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Monday, December 16, 2002

Washington: Segregationist Israel – good! Segregationist Trent Lott – bad!

Watching the Washington establishment of both Republican and Democrat persuasion fulminate against Trent Lott is instructive in the spectacle of beltway tribal hypocrisy. It would seem that the same people condemning Lott for his whimsical support of a segregationist past themselves support a segregationist present. In fact, they have that in common with Lott, which makes their hypocrisy all the more rank: both openly and enthusiastically support the segregationist state of Israel.

That Israel practices institutional racism – indeed, is an apartheid state – is beyond question to anybody with the intellectual curiosity and courage to look past the headlines and into the nuts and bolts of Israeli law. It is no dark secret, except to too many Americans, that Israeli law codifies institutional, government-sanctioned discrimination against non-Jews.

In fact, all manner of basic rights in Israel are granted according to race: citizenship, the right to buy and own property, the right to participate in government service. If a person born in Israel is not of Jewish bloodline, he is not entitled to any of these; in fact, he is often legally barred from all of them. However, if he is of Jewish blood, even if he was born, say, in America, he is automatically entitled to them all. (It’s not called the Jewish State for nothing.)

In America, such an arrangement is called segregation and institutional racism: the government granting of rights and privileges according to race. In Israel, it’s called democracy. Go figure

So why are so many Washington insiders, pundits and politicians, nearly all of whom openly and vocally support all things Israel, up in arms over what Lott had to say about segregation? Is a verbal longing for a segregationist American past really a bigger crime than aggressively supporting a segregationist Israeli present? Should a Freudian slip of the tongue at a birthday party be grounds for expulsion from the Senate when openly voting Israel billions of dollars in arms and economic aid to enforce it’s racist structure is not?

Apparently so. And given that particular perverse Washington double standard, it’s really not too difficult to see how Trent Lott, who will never be accused of being an intellectual, could make such a mistake, or believe he could get away with it. In today’s political climate, where pro-war opinion makers for both the Republicans and Democrats routinely throw around religo-ethnic slurs like "Islamofascist", it’s no surprise that Trent Lott would think it was safe to dust off the old segregationist rhetoric and take it out for a test drive.

Perhaps he wanted to see if the environment was right to begin implementing Israeli-style racial laws in America. After all, that is one of the principal reasons the Gentile supporters of Israel dedicate so much money and political capital to the Zionist cause – it establishes a socially acceptable American precedent for instituting ethno-religious discrimination. True, they probably realize it will never again be acceptable for the good-old-boys to indulge in old fashioned minority-bashing on their own, but if it’s a politically correct Judeo-Christian/center-right Establishment coalition doing the bashing, well, who’s going to stop them?

But poor, hapless Trent Lott didn’t reckon on three potent forces. First, true Christianity (yes, still a force in America, if only latently) which holds that the only blood that matters is the blood of Christ and is thus repelled by institutional racism. Second, the ruthless Machiavellianism of the pro-war lobby, which doesn’t want the American public being reminded, especially now, of the intellectual consistency between Zionism, the nascent war against the Arabs, and Jim Crow. And lastly, the P.C. police of the left, who never miss an opportunity to exploit and demagogue a racial issue for political gain.

Except if that racial issue is in Israel, which many members of the American P.C. police are on record as supporting. And they will justify their support as long as Israel can plausibly be called a democracy, even though it’s own laws put the lie to that categorization. Problem is, they and their pro-war counterparts will continue to define Israel as a democracy long after it has slipped into "Judeofascism."

Oh, I forgot: “Palestinians are terrorists and suicide bombers.” Let’s be precise: less than one percent of all Palestinians are suicide bombers, but that’s enough for some in the media to label them all as such in justification of Israel’s draconian methods in dealing with them. Less than one percent of all blacks in America are murdering criminals, too. By logic Trent Lott could appreciate, and consistent with the Israeli model, that should be enough to demonize all African Americans and take away their civil rights.

And what about those draconian Israeli methods? Israel routinely destroys the homes of innocent relatives of Palestinian terrorists. Did the American government level the homes of relatives of Timothy McVeigh? Of course not. It would never punish the son for the sins of his father. Or would it? It’s hard to tell what will happen if the pro-war coalition continues to have it’s way with American policy. The mass jailing and torture of suspects, the targeting of children and bystanders because they are of a certain ethnicity, the wholesale leveling of villages: all have been defined in Israel and in the American media as reasonable reactions to a terrorist threat by a “democracy” under siege.

“It could never happen here.” Let me tell you: if it could happen in Israel with American financing, it could happen here.

By Chris Moore, Editor and Publisher of LibertarianToday.com