Friday,
July 08, 2011 | Final Wednesday, July 13, 2011
I
First
of all, thanks to Alan Hart for his article
which I read on Salem-News[1]. It takes a brave man
to see, and even braver one to speak. And especially to speak out
against the genocidal crimes of a state whose own “mother”
called Alan Hart her “good
friend”[2]:
Caption
Photograph of Golda Meir, autographed to Alan Hart as her 'good
friend'
Zionism
is indeed the Jews' worst enemy. It tends to make the world's Jewry
the natural enemy of the entire world regardless of which country
they live in. As
was examined in another riposte
to Alan Hart, January 17, 2009 titled “No No – Not the
‘New Nazis’”[3], Jews can become
the seditious enemies of their home nations where they were born and
whose citizenship they enjoy, when matters
come into conflict with supporting their Jewish state in Palestine.
The
foundation of this sociopathy was laid very
carefully in the precise wording of the Balfour Declaration
itself. It had sanctioned the Jewish state in Palestine without
jeopardizing the Jews' political rights in
their own home countries: “It being clearly understood that
nothing shall be done which may prejudice
the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities
in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in
any other country.”
Caption The Balfour Declaration: Dear Lord Rothschild, 'His Majesty's
Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national
home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavor to
facilitate the achievement of this object. it being clearly understood
that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious
rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights
and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.'
The
Balfour Declaration permitted the Jews, solely by the fiat of
imperial power, to live in any country in the world while
simultaneously making the Jewish state in Palestine their new home
without jeopardizing their “rights
and political status” in
their home country of birth or citizenship. Notice that the wording
of the Balfour Declaration does not even mention the indigenous
peoples of Palestine by name, only referring
to them as “non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.
It further does not mention their general “rights and
political status” as a
people as it does for the Jews, but only refers to some narrower
“civil and religious rights” as
“non-Jewish communities”.
While on first glance these might appear equivalent to the layman, on
careful examination with the eyes of a shrewd lawyer, the local
“non-Jewish communities”
are not accorded the same general unspecified “rights
and political status”, as
are the transplanted Jewish people in the land of another granted to
the Jews.
While
bearing only a few short imperial proclamations, the Balfour
Declaration is the most treacherously worded document of its kind in
the history of colonization. Observe the magic of its linguistics,
wherein, the Palestinian peoples are not referred
to as a “people”, but only as “non-Jewish
communities”. Whereas, the
same document refers to the Jews as “the Jewish
people”. The simple,
largely agrarian, indigenous
Palestinian population, uninformed of the vagaries of deceit and the
Machiavellian use of legalisms and linguistics, from day one were
deprived of political status by the very wording of the Balfour
Declaration.
The
British empire making the surprising land grant to the Jews whom they
professed no inordinate love for throughout their history, only
villainous hatred, suddenly didn't even recognize the indigenous
peoples of Palestine continuously living for thousands of years in
their own ancestral lands as one people. But the Jews in Diaspora,
hailing from almost every country and culture on earth, but primarily
the Ashkenazi from Europe, are acknowledged
as one, “the Jewish People”. Thus, the Machiavellian
logic was to naturally follow, that how can a non-existent people
have the general “rights and political status”
which the “Jewish
People” enjoy as a people
regardless of where they live? That logic, once diabolically seeded
into the consciousness of the world Jewry by the fiat of Zionism as
their divine right, has been articulated by almost every prime
minister and statesman of the Jewish state of Israel ever
since. Suffice it to reproduce here as the harvest of this crafty
logic, the famous Jewish epitaph for Palestine: land without a
people for a people without a land!
Based
principally on that self-serving axiom which wiped out the very
existence of a people with a single stroke of imperial pen, that
Golda Meir, the “Mother Israel” who autographed
her photograph to Alan Hart with the inscription: “To
my good friend” as
reproduced above, was quoted in Le Monde[4] as
proclaiming: “This country exists as the fulfillment
of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to
account for its legitimacy”. Since
the Jewish God cannot be unjust even to the goyem (in the Jews'
proclamations before the goy), so Palestinian peoples must not exist
if Israel “exists as the fulfillment of a promise
made by God Himself.” (Other
intriguing Jewish convolutions on the God logic in which god suddenly
died after giving the Palestine land grant to the Jews, is in Leo
Strauss, The Early Writings 1921-1932, pg.
202, quoted in my February 08, 2009 letter to editor, Dalit Voice[5].
The 2010 Pamphlet on Palestine cited below exhaustively lists all
convolutions on Zionism, unarguably demonstrating their one singular
common purpose.)
Books
upon books have been meticulously compiled on Zionism dissecting the
conquest of Palestine from all directions. The Jews have themselves
written major treatise admitting their
crime, Israeli historian Benny Morris' Righteous Victims,
among them. And the Palestinians have narrated of their dispossession
and genocide with an eloquence which
remains unsurpassed for any oppressed peoples. Compelled by an inner
drive to side with a beleaguered peoples, I
have cited dozens of such compelling narratives in my 28 February
2007 article
“The endless trail of red herrings”[6].
However,
when we solely focus on Zionism, we somehow seem to overlook that it
was constructed by someone. Who? What for? Who aids and abets it? Who
is its primemover? How has it lasted that long? Which forces drive it
so that it has endured for almost 200 years? AIPAC? Chabad? The
Knesset? Washington?
