Vdare continues to publish vile anti-Israel propaganda
I see to my sorrow that Vdare is still indiscriminately publishing Paul Craig Roberts’s syndicated columns, including his columns in which he portrays Israel as a monstrous oppressor, while he ignores and denies, as is required by that portrayal, the actual history of the Arab war against Israel and the actual circumstances with which Israel has to cope. On January 11, Vdare posted
this by Roberts:
The Israelis can kill whomever they want whenever they want.
As though the Israelis were Nazi-like, remorseless, indiscriminate killers, rather than people compelled to use military force in order to protect themselves from jihadist Muslims whose declared and unrelenting aim is the extermination of Israel and of all Jews. If Israelis were the amoral killing machines Roberts paints them as, why would they have given Palestinian civilians in Gaza warnings of impending attacks? If the Israelis place no limits on their own blood lust, as Roberts states, why did they end the Gaza operation prematurely, leaving Hamas intact, instead of killing off Hamas entirely and being done with them?
I and others have many times called on Vdare to stop publishing Roberts’s disgusting articles, articles that lead people to hate a small Western country surrounded by Muslims who seek her destruction, articles that feed the anti-Semitism that is spreading in our society (indeed, Roberts’s line about Israelis killing whomever they want whenever they want has been widely quoted at anti-Semitic websites). Vdare’s editor has repeatedly refused, offering the lamest excuses. Shame on Vdare for disseminating Roberts’s repulsive propaganda, worthy of the lowest precincts of the left and of the anti-Semitic right. Shame on Vdare for associating the immigration restriction movement, on which the survival of America and the West depends, with this vile Israel-hater, this “conservative” ally and promoter of Muslim terrorists.
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Of course, Vdare’s ostensible excuse for publishing Roberts is that he writes in favor of an immigration restriction.
This is false. As I wrote in 2007:
A VFR reader who follows Roberts pointed out the other day that Roberts virtually never deals with the immigration issue. Furthermore, when Roberts did bring up the subject of immigration, in a column this past May, he said that he would have no problem with the entire population of Mexico coming to the U.S., if only that would rid America of neoconservatives. What connection there could be between a Mexican invasion of the U.S. and the physical removal of all neoconservatives from the U.S. is not the point; the point is that Roberts sees a few score neocon journalists as more harmful to America than the mass takeover of America by 130 million Mexicans.
So, Roberts does not write about immigration, and when on rare occasions he does write about it, far from saying “sensible” things on the subject, he utters completely insane things in favor of open borders.
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Here is Roberts’s January 11 column:
Why does Israel have a right to exist, but Palestine doesn’t?
This is the question of our time.
For sixty years Israelis have been stealing Palestine from Palestinians. There are maps available on the Internet and in Israeli publications showing the shrinkage over time of what was once Palestine into what Palestine is today—a small number of unconnected ghettos or bantustans.
Palestine became “the occupied territory” from which Palestinians were ejected and Israeli settlements built for “settlers.” Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are full of refugee camps in which Palestinians driven off their lands by Israeli force have been living for decades.
Driving people off their land is strictly illegal under international law, but Israel has been getting away with it for decades.
Gaza is a concentration camp of 1.5 million Palestinians who were driven from their homes and villages and collected in the Gaza Ghetto.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency was created 60 years ago in 1949 to administer refugee camps for Palestinians driven from their lands by Israel. As of 2002, the registered Palestinian refugee population was 3.9 million.
Caterpillar Tractor makes a special bulldozer for Israel that is designed to knock down Palestinian homes and to uproot their orchards. In 2003 an American protester, Rachel Corrie, stood in front of one of these Caterpillars and was run over and crushed.
Nothing happened. The Israelis can kill whomever they want whenever they want.
They have been doing so for 60 years, and they show no sign of stopping.
Currently they are murdering women and children in the ghetto that they have created for Palestinians in Gaza. The entire world knows this. The Red Cross protests it. But the Israelis brazenly claim that they are killing “Hamas terrorists who are a threat to Israel’s existence.”
The American media knows that this is a lie, but does not say so.
Israel has been able to slowly exterminate a people for sixty years without provoking sufficient outrage to stop it.
The United States, “Christian America,” has been Israel’s greatest enabler in its long-term murder of the Palestinian people. Millions of “evangelical Christians” endorse Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The rest of the world condemns the Israeli military attack on the Gaza Ghetto. Last week the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution requiring a ceasefire and the withdrawal of the Israeli SS from Gaza.
The United States abstained.
