Exempting Israel From Criticism
On Oct. 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the U.S. Department of State to monitor anti-Semitism worldwide.
To monitor anti-Semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House. As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.
It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.
It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee-written resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza that were endorsed by 100 percent of the U.S. Senate and 99 percent of the House of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel for its barbarity.
It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.
It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews in the media, finance, and foreign policy.
In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned.
Given the hubris of the U.S. government, which leads Washington to apply U.S. law to every country and organization, what will happen to the International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the various human rights organizations that have demanded investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population? Will they all be arrested for the hate crime of "excessive" criticism of Israel?
This is a serious question.
A recent U.N. report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within U.N. premises in Gaza. The Israeli government has responded by charging that the U.N. report is "tendentious, patently biased," which puts the U.N. report into the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel sentiment.
Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis. These acts are clearly war crimes.
It was the Israeli press that published pictures of Israeli soldiers wearing T-shirts that indicate the willful murder of women and children is now the culture of the Israeli army. The T-shirts are horrific expressions of barbarity. For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, "One shot, two kills." These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is one of extermination.
It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli peace groups. For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of the organization Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the Western democracies, where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even praised.
Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper? Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for "spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-Semitic act"?
Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel. These Americans will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror. They will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts about Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding and abetting terrorists.
A massive push is under way to criminalize criticism of Israel. American university professors have fallen victim to the well-organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Roman Catholic university because of the power of the Israel lobby. Now the Israel lobby is after University of California professor William Robinson, reports Doug Henwood. Robinson's crime? His course on global affairs included some reading assignments critical of Israel's invasion of Gaza.
The Israel lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice Department that it is anti-Semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying. The Israel lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges. Yet, Larry Franklin, the Department of Defense official accused of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and seven months in prison.
The absurdity is extraordinary. The two Israeli agents are not guilty of receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to them! If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving secrets to a spy?
Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American, rather than Israeli, interests. It eliminates any prospect of Americans escaping from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.
To keep American minds captive, the lobby is working to ban as anti-Semitic any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel. It is permissible to criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel, and anti-Semitism will soon be a universal hate crime in the Western world.
Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust. It is a crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6 million Jews were murdered.
With all that we have heard about the Holocaust, surely the facts must be there. Why does the Israel lobby consider the case for the Holocaust to be so weak that it is impermissible to study the facts and to reach an independent conclusion?
Why is the Holocaust a subject that is off limits to examination? How could a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and anti-Semites? Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by thought control.
Imprisoning people for doubts is the antithesis of modernity.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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Arnaud de Lassus in a 1991 article published in Apropos cited an account where a rabbi told a Christian that to teach and believe that Jesus Christ is divine is anti-semitism. That pretty much puts a Christian up against the wall, doesn't it? What with the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 in the hands of Jews in high places it may mean a day of reckoning for true Christians. It also points to the essence of the Zionist, ADL, ACLU, and SPLC agenda, which is nothing more than the eradication of Christianity. As for questioning the holocaust, just ask Bishop Richard Williamson what that means. Why is it that Christians tolerate these lies, mince their words, and step gingerly whenever they are required to express their faith in Jesus Christ or criticize Israel for its theft of Palestine and its brutal subjugation of Palestinians?
Every Good Friday, I cringe in church during the post-V II, politically-correct farce aka the prayer for the Jews. It is based upon an utterly fantastic (as in fantasy) premise, so as not to offend, and essentially asks for continuation of the status quo for Jews all over the world. Some critics have called the prayer scandalous and heretical. I call it jejune. In any case, as worded, it does the Jews no favor at all. I silently recite the prayer from the old rite on their behalf.
@2, Mark: the old-rite prayer for the Jews is recited in all SSPX chapels on Good Friday. Maybe, there are other non-SSPX parishes where this happens, too, but I do not know.
