Obama’s Search For A Moral Compass
By Mel Goodman on April 17, 2009 at 9:05 AM in Bill of Rights, CIA, Guantanamo, Intelligence, Rendition, Torture, U.S. Constitution, Unitary Executive Powers/Signing Statements
Some countries never acknowledge their crimes. It has been 95 years since the Turkish genocide against its Armenian population, but the Turkish government will not confess to any role in crimes that were committed. The Japanese have never admitted the terrible crimes committed throughout Northeast and Southeast Asia during World War II. And Israel has refused to acknowledge its numerous crimes against the Palestinians, most recently in Gaza, where Israeli soldiers committed grave violations of international law by deliberately attacking civilian targets and failing to protect the civilian population.
We know that the United States has committed crimes that violated the 8th Amendment of the Constitution against “cruel and unusual punishments;” the War Crimes Act of 1996; the Convention Against Torture of 1984 (the United States is a signatory); and of course Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions.
President Obama’s handling of the war crimes of the United States in facilities in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Iraq, and Afghanistan is particularly troubling because his administration has admitted that crimes were committed. He has condemned torture and abuse, closed CIA secret prisons, and ordered the closing of Guantanamo within the year.
Attorney General Eric Holder stated bluntly in his confirmation hearings that “waterboarding is torture.” CIA director Leon Panetta has done the same, and the CIA has conducted no extraordinary renditions since Panetta replaced General Michael Hayden as CIA director. Extraordinary renditions amount to enforced disappearance, which is also a violation of international law. Panetta also has announced that the CIA will no longer use contractors to conduct interrogations and has proposed a plan to decommission the remaining black sites.
We have paid a terrible price for these crimes according to General officers who have served in Iraq; they believe that U.S. use of torture and abuse is the major incentive in the recruitment of Arab fighters to Iraq in order to conduct their own acts of terror, including suicide bombings.
But the president has stated that the United States “must look forward, and not backward,” and CIA director Panetta has proclaimed that CIA officers who conducted torture and abuse in CIA secret prisons “should not be investigated, let alone punished.” The deputy director of the National Security Agency and a former CIA senior officer, John Brennan, has lobbied aggressively at the Justice Department and the CIA against any release of documents that deal with CIA’s interrogation program and its policy of extraordinary renditions.
Brennan was President Obama’s first choice to be CIA director, until the appearance of numerous articles that traced Brennan’s role as a cheerleader for “enhanced interrogation techniques” and extraordinary renditions. Finally, CIA has taken no action against CIA officers responsible for the willful destruction of nearly 100 tapes of torture and abuse against terrorist suspects, and Panetta has retained as his deputy director, Stephen Kappes, who was the ideological driver for the worst of CIA’s techniques and programs.
The CIA’s crimes are no secret, having been fully documented by Mark Danner in the “New York Review of Books,” Jane Mayer and Sy Hersh in the “New Yorker,” and Dana Priest and Barton Gellman in the Washington Post. We learned about CIA’s “black sites” in 2002; the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib in 2004; and FBI protests against CIA torture and abuse in 2006. We know that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and CIA director George Tenet endorsed and encouraged these measures.
Numerous reports, including the Taguba Report in 2004, the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the forthcoming report of the Senate Armed Forces Committee have fully documented the crimes. The recent Spanish preparation of a case against six lawyers with the Bush administration, including attorney general Alberto Gonzales, will lead to more revelations as will the inquiries taking place in Britain and Poland.
The stature of international law is diminished when a nation violates it with impunity. The stature of a nation is diminished when it commits crimes against humanity. And the national leadership is diminished when it ignores the need for accountability and explicit repudiation. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has called for a “truth commission” to gather information on U.S. detention and interrogation programs.
Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Christopher Bond (R-MI) have endorsed a similar investigation of CIA programs as well as an “evaluation of intelligence information gained through the use of enhanced and standard interrogation techniques.” This would represent a good start, but only President Obama can restore our moral compass on the crimes of the post-9/11 era. The judgment of history will be harsh if he chooses not to do so.
Melvin A. Goodman,a regular contributor to The Public Record, is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He spent more than 42 years in the U.S. Army, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. His most recent book is “Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.”
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If he just reads the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, he’ll find it.
Here’s an idea:
When the Palestinian homocide bombers stop attacking the citizen population of Israel and indescriminate missiles stop being lobed into Israel, I will cry me a river about your accusations that Israel’s don’t do enough to protect the citizen polulation of Palestinians. You play, you pay.
Until then f*ck off with your accusations of Israel war crimes!
Just saying ……….
CAROL HAKA
Mel - You are no better than the Jews in Germany who helped empower Hilter because they were too afraid of confronting him and instead felt appeasement would save their sorry behinds. Unfortunately for most of them they wee wrong.
The atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza are so far the pour fabrication of Hamas supported media and left wing anti-Israel organizations. As a Jew to suggest this without solid proof is dispicable.
Therefore you have no credibility and any other claims you are making are here.
mel apparently “forgot” to mention the deliberate killing of israeli citizens by palestinians, and the palestinians’ refusal to admit that such things have ever happened, or that there was anything wrong with it if it did.
