mehr wir forschen, desto mehr zweifeln wir” [the more we research the more we doubt”], Blick, 15 September 2006: http://www.blick.ch/news/ausland/9-11/artikel45057 ; and  “US responsible for 9-11? Swiss scholars Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel doubt official Bush version”:   https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-responsible ): “3,000 humans were sacrificed for strategic interests. The more we explore, the more we doubt the Bush version….We only ask questions.”

Professor Niels Harrit and colleagues (Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen , Copenhagen , Denmark ) : “We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center . Examination of four of these samples, collected from separate sites, is reported in this paper. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples…Based on these observations, we conclude that the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered din the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material” (see Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen, “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, The Open Chemical Physics Journals, vol.2, pp.7-31 (25): http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM ).

Jim Hoffmann (a top US software engineer who has extensively analyzed the 3 WTC building demolitions : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Hoffman ) : “The implications of the discovery of unspent aluminothermic explosives and matching residues in World Trade Center dust are staggering. There is no conceivable reason for there to have been tons of high explosives in the Towers except to demolish them, and demolition is blatantly incompatible with the official 9/11 narrative that the skyscrapers collapsed as a result of the jetliner impacts and fires. The discovery of active thermitic materials adds to a vast body of evidence that the total destruction of the Towers were controlled demolitions, and to the subset of that evidence indicating the use of aluminothermic materials to implement those demolitions” (see Jim Hoffmann, “Explosives Found in World Trade Center Dust. Scientists Discover Both Residues And Unignited Fragments Of Nano-Engineered Thermitic Pyrotechnics In Debris From the Twin Towers”, 9-11 Research, 9 December 2010: http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html ) .

Major General Albert N. Stubblebine (graduate of the U.S. Military Academy West Point, class of 52, distinguished 32 year career in the U.S. Army and retired as the Commanding General of the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command , INSCOM): “You look at the buildings falling, they didn”t fall down because of an airplane hit them, they fell down because explosives went off inside. Demolition. Look at Building 7 for God sakes … I do not believe the free press is free anymore… The press is saying what they have been told to say about this. Now do I have proof about this? No. But I believe that all the stories that were told about 9/11 were false” (see “ Major General Albert Stubblebine Towers fell down because of explosives”, World for 9-11 Truth”, 29 June 2009: http://world911truth.org/major-general-albert-stubblebine-towers-fell-down-because-of-explosives/ ).

Professor Francesco Cossiga (63rd prime minister and 8th president of Italy, professor of law at the University of Sassari, and intelligence intimate) in an interview with leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera (2007): “As I’ve been told, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow [interview appeared on 30 November 2007] the most important chain of newspapers of our country should give the proof, with an exceptional scoop, that the video (which in reality is an audio tape, NdR) in which appears Osama, leader of “the great and powerful movement of islamic revenge Al Quaeda” – God bless him! – and in which are formulated threats to our ex president Berlusconi, is nothing more than a fake realized inside Mediaset studios [the huge television group owned by Berlusconi] in Milan and sent to arabic television station Al Jazeera. The trap was organized to create solidarity for Berlusconi, who is having lot of problems related to the tangle between RAI and Mediaset. From circles around Palazzo Chigi, nerve centre of direction of Italian intelligence, it is noted that the non-authenticity of the video is testified from the fact that Osama bin Laden in it ‘confessed’ that Al Qaeda was the author of the attack of the 11 September on the Twin Towers in New York, while all of the democratic circles of America and of Europe, in the front lines being those of the Italian centre-left, now know well that the disastrous attack was planned and realized by the American CIA and Mossad with the help of the Zionist world to put under accusation the Arabic Countries and to persuade the Western powers to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan” (see “ Francesco Cossiga ” Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Cossiga ).

