Bombing of the University in Gaza
What Became of Western Morality?
By Paul Craig Roberts
Creators.com, 09-01- 2009
On the last day of the old year in the newsletter CounterPunch, two Israelis
- Jeff Halper, who heads the Israeli peace movement ICAHD, and Neve Gordon, who
is chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion
University - asked, "Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a
University in Gaza?"
"Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and
universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics
to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their
voice in opposition to Israel's bombardment of the Islamic
University of Gaza earlier this week," report Halper and
Gordon. They note that Columbia University president Lee
C. Bollinger, who has in the past ignorantly insulted Islamic
representatives, "has been silent."
It is the goyim moralists who are silent, not the Jews. It is
the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, not the goyim media, that provides
reports of Israel's abuse of Palestinians. Gideon
Levy's "The Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again" was
published in Haaretz (29 December), not in the goyim press. Levy's words--"Once again, Israel's violent responses,
even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and
cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and
wisdom"--are not words that can appear in American print or TV
media. Such words, printed in Israeli newspapers, never reach
the goyim.
The extent of Americans' ignorance is breathtaking. Israel
has the Palestinians jammed into tightly controlled ghettos known as
Gaza and the West Bank. With Egypt's help, Israel controls
the inflows of food, medicines, water, and energy into Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza are not permitted to enter Israel or
Egypt. Last week a humanitarian ship bringing food and medicine
was rammed by Israeli gunboats and turned away.
In the West Bank Palestinians are walled off from their fields, jobs,
medical care, education, water, and from one another by endless
checkpoints, roads for "Jews only,"
walls, barbed wire, and machine gun towers. Palestinians are
being evicted from their towns house by house, block by
block.
Israel's slow theft of Palestine is illegal under international
law but protected by US "diplomacy."
The Palestinians are no more of a threat to Israel than Jews in the
Warsaw Ghetto were a threat to the Nazi state. Yet, everywhere
in America--Congress, the executive branch, the print and TV media,
the universities, evangelical Christian institutions--there is the
belief that Israel is on the verge of annihilation by Palestinian
terrorists. This ignorance, so carefully cultivated by the
Israel Lobby, turns genocidal aggression into self-defense.
It fools Americans, but it doesn't fool Israelis. The
Israelis have always known that "self-defense" is a cloak
for a Zionist policy of territorial expansion. The policy is
controversial within Israel. Many Israelis object, just as many
Americans object to President Bush's illegal wars and violations
of US civil liberties. Many Israelis give voice to their moral
conscience, but they are overwhelmed by vested interests.
Karl Marx declared morality to be merely a mask for vested
interests. The writings of Marx and Engels are scornful of good
will and moral ideals as effective forces in history. The Israeli
state epitomizes Marx's doctrine that power alone is the
effective force.
Many American conservatives share the Israeli state's belief in
the efficacy of power. Conservatives who turned against
Bush's wars did so because the US was not brutal enough. They turned away from Bush's long inconclusive wars in the way
that fans desert a losing team.
Americans used to say that "the pen is mightier than the
sword," but this hasn't been the case for US and Israeli
aggression. The success the two regimes have had in instilling
fear into their populations is part of the explanation for the
impotence of morality. Another part of the explanation is that
vested interests are a powerful constraint on morality.
Consider the case of Lee Bollinger. Columbia University is
dependent on Jewish money, faculty and students. If Bollinger
were to take a stand against Israel's mistreatment of the
Palestinians, he would be denounced as an anti-semite. Presidents of competitor universities would not come to his defense.
They would pile on in hopes of recruiting Columbia's top faculty
and students and redirecting the flow of financial resources from
Columbia to themselves.
An American newspaper or TV network that took a stand against
Israel's abuse of Palestinians would be confronted with an
advertising boycott organized by AIPAC. American
politicians who criticize Israel go down to defeat by Israel Lobby
money.
Hegel gave too much emphasis to ideas, Marx too much to material
interests. Both forces operate in the world. There are
times in history when revolutionary ideas shatter material
interests. Other times the two coexist in a balance of
power. In other times material interests prevail over
morality.
We are living in the latter time. Financial interests, the
military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby are the powers that
rule America. They are buttressed by neoconservatives and
Christian Zionists and by the patriotic hubris that America is the
main force for good operating in the world. The evils America
commits are dismissed as necessary to the service of good. The
destruction of Iraq, for example, is justified as "bringing freedom and
democracy to the Iraqi people."
A number of commentators, including myself, predict a decline in
America's economic power. As this occurs, Israel will have
to abandon its policy of violence. With the accumulated hatred
that its policies have fomented, Israel will be vulnerable.
The world will need to remember that although Israel is a Jewish
state, it is a state whose policies many Jews find objectionable,
just as a majority of American Jews oppose President Bush's wars
of aggression in the Middle East and his unconstitutional policies at
home. We must not confuse Israel's Zionist government with
world Jewry, just as we must not confuse the American people with the
war criminals in the Bush Regime.
Consider, who do you trust with your civil liberties, the US
Department of Justice or the ACLU's phalanx of Jewish
attorneys?
We must avoid the mistake that was made by blaming the German people
for Hitler. It was the aristocratic German military that tried
to remove Hitler. In contrast, Democratic Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi blocked the attempt to impeach George W. Bush and Dick
Cheney. Pelosi is a discredit to California, but shall we blame
all of America for Pelosi's defense of war criminals? How
can we do so when US Rep. Dennis Kucinich courageously read out the
articles of impeachment on the House floor?
Are all Americans guilty because Kucinich did not prevail?