What I find astonishing in regard to the subject of Mr. Robert's article, is the toe-dancing performed by the Holy See in regard to remarks made by a German archbishop, Zollwitsch (spel?), who publicly denied the expiatory sacrifice of Christ a little over three weeks ago, and the frenetic papal stomp in regard to the remarks made by Bishop Williamson apropos the holocaust. Within days of Bishop Williamson's statement, he was chastised by the Pope. However, as of this moment, the Pope has not called Zollwitsch on the carpet. I am sure the Jews are pleased and Catholics confused.
@3: Duly noted (and known).
Meng, my personal situation is this: As a church musician (singer/organist), I am for many years employed by an N.O. parish (albeit "conservative," as it is run by Dominicans). Thus, the post-conciliar Church signs the checks that make up a significant portion of my living. However, by virtue of my age, liturgical rearing and sensibilities, I am in league with SSPX et al. similar, although NOT with the sedevacantists. Call me a fence-straddler, if you will. I would not hold it against you.
My fundamental position is this: Our Lord promised that He would be with us always, and that the Holy Spirit would be in charge of Holy Mother Church. He also decreed that what His vicars would bind on Earth would be bound in Heaven, etc.
To me, it all means that, whatever mess His vicars make, He is still with us, as He promised, and His Holy Spirit the guiding force. How all this makes sense now is beyond me. How it works out in the end remains to be seen.
At this point, we are beyond reason and totally dependent upon Faith and Hope. Not to mention Charity, which the sedevacantists seem to have evicted, along with the recent occupants of Chair of Peter.
Alas, we have strayed considerably from Dr. Roberts's topic. So let's get back to praying for the Jews.
I am with you, Mark.
Gentlemen: Mr. Meng @ 3 and Mr. Higdon @ 5
I am a sand-hill Southern Baptist from North Louisiana. Would one of you please explain SSPX to me. Hopefully it is not so obvious such that I have made a fool of myself as I did when I came home to Louisiana from Germany in 1985. My father had a huge yellow cat named T.C. After a couple of days at home, having had all the wonderful Southern meals which I had missed in Germany cooked for me, I got around to asking my father what T.C. stood for. His response was, "My God, son, you have earned a Ph.D. and cannot figure out what T.C. means when applied to a large, scratched up cat with testicles???"
By the way, Mr. Higdon @ 5, I agree as well with the content of your post.
You shall call NO man 'father', but your Father in heaven only.
You people can't read English apart from the Greek?
Re Robert M. Peters' inquiry at #7: "SSPX" is "Society of Saint Pius X", the traditionalist Catholic religious society founded by France's Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970. The SSPX priests say only the Latin Mass.
Mr. Stove @ 9
Thank you. I know of Archbishop Lefebvre; however, I was ignorant of the Society of Saint Pius X.
There is not such thing as anti-semitism unless you hate both jews and Arabs, since they are both semites. But I have Arabic friends who are Orthodox Christian as well as some Maronite Catholic acquaintances.
Most Jews, particularly the most annoying political kind, are Khazars with Mongol ancestry. They lived as Germans in Russia, and Russians in Brooklyn. They belong nowhere but in Israel. However, they will not do Americans the courtesy of living in the country that the Anglos carved out for them unless they are on the lam for committing crimes. But they continue kvetching about their "plight" on film, television, college lecture halls, and on the pages of dying newspapers.
The good news is that Obama's administration is trying to get them to come clean about their atomic weapons. But we'll never know for sure until they start landing on the Iranians. After that, our lives will become a living Hell due to our overweening tolerance.
So what else is new?
It seems to me the question is: what's to be done about it?
@13
Tell the Obama voters that they taste like pork ribs.
@14, Mr. Gervaise: I guess you haven't heard of Reformed Jews, they eat pork, which means we're back to square one.
@8
You ought to know we Catholics reject Sola scriptura.
@ 2 and 3
I find the 2008 prayer for the Jews better than the 1970 version. At least the current one prays for the Jews to accept Christ.
@17
If the 1970 prayer was so lame and vacuous as to occasion creation of the 2008 prayer, then the former should have been officially retired. Actually, its retirement should have been accompanied with the restoration of the pre V II prayer. There was no need for yet a third prayer.
