The Zionisation of America 2

In addition to US state legislatures doing their bit to protect Israel from free speech, Congress has also been getting in on the act:

You will hopefully remember Greenwald's 2017 piece* on the AIPAC-inspired Israel Boycott Act (S. 720), "introduced by Democratic Sen. Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, that would criminalize participation in any international boycott of Israel. After the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a statement vehemently condemning Cardin's bill as an attack on core free speech rights, one which 'would punish individuals for no reason other than their political beliefs,' numerous senators announced that they were re-considering their support." (School contractor in Texas denied work over pro-Israel loyalty oath)

Greenwald updates us here on Cardin's latest move:

"But now... a modified version of the bill is back and pending in the lame-duck session: 'Cardin is making a behind-the-scenes push to slip an anti-boycott law into a last-minute spending bill being finalized during the lame-duck session.' The ACLU has also condemned this latest bill because 'its intent and the intent of the underlying state laws it purports to uphold are contrary to the spirit and letter of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and association.'... While that 'new version clarifies that people cannot face jail time for participating in a boycott,' the ACLU insists that it still leaves the door open for criminal financial penalties' for anyone found to be participating in or even advocating for a boycott of Israel." (ibid)

Watch this space...

[*For the gruesome details, see my 23/7/17 post First They Came for the Palestinians. See also my 10/7/18 post Ziofascist Legislation Creep  in the US.]

The Zionisation of America 1

From 'the world's greatest democracy', aka the 'Home of the brave' and 'Land of the free', further evidence of the rapid advance of that most insidious phenomenon, the Zionisation of America:

"A children's speech pathologist [Bahia Amawi] who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin, Texas, has been told that she can no longer work with the public school district, after she refused to sign an oath vowing that she 'does not' and 'will not' engage in a boycott of Israel or 'otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm' on that foreign nation. A lawsuit on her behalf was filed early Monday morning in a federal court... alleging a violation of her First Amendment right of free speech." (School contractor in Texas denied work over pro-Israel loyalty oath, Glenn Greenwald, theintercept.com, 17/12/18)

"The anti-BDS Israel oath was included in Amawi's contract papers due to an Israel-specific state law enacted on May 2, 2017, by the Texas State Legislature... The bill [authored by an evangelical Republican rep.] unanimously passed the lower House by a vote of 131-0, and then the Senate by a vote of 25-4." (ibid)

 "At the time that Texas enacted the law barring contractors from supporting a boycott of Israel, it was the 17th state in the country to do so. As of now, 26 states have enacted such laws - including blue states run by Democrats such as New York, California, and New Jersey - while similar bills are pending in another 13 states." (ibid)

You won't, of course, have heard about this outrage from any branch of the Australian corporate media.

And don't dare think it can't happen here. Remember how the shit hit the fan when Sydney's Marrickville Council bravely adopted a pro-BDS position in 2011?

I'll leave you with Greenwald's assessment to ponder:

"Put simply, it is impossible to be a credible, effective, genuine advocate of free speech and free discourse without objecting to the organized, orchestrated, sustained onslaught of attacks on the free speech and free association rights undertaken specifically to protect the Israeli government from criticism and activism. Self-professed free speech defenders who only invoke that principle when their political allies are targeted are, by definition, charlatans and frauds. Genuine free speech advocates object to censorship even when, arguably especially when, the free speech rights of their political adversaries are assaulted."

Ziofascist Legislation Creep in the US

On 23/7/17, in my post First They Came for the Palestinians, I drew attention to Glenn Greenwald's ominous essay, US lawmakers seek to criminally outlaw support for boycott campaign against Israel, in which he warned that "the criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West," and went on to analyse the circumstances around the introduction of a bipartisan, AIPAC-drafted, Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720) into the US Senate, noting in particular its foreshadowing of maximum criminal penalties of $1 million and 20 years in prison for Americans supporting the international boycott of Israel.

