Obscene Anomaly
I happened to catch an npr interview with Philip Lambardo, the recently retired psychologist who carried out the grim experiment with college students simulating prison guards and prisoners at Stanford in 1968 which had to be abruptly aborted because of the brutality of the make-believe guards towards their 'prisoners'. Lambardo's latest book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,
http://www.lucifereffect.com/
details how the Stanford horrors were almost exactly duplicated by our military at Abu Ghraib up to including the forced nakedness and scorn for prisoners. Lambardo was an expert witness for the defense of the non-commissioned officer in charge there who is now serving 8 years with loss of all military benefits -- a punishment that Lombardo considers excessive and also not targeted at the higher ups who were in charge and the CIA who encouraged our soldiers to 'loosen up' the prisoners for interrogation.
Lambardo's central point is that situations can turn good people towards doing evil things -- from an Eichman to those at Abu Ghraib -- and I would add if he does not -- any occupation force that seeks to control resistant populations. He did not mention such in the interview, but it looks to me as though the occupiers in the Middle East -- the Israelis over the Palestinians and the Europeans and Americans -- Christians by culture -- trying to suppress Muslims -- are at risk of being well -intentioned (not all good by any means) people doing evil to those whom they seek to dominate.
I read the reports of the Christian Peacemakers on the occupation of the Palestinians. They note that there are brutal settlers and members of the IDF as well as the occasional decent person or 'hero' noted also as part of the pattern of evil situations by Lambardo -- the heroes being those who do not go along with the brutalities.
How do those feel who are being brutalized? One of my email friends, Khalid Amayreh, is a Palestinian journalist trained in the U.S. He is a man of peace, but I have been watching his outrage grow by leaps and bounds. Below is his latest post. Let me introduce him thus:
"Three years before I was born, three of my four paternal uncles, Hussein 27, Mahmoud 25, and Yosef 23, were killed by Israeli soldiers. They were simple shepherds who were grazing their herds near the village of Al-burj near the so-called armistice line, 20 km south West of the West Bank town of Hebron. With my three uncles, three other relatives, including a woman, were also shot dead."
http://www.p4pd.org/lifestories1.html
Obscene Anomaly
By Khalid Amayreh
2 February, 2008
The Israeli embassy in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, came under attack by anonymous gunmen this week. The attack, in which no people were killed, showed that the Mauritanian people don't like the presence of Israelis and Zionists on their national soil.
Terrorism, of course, should be condemned in the strongest terms. However, the presence of an Israeli diplomatic mission in the heart of Nouakchott is a brazen provocation to the sensibilities and feelings of Mauritanian citizens
After all, like the rest of mankind, Mauritanians watch on a daily basis what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank, namely the genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing the Zionist military-political establishment has been effecting against helpless Palestinians.
In fact, the presence of Israeli embassies, consulates, charge d'affaires , "trade offices" in Arab and Muslim capitals should be viewed as a monumental disgrace for concerned states and their governments and rulers. This is very much like maintaining normal relations with Nazi Germany while the Third Reich was busy classifying people into Ubermensch and Untermensch and exterminating numerous multitudes of people in order to fulfill German nationalism.just as Israel has been, more or less, doing to the Palestinians since its misbegotten birth sixty years ago.
Again, no one should seek to justify or encourage any acts of terror. But the presence of the representatives of a Nazi-like regime, that flies in the face of human rights and international law, in Arab and Muslim capitals is a crime that is even worse, I would say much worse, than the crime of terror.
Needless to say, the presence of Israeli embassies and "diplomats" in Arab and Muslim capitals implies legitimization of ethnic cleansing, genocide, occupation, colonialism and the systematic dispossession and attempted obliteration of the Palestinian people.
In fact, Israeli embassies throughout the world perform several functions, all of them evil and immoral. The premier function of any given Israeli embassy is to justify, defend, extenuate and explain the criminal acts carried out, nearly on a daily basis, against helpless men, women and children, who simply want to be free and refuse to be annihilated quietly.