Instead, we now have a "menu" of three prayers that say three different things, the oldest of which is, arguably, officially proscribed. How typical of modern Church "leadership": to "solve" confusion and error by sowing even more confusion. Like "restoring" the 1962 Mass (it was never lawfully banned), and then claiming that it and the Novus Ordo are the same rite, similar to opposite sides of the same coin.
Is it that hard to tell heads from tails, or is there an agenda behind such choplogic? All I know is, when there's a coin toss, only one side wins.
Again, we have veered from Dr. Roberts's topic.
@18
I think the Holy Father knows that any messing with the Ordinary Form would be met with an uproar. Look at some parishes reacted to new, more accurate translations within the Mass.
@8 & @16 Catholics not only reject Sola Scriptura, they reject private interpretation. Furthermore, "Father", being an English term is found nowhere in the Latin Vulgate nor in the Greek anything. As the Italians say all translation is traitorous; and a one-to-one translation from either of those or any other languages into English is an invitation to error. Or, as the Southern female minister said recently, while holding up her King James Bible, "If English was good enough for Jesus, it was good enough for her".
Lee, your little slur at Southern Methodists is maliciously ignorant, false, vulgar, entirely irrelevant to the subject here, and entirely discordant to this site.
#20. Let's see. This is a piece by Roberts about the Israeli Lobby and "hate crime" legislation. How do we get to some ignoramus coining a slur about Southern Methodists? Would it be relevant to bring up the number of child molesters among Catholic clergy? A lack of intelligence and worse a lack of basic Christian character is exposed here in the least likely place-- among the gnetlemen and ladies of the Chronicles fellowship. I have heard that very slur about Protestant clergy repeated quite a few times before---always by leftists atheists. No Methodist clergy would be that ignorant, whatever else may be said about them. And why "Southern" Methodist. Slandering Southerners as well as Protestants. In fact, there are no Southern Methodists anymore, they having been absorbed in the evil 1970s into the evil Yankee United Methodist Church. The now defunct Southern Methodist Church was an admirable institution---which is why the federal government tried (unsuccessfully) to destroy it during Reconstruction.
Dr. Wilson,
In in Louisiana, in the Trans-Mississippi, there are still Southern Methodist congregations, although their number is few. Yet, as local congregations, they are thriving. There is one just down the road from me - Davis Springs Southern Methodist Church. Just north of Martin, Louisiana, about ten miles from the Davis Springs, is Holley Springs Methodist Church (also Southern Methodist). Joe Adcock is buried there. I am told that there is still one "union church" in Louisiana, up near Farmerville, Louisiana. During her childhood, my mother attended a union church: one Sunday a Methodist minister preached and one Sunday a Baptist minister preached - to the same congregation.
To come, in part, back to Mr. Roberts' topic, Southern Methodists, at least the ones with whom I fellowship, unlike most of my Baptist brethren, have not run afoul of dispensationalism and the "rapture," with the attendant pro-Israel mantra of the Rev. Hagee and others.
@ #18
Mr. Higdon, can you transcribe the three prayers here? I do not know what you refer to and would be interesting toi read?
@21 Mr. Clyde Wilson,
You do me a a grave injustice. The qoute I gave is not false; I actually heard her say it directly on the radio in the last 6 months. I only ascribed it to this one lady, not to Christians in general, the vast majority of whom, I'm sure, know that Christ spoke mainly Aramaic. And I never mentioned Southern Methodists; I wouldn't know a Southern Methodist from an Eastern, Northern, or a Western or any other kind of Methodist; and in fact I wouldn't know a Methodist (person or belief) from a Mormon. I also have no animus against Southerners.
Dr. Wilson, the 'Catholic gang' here (myself included) veered off topic; I certainly hold no ill-will toward Protestants. Much of my family were Covenanters who were often allied with Catholics due to their shared persecution.