So where are we now with this piece of Ziofascist legislation creep, almost one year on? Here's an update from theintercept.com's Alex Emmons, New house bill would empower Donald Trump to punish US companies that boycott Israel (29/6/18):

"The House Committee on Foreign Affairs unanimously passed a measure on Thursday that would give the Trump administration power to decide how to punish US companies that engage in or promote boycotts of Israel - including through criminal penalties. The committee passed an amendment... from Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif, that largely replaced the text of... the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. When the original legislation was first introduced last year, it drew outrage from activists, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned that by threatening to impose steep criminal penalties on boycott activists engaged with international bodies' boycotts, the bill was unconstitutional.

"After the uproar, the initial bill... lost momentum. But Royce's effort to move his version out of the Foreign Affairs Committee is part of a push to reinvigorate Capitol Hill's efforts to use statutory means to clamp down on the growing movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction the Jewish state for human rights violations against the Palestinians. Pro-Palestinian activists said Royce's amendment, despite being an attempt to work around civil liberties concerns, could be the most dangerous version of the bill yet, because it delegates the lawmaking power to the Trump administration...

"Royce's amendment rewrites the bill to direct the administration to issue regulations that prohibit US companies from involvement with the BDS movement... The bill covers those companies that attempt to 'comply with, further, or support' UN or EU calls for a boycott of Israel... [It] requires them to be 'consistent with the enforcement practices' of the 1979 Export Administration Act - which allows for a range of civil and criminal penalties stopping out at a maximum of $1 million fine and 20 years in prison...

"According o the ACLU, 24 states have passed laws aimed at punishing the boycott movement, and more than 100 bills have been considered by state and local legislatures across the country."

Land of the free? You're kidding me!

First They Came for the Palestinians...

Political Zionism's global reach, manipulation and corruption of Western, particularly US, institutions goes on:

"The criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West. In France, activists have been arrested and prosecuted for wearing T-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel. The UK has enacted a series of measures designed to outlaw such activism. In the US, governors compete with one another over who can implement the most extreme regulations to bar businesses from participating in any boycotts aimed even at Israeli settlements, which the world regards as illegal. On US campuses, punishment of pro-Palestinian students for expressing criticisms of Israel is so commonplace that the Center for Constitutional Rights refers to it as 'the Palestine exception' to free speech.

"But now, a group of 43 senators - 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats - wants to implement a law that would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, which was launched in protest of that country's decades-old occupation of Palestine. The two primary sponsors of the bill are Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is the punishment: Anyone guilty of violating the prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000, and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison." (US lawmakers seek to criminally outlaw support for boycott campaign against Israel, Glenn Greenwald & Ryan Grim, theintercept.com, 20/7/17)

The entire report is well worth a read and contains such revelations as: "Perhaps the most stunning is our interview with the primary sponsor of the bill, Democratic Sen. Benjamin Cardin, who seemed to have no idea what was in his bill, particularly insisting that it contains no criminal penalties."

Brains Overboard: The Tribal Mentality

"Several of the victims of an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla were shot in the head from above, presumably from a helicopter, according to the forensics report released Monday by a human rights group." (Flotilla victims shot from Israeli chopper, Turkish report shows, hurriyetdailynews.com, 29/6/10)

"All but two of the 9 Turks killed in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship were shot more than once, and 5 died from bullet wounds to the head, according to forensic reports... The 9 volunteers were shot a total of 31 times, according to the documents." (Forensics: Turks shot multiple times on Gaza-bound ship, ynetnews.com, 29/6/10)

"Activists on board a six-ship flotilla carrying aid to the Gaza Strip tried to lynch the the Israel Navy commandos who boarded their Turkish-flagged boat early Monday, Israel Defense Forces sources told Haaretz on Monday afternoon. At least 9 people were killed and several more were wounded in the fighting that erupted aboard one of the ships." (Israel Navy commandos: Gaza flotilla activists tried to lynch us, Amos Harel, Haaretz, 31/5/10)

Israeli talking points aside, how to explain the disparity between the data revealed in the Turkish forensic report on the Gaza flotilla massacre victims and the earlier Israeli story?