These criminal acts include the deliberate murder of innocent civilians, destruction of their homes, bulldozing of their farms and decimation of their ability to live a normal life. In other words, Israeli ambassadors and consuls and charge d'affaires effectively act as public relations officer for the Israeli occupation army, a Jewish Wehrmacht by every standard of morality.
Their lies are incalculable as they are obscene. They claim that the harsh blockade on the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million inhabitants, now in effect for the eighth consecutive month, is not meant to harm civilians and is only in response to "rockets" fired by Palestinian freedom fighters onto Israeli settlements.
Of course, these lies are pornographic just as Israeli atrocities are also pornographic because anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of the situation in Palestine-Israel knows quite well that the "rockets" are only a pretext, and that the real motive behind the slow-motion genocide in Gaza is to simply kill as many Palestinians as the world public opinion allows, under existing circumstances, and possibly destroy the democratically elected Hamas government in order to enable America's Palestinian lackeys in Ramallah to sell out the Palestinian cause and inalienable rights unopposed.
Israeli embassies and diplomatic missions have the habit of giving a rosy picture of the "democratic" Israeli society and how Jews and non-Jews are treated equally.
I don't know if the Mauritanian ambassador in Israel conveys to his government back in Nouakchott the "real" reality, not the virtual reality, created by Zionist propaganda.
>From example, does he inform his government that Israeli cabinet ministers, Knesset members, and even rabbis routinely call for the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews, who are actually Israeli citizens?
Does His Excellency inform his government that the Israeli occupation army often murders 50 or 70 or even a hundred Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, for every Israeli settler killed by Palestinians?
Does His Excellency inform his superiors that some rabbis, even high-ranking ones, constantly call for the "relocation" and deportation of Palestinians from their ancestral homeland to Arabian deserts.from Sinai, to Saudi Arabia to even the sub-Sahara desert in North Africa?
Does he inform his government that an important Israeli rabbi by the name of David Batsri routinely teaches in his synagogue that Arabs are actually donkeys, not human beings, and that the Almighty created them in a human shape only in order to work and serve the Jews?
If Arab ambassadors in Israel don't communicate Israeli crimes and racism to their respective governments, then what are they doing in Tel Aviv? Frequenting casinos and nightclubs? Socializing with Mossad and Shin Beth agents? Or probably conspiring against their own countries and their own peoples, probably in return for some money?
And if they do relay reality to their capitals as they indeed should, then why don't these respective Arab governments keep silent about these crimes? Are they and their Israeli colleagues members in the same Mason lodge?
When a number of Arab states decided to normalize relations with Israel, especially following the hapless Oslo Agreement, mainly to obtain a certificate of good conduct from the US, Israel's guardian-ally, the rulers of these states argued then that relations with Israel would serve the Palestinian cause and encourage the Jewish state to walk in the path of peace and come to terms with Palestinian rights.
However, nearly 15 years after the conclusion of the Oslo Accords, it is crystal clear that normalization between certain Arab states and Israel has emboldened the latter as its criminality and ferocity have reached unprecedented level.
Paradoxically, normalization with Israel, which the stupid Arab regimes had hoped would be a political asset, has turned out to be a disastrous liability for the Palestinians and their enduring struggle for freedom, and an asset for Israel which has been able to endear itself to Arab regimes and at the same time keep murdering the Palestinians in the hundreds and in the thousands.
Today, Israel has more or less normal if not cordial relations with Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Oman, Mauritania, Tunisia and Morocco. There is also a lot of flirting going between Israel and a number of other Arab and Muslim states such as Pakistan and Indonesia and to a lesser extent Algeria and Yemen.
This is happening while the slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli machine of death continues unabated and the construction of Jewish colonies in occupied Arab land goes on unhindered. Israel is even effectively destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque.step by step and stone by stone.
In conclusion, normalization between Israel and Arab and Muslim states, especially before ending Israel's Nazi-like occupation and colonization of the Palestinian homeland, is an obscene anomaly that must come to an end sooner rather than later.