General Leonid Ivashov (vice-president of the Russian Academy on geopolitical affairs. He was the chief of the department for General affairs in the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Defense, secretary of the Council of defense ministers of the Community of independent states (CIS), chief of the Military cooperation department at the Russian federation’s Ministry of defense and Joint chief of staff of the Russian armies) (2006): “Terrorism is the weapon used in a new type of war. At the same time, international terrorism, in complicity with the media, becomes the manager of global processes. It is precisely the symbiosis between media and terror, which allows modifying international politics and the exiting reality. In this context, if we analyze what happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States , we can arrive at the following conclusions: 1. The organizers of those attacks were the political and business circles interested in destabilizing the world order and who had the means necessary to finance the operation. The political conception of this action matured there where tensions emerged in the administration of financial and other types of resources. We have to look for the reasons of the attacks in the coincidence of interests of the big capital at global and transnational levels, in the circles that were not satisfied with the rhythm of the globalization process or its direction. Unlike traditional wars, whose conception is determined by generals and politicians, the oligarchs and politicians submitted to the former were the ones who did it this time. 2. Only secret services and their current chiefs – or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations – have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude. Generally, secret services create, finance and control extremist organizations. Without the support of secret services, these organizations cannot exist – let alone carry out operations of such magnitude inside countries so well protected. Planning and carrying out an operation on this scale is extremely complex. 3. Osama bin Laden and “Al Qaeda” cannot be the organizers nor the performers of the September 11 attacks. They do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders. Thus, a team of professionals had to be created and the Arab kamikazes are just extras to mask the operation. The September 11 operation modified the course of events in the world in the direction chosen by transnational mafias and international oligarchs; that is, those who hope to control the planet’s natural resources, the world information network and the financial flows. This operation also favored the US economic and political elite that also seeks world dominance” (see General Leonid Ivashov, “International terrorism does not exist: September 11 attacks were the result of a set-up”, Global Research, 23 January 2006: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1789 ) .

Andreas von Bülow (state-secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Defence (1976-1980) and German Minister for Research and Technology , 1980-1982): “Planning the attacks was a master deed, in technical and organizational terms. To hijack four big airliners within a few minutes and fly them into targets within a single hour and doing so on complicated flight routes! That is unthinkable, without backing from the secret apparatuses of state and industry” and “If what I say is right, the whole US government should end up behind bars…They have hidden behind a veil of secrecy and destroyed the evidence – that they invented the story of 19 Muslims working within Osama bin Laden’s al-Qa’eda – in order to hide the truth of their own covert operation” (see “Andreas von B ü low”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_von_B%C3%BClow )..

25 US military officers have spoken out against the Bush Administration lies about the 9/11 atrocity . The views of these men are particularly noteworthy because of their unquestionable patriotism, their military service and their technical expertise. What these American military heroes are saying is actually unexceptional in the sense that it has all been said by themselves and others before. Thus not just military men and scientists recognize the “impossibility” of the “official Bush version” e.g. an aviation gas fire cannot melt or even soften steel; it is hard enough to crash a light aircraft at ground level into a tree-surrounded building like the Pentagon, let alone a huge airliner; the absence of passenger effects from the various sites; the minimal-resistance collapse of the Twin Towers mimicking “perfect” demolitions; the collapse of the WTC7 building that had not been hit by a plane and which had suffered only minor fires etc etc (see Gideon Polya “US did 9/11? US Military Officers Challenge “official Bush version” of 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-did-9-11 )..

US Navy Commander Kolstad about the “official Bush version” account of American Airlines Flight 77 that allegedly crashed into the Pentagon: “At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying. I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and I could not have flown it the way the flight path was described. I was also a Navy fighter pilot and Air Combat Instructor and have experience flying low altitude, high speed aircraft. I could not have done what these beginners did. Something stinks to high heaven!” (see Gideon Polya “US did 9/11? US Military Officers Challenge “official Bush version” of 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-did-9-11 ).

Former U.S. Air Force pilot Lt. Jeff Dahlstrom on what happened on 9/11 and why it happened : “The US government and the news media, once again, were lying to the world about the real terrorists and the public murder of 2,972 innocents on 9/11. The ‘Patriot Act’ was actually written prior to 9/11 with the intention of destroying the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was passed by Congress, based upon the government’s myth of 9/11, which was in reality a staged hoax. 9/11 was scripted and executed by rogue elements of the military, FAA, intelligence, and private contractors working for the US government. In addition to severely curtailing fundamental rights of Americans, the 9/11 crime was then used by this administration, the one I originally voted for and supported, to justify waging two pre-emptive wars (and most likely a third war), killing over 4,500 American soldiers, and killing over one million innocent Afghan and Iraqi people. It was all premeditated. Treason, a false flag military operation, and betrayal of the trust of the American people were committed on 9/11 by the highest levels of the US government and not one person responsible for the crimes, or the cover-up, has been held accountable for the last six years” (see Gideon Polya “US did 9/11? US Military Officers Challenge “official Bush version” of 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-did-9-11 ).

