************************************************
* T H E H O F F M A N W I R E
*
* Oct.13, 2000
*
* Independent History and Research
* Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83816 USA
*
* Website:
*
* http://www.hoffman-info.com
**************************************************
This e-mail is for those who have requested it.
We have a strict anti-spamming policy.
Subscribe/Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
**************************************************
Tracking The Dragon of the Double-Standard
by Michael A. Hoffman II
The dragon of the double-standard that haunts our dreams in the media
monopoly has scorched the commonweal yet again. This past week, the Middle
East reports of my old employer, the Associated Press, inspired newspaper
headlines across the U.S. which read, "Barak calls on Arafat to Stop the
Violence."
The operant word in that headline is violence. It is an inaccurate word to
use in describing a revolt by colonists against an occupier. An impartial
headline would have read, "Barak Calls on Arafat to Stop the Protests."
After more than 50 years of "Holocaust" propaganda one would think the press
might be a tad bit sensitized to the lexicon of nationalist chauvinism, war
crime and atrocity and occasionally apply that lexicon to something other
than Nazis-and-Jews.
But when it comes to reporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine, so
hardened is the Jewish jingoism that Deborah Sontag, the NY Times' Middle
East correspondent, wrote in yesterday's Times that there has been a
"disproportionate" number of children shot to death by the Israelis. What,
pray tell, what would be a proportionate number, Miz Sontag, and who would
dare wield such proportionality with regard to the deaths of Jewish children
anywhere in any era?
When Palestinians attempted to retaliate for the deaths of those children,
Clinton, Gore, Lieberman and George W. Shrub all called on Arafat to "stop
the violence." But when two heavily armed Israeli soldiers were killed by an
Arab crowd and Jewish leaders sought vengeance with helicopter gunship and
missile attacks, the Jewish violence became, in a wave of the magic media
wand, not violence, but "retaliation."
In the same vein, the attack on the US Navy ship in Yemen is described as a
terrorist act. How so? Military targets are legitimate ones in wartime and
the Zionists and Uncle Sam(uel) have been at war with Arabs and Muslims
since 1948. Our forthcoming "retaliation" will not constitute violence
however, but "America standing tall" and "showing our resolve."
When the Serbs publish Wanted posters for war criminals like Albright,
Clinton and Cohen, it's dubbed a "propaganda exercise" by the media. But
when US mercenaries (oops, I mean "peace-keepers") hunt down Serb "war
criminals" it's the pinnacle of humanitarian action. The Nuremberg war
crimes trials of Nazis were a lofty example of jurisprudence, but the
Palestinian call for war crimes trials for Israelis would amount to the
convening of a "kangaroo court."
The media fatcats in America are enveloped in a cocoon of sacrosanct awe as
"guardians of the people's right to know" and are invulnerable to sanction
or attack. Yet in most cases this behemoth condoned and indeed applauded the
NATO bombing of a Serbian TV news station last year and the recent Israeli
bombing of a Palestinian radio station.
And so it goes. Anne Frank's solitary death from typhus is mourned in
museums throughout the world. My own state of Idaho is building an
ostentatious "human rights" palace in her name in Boise, but you can bet
your last shekel there will be no photos of the bullet-riddled cadavers of
Palestinian kids. After all, it's not the Israelis' fault that Palestinians
put children "in harm's way" (never mind that all of occupied Palestine is a
danger zone for Palestinian children). When Palestinian children are killed,
it's their parent's fault. Anne Frank's death however, was the Germans'
fault.
How does one account for this Wonderland logic, this immunity from
responsibility? At bottom it comes down to the myth, assiduously promoted in
everything from the Indiana Jones movies to the Tom Brokaw books and the
pulpits of most churches, that so-called "Jews" are Holy People whose blood
is redder and upon whom a presumably racist god smiles from the precincts of
some celestial ghetto.
Hence, the Zionists and their American lodge-brothers may "humanely" and
"with precision" bomb and rocket Arab civilians, to avenge the deaths of
American and Jewish sailors and soldiers. Palestinians however, as mere sand
fleas and camel-riding towelheads, do not have any corresponding right to
fight for their land or avenge themselves on their oppressors.
The only memory worth polling high school students about concerns whether or
not they're aware of what happened to you-know-who in World War Two.
Reporting on Palestine presupposes a loss of memory regarding the Israeli
holocaust against Arab civilians. From Ariel "the Butcher of Beirut"
Sharon's attacks on schools, apartment blocks and hospitals in Lebanon in
1982, to the Israeli massacre of women and children at Qana in 1996, to the
routine executions of Arab children and their mothers for the capital crime
of protesting the Israeli occupation; all this is down the memory hole.
The media want us to believe that all would be fine if the Palestinians
would only peacefully coexist with the Israelis, under an apartheid regime
that has stolen their land, reduced them to penury and summarily killed and
expelled them at will. Two million native-born Palestinians are denied
re-admission to the land of their birth, which is just fine with the Zionist
human rights partisans who protest when "racist" European nations balk at
taking any more immigrants from foreign lands. The Jewish racism that
refuses immigration rights to Palestinian natives is simply not an issue.
When Israelis shoot Palestinian civilians the media paint the murders in
terms of shades of moral gray and hues of existential ambiguity- "it was a
mistake," the "troops couldn't see well through the slits in their bunker,"
the "chldren are a cover for Palestinian snipers." The message is that the
Jewish people simply can't commit war crimes and atrocities like other
people. Israelis are decent even when they must engage in the unpleasant
task of child murder.
But watch the obsession with what the Palestinian crowd did to the two
Israeli soldiers who invaded the funeral of yet another Arab civilian.
Adjectives like "brutal" and "depraved" will be bandied about. The details
of the deaths will be examined to a minute degree almost never accorded
Palestinian victims.
The point the media are making is that the Arab people are basically twisted
and tainted people--as we are told all opponents of Jews have been
throughout time--who gang up on the poor, persecuted Israeli army.
In the face of this cant, it would be interesting to pay a call on the
seismic fault that is the American public school, where Hillary and her
legions of do-gooders are attempting to avoid another Columbine by
instilling in millions of American kids the important lesson that "violence
is not an acceptable way to solve a problem."
Unless of course the problem is 900 million Muslims, in which case the
rockets and missiles must fly, in tandem with the dragon of the
double-standard, whose job it is to ensure that "Holocaust" parallels are
never drawn with regard to the atrocities of the Holy People and their
partners in war crime in the good ol' USA.
Michael A. Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the
Associated Press. His latest book is "Judaism's Strange Gods." He is
currently on the campaign trail dogging Sen. Joseph Lieberman.
Copyright 2000 by hoffman-info.com
This article is online at
http://www.hoffman-info.com/news.html
Judaism's Strange Gods. Softcover, 144 pages.
http://www.hoffman-info.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?item=83
$11.95 postpaid. (foreign send US$16).
Lieberman's Strange Gods: Professionally recorded, two camera video. 57 min.
http://www.hoffman-info.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?item=88
The opening salvo in Hoffman's nationwide "Lieberman Awareness Campaign.
$19.95 plus $3 shipping (foreign send US$26 for this NTSC video).
The Religion of Judaism: Parts 1-3.
http://www.hoffman-info.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?item=87
Three audio-cassettes (includes soundtrack from the above video) in an
attractive album with liner notes and color photo of Hoffman on the cover.
$19.95 plus $3 shipping (foreign send US$26 for this NTSC VHS video).
Israeli atrocities:
http://www.hoffman-info.com/palestine.html
Israeli Army Shoots at Ambulances and Medical Workers:
http://www.hoffman-info.com/palestine28.html
---------------------------------------------------