Most
significantly, who
crafted such a diabolical document like the Balfour Declaration? And
what power did they exercise over the mighty British empire to
prevail with such an unjust demand? What is the nature of that
seemingly infinite and inexhaustible power
that even today, no statesman of the entire Western Hemisphere can
utter an effective word or take an effective action against the
Jewish state?
Such
magic doesn't just happen without a primemover force – like the
force of gravity whose effects all can see but not the force itself.
It took several thousand years of observing its effects by all and
sundry that someone came up with an accurate explanation for gravity,
and with nothing more than just a falling apple. It was right there,
apples have fallen from trees since the day Adam and Eve took the
proverbial bite from the tree of knowledge, but the mind wasn't ready
to see it until Isaac Newton.
II
My
critique of Alan Hart, and of most of the conscionable Western
witnesses to the genocidal crimes against humanity being purveyed
upon an indigenous peoples in Palestine during our own lifetime (not
something we just read about in history books and for which we can do
nothing about today), is that they only speak of what they see,
rather eloquently too, but almost always superficially. Yes we all
can see the dead bodies, doesn't take a Nostradamus to perceive
what's already before one's eyes. But they don't speak of what they
don't see. Like the iceberg, 90% is hidden from sight. And like the
iceberg, it is also known to exist, and to lurk just beneath the
surface. It is not secret or esoteric knowledge, nor is it a
classified state-secret. And just like it is for the iceberg, most
descriptions of it only describe the visible 10% above the surface. I
am not sure what profound wisdom is gleaned from reading such
narratives. I am sure studying and documenting crimes against
humanity is necessary. If eruditely documenting is the main purpose,
than I believe people are doing a terrific job of it. Even the senior
Bush White House advisor proclaimed this to the New York Times in
2004[7]:
‘We’re
an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while
you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will —
we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can
study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re
history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to
just study what we do.’ — Ron Suskind, quoting Senior
Bush Advisor, The New York Times, October 17, 2004
But
if changing what the “history's actors” are doing before
they accomplish all their goals in incremental stages, is the main
goal of dissent, then these erudite documentations
etc. are as meaningless as boasted above by the history's actors
themselves. This is an empirical fact. Not a matter of opinion.
If
no thinker and lauded exponent of Palestine will see the 90% which
gives the entire foundational substance to the visible 10%, then
their articulation of the problem is only as deep (or shallow) as the
10% visible iceberg. It is forever relegated to studying the “new
realities” being daily created by the “history's
actors”. As they like to put it with considerable chutzpah
and hubris, “to just study what we do.”
So,
in my moments of stupidity (since no brilliant
peoples like all the Nobel peace prize winners and academic
professors and scholars ever seem to think of this, I must be the
stupid one to do so), I have to wonder that while how easy it is to
see the 10% of the visible iceberg mass for dissent-chiefs, why is it
so hard to see the remaining 90% for those who do see the 10%?
Virtually
without exception, all famous and lauded narrators of Palestine in
the dissent-space keep coming up with faulty frameworks to explain
what they do see in Palestine. The rare exception which links it to
the larger global agenda in the world, is either immediately
marginalized, or ignored. Or, the oddballs inexplicably marginalize
themselves in the eyes of rational people who might otherwise pay
attention to them, by simultaneously uttering some outlandish
gibberish.
This
blindsight amidst the learned simply drives me up the wall,
especially when peoples, far more knowledgeable and experienced than
I, indulge in it.
Why
do they do that? Are they blind? Or, are they stupid? Or, am I really
really brilliant? I would safely strike out
the last item self-servingly put there if I were you, because I don't
believe it myself. Nothing I have said in the zillion words on my
website is rocket science. Then, is there some other reason for these
stupidities which ought to remain unspeakable?
For
what little my opinion is worth, I have still tried to address this
very question in my May 15, 2010 Pamphlet
“How to Return to Palestine”[8].
And
in my view, I am sorry to say that the heartfelt narratives of Alan
Hart, as truly heart warming as they always are, seldom do any
analytical justice to unraveling the core issues which pertain to the
invisible 90%.
I
am really sorry to say this of peoples' heroes. But I have to say it
because that's the only way to lick this totem pole of hero worship
of dissent-chiefs. To boldly challenge the lauded and brand-name
narrators and give them the opportunity to think afresh. None of us
are god, prophet, or all knowing and all seeing. And unless we begin
to acknowledge that fact, that we aren't, that our understanding of
reality must always remain tentative and continually subject to
correction, that we can actually stand to gain new insights into the
problem-space only if we stop pretending that we already understand
it all, no freaking sunshine is ever gonna enter the dark-matter
between our ears.
People
throng to Alan Hart, just like to the other dissent-chiefs. He is
respected, widely published, and wins many accolades for his
narratives (and also the ire of his Zionist antagonists of course).
But
is it rocket science that he actually misses by a mile on the hidden
but only in plainsight 90% of the iceberg?
If
I can see it, why can't Alan Hart? He is, I wholly admit just by
looking at his imposing credentials, far more experienced,
accomplished, and politically astute, than a lowly plebeian.
Omissions
are a serious offence. So serious in fact, that Aldous Huxley stated
it thusly:
‘The
greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing
something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still
greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By
simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr.