Until then, all these embassies and representative offices will remain despised by the masses whether in Egypt, Jordan or Mauritania. And rightly so.
(end)
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FindingHumaneJobs
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OurStupidEconomy
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
http://www.lucifereffect.com/
details how the Stanford horrors were almost exactly duplicated by our military at Abu Ghraib up to including the forced nakedness and scorn for prisoners. Lambardo was an expert witness for the defense of the non-commissioned officer in charge there who is now serving 8 years with loss of all military benefits -- a punishment that Lombardo considers excessive and also not targeted at the higher ups who were in charge and the CIA who encouraged our soldiers to 'loosen up' the prisoners for interrogation.
Lambardo's central point is that situations can turn good people towards doing evil things -- from an Eichman to those at Abu Ghraib -- and I would add if he does not -- any occupation force that seeks to control resistant populations. He did not mention such in the interview, but it looks to me as though the occupiers in the Middle East -- the Israelis over the Palestinians and the Europeans and Americans -- Christians by culture -- trying to suppress Muslims -- are at risk of being well -intentioned (not all good by any means) people doing evil to those whom they seek to dominate.
I read the reports of the Christian Peacemakers on the occupation of the Palestinians. They note that there are brutal settlers and members of the IDF as well as the occasional decent person or 'hero' noted also as part of the pattern of evil situations by Lambardo -- the heroes being those who do not go along with the brutalities.
How do those feel who are being brutalized? One of my email friends, Khalid Amayreh, is a Palestinian journalist trained in the U.S. He is a man of peace, but I have been watching his outrage grow by leaps and bounds. Below is his latest post. Let me introduce him thus:
"Three years before I was born, three of my four paternal uncles, Hussein 27, Mahmoud 25, and Yosef 23, were killed by Israeli soldiers. They were simple shepherds who were grazing their herds near the village of Al-burj near the so-called armistice line, 20 km south West of the West Bank town of Hebron. With my three uncles, three other relatives, including a woman, were also shot dead."
http://www.p4pd.org/lifestories1.html
Obscene Anomaly
By Khalid Amayreh
2 February, 2008
The Israeli embassy in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, came under attack by anonymous gunmen this week. The attack, in which no people were killed, showed that the Mauritanian people don't like the presence of Israelis and Zionists on their national soil.
Terrorism, of course, should be condemned in the strongest terms. However, the presence of an Israeli diplomatic mission in the heart of Nouakchott is a brazen provocation to the sensibilities and feelings of Mauritanian citizens
After all, like the rest of mankind, Mauritanians watch on a daily basis what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank, namely the genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing the Zionist military-political establishment has been effecting against helpless Palestinians.
In fact, the presence of Israeli embassies, consulates, charge d'affaires , "trade offices" in Arab and Muslim capitals should be viewed as a monumental disgrace for concerned states and their governments and rulers. This is very much like maintaining normal relations with Nazi Germany while the Third Reich was busy classifying people into Ubermensch and Untermensch and exterminating numerous multitudes of people in order to fulfill German nationalism.just as Israel has been, more or less, doing to the Palestinians since its misbegotten birth sixty years ago.
Again, no one should seek to justify or encourage any acts of terror. But the presence of the representatives of a Nazi-like regime, that flies in the face of human rights and international law, in Arab and Muslim capitals is a crime that is even worse, I would say much worse, than the crime of terror.
Needless to say, the presence of Israeli embassies and "diplomats" in Arab and Muslim capitals implies legitimization of ethnic cleansing, genocide, occupation, colonialism and the systematic dispossession and attempted obliteration of the Palestinian people.
In fact, Israeli embassies throughout the world perform several functions, all of them evil and immoral. The premier function of any given Israeli embassy is to justify, defend, extenuate and explain the criminal acts carried out, nearly on a daily basis, against helpless men, women and children, who simply want to be free and refuse to be annihilated quietly.
These criminal acts include the deliberate murder of innocent civilians, destruction of their homes, bulldozing of their farms and decimation of their ability to live a normal life. In other words, Israeli ambassadors and consuls and charge d'affaires effectively act as public relations officer for the Israeli occupation army, a Jewish Wehrmacht by every standard of morality.
