This coming week, our country's executive branch will be pushing for acceptance of a new nuclear non-proliferation initiative that refuses to accept the reality that one of the major players in the dynamics of nuclear proliferation is even a player in the discussion. This coming week, our President's United Nations and State Department representatives will continue to push a meme that the recent UN Goldstone Report on last winter's Gaza Strip War is hopelessly flawed, and should be discounted because it equally condemns both sides in the tragic and unnecessary conflict.
This coming week, one of our country's most articulate critics of Israeli and American policies toward relentlessly shrinking Palestine and of our country's relationship with the expansionist Israeli state, will deliver three addresses in Anchorage:
• On Thursday October 8th, Alison Weir will address the Bartlett Club (Denny's on DeBarr) at noon.
• On Friday October 9th, she will address the Alaska World Affairs Council (Hilton Hotel) at noon, and will speak at the Wilda Marston Theater at the Loussac Library at 7:00 p.m.
Already, the local pro-Zionist expansion network is aiming to have her appearances canceled. Beginning Friday, I started receiving calls from friends who had been contacted with the claim that Weir is a "Holocaust Denier."
I've been aware of Weir's work at If Americans Knew, and her articles at Counterpunch and other web sites for years, and had read of this false accusation before. Saturday evening, Weir was on Shannyn Moore's KBYR radio call-in program. I called and asked Weir to address the accusation. She strongly iterated that the accusation is absurd, explaining her personal knowledge of just how awful the Nazi Third Reich's liquidation of six million European Jews, along with millions of other innocents was.
Weir is in Alaska to inform our under-informed populace about the importance of getting unbiased information about the history of the Israeli state and its relationship to its neighbors and to our foreign policy decisions.
My experience with her articles and talks available on YouTube is that she is very accurate. The attacks on her here, as at other places, are designed to take advantage of the lack of information most Americans have to balanced views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and upon guilt many Americans feel through decades of exposure to heavily propagandized media coverage of events involving the Israeli state, in combination with relentless reminders of the Holocaust.
Last summer, Weir was on Eddie Burke's KBYR call-in program. Burke treated her with far less professionalism than did Shannyn Moore this Saturday.
The subject of the bombing and torpedoing of the USS Liberty during the 1967 Six-Day War came up. Burke, a U.S. Navy veteran, was totally ill-informed.
Burke claims he likes me. But when I've tried to bring up the USS Liberty with him, he immediately tries to change the subject. I believe, like every surviving member of the ship's crew, that the Israelis intended to sink the ship, while knowing it was American. Why they wanted to do that is still a mystery.
But I refuse to overrule the gut instincts of over 100 American sailors and officers who saw their shipmates killed or maimed over the course of hours; saw one American flag after another raised up the mast, and then shot down; saw torpedo boats come close enough to pepper all the lifeboats with hundreds of holes; and saw anyone willing to man a machine gun blasted to Hell.
Every surviving American from that attack - for which the commanding officer quietly received the Congressional Medal of Honor - believes the attack was intentional. A foreign government says it wasn't. If one sides with our brave sailors against that foreign government, one is immediately labeled an anti-Semite.
Why?
Any reader who wants to so label me for writing this - go find a living member of the USS Liberty crew who sides with that foreign government's version of the attack, and I'll reconsider my view.
Until then, Eddie - you're betraying your shipmates.
16 comments:
It's called a "False Flag" operation, Burke should look up the meaning of the term.
As far as Alaska and Alaskans go....
What a backward place, eh ?
Why do we have to be Bushily "for Israel or against it"? Blindness and loyalty are different things. Keep it up Phil.Truth is good.
You know what is interesting Gusty? I have written letters to the guys who run the Israel hating USS Liberty site and had back and forths with them in email. Not once did they admit to be willing to back off if there was this investigation (they keep screaming about) that would finally prove Israel didn't knowingly bomb a United States Navy Ship. The only answer I got was to go on their message board and fight it out with their "followers". In other words if the favor fell to Israel they would keep screaming it was all a lie and Israel did attack the ship on purpose. You know that old saying, "damned if you do and damned if you don't".
Kind of like you are doing now.
You really know little to nothing since you never read both sides.
You are one-sided mentally and that makes you a half wit.
Go ahead and delete the post Heinrich (yes I believe you resemble that chinless freak quite a bit) because YOU know what I wrote and that is all that counts.
As for the girl from the spit, she didn't have much going with her interview either. She just let the David Duke pin-up girl go on and on about bull crap. None of which the spit chick never questioned.
Why? We all know why...don't we Ms. Moore?
Judith
Really, Phil, this is what you want to endorse?
http://alisonweir.org/
http://adamholland.blogspot.com/2009/09/blood-libel-promoted-by-counterpunch.html
Robert Meyerowitz
Robert,
I feel uncomfortable with Ms. Weir's August 28th Counterpunch article. My friend Max Blumenthal alerted me to it when he was in Anchorage last week.
The headline is extremely unfortunate. The article itself cites several articles in the European, Israeli and international press on this set of subjects.
Phil Weiss, at Mondoweiss, who is very sensitive to the same issues as is Blumenthal, doesn't seem to feel the Counterpunch article goes over the line, and is open to meeting Ms. Weir and discussing the issues she raises. I hope to do just that this week, when she is in Anchorage. Part of why this essay is "Part One."
This post, though, Robert, is about the USS Liberty.
Do you believe every living American who was attacked that day is wrong, and that a foreign government's report should be cited as more factual than these Americans' actual experiences that day?