Churchill calls an “iron curtain” between the masses and
such facts or arguments as the local political bosses regard as
undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much
more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent
denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals. But silence
is not enough. If persecution, liquidation and the other symptoms of
social friction are to be avoided, the positive sides of propaganda
must be made as effective as the negative.’ — Aldous
Huxley, Preface (circa 1946) to Brave New World, 1931, Harper, pg. 11
If
curious about how an ordinary plebeian thinks bluntly on the 90% that
no Westerner who is famous as an academic, a journalist, or a
scholar, will touch with a ten-foot pole in their erudite
scholarship, see the first three parts of My Confusion Series[9].
Part-2
and Part-3
are perhaps directly pertinent as a response to Alan Hart's most
significant omission of his narratives.
Unless
Alan Hart goes there, my going there is ineffective and wasted effort
- because, I don't carry an imposing resume like Alan Hart. No one
ever listens to a plebeian. But people pay much attention to someone
like Alan Hart. When I sent my maiden 2003 manuscript to 30
publishers via Fedex at considerable cost, only six bothered to say
no thanks. Twenty four didn't reply. I don't even know if they ever
got to the right person. The publisher who published John Perkins'
Confessions of Economic Hitman in 2004, on Perkins' kind referral
(since I had requested him to refer me to his publisher after
learning that his book too had been turned down dozens of times),
talked to me by phone only to let me know that publishing is not
about a cause, but about profits. An unknown first of all is hard to
publish because he does not have readership. Secondly, as the
Berrett-Koehler representative had put it, and this was the most
disconcerting to me, one with a Middle Eastern name will be presumed
to be biased by the American readers since his own peoples are being
killed, hence no one will buy my book - so sorry.
In
those days, I still greatly admired Noam Chomsky as he had been one
of my most inspiring professors at college. My maiden manuscript sat
in Chomsky's in-basket for review for months, as it did on almost all
brand-name dissent-chiefs I had ever met in my life (including names
like Daniel Ellsberg and Tariq Ali –
to both of these prominent chiefs I had hand-delivered my manuscript,
in those days I was still a bit green behind the ears), before
Chomsky let me know that he will likely never get to it. He said he
was too busy and there were just way too many things in his
in-basket, which I interpreted as there were too many important
peoples ahead of me in his in-basket.
Howard
Zinn, what a remarkable teacher that late historian was, on a cold
call from me to his home in Boston, immediately agreed to review my
manuscript after we chatted a bit about his own million copy
bestseller. In fact, Howard Zinn reviewed two drafts for me. And when
I was unsuccessful in lining up any prominent publisher, Zinn even
wrote me a short but stellar commendation
letter to send to publishers. Despite all that, I got zero interest
from any mainstream publisher. Seven Stories Press who had published
Chomsky's 911 booklet (see Noam Chomsky below) also talked to me,
said my book was interesting, but that they liked first-hand research
(whatever that meant). In fact the title for my essay “They
Dared to Knock on my door” which was the first part of my
manuscript[10], if I recall correctly, was suggested by
Greg at Seven Stories Press. As I now recall, he had also noted that
as an unknown in this crowded field where mainly brand-names are
magnets, and others have to have some unique hook, my narrative as a
Muslim complaining about Islamophobia in America and America's
fictitious war on terror just won't sell. I should look into
self-publishing. Sorry.
I
am not sure that Alan Hart has had such problems.
All
those publisher turndowns back in 2003, at least in my case, were
partly symptomatic of what is empirically obvious.
We,
as part of our human nature, naturally tend to listen to those in
positions of power, those with titles, those with published
accolades, those who have met kings and queens, prime
ministers and presidents, those who look sharp and talk sharp,
and tend to accept from them, on the slenderest evidence, that which
already meets with the presuppositions of our own worldview. And we
concomitantly reject that which doesn't,
despite preponderance of evidence, continually demanding more, more,
more. It's as if cognitive dissonance prevents us from giving up our
old beliefs, even reaffirming them to make
them even more strongly held when shown to be wrong.
If
we are in the mainstream, our heroes are the mainstream heroes. We
don't hear dissent. And if we are in the dissentstream, our heroes
are invariably the dissent-chiefs and we applaud
ourselves for our brilliance that we are not sheep. But empirically,
we are each beholden to our natural inclinations, to our worldviews
howsoever we may have acquired them, whether by inheritance, or
vicariously implanted by the Mighty
Wurlitzer[11].
And
each of us have our own heroes and storytellers we generally
gravitate toward. And it is they, our heroes, people whom we respect
and admire, who invariably inform us what is the matter with whatever
they might be interested in. This aspect of our natural propensity
was partly captured by Bertrand Russell thusly:
'What
a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index to his
desires – desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If
a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts [or
worldview], he will scrutinize it closely, and unless [and at times
even when] the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe
it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a
reason for acting in accordance with his instincts [or worldview], he
will accept it even on the slenderest evidence.' — Bertrand
Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom, 1919, page 147
What
Bertrand Russell neglected to mention is that we tend to accept such
narratives on “the slenderest evidence” more
easily when it is brought to us by our respective heroes. But Adolph
Hitler didn't. He not only recognized, but also capitalized on such
shrewd understanding of human psychology (see below).
