STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Get a low APR NextCard Visa in 30 seconds! 1. Fill in the brief application 2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds 3. Get rates as low as 2.99% Intro or 9.99% Ongoing APR and no annual fee! Apply NOW! http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/NextCard ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]Title: Meeting of the Minds-- Cal Thomas and Joseph Goebbels -- by Raja Swamy STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
1. Fill in the brief application
2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds
3. Get rates as low as 2.99% Intro or 9.99% Ongoing APR and no annual fee!
Apply NOW!
http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/NextCard
Meeting of minds: Cal Thomas and Joseph Goebbels
Raja Swamy*
To be amazed is no longer an amazing thing in itself. Living in the
year 2001 amazement
abounds everywhere. This morning as I drive to work, I hear the meticulous
details of how
a specific chemical combination was mixed at 7:01 A.M., applied soon
after and a certain
individual was meticulously dispatched to the hereafter by the execution
machinery of the
state. Following a cold report of the process, we hear numerous reporters
ask such difficult
questions as "Did everything go according to procedure?" Compare that
with questions
reporters ask when another third world country is bombed to smithereens:
"Did the F16's
do their job according to procedure?" One reporter even queried with
an eagerness to know
the truth, "how many IV's did you use?" Amazement! An overdose of it
no doubt in these
days of never ending affronts to human dignity.
The defeat of Nazism and the end of old-fashioned colonialism served
to create illusions
of an impending utopia of co-operation and mutual respect in the world.
However the
end of German fascism does not appear to have resulted in ending fascism
as an idea or
even as a practice. One of the greatest travesties of our times is
the role Europe and the
United States have played in encouraging and building up racist Israel.
>From 1948 until
the present, the west has consistently ignored the rights of indigenous
Palestinian people
whose land has been continuously been stolen by Israel, and offered
up to settlers living
in comfortable places like New York. Year after year, more and more
indignation heaped
upon the victims, and their children.
All the west can offer is demands for Palestinian children to grow up
learning to be
obedient slaves in a prison called occupation. This, the people of
Palestine, inspite of
their leaders, have thankfully thrown into the dustbin; the Intifada
is a human struggle for
justice, and truth is on the side of Palestine, no matter how glossy
the lie can be made to
appear by the rich overfed racists of the world.
Thousands upon thousands of Palestinians grow up, live in and die in
squalid refugee
camps, some of these camps are adjacent to new 'settlements,' where
European Jews
enjoy watering their lawns, or sunbathing, or walking their dogs, while
Palestinian children
have no good water to wash in, drink, no parks to play in, no facilities
to even have a half-way
decent education. No, this historic ritual of systematic dispossession,
and institutionalized
oppression continues even as Israel is feted in the world as a supposedly
'democratic' state,
its leaders are treated like statesmen, even if their hands are dripping
blood.
The moral legitimacy claimed by the west is hollow and insulting. Just
as the inquisition
saw priests praying for the souls of those whose fingers they chopped,
whose necks they
broke, whose eyes they gouged out, so too, the U.S. has this amazing
ability to dispatch
a 'peace-maker,' and simultaneously the head of the CIA, in order to
'make peace.' They
want Arafat to accept his given role as 'chief of prison security,'
while even a timid
suggestion that he is a 'president,' seems to insult the living daylights
out of the Israeli
leadership and the Americans.
Recently, it appears that the Palestinian Intifada has evoked some extremely
strong feelings
among many defenders of Israel. Suggestions that Israel use all its
military might to crush
the unarmed and outmatched Palestinian population with force of arms
are so common,
they are even presented in the news as normal, and typical. Interestingly
enough, not one
reporter, or editor, has made much of any of these often sickening
calls for more violence
against Palestinians. Outright calls for 'liquidating terrorists,'
etc. are usually euphemisms
for extreme violence against Palestinian people in general. Perpetrators
of extreme violence
against Palestinians are treated with extraordinary lenience, while
Palestinians are
routinely shot, bombed, abducted, tortured, beaten, etc. on the mere
pretext that they are
suspected of anything other than being dead!
Jewish people in Europe faced the most horrific episode of racism and
ethnic cleansing
witnessed since slavery. Then how can those claiming to be supporters
of Israel in their right
mind ever advocate Nazi ideas and practices for Palestinians? Reading
a piece written by one
Cal Thomas, I was struck with how much his ideas sounded like straight-up
Nazi propaganda.