Alan Hart , eminent UK Middle East expert and journalist, ) has reported that according to “consultants who work for leading engineering and construction firms” the 3 buildings destroyed in the World Trade Center were brought down by explosive demolition and quite likely involving the Israelis: “The twin towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion, not the planes….My guess is that at an early point they [Mossad] said to the bad guys in the CIA – hey this operation’s running what do we do, and the zionists and the neo-cons said let’s use it” (see “Alan Hart breaks silence about 9/11 on Kevin Barrett Show”, 9/11 Truth Norcal, 26 May 2010: http://norcaltruth.org/2010/05/26/alan-hart-breaks-silence-about-911-on-kevin-barrett-show/ ).

Dr Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan, ten-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College) : “Several things are very clear to me from a careful assessment of both official and critical evaluations of the 9/11 attacks. First, the striking aircraft alone simply could not have brought down either of the two buildings in the manner in which they fell, much less a third building which was not hit by a plane (I expect the one intended to do that as a “cover” had ended up in that Pennsylvania field), given the available physical evidence and a wealth of expert testimony. This means the attackers had assistance on the ground, and it had to have been active before the attacks occurred: preparing buildings for controlled demolition is not something done haphazardly in the midst of chaos. Second, only two intelligence agencies had the expertise, assets, access and political protection to execute 9/11 in the air and on the ground: our CIA and Israel ‘s Mossad. Only one had the incentive, using the “who benefits” principle: Mossad. And that incentive dovetailed perfectly with the neo-con’s agenda and explicitly expressed need for a catalytic event to mobilize the American public for their wars, using American military power to destroy Israel ‘s enemies. Only the unexpected strength of the Iraqi resistance kept Syria and Iran from being attacked in the second Bush Administration. Thus, the evidential trail for 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq run from PNAC, AIPAC and their cohorts; through the mostly Jewish neo-cons in the Bush Administration; and back to the Israeli government. None of the denials and political machinations can alter that essential reality. Terms such as treason, betrayal and deceit do not overstate the case against them.” (see Dr Alan Sabrowsky, “Treason, Betrayal and deceit: 9’11 and beyond”, Information Clearing House”, 10 September 2009: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23460.htm ).

Underscoring this is the appalling, sustained, over 2 century record of pathological deceit by the US in the interests of war, expansion, theft and hegemony. The Bush Administration alone was found to have told 935 untruths about Iraq in the run-up to the illegal invasion of that country (see “Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war”, CNN, 23 January 2008: http://articles.cnn.com/2008-01-23/politics/bush.iraq_1_intelligence-flaws-iraq-and-al-qaeda-study?_s=PM:POLITICS ).

Conclusion.

Means, Opportunity and Motive (MOM) analysis makes a compelling case that the US did 9-11, most likely with the involvement of the genocidal racist Zionists running Apartheid Israeli state terrorism.

The American and Israeli perpetrators are well protected by layers of Mainstream media and politicians lying by commission and lying of omission. The biggest of the Big Lies  of the Mainstream media and politicians in the Western Murdochracies is a huge lie of omission over post-9-11 deaths associated with the War on Terror.  While we are endlessly (and quite properly) told of the 3,000 Americans who died on 9-11 and the US Alliance military deaths in Occupied Iraq (4,736 as of today) and in Occupied Afghanistan (2,071 as of today) (see: http://icasualties.org/ ), Mainstream media and politicians resolutely refuse to report the horrendous post-invasion deaths of the Indigenous inhabitants of Iraq and Afghanistan that now total about 7 million – over 2,300 innocent people murdered by the US Alliance for every person killed on 9-11, an event that even according to the “official US version of 9-11” involved no Iraqis nor any Afghans.

UNICEF data indicate that every 3 days more Occupied Afghans die avoidably under US, NATO and Australian occupation (3,700) than the number of those who were killed on 9-11 (3,000), an atrocity that did not involve any Afghans according to the “official US version of 9-11”- indeed, according to some top scientific and intelligence experts the US did 9-11, some saying with likely Israeli terrorist complicity (see: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19999 ).

Bring on war crimes trials at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for all those involved in the US Alliance-imposed, ongoing Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide (3.5 million post-invasion non-violent deaths from deprivation, possibly 1.0 million post-invasion violent deaths, 2.4 million post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths, 3-4 million refugees plus a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated by the US in NW Pakistan: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ ).

