Joe Stiglitz

Zionism Unmasked

While Zionism is clearly a nationalist ideology, that narrow framing does the term an injustice as it is so much more.

Zionism is more accurately described as a strategy for targeting thought and emotion as a means to influence behavior. Naïve Jews were its first victims when induced to identify with an enclave in the Middle East that President Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist, was induced to recognize as a “state.”

Zionism is first and foremost a mental state that manifests as a dispersed form of internalized nationalism—a Diaspora—that binds to an extremist enclave those who may never set foot there. After 1967, this “state” became the “Land of Israel” based on a more expansive area seized by Israel Defense Forces along with other occupied lands that Zionists claim a god gave them.

Zionism recruits by sustaining a shared sense of insecurity within the broader Jewish community. It progresses by marketing its perceived vulnerability and victimhood among those on whom it relies for financial, military and diplomatic support.

When, as now, policies of the Zionist state come under attack, media campaigns herald an outbreak of anti-Semitism and hatred—not for Zionism but for Jews, enhancing recruitment.

By choosing to identify their interests with those of Zionism, Jews choose to make themselves feel insecure. Zionism relies for its success not only on deception but also on self-deceit.

Many well-informed Jews opposed Israel’s founding in 1948. By 1967, Jewish-Americans were active in the civil rights movement. With the Six-Day War, that activism became problematic. How could Jews back civil rights for Blacks while Zionism denied those rights to Palestinians?

That era marked a turning point both for Zionism and legitimate Judaism as many Jews abandoned civil rights activism when they could no longer reconcile their activism with Israeli oppression. Thus the present mental state of Barack Obama’s many Jewish Zionist advisers.

The Six-Day War induced more Jews to identify with Zionism as a defender of Jews. Yet now we know that war was a long-planned land grab destined to outrage Arabs and Muslims. When combined with a murderous occupation, decades of Israeli provocations were guaranteed to evoke the violent reactions required to rationalize a “war on terrorism.”

In terms of game theory war planning, today’s results were perfectly predictable—mathematically model-able within an acceptable range of probabilities. Once again Zionism targeted thought and emotion to manipulate behavior by provoking antagonism and evoking extremism—the two key ingredients required to plausibly proclaim their insecurity.

When your numbers are few and your ambitions vast, what choice did Zionists have but to seduce and deceive a super power so that our military would wage their wars for Greater Israel?

Peace is the Opponent

Peace is a perilous ‘state’ to be avoided at any cost by a nationalist ideology that thrives on serial crises wed to a perpetual state of conflict and fear. To realize the Zionist goal of hegemony over the Middle East requires a series of plausible Evil Doers and a persuasive narrative. Could Zionism be the reason we segued so seamlessly from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism? See: How Israel Wages War on the U.S.

Instead of the anticipated post-Cold War “peace dividend, the U.S. finds itself waging what Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz calls The $3 Trillion War—all of it borrowed, including $700 billion in interest expense.

In hindsight, the phony intelligence that induced us to war in the Middle East was traceable to Israelis, pro-Israelis or assets developed for that purpose such as Iraqi liar Ahmad Chalabi.

Other than those sharing a Zionist mental state, who had the means, motive, opportunity and, importantly, the stable nation-state intelligence to conduct such operations inside the U.S.?

Yet even now those responsible elude accountability and even scrutiny as cries of “anti-Semitism” are deployed to intimidate and misdirect—by manipulating thought and emotion.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. claimed 50% of the world’s productive power, ensuring we would have the world’s top-rated government bonds for at least two generations. When the Cold War drew to a costly close in 1989, the U.S. had spent $15.9 trillion on defense since 1948 (in 2010 dollars). Now a potential war without end has taken its place.

Americans have been induced to believe that the Zionist state is an ally. We are not alone in viewing Israel as a legitimate nation and a noble experiment to provide a “homeland” for a victimized people. That alluring storyline victimized the broader Jewish community while also laying waste to the nation that was first deceived to extend to Zionists the hand of friendship.

To escape the ravages of Zionism requires that we concede its duplicitous nature and make its operations transparent so that its perpetrators become apparent. As a long-deceived global public grasps its costs in blood and treasure, this mental state will be seen for what it is: a criminal state.

The Psychopath Within

In the clinical psychiatric literature, this “state” features interpersonal traits such as superficial charm, pathological lying, egocentricity, lack of remorse, and callousness that are regarded as characteristic of psychopaths. In order to betray, psychopaths first befriend. In order to defraud, they first establish a relationship of trust. Sound familiar?

Those who share such a mental state will happily incite hatred to catalyze a reaction and then claim they are the victims of hate. For those inhabiting this mental state, it appears rational and even desirable to provoke a response and then claim to be a target of anti-Semites. Inside this internal state, self-absorption is all-encompassing with arrogance its most visible trait.

