My uncle liberated Dachau

My uncle liberated Dachau at the end of WW II. After four years of combat, he had lost much of his emotional response to anything, a classic case of PTSD. Only once he did talk about the Dachau survivors and how hard it was to keep them alive. They were nothing but skin and bones.

My uncle was proud of what he did there. His army had done the right thing, and brought an end to the Third Reich and its nightmare of exterminations. At least he had that to comfort himself for all those years in a foxhole. He was on the right side of history.

How different our world is from his. Now the US is arming and funding an actual genocide in Gaza. Hoards of Palestinian children roam their cratered world, just looking for something to eat. They could be from Dachau, emaciated skeletons of their former selves. By the tens of thousands these Palestinian children bear witness to how our nation has gone from savior of the innocent to executioner.

My uncle wouldn't have believed it possible, that his beloved country could have turned into a champion of apartheid and genocide. He wouldn't have understood how the Israel Lobby was allowed to spend 36 million on the last election, much more than the "contributions" of even the US weapons makers (OpenSecrets.org). He would find himself adrift in a world where money can buy one's soul. Where "never again" is a quaint reminder of a forgotten time.  

Fred Nagel

Trail of Tears

Bodily feelings sometimes go away, but always return with a bit more urgency. Like hunger, you can forget it for a while, but it invariably comes back stronger. That is what the children learn, as they are slowly starved to death by the US/Israel death machine.

I find that as I immerse myself in day to day events, this slaughter is always waiting to come back to me. Could the country I love be starving children to death by the thousands? By the tens of thousands? Their spindly arms and legs have that Buchenwald look. I can't bear the images that wait for me to close my eyes.

Once the children behind barbed wire fences appear to me, my mind starts a desperate search. Could my own country be murdering children like this? Could our own churches and synagogues be cheering on the extermination? Did we catch this endless warfare and charnel house slaughter from the Nazis?

Both political parties want this butchery. All the money we have is going into more bombs and planes. We can't get enough of it. We wave our flags, heedless of what our country is really doing. We sing "God Bless America," as if we had the right to ask our lord to celebrate the holocaust of this century.

Are we incapable of empathy? Is this life but a trail of tears, the name given to our very own ethnic cleansing and annihilation of the Cherokee Nation? Who on earth can protect the Palestinians from the barbarians?

The Gift of Thrice Promised Land

We are so aware of the powerful Israel Lobby and its money machine that we overlook the many ways that Jews have been used and abused by both England and the United States. Going all the way back to the Balfour Declaration, we find that England had a habit of promising Palestine to several nations and peoples at the same time. There was the promise made in 1915 to give Arabs independence from the Ottoman Empire (called the Hussein-McMahon correspondence). And then there was a separate agreement with the French in 1916 that guaranteed Palestine would be under international control, and the rest split between the two Western powers (called the Sykes-Picot agreement). England made all three agreements without ever consulting the indigenous inhabitants of the region.

How big a gift was this thrice promised land of Palestine to the Jews? It was already owned and occupied by millions of Palestinian people. To make the area an all Jewish state would take decades of ethnic cleansing and slaughter, something that would eventually make Israel a pariah state in the rest of the world. A kinder, more reasonable solution would have been to let Jews immigrate to English speaking countries where there was plenty of room. But of course, England and the US did not want the millions of desperate Jewish refugees who needed a home. Giving Palestine to the Jews ensured that they wouldn't be clambering to get into England and America.

Probably the most important reason for the creation of Israel is the oil fields that surround our militarized colony in the Middle East. Not only did England and the US avoid a huge influx of Jews, but these redirected immigrants would make up a military base to extend Western control over these vast oil fields. Israel would do the dirty work of empire without staining the reputation of English speaking countries.

It wasn't long before both England and the US began see another benefit to the creation of the state of Israel. The Jewish Holocaust was a potent symbol and could be used in many ways. Even the Western support of Israel's ethnic cleansing and genocide could be made virtuous by referring to the Holocaust. How could anyone dare to criticize Israel/US foreign policy if it were done in the name of Jewish suffering?

In addition, charges of antisemitism have become the weapon of choice in England and the US for ending any criticism of the US Empire and its unholy alliance with Israel. If you are a college teacher who condemns Israel's war crimes and crimes against humanity, why you must be an antisemite! If you are a student chanting "Free Palestine," why you must hate Jews. Our Congress is falling all over itself to make any criticism of Israel illegal, and these laws are a  particularly dangerous assault on our First Amendment freedom of speech.  

But the use of the Holocaust and antisemitism for political gain cheapens and debases Jewish history and Jewish culture. Who will respect these terms when they are used to justify an ongoing genocide? Who will be left to fight real antisemitism? Certainly not the 36 million Christian Zionists in America, whose thinly veiled antisemitism should be a concern to us all.