Therefore,
having become acutely aware of all this through my own successive
failures to convince anyone of anything (unless I am preaching to the
choir - and what's the great benefit of that), I began tackling
peoples' heroes directly, beginning with my own hero in my earlier
life, Noam Chomsky. In the slenderest hope that if I can get
someone's hero to interlocute with a
plebeian, and can miraculously change his mind, his flock will
naturally follow. It hasn't happened yet, but I keep trying.
To
you, the reader, what I say will be dismissed trivially. But have the
same thing be stated by the pundit/scholar/chief you admire –
well, try your own experiments. I know
someone who even did the following experiment:
sent one of his rejected articles again, by doing some simple word
substitution, mainly replaced his own name and put “Thomas
Friedman” and mailed it back. The same article which had been
rejected on specious grounds of racism earlier, was accepted with
that made up authorship of a Jewish brand-name,
and substituting two words identifying one
people with another people. I think the reader can well guess what
those might have been. Later the person let the publication know that
he had only done that experiment to prove to them the natural
perception bias, not to mention vile prejudice which had gone into
rejecting his first submission.
Therefore,
through this response to Alan Hart's article, I once again try to
interlocute with a brand-name chief. I invite Alan Hart, the narrator
of Palestinian travails, to offer a response to an ordinary
plebeian's missive by examining what's argued in Part-2 and Part-3 of
my confusion series referenced above. If I am shown the errors in my
thinking, I will humbly bow my head in shame and quietly slink away
to rethink and relearn from the master.
Obviously,
no two people agree on anything. So, the reader might well ask,
what's wrong with everyone having their own point of view in dissent?
It is, after all, dissent. Dissent means to disagree – don't
it? The most powerful description of dissent I ever saw is this one
by Vaclav
Havel[12]:
'I
too think the intellectual should constantly disturb, should bear
witness to the misery of the world, should be provocative by being
independent, should rebel against all hidden and open pressure and
manipulations, should be the chief doubter of systems, of power and
its incantations, should be a witness to their mendacity. For this
very reason, an intellectual cannot fit into any role that might be
assigned to him, nor can he ever be made to fit into any of the
histories written by the victors. An intellectual essentially doesn't
belong anywhere; he stands out as an irritant wherever he is; he does
not fit into any pigeonhole completely.' — Vaclav Havel, cited
in Zahir Ebrahim, Responsibility of Intellectuals – Redux,
March 03, 2007
So,
what's wrong with each one of us standing alone, in our own little
Hyde Park screaming corner, blaring our own irritants into the ears
of power? Okay, some have more prominent perches than others, but
that's just capitalism, egalitarianism, meritocratism.
What's wrong with that? You are just upset that the NYT does not
publish you or pays any attention to your submissions – why
don't you go back to engineering where you still have some earned
credibility, and evidently were also quite
successful? What do you have to show for ten years of activism
anyway? By your own admission, you haven't changed a single mind!
Such cynicism is what I constantly hear from both my trusted friends,
as well as my antagonists (those who were formerly
my friends but today I suspect just hate my guts because I refuse to
suffer fools any longer).
In
fact, I was even informed by one of my very wise colleagues in
Pakistan when I had offered him a copy of my unpublished manuscript
as keepsake, that I was wasting my time if I expected it to make any
difference even if it was published by Simon & Schuster and
became a bestseller on the New York Times list. His opinion was that
people don't change their mind by reading a book. (At that time I of
course didn't want to believe it, but now I am convinced of that fact
myself.) My uncle too had reliably informed me that I will be
“disappeared” the moment I came into notice of the
intelligence apparatus – and since the FBI had already visited
me twice, my days were surely numbered. (That I did believe,
and still do fear – but seek refuge in none except in my own
faith.) All that was back in 2003 when I first started opening my
mouth, and that was after I had already been exercising my legs and
my lungs in anti-war protest marches since 2002-2003.
So
what difference does dissent make? What has the bold courage of a
handful really changed? Whether it be of those much sought after
brand-named dissent-chiefs, or of the unknown tens of thousands of
other individuals who feel an inner compulsion to not accept
villainous matters as they are?
I
sincerely believe the following: that those who principally side with
truth, those who bear witness, those who seek fair justice for their
fellow man, and take personal risks in doing so when they don't need
to – when they could just as easily be pursuing their own
'American Dream' like the rest of silent bystanders – are all
principally holding the same book (the book of justice,
metaphorically speaking).
But
we are not all on the same page. Obviously. That is our undoing. Why?
Why do all of us have to be on the same page?
Because,
we are often unable to separate the myriad obfuscating issues into
their proper causal relationships of cause and effect. The causality
is also hierarchical, and often obfuscated by lower order less
significant bits masquerading themselves as the higher order bits. We
also often seem to confuse dependent variables of a complex system
with its independent variables which are often calculatingly masked
by the dependent variables for obvious reason.
In
other words, the subject of hegemony in modern times is very complex
- even though it may be as old as mankind - far more complex than
simply the dead bodies strewn from Palestine to Iraq to Afghanistan
to Pakistan which all can see.
To
separate out the causal relationships which are often highly nuanced,
and almost always cloaked in deception, is not easy. It requires a
great deal of commonsense - a commodity which appears to be less
common than the name might suggest.