Bring on the war crimes trials at the International Criminal Court (ICC)  for all those involved in the US Alliance-imposed, ongoing Iraq Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide (1.1 million post-invasion non-violent deaths from deprivation, 1.4 million post-invasion violent deaths, 0.8 million post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths, 5-6 million refugees plus 0.2 million violent deaths in the Gulf War, 1.7 million non-violent deaths from deprivation under Sanctions and 1.2 million under-5 infant deaths under Sanctions: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ).

September 11 should primarily remembered for the anniversary of the launching of Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha Movement for peaceful resistance in Johannesburg, South Africa  in 1906 (see “Sept. 11: creating history of a different kind”, The Hindu: http://www.hinduonnet.com/mag/2002/10/06/stories/2002100600290500.htm ).

9-11 must be made a day to remember  (1) the launching of Gandhi’s ultimately successful for peaceful opposition to racist violence; (2) to remember  the US (and most likely Israeli) destruction of 3,000 Americans on 9-11; and (3) to remember the 8 million people murdered, so far, by genocidal US and Zionist violence since 9-11 (2.5 million violent deaths and non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation in Iraq; 4.5 million violent deaths and non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation in Afghanistan; and 0.8 million opiate drug-related deaths – 50,000 in the US and 3,000 in Australia – due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world share in 2001 to over 90% today).

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent folk who believe that “all men are created equal” and that one should “love thy neighbour as thyself” are obliged to (a) tell  everyone you know and (b) urge sanctions and Boycotts against all those citizens, corporations, countries, people, pundits and politicians involved in the racist Zionist- and neocon-backed US Alliance War on Terror that is in horrible actuality a War for Oil and Hegemony, a War on Women and Children and, more specifically,  a cowardly, racist and genocidal War on Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Asian and Non-European Women and Children.

By Dr Gideon Polya

Better late than never, a very senior Palestinian official in Ramallah, Yasser Abed Rabbo, found the right way to challenge Israel and the U.S. As reported by AFP on 13 October, he said, “We officially demand that the US administration and the Israeli government provide a map of the borders of the state of Israel which they want us to recognise.”

That’s a completely logical and totally reasonable demand.

If Israel was interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept, the map provided would show Israel with borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war. An accompanying note would say that, subject to agreement in final negotiations, Israel seeks minor border adjustments here and there. The note would also propose that Jerusalem should be an open, undivided city and the capital of two states.

If such a map with the note as above was presented, it would open the door to peace.

But the implementation of such land-for-peace deal would require the IDF to confront and forcibly remove illegal Jewish settlers who refused to leave; and that would open the door to a Jewish civil war – the price Israel’s Jews would have to pay for 62 years of contempt for and defiance of international law.

Of course it won’t happen. As I reveal in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, why not was explained to me as far back as I980 by Shimon Peres. At the time he was the leader of the Labour Party, the main opposition to Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s Likud-led coalition. Peres was hoping to win Israel’s next election and deny Begin a second term in office. (President Carter was hoping and possibly praying for such an outcome). My purpose in talking with Peres in private was to establish whether or not he was interested in me acting as the linkman in a secret, exploratory dialogue between himself and PLO Chairman Arafat. Peres was interested but before I went off to Beirut to seek Arafat’s agreement to participate in a little conspiracy for peace, he said to me, “I fear it’s already too late“.

I asked Peres what he meant and this was his answer:

“Every day that passes sees new bricks on new settlements. Begin knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s stuffing the West Bank with settlers to create the conditions for a Jewish civil war. He knows that no Israeli prime minister is going down in history as the one who gave the order to the Jewish army to shoot Jews out of the West Bank“. Pause. “I’m not.”

When Peres spoke those words to me there were 70,000 illegal Jewish settlers on the occupied West Bank. If it was “too late” then, in 1980, how much more too late is it today when the number of illegal Jewish settlers is in excess of 500,000 and rising on a daily basis?