I would like to make myself clear apropos #26, regardless of the consequences. I didn't veer off topic, if anything, some of my remarks may have been tangential to the topic. Yes, I hold no ill-will toward Protestants, and that includes Mr. Wilson, but I do confess to animosity toward protestantism, because it has disrupted the Christian order set down by the Catholic Church since its commission to convert the world by our Lord Jesus Christ. I will not conform myself to Mr. Wilson's protestant tyranny, as if there is no Christian truth and freedom.
@15 J
My attempt at a little humor fell flat. I meant the other Obama voters. The ones thaty make up 13% of the electorate rather the 1% crowd.
It seems rather strange that in a discussion of Zionist tyranny, we have fallen into fighting the reformation all over again. While I would be interested in a continued discussion of the SSPX, the prayer for the Jews, and other issues raised here, I dont see how keeping the discussion on topic is somehow 'protestant tyranny'. We are about to enter a new era of censorship and oppression, one in which things that I and many of the rest of the posters here have said in these blogs could land us in prison, and this is the best we can do?
As the poster who first brought up "the prayer for the Jews," I point out here that the flaccid 1970 version thereof is a perfect example of the earthly "leaders" of Holy Mother Church cowering before the Zionist tyranny--which is Dr. Roberts's topic. Perhaps I should have articulated a clearer case for the relevancy of my #2 post.
@29
Mr. Wilson,
Perhaps staying on topic would have involved someone questioning whether the tyranny that the article articulates could have developed without the endorsement of protestantism in America?
#32. I don't believe that Catholics are any less guilty of the degradation of the U.S. than are Protestants. On balance, it is the other way around, although neither have anything to brag about.
@31:
I dont think it is protestantism in general, rather it is mainly certain evangelicals and in particular the televangelists. On the other hand, the Catholic church has shown considerable weakness in this regard.
Mr. Roberts is right as usual. The larger issue is the attack on the Freedom of Speech. The Israeli lobby in the USA in unison with the politically correct of the LEFT have created speech and thought boundaries that you cross at your own peril. One only has to observe the savaging of Miss California for saying she is against gay marriage as is the majority of citizens in her state. The fury of the Left descended upon her and continues for crossing the politically correct boundary. Our Bill of Rights are under the most severe assault since the tragedy of 1861. If cap and trade is enacted, businesses will be taxed for emitting CO2 even though the science is far from certain about the causes of global warming. Our electricity sources from oil, gas and coal will disappear to be replaced by environmentally benign but inefficient sources of energy. The bigger threat is the power of the government to approve business formation based upon its carbon footprint. This in effect will give government the power to decide whether a business can even form or operate given its potential to 'pollute' the environment. If you can say what is on your mind and business is totally regulated by the government, then the USA has crossed the line into the zone of tyranny. We are fighting against totalitarian fascists whether the variety are the anti-gentiles, feminists, sexual perverts, environmentalists or militant atheists. We had better wake up to the reality....sooner rather than later.
@32
Prof. Wilson,
That may well be true, but one might argue that is the case only because American Catholics are really practicing Protestants.
Incidentally, I am playing "devil's advocate" and the preceding should not be construed as an attack on protestantism. As I have stated in other threads on this forum, I am quite fond of both American Catholic and Protestant traditionalists. The American Bernard Iddings Bell being my favorite example of the latter.
#34 - The "savaging of Miss California" by the "fury of the Left"? You're kidding, right? She couldn't have gotten any more out of this contrived controversy if she planned it. And somebody may well have planned it - Donald Trump would be my first suspect. If this dust-up shows anything, it is how stupid and easily manipulated are the majority of supposed rightists. Probably that needed no further proof after all the swooning over Sarah Palin, another beauty contestant. But what is one to expect from voters whose main source of news and commentary is Fox, with its stable of blonde bimbo political and legal commentators?
@34
Anti-gentiles? Is that the new code word for Jews, to go along with Zionists, Israelis, the Lobby etc?
Why not just use the word Jews? After all, it might be the last chance you get if the hate speech legislation passes.
Why all the BS about Southern Methodists, etc? The article was about hate crimes legislation and the silencing of criticism of Israel and the near completion of cultural Marxism totally being implemented in the West.