I browsed to a website that had some awful writings and speeches by
the despicable Joseph
Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister. To my amazement, I was able
to find several
instances of the same ideas expressed by Cal Thomas. I list a few here.
Cal Thomas, 2001: "It should now be clear that Israel cannot tolerate
a huge Arab population
within its borders, so a political decision must be made.
Joseph Goebbels, 1943: "Our state's security requires that we take whatever
measures
seem necessary to protect the German community from their threat.
That leads to some
difficult decisions, but they are unavoidable if we are to deal with
the threat."
Note the words used by Herr Goebbels, 'security,' 'community,' 'decisions,' 'unavoidable,'
Neither of the above two reveal any democratic pretensions, so we can
go beyond the
overtly disgusting to the internals of this monster:
Security is the watchword of the Israeli state today. Peace they say
can only come with
'security.' But what is this 'security' to a state that has the fourth
strongest military in the
world and is allied to the strongest military power in the solar system?
So we take it to
mean something between irrational paranoia and excessive bad faith.
'Security' was also a
watchword for apartheid South Africa, for Josef Stalin, and Benito
Mussolini. In each
case, the proponent of 'security,' claimed totalitarian powers which
enabled military
non-solutions at the expense of peoples' rights, and succeeded at best
in postponing the
underlying issues, which resurfaced later to overwhelm them. Besides,
those harping
most about securityoften are the ones committing the worst atrocities,
from Duvalier
to Marcos, the Shah of Iran to the Generals of South America. In India,
the right wing
proto-fascist government after coming to power first and foremost pushed
for the
establishment of a National 'Security' Council. For what? To cover
up the things they
would like to do under the guise of 'security.' Thats all. Neither
the farmers of Punjab
nor the weavers of Karnataka state feel more secure. Of course the
next step for these
'security' minded usurpers is to overhaul the country's democratic
constitution, and
that is exactly what they want to do! So much for 'security!'
Community here is defined in purely ethnocentric-racist terms. To Goebbels,
it indicated
Aryan Germans only, no Jews, no Roma (Gypsies) , no Slavs, etc. To
Herr Thomas,
it means Jews only, no Arabs, no Africans, no nobody else!
Decisions: Both know that such lunatic ideas require the legitimacy
of state power;
therefore they talk of it in bureacratese in order to make it sound
binding and feasible
as an idea.
Unavoidable: Otherwise known as Fait accompli, the idea that something
has no
alternatives is an age old one; declare something as inevitable, so
that anybody even
thinking of opposing it could be accused of being so unreasonable and
against the tide!
Both Goebbels and Thomas have the same racialist inclination: they view
the 'other'
as a malignant externality that needs to be removed from the 'self'
group. Goebbels
even quoted Mussolini in declaring that the treatment of the Jews in
Europe is not a matter
of human rights but one of 'hygiene!' Racial nationalism of this sort
cannot lead anywhere
but disaster as has been evident throughout history.
Cal Thomas, 2001: "Most Arabs and Palestinians appear to be nonviolent
but it can be
difficult to tell the difference."
Joseph Goebbels, 1941: "There are no distinctions between Jews. Each
Jew is a sworn
enemy of the German people.... If he does not make his hostility plain,
it is only from
cowardice and slyness, not because he loves us."
Part of being a racist involves diminishing the distinctions of the
'other.' Here, Herr Thomas
notes that although most Arabs and Palestinians "appear" to be nonviolent,
his insight
proves that it is very difficult to differentiate. Here is a self-avowed
racist! To turn the
victim into a mass of untrustworthiness is another way of blocking
all human feelings in the
face of brutalizing the victim. Cold hearted killing is not for everyone,
so myths about the
inhumanity of the 'other,' serves to make genocide and oppression palatable
to the soft
sensibilities of racist Israelis as it did racist Germans fifty years
ago.
Cal Thomas, 2001: "Israel should declare its intention to transfer large
numbers of its
Palestinian residents to Arab nations... Eviction is a better avenue
to stability. Will it
happen? Probably not. Should it? Yes."
Joseph Goebbels, 1942: "The Jewish question will have to be written
up in a plan
on a pan-European scale. There remain more than eleven million Jews
in Europe. In
the first place it is necessary to concentrate them all in the east.