Some weeks after that conversation with Peres, I had reason to talk in private with Ezer Weizman, then serving as Defense Minister in Begin’s first-term government. He gave me extraordinary and frightening insight into why any future Israeli prime minister would not and possibly could not order the IDF to remove settlers from the West Bank by whatever force was necessary. At a point in our conversation he said the following, very slowly and with quiet emphasis:

“This lunchtime Sharon convened a secret meeting of some of our generals and other top military and security people. They signed in blood an oath which commits them to join with the settlers and fight to the death to prevent any government of Israel withdrawing from the West Bank.” Pause. “I know that’s what happened at the meeting because I’ve checked it out and that’s why I was late for this appointment with you.” (I tell the full story of this conversation with Weizman in The Blood Oath, Chapter 12 of Volume Three of the American edition of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews).

So no, there won’t be a Jewish civil war because no Israeli prime minister is ever going to risk provoking it.

So there will be no map. (I mean not one that could come even close to satisfying the Palestinian demand and need). Yasser Abed Rabbo knew that when he put the demand into words.

So what was the point of his challenge?

I presume he was hoping that Israel’s refusal to come up with a map based on more or less pre-June 1967 borders will help to convince more and more people, Americans especially, that Israel simply is not interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept, and for which there is universal support (minus only the opposition of the Zionists and the mad, fundamentalist Christians who support them right or wrong, an opposition which in numbers of people is only a tiny, almost invisible fraction of the global whole).

If it does that, the challenge will not have been made in vain.

Footnote

The day after Yasser Abed Rabbo issued the challenge, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman had the gall (chutzpah) to say that Israel “has already made many gestures to the Palestinian Authority to facilitate restarting direct negotiations,” and now “the other side must show goodwill”. In one sense Liberman was right. Israel has made many gestures to the Palestinians. But all of them have been of the “Go to hell” type.

By Alan Hart

19 October, 2010

Alanhart.net

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent. He is author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs at http://www.alanhart.net and tweets via http://twitter.com/alanauthor

The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government.

Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist.

The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan, in one of the US army’s biggest leaks of information. The documents caused a sensation when they were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and German magazine Der Spiegel, revealing hitherto unreported civilian casualties.

WikiLeaks defied Pentagon calls to return the war logs and destroy all copies. Instead, it has been reported that it intends to release an even larger cache of military documents, disclosing other abuses in Iraq.

Moneybookers moved against WikiLeaks on 13 August, according to the correspondence, less than a week after the Pentagon made public threats of reprisals against the organisation. Moneybookers wrote to Assange: “Following an audit of your account by our security department, we must advise that your account has been closed … to comply with money laundering or other investigations conducted by government authorities.”

When Assange emailed to ask what the problem was, he says he was told in response by Daniel Stromberg, the Moneybookers e-commerce manager for the Nordic region: “When I did my regular overview of my customers, I noticed that something was wrong with your account and I emailed our risk and legal department to solve this issue.

“Below I have copied the answer I received from them: ‘Hi Daniel, you can inform him that initially his account was suspended due to being accessed from a blacklisted IP address. However, following recent publicity and the subsequently addition of the WikiLeaks entity to blacklists in Australia and watchlists in the USA, we have terminated the business relationship.'”

Assange said: “This is likely to cause a huge backlash against Moneybookers. Craven behaviour in relation to the US government is unlikely to be seen sympathetically.”

Moneybookers, which is registered in the UK but controlled by the Bahrain-based group Investcorp, would not make anyone available to explain the decision. Its public relations firm, 77PR, said: “We have never had any request, inquiry or correspondence from any authority regarding this former customer.” Asked how this could be reconciled with the references in the correspondence to a blacklist, it said: “We stick with our original statement.”

Written by David Leigh & Rob Evans

Posted: 19 October 2010 10:52

15 October, 2010

© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited

Members of the Tea Party take a lot of heat, and justifiably so, for blatant hypocrisy. They want the government out of their lives, and they want to retain all the benefits of Empire.

Just like the rest of us.

Who doesn’t want the government out of his life? And yet, who wants to give up the safety nets of Empire? Who wants to terminate the oppression-abroad approach we employ, merely to generate self-reliant, resilient communities? Who wants to trade life in a cubicle for a life of hard work?

Do you know anybody who wants Big Brother looking over his shoulder? Do you know anybody who wants the Internal Revenue Service knocking on his door? Do you know anybody who wants to pay more taxes than he already does? Do you know anybody happily paying into Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid with full understanding these Ponzi schemes have nearly run their course? Do you know anybody who looks forward to life as a government serf?