So,
here is a test of commonsense for the reader whose moral compulsion
drives him or her to no longer remain a silent bystander: all see the
power of AIPAC and Chabad, some write major treatise on how they
influence the United States to favor Israel. From Paul Findley in
1985 (They Dare to Speak Out) to Mearsheimer and Walt in 2007 ( The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy), and in the ten thousand
articles across the Israel-Palestine landscape, these Zionist lobby
groups are indicted for their unelected power-wielding upon the
elected representatives of the people. Can
you suggest what makes these Zionist Lobby groups so powerful? The
brand-named academics and former elected officials who write those
narratives haven't. Can you, dear reader? It isn't rocket science.
My
own limited thinking on this matter is argued in the cited Pamphlet.
I am sure others with more wherewithal can do much better. The
problem is – all whom one imagines as having more wherewithal
don't want to go there! This unspeakable iron wall no one desires to
breach.
When
it comes to Zionism and Palestine, a land that was taken over by
deception and treachery, and whose narratives are replete with both
“beneficial cognitive diversity” (ala Cass Sunstein[13])
and Trojan Horses (ala fifth columnists from among the
Palestinians[14]
themselves), all effectively lead the struggle away from
focussing on what and who are Zionistan's real primemovers.
The
struggle for Palestine has been replete with red herrings (a smelly
fish that a fugitive drags across the path in order to put the
pursuing dogs off the trail). Every single one of these, as far as
one can tell, is either been planted by, or aided and abetted by,
lauded dissent-chiefs with brand-names. Don't believe it? See it for
yourself in the already cited article “The endless trail of red
herrings”.
Thus,
the direct addressing of the behind the scene powers which can
potentially add some efficacy to the otherwise sterile pursuit of
justice in Palestine, is made impossible when no one will go there.
Either deliberately as fabricated or controlled dissent, or out of
sheer ignorance, or out of self-preservation.
Caption
A Palestinian child's indomitable courage on Ground Zero in
Palestine (Photographer unknown). In order to be effective in
dealing with such a multifaceted and unique adversary, a division of
labor between those compelled to face the live ammunition and
checkpoints on Ground Zero, and those in Diaspora living in the
comforts of the West with the luxury of time and liberty to
effectively focus on the prime-movers, is the rational demand of the
hour. But evidently, none suffering the excruciating weekend pains
of Diaspora can muster even the courage of a tiny child of
Palestine! See Palestine: The Struggle Forward
The
day a brave Palestinian narrator in Diaspora is willing to risk an
iota of hair on his balding head, or underneath the fashionable
headscarf, that will surely be the first day of reclaiming Palestine
for their progeny. No dissent-chief, East or West, is going to do it
for them. The only way they ever get to become dissent-chiefs in the
first place is by not going there.
Every
child of Palestinian Diaspora must learn to throw the comparable
intellectual stone and be willing to risk being shot dead like the
child of Palestine on Ground Zero, if they ever want to reclaim
their home. The grandiose prize-winning narratives fired while
resting one's mighty pen safely upon the tiny shoulders of the
uncompromising child of Palestine - one who is risking it all in
throwing a tiny pebble at a Goliath which can annihilate him even
before the pebble leaves his tiny palm - is the grotesque caricature
of the Palestinian struggle in the relative safety of Diaspora.
What
I fail to grasp is why should the Palestinians in Diaspora refuse to
go there? They have everything to gain, and only their good 'American
Dreams' to lose? Is that even a fraction of what their brethren brave
daily in their existential struggle on ground zero, still refusing to
give in despite burying their dead daily,
like the un-identified child in the photograph[15]
in Alan Hart's article? But we equally see such omissions in the
Palestinians' own narratives as well. This is amply demonstrated
in my responses to Salman
Abu Sitta[16],
Antoine
Raffoul[17],
Ismail
Zayid[18],
Khalil
Nakhleh[19],
Shadi
Nassar[20],
Mustafa
Barghouti and Anna Baltzer[21],
Jeff
Gates[22],
Jeff
Blankfort[23],
et.
al[24].
Our
collective inability to analyze causality has been deliberately made
prodigious. Either through co-option, or through dumbing us down
while letting us pretend that we are super-smart! I call it the “IVY
League Morons Syndrome” and there is an article with that title
on my website[25]. The upshot of it all is that it
ultimately succeeds in keeping us from opening the book of justice
which we all evidently care about, on its most significant page
simultaneously. That, is the real purpose of introducing "beneficial
cognitive diversity" through "cognitive infiltration"
(sic!).
III
Let's
change that calculus of subterfuge and energetic runs on treadmills
to soothe the conscience, which have been in any case crafted for us
by the “history's actors” themselves.
But
firstly, one can't change anything by patting oneself on the back for
one's efforts in the pursuit of justice. Which is unfortunately
largely the tenor and character of modern day dissent-chiefs as well
as their flock. Not everyone is like that, but many appear to be on
ego trips for their own narrow self-interests, their shrill laments
on behalf of the poor victims notwithstanding.
Secondly,
the rank and file of dissent, when we are conscionable peoples who do
lend our consciences to our moral endeavors as an inner compulsion,
primarily do so to soothe our own consciences. This should be
self-evident, but isn't. We, generally speaking, haven't the capacity
nor the wherewithal to shrewdly employ both mind and hand to ENGINEER
a struggle.
I
really don't understand that when we easily see the crimes against
humanity are diabolically engineered, that both consent and dissent
is Machiavellianly manufactured – the engineering of consent –
why we persist in feeling that we can counter villainous tyranny
un-engineered? That, by just randomly, and largely symbolically,
exercising our consciences, our lungs, and our pens, for whatever
strikes our immediate fancy, we can make a difference whatsoever?