After the war we will be
able eventually to assign them an island, perhaps Madagascar. In any
case, there will
be no peace in Europe as long as the Jews on the Continent are not
totally excluded."
To treat an entire people as an 'object' to be 'transferred,' 'placed,'
'evicted,' 'expelled,'
'assigned,' etc. is the clearest indication that both Cal Thomas and
Goebbels draw
inspiration from the same gutter. Such statements indicate that the
person is beyond
moral reproach since in his mind, he has turned the 'other' into a
'thing,' which he
wishes to manipulate according to his own fantasies. Israel has made
it a consistent
state policy to steal land, homes, and throw out Palestinian residents.
Millions of
Palestinians are reduced to stateless people with no rights and no
protection, by the
official policy of Israel.
Cal Thomas, 2001: "...knowing full well their (Palestinians) reputation
for breaking
agreements and conspiring against their host government."
Joseph Goebbels, 1940: "All Jews by virtue of their birth and their
race are part
of an international conspiracy against National Socialist Germany.
They want its
defeat and annihilation, and do all in their power to bring it about."
What is more dehumanizing than to label an entire people as 'untrustworthy?'
This
goes along with the argument that whatever is done to 'them' is only
because 'they'
are untrustworthy; better to err on the side of caution: if you dont
know who is
trustworthy and who is not, you are better off believing all of them
are untrustworthy,
so justifying any brutality will also gain the sympathy of your racist
audience since
they 'understand' your predicament! Cal Thomas and Herr Goebbels share
this sense
of deep distrust, not because they truly distrust, but because they
know that by
believing such nonsense their ideas of genocide and ethnic cleansing
would be
better served. Racists are hard to reason with simply because they
have damaged
and diminished their own humanity in the process of denying the humanity
of the 'other.'
Oppressors are not very stable mentally since they live on and feed
off of paranoia,
fear, intimidation and cruelty. Cal Thomas is a fascist, and I don't
know what he is doing
writing on your publication. I do know that you as a publication have
shot yourself in
the foot believing that you are helping the cause of Israel's war against
the Palestinian
people by publishing the words of such dangerous raving lunatics.
I have highlighted the similarities between Goebbels and Thomas to prove
to you that
such notions as the 'transfer' of Palestinians are historically bound
to explode in the
faces of those who cheer its actualization. Palestinian people have
been fighting against
dispossession and oppression for a century now; do you think they will
meekly
accept the dictates of a state whose policies are more and more resembling
the
policies of Nazi Germany? Do you think the world will sit quietly?
I don't think so.
Needless to say, Cal Thomas's words are demeaning and insulting also
to the Jewish
people who suffered horribly under Nazi Germany. With audacity, he
rambles on like
Goebbels, about 'transfer,' 'eviction,' etc. without the slightest
indication of respect
for the victims of these same policies. With what face can this man
talk to a survivor
of the Jewish holocaust about evicting Palestinians? It is a terrible
insult to the legacy
of the holocaust that people like this continue to speak for Jews,
advocating Nazism
in the name of the Jewish state! It is a terrible shame that the state
of Israel has yet to
be dragged to the docks of world justice for its inhuman, racist and
thoroughly despicable
thievery and oppression of the Palestinian nation.
Worst of all, it is a screaming shame that someone like Cal Thomas can
even find
sanctuary for his Nazi ideas on the pages of a publication like the
Jewish World Review.
Goebbels' words were those of a racist thug, nevertheless, minister
of propaganda for
Nazi Germany; Cal Thomas's words are those of a racist thug, on the
pages of a supposedly
'democratic' publication. Amazement abounds in these days, when to
be good, means
to be bad, and to 'heal' from terrorism, means to watch a human being
injected with
poison from behind a glass door, when to pursue 'peace' means to prepare
for genocide,
and when the murder of three unarmed Palestinian women by an Israeli
tank commander
firing off his shells, is called 'sporadic violence,' while the stone
of a youth challenging
tyranny in the face, is called 'terroristic violence.' Amazement abounds
in an era when
people like Thomas meet Goebbels, and recognize each in the other.
History will not be
kind to an Israel that draws inspiration and sustenance from such depths
of evil.
Raja Harish Swamy
Middletown, CT.
Raja Swamy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6-11-01
To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