These supposed allies of Zionism are intent on pushing all Jews into the Holy Land where they can either convert to Christianity or be slaughtered. Only when Jews have been ethnically cleansed from the rest of the world, will sweet Jesus appear and save all Christians from the carnage awaiting Jewish unbelievers. Is this "final solution" any better than the plan offered by the insane leaders of the Third Reich? In fact, is it really any different?

Will the creation of Israel prove to be the second catastrophe visited on the Jewish people by Western imperialism?  

-Fred Nagel

Cognitive dissidence keeps me up

Cognitive dissidence keeps me up at night. On one side, my country preaches human rights and democracy. But at the same time, it sends Israel one ton "Biden Bombs" to blow up what is left of Gaza.

There is very little left. Two million refugees are huddled under makeshift tents, waiting for food that never comes. Yet our sweet land of liberty keeps sending billions in military aid to keep the Palestinian genocide going. What perverse monster could think of doing such a thing to other human beings? What government bureaucrat would carry out such murderous orders?

The ongoing extermination of two million Palestinians is Gaza isn't hidden very well. Skeletal children are holding out their metal pots for any little scrap of food. They have to drink contaminated water because the electricity is gone and the pipes all destroyed. School for these children is just a memory of long ago. There are no school buildings left, nor any colleges. Nothing but rubble as the Palestinian people prepare their children to die.

I don't want to be a citizen of a country that does that to millions. Our pro-Zionist Congressional representatives get hundreds of thousands from the insanely rich Israel Lobby. That just makes people like Pat Ryan nothing but hired killers. He has already gotten over $163,000 this year in Israeli bribes. (opensecrets.org)

"Let me ask you one question. Is your money that good? Will it buy you forgiveness, do you think that it could?" -Bob Dylan

Fred Nagel

Symbol of Palestinian Resistance

 

Watermelon is a cherished fruit in Palestine. It is also a symbol of resistance to Israeli occupation and repressions. After the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel banned the Palestinian flag, as well as its colors of red, green, black and white. And in the 1980s, Israel shut down art galleries and arrested artists for displaying anything that represented Palestinian freedom. According to the popular story Israeli authorities warned artists that "Even if you do a watermelon, it will be confiscated." Hence even holding a slice of fresh watermelon outside became a statement of protest.

Watermelon has also become a reminder of "Pinkwashing," the attempt to use LGBTQ rights to cover up the racism of Israel's apartheid regime. Pinkwashing tries to sell Israel's occupation as somehow a paradise for gay rights, despite the fact that 5 million Palestinians live under a brutal yoke of oppression.

Now that Israel's harsh occupation has become a genocide, it is more important than ever that we as US citizens do whatever we can to save millions of Palestinians. Tens of thousands of children have been slaughtered. Many more are without food, water and shelter, a killing field that is funded and abetted by the United States government.

Is this what our country has become? Our politicians have all been paid off by the billionaires in the Israeli Lobby. Biden has gotten more money from the Israel Lobby than any other politician in Washington. Our own Pat Ryan is swimming in pro-Israel funds. Check out the massive amounts our two Senators rake in from Israel (opensecrets.org).

Our country could stop this slaughter if it wanted to. Instead we see the pro-Palestinian college encampments being brutalized by the police, ever eager to serve the ruling class. But there is resistance in the air. Our students are telling the nation to end its genocide of the Palestinian people. The rest of the world is demanding that the two pariah states of Israel and the United States be ostracized for their brutal crimes against humanity. Isn't it time we all took some responsibility for what our country is doing in our name?

mideastcrisis.org

Our murderous parent

My country is like a bad parent who never really changes his abusive habits. He sent me off to war in 1967, only to have all the lies come back to haunt him. He killed two million Vietnamese along with 58,000 US troops, and never even said he was sorry.

In the 1980s, he was training death squads in Central America, and arming them to commit atrocities in Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador. And after all that bloodletting, he never whispered a word of remorse.

The invasion of Iraq was another inexcusable moment for my American family. The invasion was all based on his lies about weapons of mass destruction, and again we murdered millions of innocent people. But our media hid most of the slaughter from us, and neither political party thought to condemn his obvious war crimes.

Now our parent is paying for and perpetuating the worst genocide of the 21st century. True to form, he never bothers to look at the torture, the starvation, the endless bombing of hospitals and schools in Gaza. The charnel house of his wars reminds us once again of how criminal our parent really is. And how dangerous. His wars abroad are based on carnage, and that is what our shameless parent is very good at. He sees some strategic goal in the eradication of the Palestinian people and there is nothing that can stop him. Not even the slaughter of 20,000 children.

Our murderous parent will one day destroy our American family.  

Fred Nagel

Now that we have hit 103,000, it might be time to change

This ClassWars Blog has followed Activist Radio guests for over a decade. Recently, I have used it to publish letters and articles that haven't been as closely linked to Activist Radio. That gives me more freedom, since linking to a specific guest each week had begun to feel restrictive. 

So I will continue to post my writings, and even include some graphics to spice things up. If you are a regular reader of this blog, I would love to hear what you think about the change. Just drop me an email.

Fred