Today that fancy is the BDS and Sailing to Gaza. Yesterday it was the
endless weekend-only protest marches of a few hours before people
returned to the pursuits of their 'American Dreams' on weekdays.
Not
to take anything away from the courageous people who are
participating in these exercises – even the optimists will have
to admit they are largely symbolic. BDS[26] is
deconstructed here.
And
I will openly admit that if I had a tenth of the courage and a
hundredth of conscience of these moral activists who are putting
their precious lives on the line sailing to GAZA, even if
symbolically, for symbols of resistance are equally important to any
struggle, I would have joined them. Since I am thus far unwilling to
brave Israeli bullets whizzing by my head, I am unwilling to say
anything further[27]
on the subject except to reiterate that these symbols of resistance
are indeed entirely symbolic. Ten million sailing to GAZA from all
directions however, would surely alter that calculus. That requires
engineering. Hope and wishful thinking don't create engineering, nor
do moral compulsions. The actual exercise of engineering does. That
requires enormous focus, enormous resources, and more than some iota
of brains to orchestrate it.
A
prerequisite to engineering an effective struggle for change which
doesn't solely run on the treadmill, is to understand the myriad
forces which maintain the status quo. Many of these forces are masked
and layered in deception. They almost always stay behind the scenes
leaving their henchmen to be visible. So we neither know ourselves
very well, nor unfortunately our enemy. Sun Tzu's following wisdom on
the Art of War makes our shortcomings rather apparent:
'If
you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of
a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every
victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the
enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.'
The
main harbingers of engineering any change against villainous tyranny,
I have lamentably come to realize, are not going to be ordinary
peoples like us plebeians. Typically, we are just the crowd who
follow our leaders. I am sure you reading this is an exception. But
most of dissent falls into this category.
The
unfortunate reality is that very few people think independently. I
have found so much truth in the oft quoted statistic by poets and
sociologists alike, that "less then 2% people in any population
actually think, 8% think they think, and 90% wont be caught dead
thinking". Bertrand Russell too made the observation that "most
people rather die than think, and they do." Hitler capitalized
on that observation in Mein Kampf and in constructing the Third
Reich. The same is being capitalized in constructing the Global
Fourth. I have deconstructed the manufacturing of both consent and
dissent, an engineered product of latter day hectoring hegemons that
is entirely based on that sociological empiricism, in my report
"Manufacturing Dissent" available on my website. Here is a
short extract from Hitler's Mein Kampf:
Begin
excerpt
In
journalistic circles it is a pleasing custom to speak of the Press as
a 'Great Power' within the State. As a matter of fact its importance
is immense. One cannot easily overestimate it, for the Press
continues the work of education even in adult life. Generally,
readers of the Press can be classified into three groups:
First,
those who believe everything they read;
Second,
those who no longer believe anything;
Third,
those who critically examine what they read and form their judgments
accordingly.
Numerically,
the first group is by far the strongest, being composed of the broad
masses of the people. Intellectually, it forms the simplest portion
of the nation. It cannot be classified according to occupation but
only into grades of intelligence. Under this category come all those
who have not been born to think for themselves or who have not learnt
to do so and who, partly through incompetence and partly through
ignorance, believe everything that is set before them in print. To
these we must add that type of lazy individual who, although capable
of thinking for himself out of sheer laziness gratefully absorbs
everything that others had thought over, modestly believing this to
have been thoroughly done. The influence which the Press has on all
these people is therefore enormous; for after all they constitute the
broad masses of a nation. But, somehow they are not in a position or
are not willing personally to sift what is being served up to them;
so that their whole attitude towards daily problems is almost solely
the result of extraneous influence. All this can be advantageous
where public enlightenment is of a serious and truthful character,
but great harm is done when scoundrels and liars take a hand at this
work.
The
second group is numerically smaller, being partly composed of those
who were formerly in the first group and after a series of bitter
disappointments are now prepared to believe nothing of what they see
in print. They hate all newspapers. Either they do not read them at
all or they become exceptionally annoyed at their contents, which
they hold to be nothing but a congeries of lies and misstatements.
These people are difficult to handle; for they will always be
sceptical of the truth. Consequently, they are useless for any form
of positive work.
The
third group is easily the smallest, being composed of real
intellectuals whom natural aptitude and education have taught to
think for themselves and who in all things try to form their own
judgments, while at the same time carefully sifting what they read.
They will not read any newspaper without using their own intelligence
to collaborate with that of the writer and naturally this does not
set writers an easy task. Journalists appreciate this type of reader
only with a certain amount of reservation.
Hence
the trash that newspapers are capable of serving up is of little
danger--much less of importance--to the members of the third group of
readers. In the majority of cases these readers have learnt to regard
every journalist as fundamentally a rogue who sometimes speaks the
truth. Most unfortunately, the value of these readers lies in their
intelligence and not in their numerical strength, an unhappy state of
affairs in a period where wisdom counts for nothing and majorities
for everything. Nowadays when the voting papers of the masses are the
deciding factor; the decision lies in the hands of the numerically
strongest group; that is to say the first group, the crowd of
simpletons and the credulous. — Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler, Vol.