While the rest of the world condemns Israel’s inhumanity, the US Congress—I should say the US Knesset—rushed to endorse the Israeli slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza.
The US Senate endorsed Israel’s massacre of Palestinians with a vote of 100-0.
The US House of Representatives voted 430-5 to endorse Israel’s massacre of Palestinians.
The resolutions endorsed by 100% of the US Senate and 99% of the House were written by AIPAC, as were the speeches praising Israel for its inhumanity.
The US Congress was proud to show that it is Israel’s puppet even when it comes to murdering women and children.
The President of the United States was proud to block effective action by the UN Security Council by ordering the Secretary of State to abstain.
Be a Proud American. Swagger and strut. Pretend that you are not besmirched by the shame that your government has heaped upon you. Take refuge in your ignorance, fostered by 60 years of Israeli lies, that the murder of Palestinians and the theft of their lands is “Israel’s right of self-defense.”
[end of Roberts column.]
- end of initial entry -
David B. writes:
I have previously pointed out my complete disdain for Roberts. I just checked the Chronicles site, and they did not run his January 11 column, “America’s Shame.” At least, I couldn’t find it. Unlike Brimelow, Fleming runs most of Roberts’ columns (probably out of friendship, as well), but not all of them. Several times, I have seen Fleming write that America must support Israel’s right to exist.
One of the Chronicles writers, Clyde Wilson, wrote in the comments section to one of Roberts’ columns, “Mr. Roberts sure does shake the tree. This is what makes him valuable.” A month or so ago, I really lambasted Roberts in the comments section at Chronicles. I pointed out that while claiming to be against prosecutorial misconduct, Roberts did not write a single column about Nifong’s attempt to send 3 innocent men to prison for 30 years. Not a peep from Roberts on the Duke Hoax. Nor does Roberts write that turning America into a third world nation will increase false prosecutions.
LA replies:
You write: “I have previously pointed out my complete disdain for Roberts.”
We’ve been corresponding for several years, and that’s strong language coming from you.
Re your quote of Clyde Wilson at Chronicles:
“Mr. Roberts sure does shake the tree. This is what makes him valuable.”
This shows the lack of intellectual maturity, the absence of moral reasoning, that is typical of paleocons. There are many very bad people in the world who “shake the tree.” Does that make them valuable?
Jesus called on men to live in the kingdom of God. Muhammad commanded the killing of non-Muslims until the whole earth was subdued by Islam. Jesus certainly “shook the tree.” So did Muhammad. Did that make Muhammad as valuable as Jesus?
It’s not shaking the tree that makes one valuable, but the quality and truth of what one says.
David B. replies:
A small correction. Clyde Wilson’s comment on Roberts was, “Mr. Roberts really shakes the tree, which is his merit.” I must point out that I like most of Clyde Wilson’s Chronicles essays. It may be a Southern thing. One reason I feel strongly about Roberts is because his column is usually a waste of space that could be used for something truly valuable.
LA replies:
Yes. Here are some examples of how Roberts shakes the tree:
For sixty years Israelis have been stealing Palestine from Palestinians.
The Israelis can kill whomever they want whenever they want.
They have been doing so for 60 years, and they show no sign of stopping.
He has also written:
Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.
Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of “executive orders” that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, “terrorist” events in the near future.
Would a government that has lied us into two wars and is working to lie us into an attack on Iran shrink from staging “terrorist” attacks in order to remove opposition to its agenda?
He also says:
By overturning habeas corpus, neoconservatives have laid the foundation for a tyrannical police state. If I could rid America of neoconservatives, I would accept the entire population of Mexico.
Yep. There’s Roberts’s tree-shaking. And respected paleocon scholar Wilson says it has merit.
Meanwhile there is not a single member of the paleocon tribe who will say to his tribesmen, “My fellow paleocons, we’ve gone far astray. We don’t stand for anything any more except for dislike of America as it actually is and hatred for neocons as the supposed representatives of America. We hate neoconservatives more than we fear the threat of Islam. We publish demented haters who call for the Mexican conquest of the U.S. if only it would somehow get rid of the neoconservatives. We no longer believe in moral truth, we believe that the enemy of our enemy is our friend. We no longer believe in defending America, because we resent America. We no longer even seriously argue for a restoration of constitutional government, which used to be central to our political belief system. We must stop this madness and return to a legitimate conservatism.”
No. There’s not one of them that says anything like that. Even the more reasonable paleocons excuse the virulent statements of their fellow paleocons.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 28, 2009 02:05 PM | Send