With the exception of me, on the other hand, do you know anybody who will be happy when the fuel fails to show up at the filling station? Do you know anybody who will happily forgo water coming out the municipal taps? Do you know anybody who happily contributes to the federal government’s Ponzi schemes monetary policy, knowing he’ll never get his money back?

Consider one example from among hundreds. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are horrific by all accounts. We are the “reluctant” occupiers, forced to play cop in a world run amok. Or maybe we’re the ones running the world amok with our perpetual wars. Maybe if we cease playing Conquistador the world will be a more peaceful place. If so, we should cease occupying these and other countries. Most self-proclaimed liberals agree that we should withdraw our troops (instead of the current approach, which means claiming to withdraw them).

But if we withdraw, we won’t have access to enough oil and other “resources” to run the U.S. industrial economy. In fact, without an industrial economy based on war, unemployment would skyrocket. I’m betting most self-proclaimed liberals wouldn’t like that outcome any better than the ongoing occupation of foreign lands. We are all Tea Partiers now.

A line from Frederick Douglass comes to mind: “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.”

By Guy R. McPherson

11 October, 2010

Guymcpherson.com

Guy R. McPherson is Profesor Emeritus at the University of Arizona. Educated in the ecology and management of natural resources, his early scholarly efforts produced many publications of little lasting importance. In mid-career, he began to focus on development and creative application of ecological theory, primarily with an eye toward conservation of biological diversity. Currently, his scholarly efforts focus on social criticism, with results that appear most frequently on newspaper op-ed pages. In addition, he facilitates research by students and he prepares synthetic documents focused on articulation of the links between (1) environmental protection, social justice, and the human economy and (2) science and its application. These efforts have produced more than 100 scholarly papers and nine books.

In 2009 at the height of a productive career, McPherson left the university to prepare for collapse. He now lives in an off-grid, straw-bale house where he puts into practice his lifelong interest in sustainable living via organic gardening, raising small animals for eggs and milk, and working with members of his rural community.

contact information:

Guy R. McPherson, Professor Emeritus

University of Arizona

School of Natural Resources & the Environment and

Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Biological Sciences East 325

Tucson, Arizona 85721

email: grm@ag.arizona.edu

The Viva Palestina convoy of almost 150 vehicles, 370 people from 30 different countries and $5 million of aid has entered Gaza.

Amidst scenes of jubilation from thousands of Palestinians there to greet the convoy, Kevin Ovenden, the convoy director, expressed his joy at being in Gaza once again. “We have driven more than 3,000 miles to bring this essential aid and to break this illegal siege of Gaza. We have been joined by supporters from Morocco and Algeria and from the Gulf States and Jordan, to make this the biggest convoy ever to break the siege of Gaza. We are absolutely overjoyed to be here and to bring with us the soil from the graves of those who were massacred on the Mavi Marmara which will be used to plant trees as a memorial to their sacrifice.”

By Viva Palestina

Britain will cut 490,000 public sector jobs over four years under austerity measures designed to reduce the country’s record deficit.

George Osborne, the finance minister, told parliament on Wednesday that the job losses were “unavoidable when the country has run out of money”.

“Today is the day that Britain steps back from the brink. It is a hard road but it leads to a better future,” he said.

He said he had ordered $130bn in spending cuts by 2015, aiming to reduce Britain’s deficit of 11 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to around two per cent within five years.

The measures will also hit the welfare state, cutting child benefits and pushing the state pension to 66 by 2020.

The cuts come as figures reveal British public sector spending in September reached $25.5bn – a record high level for the month.

Analysts had initially forecast a slight rise from September 2009’s public net borrowing of $24.4bn.

Protests

Small protests against the cuts are already taking place with larger marches and rallies scheduled to take place in London, the capital, later on Wednesday.

Nazanine Moshiri, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in London, said demonstrations so far were not matching the scale of anti-austerity protests seen previously in Europe.

“We’re not seeing anything like the kind of protests we’ve seen in the streets of Paris in the last few days.

“People here are looking at this as a way of blaming the previous government of the Labour party for what has happened, rather than blaming the current coalition government.”

But she added the move was a “big gamble” for the Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance.

“If the economy doesn’t start to grow, who knows what could happen here,” she said.

‘Double-dip’ risk

Ruth Lea, a British economist, told Al Jazeera that Wednesday’s cuts were needed to reduce the deficit.