Glenn Greenwald's must-read The Israeli flotilla attack: victimhood, aggression & tribalism (salon.com, 3/6/10) is as good an explanation as any. Some excerpts:

"How could anyone with the slightest intellectual honesty claim... that armed Israeli commandos were the victims of unarmed civilian passengers; or, more generally, that a nuclear-armed Israel with the most powerful military by far in the Middle East and the world's greatest superpower acting as Protector is the persecuted victim of a wretched, deprived, imprisoned, stateless population devastated by 40 years of brutal Israeli occupation and, just a year ago, an unbelievably destructive invasion and bombing campaign? The casting of 'victim' and 'aggressor' is blatantly reversed with such claims - which is exactly the central premise that has been driving, and continues to drive, US foreign policy as well. In Imperial Ambitions, Noam Chomsky - talking about America's post-9/11 policies - described the central mental deception that is at the heart of all nations which dominate others with force: 'In one of his many speeches, to US troops in Vietnam, [President Lyndon] Johnson said plaintively, 'There are 3 billion people in the world and we have only 200 million of them. We are outnumbered 15 to 1. If might did make right, they would sweep over the United States and take what we have. We have what they want'. That is a constant refrain of imperialism. You have your jackboot on someone's neck and they're about to destroy you. The same is true with any form of oppression. And it's psychologically understandable. If you're crushing and destroying someone, you have to have a reason for it, and it can't be, 'I'm a murderous monster'. It has to be self-defense. 'I'm protecting myself against them. Look what they're doing to me'. Oppression gets psychologically inverted; the oppressor is the victim who is defending himself.'

"Thus nuclear-armed Israel is bullied and victimized by starving Gazans with stones. The Israel Navy is threatened by a flotilla filled with wheelchairs and medicine. And the greatest superpower the Earth has ever known faces a grave and existential threat from a handful of religious fanatics hiding in caves. An American condemnation of Israel, as welcome as it would have been, would be an act of senseless insincerity, because the two countries (along with many others) operate with this 'we-are-the-victim' mindset.

"A prime cause of this inversion is the distortion in perception brought about by rank tribalism. Those whose worldview is shaped by their identification as members of a particular religious, nationalistic, or ethnic group invariably over-value the wrongs done to them and greatly under-value the wrongs their group perpetrates. Those whose worldview is shaped by tribalism are typically plagued by extreme persecution complex (the whole world is against us!!!; everyone who criticizes us is hateful and biased!!!) Haaretz today reports that 'Jewish Republicans and Democrats in the US gave a rare demonstration of unity on Wednesday when they backed Israel's raid of a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla'. Gee, whatever could account for that 'rare demonstration of unity' between these left-wing Jewish progressives and hard-core, Jewish right-wing war cheerleaders who agree on virtually nothing else? My, it's such a mystery. I can't express how many emails I've received over the last week, from self-identified Jewish readers (almost exclusively), along the lines of: 'I'm a true progressive, agree with you on virtually every issue, but hate your views on Israel'... On this one issue, they magically abandon their opposition to military attacks on civilians, their defense of weaker groups being bullied and occupied by far stronger factions, their belief that unilateral military attacks are unjustified, and suddenly find common cause with Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, and the Bush administration in justifying even the most heinous Israeli crimes of aggression.

"It will never cease to be mystifying (at least to me) that they never question why they suddenly view the world so differently when it comes to Israel. They never wonder to themselves: I had it continuously drummed into my head from the time I was a small child, from every direction, that Israel was special and was to be cherished, that it's fundamentally good but persecuted and victimized by Evil Arab forces surrounding it, that I am a part of that group and should see the world accordingly. Is this tribal identity, which was pummeled into me from childhood - rather than some independent, dispassionate analysis - the reason I find myself perpetually sympathizing with and defending Israel?

"Doesn't the most minimal level of intellectual awareness - indeed, the concept of adulthood itself - require that analysis? And, of course, the 'self-hating' epithet - with which I've naturally been bombarded relentlessly over the last week - is explicitly grounded in the premise that one should automatically defend one's 'own group' rather than endeavour to objectively assess facts and determine what is right and true. This tribalism is hardly unique to Israel and Jews; it's instead universal. As the Bush years illustrated, there is no shortage of Americans who 'reason' the same way."