Their lies are incalculable as they are obscene. They claim that the harsh blockade on the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million inhabitants, now in effect for the eighth consecutive month, is not meant to harm civilians and is only in response to "rockets" fired by Palestinian freedom fighters onto Israeli settlements.
Of course, these lies are pornographic just as Israeli atrocities are also pornographic because anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of the situation in Palestine-Israel knows quite well that the "rockets" are only a pretext, and that the real motive behind the slow-motion genocide in Gaza is to simply kill as many Palestinians as the world public opinion allows, under existing circumstances, and possibly destroy the democratically elected Hamas government in order to enable America's Palestinian lackeys in Ramallah to sell out the Palestinian cause and inalienable rights unopposed.
Israeli embassies and diplomatic missions have the habit of giving a rosy picture of the "democratic" Israeli society and how Jews and non-Jews are treated equally.
I don't know if the Mauritanian ambassador in Israel conveys to his government back in Nouakchott the "real" reality, not the virtual reality, created by Zionist propaganda.
>From example, does he inform his government that Israeli cabinet ministers, Knesset members, and even rabbis routinely call for the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews, who are actually Israeli citizens?
Does His Excellency inform his government that the Israeli occupation army often murders 50 or 70 or even a hundred Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, for every Israeli settler killed by Palestinians?
Does His Excellency inform his superiors that some rabbis, even high-ranking ones, constantly call for the "relocation" and deportation of Palestinians from their ancestral homeland to Arabian deserts.from Sinai, to Saudi Arabia to even the sub-Sahara desert in North Africa?
Does he inform his government that an important Israeli rabbi by the name of David Batsri routinely teaches in his synagogue that Arabs are actually donkeys, not human beings, and that the Almighty created them in a human shape only in order to work and serve the Jews?
If Arab ambassadors in Israel don't communicate Israeli crimes and racism to their respective governments, then what are they doing in Tel Aviv? Frequenting casinos and nightclubs? Socializing with Mossad and Shin Beth agents? Or probably conspiring against their own countries and their own peoples, probably in return for some money?
And if they do relay reality to their capitals as they indeed should, then why don't these respective Arab governments keep silent about these crimes? Are they and their Israeli colleagues members in the same Mason lodge?
When a number of Arab states decided to normalize relations with Israel, especially following the hapless Oslo Agreement, mainly to obtain a certificate of good conduct from the US, Israel's guardian-ally, the rulers of these states argued then that relations with Israel would serve the Palestinian cause and encourage the Jewish state to walk in the path of peace and come to terms with Palestinian rights.
However, nearly 15 years after the conclusion of the Oslo Accords, it is crystal clear that normalization between certain Arab states and Israel has emboldened the latter as its criminality and ferocity have reached unprecedented level.
Paradoxically, normalization with Israel, which the stupid Arab regimes had hoped would be a political asset, has turned out to be a disastrous liability for the Palestinians and their enduring struggle for freedom, and an asset for Israel which has been able to endear itself to Arab regimes and at the same time keep murdering the Palestinians in the hundreds and in the thousands.
Today, Israel has more or less normal if not cordial relations with Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Oman, Mauritania, Tunisia and Morocco. There is also a lot of flirting going between Israel and a number of other Arab and Muslim states such as Pakistan and Indonesia and to a lesser extent Algeria and Yemen.
This is happening while the slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli machine of death continues unabated and the construction of Jewish colonies in occupied Arab land goes on unhindered. Israel is even effectively destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque.step by step and stone by stone.
In conclusion, normalization between Israel and Arab and Muslim states, especially before ending Israel's Nazi-like occupation and colonization of the Palestinian homeland, is an obscene anomaly that must come to an end sooner rather than later.
Until then, all these embassies and representative offices will remain despised by the masses whether in Egypt, Jordan or Mauritania. And rightly so.
(end)
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FindingHumaneJobs
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OurStupidEconomy
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 9:15 AM
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