“If we don’t cut now the generations to come will have to pay for all this,” she said.

Lea added that the prospect of a “double-dip” recession was unlikely, saying: “Even though we talk about these enormous cuts they only mean one per cent year-on-year,” she said.

The International Monetary Fund has strongly backed plans for an aggressive reduction of Britain’s record high public deficit, describing spending cuts as an “essential” weapon.

But some economists have warned that the measures will tip Britain back into recession.

Mervyn King, the central bank governor, painted a gloomy picture late on Tuesday, saying it would be a long while before Britain could recover from the 10 per cent drop in output seen in the last recession.

The opposition Labour Party, which the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government blames for running up Britain’s massive debt when it was in power, has agreed there is a need for fiscal discipline.

But it says that the coalition are cutting too much too soon.

Alan Johnson, Labour’s spokesman on economic issues, accused Osborne of “economic masochism”, warning that his cuts would leave Britain trapped in a cycle of low growth and high unemployment for years.

Wednesday’s measures will see spending cut across government departments, including the Foreign Office, which will lose 24 per cent from its budget, the police force, and the interior and justice departments.

The BBC is also being affected by the measures, with the government cutting funding to the World Service.

The plans are also extending to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, with royal household spending falling by 14 per cent in 2012 to 2013.

However the National Health Service, schools and overseas aid have been protected under the spending review.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research think tank has said it believes the government will only be able to push through half the planned cuts.

By Aljazeera

20 October, 2010

Aljazeera

The corporate mass media (especially television) did not treat the Chilean mine collapse as a labor story but rather as a feel-good human interest story. It not only avoided asking hard questions about why the near-disaster occurred and why the mine workers could be treated like guinea pigs by their employers, it actively obscured these questions. I saw a psychobabbling guest of Tony Harris on CNN actually talking about how the Chilean government is the father figure for the miners and their supporters and people are turning to it for succor and inspiration. I threw up a little in my mouth.

So here are the questions that a social historian would ask about the sorry episode, and which I never heard anyone on television news ask during all the wall to wall coverage:

1. What were the miners mining? (A.: Gold and copper).

2. Did the high price of gold and the fact that the mining company was close to bankruptcy cause the company executives to cut corners?

3. Are the mine owners guilty of criminal negligence?

4. Why did the San Estaban mining company reopen the mine so quickly after an earlier tunnel collapse severed the leg of a mine worker?

5. Why is there no accountability for the mine owners?

6. Is George W. Bush-style deregulation of the mining industry by the Chilean government part of the problem here?

7. What is the influence of big gold and copper corporations over US policy?

8. Are copper and gold mine owners stronger in relation to workers and have they escaped government regulation because the US engineered a coup in 1973 to destroy the Chilean Left?

9. Was the San Estaban mining company’s ability to marginalize the union and to disregard input from the workers rooted in American-imposed corporate privilege?

10. In other words, was the trapping of these workers in the first place Richard Nixon’s and Henry Kissinger’s fault?

By Juan Cole

14 October, 2010

JuanCole.com

The government has approved the proposal for an amendment to the Citizenship Law, according to which anyone requesting Israeli citizenship will have to declare loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state. This amendment is perceived by many to be an unnecessary provocation against the country’s Arab population, even though it is ostensibly directed towards neither Arab citizens nor Jewish citizens, but towards those seeking citizenship, including Arab spouses requesting citizenship for the sake of family unification.

Columnist Nahum Barnea described it in sharp words: “The proposed law doesn’t just seem racist; it is racist. It compels non-Jews to declare they will be loyal to the Jewish state, but does not demand the same of Jews. Jews are exempt, because the Haredi rabbis are not willing to declare their loyalty, not to the Jewish state and certainly not to the democratic state. The results are harsh. It’s still not the racist Nuremberg laws, but it smells the same” (Yedioth Aharonoth Supplement, October 8, 2010).

In the Declaration of Independence and the Basic Laws (which serve Israel as a kind of constitution) Israel was declared a Jewish state long ago. The state’s symbols, the Star of David and the Menorah, leave no room for doubt. Thus too the other laws such as the Law of Return, and various temporary provisions and standing orders, which give preference to Jews above non-Jews. What, then, led the justice minister to propose the amendment now, an amendment which will affect just a few thousand people each year, most of whom are not Arabs and do not question the state’s Jewish character?

