One ZGram reader wrote in a Letter to the Zundelsite, expressing the feelings of many:
"The shock has not worn off yet and even the most unsophisticated citizen of our country knows in his heart and gut that some rich Arab did not engineer this very complicated operation. They are too small - and what happened was too big."
As Ernst and I were listening to the first network broadcasts of the September 11 tragedy, we were horrified at the sappy, insipid, inconsequential voices that came on the air. Very little of substance was being conveyed beyond "...ain't it awful!" and "...let's hit 'em hard!"
By shining contrast, there are so many penetrating analyses and thought-provoking articles appearing on the Internet or forwarded directly to me via e-mail or fax that I find it very hard to pick, choose and file. There are still thinking people out there who know exactly what's what and who's who.
There are two items I want to share with you before I come to today's "Call to Sanity" ZGram. One is that I want my readers to understand that the struggle for truth and sanity in the current climate of suspicion, hate and revenge - and now sorrow - is claiming some notable casualties. As many undoubtedly know, writer and news analyst Israel Shamir lost a prestigious job at the Israeli daily, Ha'aretz. Veteran columnist Charley Reese lost his Florida job and had the syndication of his much-beloved articles severely curtailed. Phil Reeves walked out on the Murdock empire rather than be censored. And it must be the Eighth Wonder of the World that the very courageous Robert Fisk is still with the Independent.
I mention this because I want my readers to understand that some of us have to make a choice between staying on the air or saying everything we know or feel. Realities are such that *some* truth getting out via alternative media is better than having no alternative media at all to contrast and offset lapdog media.
The second item of much interest is a rather telling item you can read in its entirety at http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=75266&contrassID=2&su bContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
The gist of that article is that five Israeli citizens were illegally in the US for months if not years and were arrested by the FBI four hours after the attack on the WTC for "puzzling behavior". They were iterrogated for up to 14 hours, held communicado, and quickly transferred to INS holding centers waiting for deportation. Thanks to Ha'aretz, here we have at least one piece of evidence that American law enforcement personnel are not easily fooled by that odd and ever-so-convenient "Arab language flight instruction manual" supposedly left in a seized rental car. At least some of our cops are keeping a jaundiced eye at some Israelis as well.
Now to today's essay, written by occasional Zundelsite columnist Ian Macdonald:
[Start]
While Canadians and Americans grieve over the loss of several thousand innocent lives in New York, they should not allow Israeli media propagandists to blind them to the killing of much larger numbers of innocent victims in the Middle East and other atrocities by the Israeli-U.S. coalition that made some kind of violent retaliation almost inevitable.
President Bush now pretends that the September 11 attack was little more than mindless terrorism and threatens to increase the death toll manyfold by making war on any and all Muslim countries seen to support the Palestinian cause. Such a move would be massively counterproductive. It would provoke Muslims and other victims throughout the world to resort to further acts of vengeance probably more ingenious and certainly more catastrophic than the initial attack. Since the possibilities are unlimited, the methods unpredictable and the potential perpetrators mostly unidentifiable, there would be no defense compatible within maintenance of a democratic society.
The logical and eminently preferable solution of course is to eliminate the impetus for terrorism as opposed to the President's historically-invalidated proposal to "root it out wherever it is found". Since Israeli wrongdoing, especially the cruel dispossession and subjugation of the indigenous Palestinians, is the cause of the problem, it is self evident that the prerequisite to the elimination of terrorism is the neutralization of the Zionist state and her forced compliance with the norms of civilized behaviour. This solution would require Israel to disarm itself of all weapons of mass destruction, to withdraw completely to the 1967 borders leaving all improvements intact, to return all former Palestinian-owned property within Israel proper to its original owners, to pay compensation for loss of Palestinian lives and livelihoods (similar to that demanded by Jews for alleged losses during WWII), to end legal ethnic or religious discrimination and to extend the Law of Return to the Palestinian diaspora. Failure to comply should be answered by the imposition of sanctions, no less stringent than those imposed on Iraq, accompanied by rigorous inspection and a UN military presence if required.
As for the origin of the World Trade Centre/Pentagon attack, Iraq and others have speculated that the attack was triggered by Israeli agents provocateurs to deflect the attention of the American public from Israeli crimes while at the same time prompting U.S. military action against Israel's perceived enemies. If indeed Israel played a role in the attack (by no means inconceivable in view of her record of cunning duplicity and deep penetration of her enemies' ranks) it risks horrendous consequences, not only for Israel but also for Zionist collaborators, Jewish and Gentile, who would bear the blame for having betrayed their host nations into disrepute and unnecessary, painful sacrifices - moral, material and human.
Thought for the Day:
"The question no one in America has yet dared ask, except rhetorically, is "Why?" Unless the country's rulers try to get some understanding of the answer to that, the danger to all humanity is going to be terrifying.
(The Guardian, September 17, 2001)