1, Chapter X (page numbers vary by edition and translation)
End
excerpt
Empiricism
suggests that the main harbingers of change throughout history have
always been chiefs, inspiring leaders who head their own flock who
invariably follow them blindly. And unless these leaders are patsies
standing in for the puppetmasters, one presumes that they are the
third category of people who “have learnt to regard every
journalist as fundamentally a rogue who sometimes speaks the truth.”
Such
people, often the opinion makers for their own flock, by opening the
book on the same most significant page simultaneously, and genuinely
pursuing the logic which naturally falls out on that page, can surely
engineer a focussed struggle for real efficacy rather than as a
commodity to soothe one's conscience, or line one's pocketbooks, as
it lamentably is today.
The
unpleasant reality today is that narratives in favor of the
'untermenschen' (German word for 'the lesser peoples'), showing dead
children and dead bodies, be they in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq,
Pakistan, or elsewhere along the 'arc of crisis' in the
'global zone of percolating violence' (both those terms[28]
are due to the architect of The Grand Chessboard, Dr. Zbigniew
Brzezinski),
have become a commodity. It spans the full gamut of narrow
self-interests.
If
valid cynicism be allowed to air for a minute (I am sure I will incur
the wrath of the pious), gallant people playing dissent with empire
are often funded by the instruments of empire itself. Mercenaries and
useful idiots alike – imperial military strategy documents
refer to the latter as “surrogates”, civilians who act on
the military's behalf without realizing it themselves (greed, false
patriotism, being a “house nigger”, and being “tickled”,
equally make convenient stooges) – willingly go on
reconstruction projects from Iraq to Afghanistan
in the name of bringing the bombed out peoples a taste of Western
“democracy”. Witness where they draw their paychecks
from? The very same Military-Industrial-Academe-Media-Nonprofit-UN
complex which ab initio creates the furor and “legal
legitimacy” for aggressive war under various pretexts, and
which directly benefits from bombing the “poor devils”
out in the first place! The manifest absurdity of this scam of
destroy-build-destroy-build cycle when one
is reaping its benefits, becomes rocket science to comprehend even
for people with Ph.D.
The
rising monetary cost of war (see costofwar.com) is a great method of
creating unpayable national debt, no matter who spends the money or
how it is spent. Cui bono national debt? The relationship
between rising national debt, the strangulation of the United States
itself as a sovereign nation-state, and the
construction of one-world government of the
financial oligarchy, has been explored and documented in
considerable depth on my website. One can read a succinct
summary in Chapter 3 of my 2011 book:
“The Poor-man's guide to modernity”[29].
Suffice it to simply state the obvious here that dissent –
controlled or self-serving doesn't matter – benefits from the
hegelian dialectic of their venture in many tangible as well as
intangible ways.
Narratives
purporting to favor the 'untermensch' often make their authors quite
rich and famous. Even win them prizes for their eloquence, and
sometimes accolades from the very instruments of those whom they
seemingly oppose in their dissent. The absurdity of this too, of
course, is entirely lost on their gullible flock who in point of
fact, cheer wildly for their heroes on such
occasions and carry them even more proudly
upon their shoulders. They fail to take notice of the distemper that
their gallant heroes of mankind themselves covet these prizes and
honors, and proudly display them on their resumes. But I am sure that
these gallant dissent-heroes donate every penny of their windfall
proceeds back to the Palestinians, to the very victims whose
narratives make them wealthy and famous.
Here[30]
is Noam Chomsky, “arguably the most important intellectual
alive” as anointed by the New York Times – the
accolade proudly adorning many a backcover of his books which of
course does not hurt in selling the brand-name of Noam
Chomsky to the public – gallantly giving away the proceeds of
his books. And here[31]
is a Palestinian lawyer in the West Bank doing it for the Orwell
prize he gladly accepted for his narrative from the very people who
instrumented the cataclysm upon his peoples which he narrated
thereof.
It
is very straightforward to recognize specious opinion-makers. They
generally tend to share the one common trait: they all see the sun
after it shines and hear the thunder after it roars. That is,
they see the 10% visible iceberg, after the fact, and describe it
with great eloquence. Sun Tzu captured the obviousness of it with
remarkable eloquence when defining the characteristics of a true
warrior in the Art of War 2500 years ago:
'8.
To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is
not the acme of excellence.
9.
Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the
whole Empire says, "Well done!"
10.
To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun
and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is
no sign of a quick ear.' — The
Three Political Dialogs[32], compiled by Project
Humanbeingsfirst, pg. 7
I
hope dissent-chiefs like Mr. Alan Hart, because of their vast
celebrity appeal and consequent flock, might be of the third type
mentioned by Hitler in Mein Kampf, and not just self-policing,
self-serving, controlled dissent. That, they might in fact be more
like the skilled warrior described by Sun Tzu. That he, Alan Hart, is
able to evaluate what he reads not based on which of his own heroes
might have written it, or his own natural proclivity to favor his own
a priori worldview as Bertrand Russell effectively described it, but
what it's actually saying. If Alan is that man, then by reading
part-2 and part-3 of my confusion series mentioned in this article,
he will either be persuaded by it and will logically open that mighty
book of justice on the right page himself. Or, he will refute it.