Law is irrelevant to those who consider themselves above the law. Morality and conscience are of no concern to those who consider themselves The Chosen—by a god of their own choosing. Such a nationalist ideology has no place in a system of nation states dedicated to the rule of law.

Those sharing such a “state” pose too great a peril to be an object of pity or compassion. Accountability is the only appropriate response along with an initiative—deploying force as required—to secure any weapons of mass destruction that may be in their possession.

Such a state cannot be delegitimized because any legitimacy attained was integral to the fraud it inflicted on the community of nations. The issue at hand is how best to protect a peace-seeking world from a psychopathic ideology that assumed the appearance of legitimacy so that a Christian Zionist president could be deceived to recognize as a nation a criminal state.

Joe Stiglitz

‘Passionate attachment’ costs Taxpayers Trillion$

‘Passionate Attachment’ Costs Taxpayers Trillion$

By Jeff Gates

George Washington warned Americans about the high cost of permanent alliances. Cautioning future generations against the “illusion of a common interest,” he advised in his farewell address of September 1796 that the costs were particularly acute when an alliance is accompanied by a “passionate attachment” to that foreign nation.

A change in presidencies offers a timely moment to tally the costs of America’s six-decade alliance with Israel in terms of both blood and treasure. But for that alliance, would the U.S. military be waging two wars in the Middle East? The 9-11 Commission reported that the purported ‘mastermind’ of that mass murder was motivated by his outrage at U.S. support for Israel.

With 4,195 (and counting) Americans dead, 30,000- plus grievously wounded and hundreds of billions spent, are those costs traceable to the passionate attachment that Zionists—both Christians and Jews—have for Israel? Joe Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist, projects that the long-term costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will exceed $3 trillion.

Other economists include in the cost of this lengthy alliance the expense of the Arab oil embargo 35 years ago. When, during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Arab nations sought to recover land taken by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, Richard Nixon resupplied the Israel Defense Forces. In response, Arab oil producers hiked the price of oil, igniting a recession that cost the U.S. an estimated $420 billion in foregone economic output.

But for that alliance, higher priced energy would not have cost Americans $450 billion, according to economist Thomas Stauffer, writing in the Christian Science Monitor in December 2002. Should those embargo related costs be included? Are they rightly part of the “but for” tally? How about the $134 billion for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve established as a hedge against Arab nations again using their oil clout?

What about the $117 billion given to Egypt and $22 billion to Jordan as foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel? Those costs raise the tally to $4.3 trillion. But for this alliance, would the U.S. have incurred those costs?

If not, then all or a substantial portion of that $4.3 trillion should be included when weighing the costs and benefits of what is routinely described as the U.S.-Israel “special relationship.”

Should we include the expense of keeping oil-shipping lanes open in a volatile region that would be less volatile but for Israel’s expansionist policies in the region?

Though debates rage about how best to tally the indirect “but for” costs, little dispute surrounds the expense of direct outlays. The cumulative direct aid since 1948 was put at $113.85 billion in the November 2008 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (found at wrmea.com).

Direct outlays are often hidden in obscure sections of the federal budget by Israel’s allies in the congressional appropriations process. No one disputes that Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. aid since World War II. In 2007, U.S. lawmakers committed American taxpayers to pay an average $3 billion to Tel Aviv each year over a 10-year period—for another $30 billion. Those direct costs omit a 2005 defense appropriations commitment authorizing the transfer to Israel of “surplus” military equipment. The amount and cost of that equipment was not specified.

How does one tally the cost in U.S. jobs due to trade sanctions enacted at the urging of the Israel lobby that reduce U.S. exports to the Middle East? Unlike other recipients, Tel Aviv is allowed to spend in-country 26.3 percent of each year’s U.S. military aid. Israel’s defense industry now ranks ninth in global arms exports. What is the cost of that policy in U.S. jobs?

Absent from this partial tally is any mention of the strategic costs of this alliance. How does one compute the “but for” costs of an avowed ally that routinely dispatches spies who compromise U.S. national security?

What costs did Jonathan Pollard impose on American interests when he stole more than one million classified documents? Or when sensitive technologies were leaked to China? Or when officials of the Israel lobby gave Tel Aviv classified information on Iran?

In a governing system based on informed consent, the opinions of informed Americans should be surveyed before more funds are committed to this special relationship:

? Should Israel remain first-ranked as a recipient of U.S. foreign aid?

? Should Tel Aviv receive $8.5 million per day in U.S. military assistance?

? Should Americans pay for Israel’s armed occupation of Palestinian land?

? Should the U.S. military be deployed to wage war in Iran on Israel’s behalf?

After six decades, perhaps a newly elected president should heed our first president’s advice: “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

Jeff Gates is the author of Guilt By Association—How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War available through www.criminalstate.com