In fact, behind this amendment there is a hidden message regarding a debate sparked some five years ago between representatives of the Arab population and the state. The conflict began when former Knesset member Azmi Bishara set up a party under the slogan “A state for all its citizens”, which opened the way for Arab parties and institutions to challenge the state and expose the structural contradiction in its self-definition as “Jewish and democratic.” This philosophical clash between the Arab minority and the state served to oil the wheels of Avigdor Lieberman, today Israel’s foreign minister, whose party won 15 seats in the last general elections with its slogan “No citizenship without loyalty.”

In 2006, the Arab Monitoring Committee and the Committee of the Heads of the Local Arab Councils published a document entitled “The Future Vision of Palestinian Arabs in Israel.” According to this document, “The definition of the state as a Jewish state, and the use made of democracy to serve its Jewishness, excludes us from its ranks and places us in opposition to the nature and essence of the state in which we live.”

The “Vision” document raises the question of whether Israeli democracy can really include the Arab minority and treat it with full equality. The document is a response to the alienation that Israel’s Arab citizens have felt for over 60 years. It is not the definition of Israel as a Jewish state which led the Arab leadership to challenge the state, but the institutionalized discrimination which the Arab population suffers. Democracy cannot exist in a state of institutionalized discrimination. The real issue is not about changing the national anthem or the flag, but the fate of tens of thousands of young Arabs who see their future expropriated by the state.

The violence spreading in the Arab towns and villages, the daylight murders in Nazareth and Lod, these things express the collapse of the Arab education system, the rising unemployment, the poverty, and the powerlessness of Arab local authorities who are unable to supply even basic services.

Lieberman isn’t really interested in ascertaining the loyalty of those seeking citizenship. He wants to question the loyalty of the entire Arab population. The amendment to the law is just a beginning. Last month in the UN General Assembly he already presented his vision for the state, according to which the land populated by Arabs should be transferred from Israel to the Palestinian Authority in exchange for West Bank settlements.

If Netanyahu and his government continue to provoke the Arab population they will turn the state into an Apartheid state, which will pull the rug from under the claim that Israel is both Jewish and democratic. The demand to define Israel as “a state of all its citizens” stems from the fact that in defining itself as “Jewish and democratic” Israel has failed to apply the second part of the equation. The “Jewishness” comes at the expense of democracy. Now, instead of taking the Arab demand for equality seriously, the government provokes again – not only will you not get a state of all its citizens, we intend to continue to exclude you and to discriminate against you in all areas of your life.

One could expect, perhaps, that a state recently accepted into the OECD, a state trying hard to integrate into the global economy, which presents itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” would change its attitude towards its Arab population. Reports from the Bank of Israel and various authorities, and the conclusions of the Orr Commission which investigated the events of October 2000, create the illusion that the state is in fact trying to address the problems of education, employment, health and other issues which the policy of discrimination has produced. However, between recognizing injustice and doing something to remedy it, there stands a rightwing government trumpeting a nationalist and racist ideology. The efforts of the present government to exacerbate the conflict also result in skepticism, self-seclusion and extreme nationalism among Arab citizens.

The clashes surrounding the character of the state have another aspect which has not been given sufficient attention. In fact, Israeli society is deeply divided today – not just between Jews and Arabs, but between Jews and Jews. The state advances discriminatory policies against all workers, whether Jewish or Arab: labor-contractor employees, college teachers, artists, truckers, industrial workers, and migrant laborers with their children. Their rights to a secure place of work with social benefits are withheld. “Jewish” Israel in fact serves just a rich minority, a handful of families who received property and assets from the state, and use them for their own benefit without social obligation or public responsibility. Thus, Lieberman’s position as the watchman of Jewish Israel sits happily with the fact that he is up to his ears in investigations on suspicion of corruption. And he is not alone – many politicians do likewise, on the one hand competing for the honor of most rightwing, on the other hand feathering their nests by groveling to the tycoons.

There is certainly a reason to discuss the character of the state. However, the vision that must be debated concerns the future of all the workers, Jews, Arabs and others. The only truly democratic state will be one whose resources are equally and justly distributed. Such a state will no longer need the definition “Jewish,” which perpetuates a false solidarity among Israel’s Jews and institutionalized discrimination against its Arab citizens.

Translated by Yonatan Preminger

By Yacov Ben Efrat

12 October, 2010

Challenge-mag.com