My comment was about Alison Weir, who seems to be promulgating the hoariest libel about Jews -- today. And her "sources" seem to be counterfeited in at least some instances (see the Holland post). I'm uncomfortable with this, too -- to say the least. Surely you know what hackles it raises, and seems meant to raise.
I'm not taking issue with her account, or yours, of the Liberty incident; I just don't know. But in light of what she is saying about what is happening today, e.g., the Counterpunch article, do you really think she's "one of our country's most articulate critics of Israeli and American policies"?
Robert asks, "do you really think she's "one of our country's most articulate critics of Israeli and American policies"?"
By and large, she is. She has defended criticism of her use of source materials on other articles elsewhere. I'm hoping she will respond to Adam Holland's well-written article.
If you listen to the podcast of Shannyn Moore's KBYR program interview with Weir, you may note that at the beginning of my time with Weir, I stated I had two questions for her. The second was to be based on Max Blumenthal's reservations about Weir that emanate from the Counterpunch article. I intended to ask her why she had - apparently - exaggerated the stature of Ariel Toaff, and had neglected to point out that in the second edition of his book, he has issued a strenuous disclaimer, that reads:
"Jews were not involved in ritual murder, which was an entirely Christian stereotype."
I was cut off, probably inadvertently, and when I began asking the second question, I realized I was no longer on the air. I brought this up with Moore's editor, Kelly Walters, after the show.
Weir clearly has an agenda. Phil Weiss appears to be willing to sit down and have a cup of coffee with her, even after she tore into his critique of a recent speech she made at Yale:
http://mondoweiss.net/2008/10/alison-weir-of-if-americans-knew-has-responded-to-my-post-of-a-couple-weeks-back-about-her-presentation-at-yale-the-links-o.html
I tend to agree with Weiss that "I'm always reluctant to criticize people on my side of the issue because we're up against so much," to a point. I wish I'd had more time to talk to Max about why he is so disturbed about Weir's article, while Max was here.
Obviously this is a very complex issue, and like so many others there is information and misinformation out there to sort through. Little ole' average me doesn't know where to start with it all. I guess I will try to attend one of Alison's talks this week but take it with a grain of salt, so to speak. I hope there is more discussion here before then so one can get more of a feel for it all.
Y'all are discussing this but has anyone read Alison Weir's article? and why is it not cited/linked? I urge you to read at at http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/sweden.html - and read the citations too, and then discuss it. It fully takes account of Ariel Toaff's later disclaimer, among other things. And just who is Adam Holland anyway?
JeanK,
I've read the August Counterpunch article and Holland's but have not read Weir's version at her own site.
Holland is a New York blogger. I'm somewtimes in agreement with him, but have only visited his site in the past through links that came up in peoples' articles. His blog links to Max's site, and to Dave Neiwert's site.
Robert's concerns on Weir, based on Holland's article, are genuine. I don't know whether Robert is actually all that familiar with Weir's work.
I do hope to meet with her this coming week, and satisfy my own curiosity.
This isn't really complicated... a 10 year-old can figure it out.
A ship that has an American flag on it is an American ship.
If you believe that the IDF did not recognize an allied ship, then I question your mental stability.
How do you defend the rifling of lifeboats which is a war crime?
As far as "hating the jews" goes, I don't believe that anyone involved hates the people, they are just angry with the obvious criminal activities of their government through the use of their military. There is corruption in the Israeli government as their is in ALL governments. They're run by flawed sinful people after all.
Phil,
I sent this yesterday but am resending in case the gmail problem interfered with it.
I've just read the article in Counterpunch and it too discusses Toaff's recantation and the circumstances around it.
Fyi, the updated version of the article is in the Washington Report that is just coming out. They've sent several boxes of them that should arrive in time for anyone coming to the events later this week who is interested to take one and read it in its entirety.
I've started googling Adam Holland and Israel, and so far have found his article saying that former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (who twice attempted to go to Gaza by boat) has fascist friends and has exploited the current recession to promote anti-semitism, and other such, many concerned with perceived anti-semitism, and issues about what his own agenda may be...will keep going, and looking for any substantiation.
Robert, you actually believe Phil has a fair bone in his bent and aging frame?
Of course someone who uses the name of "Gustav" on messages boards is going to believe someone like Alison Weir to be one of the most knowledgeable on Israel, so does David Duke. If you go to any "white supremacist" site or as they prefer to call themselves "white nationalists" you will see they all preach exactly the same BS that the blond she Polish nazi preaches. Whether it's about this land of Palestine, Jews cutting throats of children to make their Matzah or ripping beating hearts out of their still breathing victims...hmmmmm...sounds more Arab/Muslim to me but that is another story altogether.
By the way...are you the same Robert Meyerowitz that was the Anchorage Press Editor?
I hope you attend the pin-up girl to the Third Reich talk's here in town. I'm going to as many as possible. The Jews in this town need to get off their quaking butts and stand their ground once in a while!
Are you going to be there Gusty? Old man! Maybe you can bring your horn and toot us a few tones...*snicker*
Judith/Golda/MBG,
The handle "Gustav" came from my passion for the music of Gustav Mahler. My other "handle" on the web is "Edward Teller," because I'm writing an opera about Project Chariot. Neither of these connotes to anyone other than you any sordid motives.
"Neither of these connotes to anyone other than you any sordid motives."
little flustered there, gusty? *laughing*
P.S. you are no Gustav Mahler...*wink*
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