Short
of any of that transpiring, to just respond to Alan Hart's largely
rhetorical question embedded in the title
of his article, there is no real Palestinian power – people or
otherwise. Disenfranchised masses, the wretched of the earth,
like any other mob, are only power in the
hands of Machiavelli. This is self-evident. It is even a truism. In
the case of Palestinians on ground zero, they stand at the threshold
of annihilation while those in Diaspora
look on. The only recourse for Palestinians today to overturn that
dismal existential state of affairs they have been brought to, is to
clean their own house first of their house negroes and fifth
columnists[33].
I
could be wrong about everything in this article – judge for
yourself. Don't let someone else do the thinking for you. If you, Jew
or Gentile, are frustrated by the inefficacy of your labors while
“history's actors” continue to create new
realities boldly inviting you “to just study what we do”
to your good heart's content, look into opening the book on its most
significant page.
Thank
you for reading the words of a plebeian.
Zahir
Ebrahim
Project
Humanbeingsfirst.org
Footnotes
[1]
http://salem-news.com/articles/july062011/palestine-chanve.php
[2]
http://www.alanhart.net/about-alan-hart/
[3]
http://bloghumanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/no-no-not-the-new-nazis-by-zahir-ebrahim/
[4]
Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971
[5]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2009/02/letterto-dalitvoice-which-god.html
[6]
print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2007/12/endless-red-herrings.html
[7]
Ron Suskind, Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush,
New York Times, October 17, 2004,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?_r=4&ex=1255665600
[8]
http://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/pamphlet-how-to-return-to-palestine-this-day-forward-5-15-2010-by-zahirebrahim-2ed.pdf
Online:
http://humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/p/pamphlet-how-to-return-to-palestine.html
[9]
Part-1
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-many-jews-does-it-take-to-confuse.html
Part-2
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-confusion-invisible-rothschild-usa.html
Part-3
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-confusion-pt3-omnipotent-rothschilds.html
[10]
http://prisonersofthecave.blogspot.com/2007/04/part-1-they-dared-to-knock-on-my-door.html
[11]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2009/05/note-on-mighty-wurlitzer.html
[12]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2007/12/responsibility-of-intellectuals-redux.html
[13]
Cass R. Sunstein & Adrian Vermeule, Conspiracy Theories, January
15, 2008, Social Science Research Network,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585&
(cached
pdf)
[14]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2011/07/palestine-enemy-within-by-zahirebrahim.html
[15]
http://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image-of-an-unidentified-dead-palestinian-child-in-the-field-via-alan-hart-salem-news.jpg
[16]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/04/resp-abusitta-rothschild-not-zabara.html
[17]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/04/resp-antoine-raffoulwhat-is-iron-wall.html
[18]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/04/resp-ismail-zayid-breaching-iron-wall.html
[19]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/04/resp-palestine-contested-histories.html
[20]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/03/secretking-rothschild-roman-jerusalem.html
[21]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2009/11/rescuing-thestruggle-for-palestine.html
[22]
http://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/zahirs-letter-to-jeff-gates-of-criminalstate-com-in-response-to-anti-semitism-what-is-it-march182010.pdf
[23]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/07/let-jeffblankfort-rothschilds-palestine.html
[24]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2009/11/genesis-to-genocide-golem-not-jewish.html
[25]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2011/01/ivy-league-morons-syndrome-zahirebrahim.html
[26]
http://bloghumanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/response-to-leaked-zionist-strategy-paper-to-counter-bds-by-zahir-ebrahim/
[27]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/12/zahirs-response-mary-rizzo-ken-okeefe.html
[28]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2011/01/unlayering-middle-east-war-agenda.html
[29] See Chapter 3:
http://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/the-poor-mans-guide-to-modernity-ze-ebook-print.pdf
Revised
6th Edition
http://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/the-poor-mans-guide-to-modernity-6th-edition-2013-zahirebrahim.pdf
Read
Chapter 3 online, Of Ostriches and Rebels on The Hard Road to World
Order,
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/12/of-ostriches-and-rebels-zahirebrahim.html
[30]
Peter Schweizer, Noam Chomsky, Closet Capitalist, Hoover Institution
Stanford University, January 30, 2006,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/6222
[31]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/05/letter-toguardian-2008-orwellprize.html
[32]
http://tinyurl.com/political-dialogs
http://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/cacheof-three-political-dialogs-to-screw-your-enemy-via-gutenberg-and-aztlan.pdf
[33]
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2011/07/palestine-enemy-within-by-zahirebrahim.html
Source
URL:
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2011/07/response-to-alan-hart-by-zahir-ebrahim.html
Mirror
URL:
http://bloghumanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/response-to-alan-hart-by-zahir-ebrahim/
PDF
URL:
http://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/response-to-alan-hart-by-zahir-ebrahim-5.pdf
The
author, an ordinary researcher and writer on contemporary
geopolitics, a minor justice activist, grew up in Pakistan, studied
EECS at MIT, engineered for a while in high-tech Silicon Valley (
http://tinyurl.com/zahir-patents
), and retired early to pursue other responsible interests. His
maiden 2003 book was rejected by numerous publishers and can be read
on the web at http://PrisonersoftheCave.org.
He may be reached at http://Humanbeingsfirst.org.
Verbatim reproduction license at
http://humanbeingsfirst.org#Copyright.
07/13/2011 16:00:06
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Palestine:
The Illusion of Power and the Calculus of Dispossession – A
Response to Alan Hart 23/23
