ZGram - 9/18/2001 - "A Call to Sanity: An Essay by Ian Macdonald"

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

September 18, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

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.

[END]

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)