So the Jews are responsible for their own genocide and they “enabled” Hitler? Well, see there. I blamed Hitler all this time and it turns out it’s all the fault of the Jews who happily walked into gas chambers.
You don’t read well.
Hitler killed the Jews including the Jews who sought to appease Hitler. Jewish people who turn against Israel and support their enemies is no better than the turncoat Jews in Germany.
I never said that they were the majority of Jews idiot.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch. Mel is correct. The US is guilty of war crimes. So is Israel. Simply accept the fact about the I/P crisis. Blaming innocent civilians for their own deaths at the hands of an army is about as callous as you can get.
Palestinians are not civilians - they are soldiers.
War is hell. Like I said, you play you pay.
Stop attacking Israel and they won’t attack you. Same with the US.
CAROL HAKA
“Palestinians are not civilians- they are soldiers.”
That is truly a sick comment. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Israeli’s are moral soldiers. Palestinians are paid soldiers by terror groups.
Golden Rule applies.
And the institutions you sited - are those the same ones that hang out with Jimmy Carter - as in the President that built the Taliban with Dr. Brezinsky?
CAROL HAKA
Sorry, Carol, but it was REAGAN (along with Pakistan’s ISI) who helped to build the Taliban. The Taliban did not exist until the MID 1980s (at the earliest; even then, that group didn’t come to ANY sort of real attention until the early 1990s, even in Afghanistan).
Bear in mind that obviously the Reagan Administration (which was in office in Jan 1981) would have CONTINUED the Carter plan (which, incidentally, did NOT build the Taliban–the Carter program was to fund an anti-Soviet force called the mujahedeen and included dozens of factions with their own goals, but the Taliban are solely a by-product of the Reagan/Bush era).
Check some REAL history, instead of that retconned neocon trash you’re obviously relying on.
You are correct. Watch the highly sanitized “CHarlie Wilson’s War”. We did fund and arm the mujahideen to fight the Soviet invasion of Afganistan.
Our motives are the same as the Soviets. Oil pipelines, natural resources, and a foothold in the Middle East.
I guess you just consider the collapse of the Soviet Union and the symbolic end of the cold war as fringe benefits.
Not fringe benefits, andrew. Maybe a cautionary tale since the Soviets were not the first power to try to conquer Afghanistan and fail.
PamFlorida
Yes. And Obama wants to send troops and already sent 20,000 (!) while saying with the other side of his mouth that he wants Diplomacy and Development–NOT military solutions!!
We should all get a copy of Eisenhower’s commentary of the military, just before JFK’s inauguration where he says the greatest dangers are from an industrialized military that’s taking over control of the government….amazing prophet. A man, like Colin Powel, who lived the War and came to despise it!
Obummber should impeach Bush and confiscate all his family fortune–in Saudi banks!!
ISLAMIST SEXIST OPPRESSIVE DICTATORSHIP IN TURKEY SHOULD ACKNOWLEDGE THE GENOCIDE OF TWO MILLION ARMENIANS AND HTE RAPES OF THOUSANDS OF ARMENIAN GIRLS 90 YEARS AGO… THESE MURDERERS SHOULD BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE–IT’S NEVER TOO LATE. JUST AS WE MUST NEVER EVER ALLOW OUR SELVES TO FORGET WHAT THE NAZIS DID IN GERMANY AND EUROPE IN WWII….too bad there’s a little boy in the White House who calls his clueless self “Coolest Prez” in the ‘hood…
Brezinski and Carter are responsible for the Taliban. period.
CAROL HAKA
From the horses mouth, as much as he will admit to:
“In 1998, Brzezinski was interviewed by the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur on the topic of Afghanistan. He revealed that CIA support for the mujaheddin had started before the 1979 Soviet invasion, knowingly increasing the probability of a Soviet invasion. Brzezinski saw the invasion as an opportunity to embroil the Soviet Union in a bloody conflict comparable to America’s experience in Vietnam. He referred to this as the “Afghan Trap” and viewed the end of the Soviet empire as worth the cost of strengthening militant Islamic groups.
He went on to say in that interview, “What is most important to the history of the world? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?” When the interviewer questioned him about Islamic fundamentalism representing a world menace, Brzezinski said, “Nonsense!” [21][22]
In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski says that assistance to the Afghan resistance was a tactic designed to bog down the Soviet army while the United States built up a deterrent military force in the Persian Gulf to prevent Soviet political or military penetration farther south (see: the Carter Doctrine).”
CAROL HAKA
Carol Haka
Thanks for an informative commentary here. Brezinsky should be sent to Guantanamo–together with the “Coolest Prez in the ‘Hood”…
Turkey should acknowledge its atrocities and fullscale Genocide against 2 million Armenians. And Germany should never forget its own atrocities and Genocide against the Jews–and those Europeans who helped them sometimes avoid detention and death (I have stories from my parents on this horrendous part of history)…LEST WE FORGET!!!
I am very sad for my country. Due to BS Anti-Israel propaganda, and because we have a self admitted Muslim “President,” we are no longer friends to Israel. Any Jew who voted for that pig Obama gets what they deserve. And my heart is broken for what this country has become.
Yes my Paula Revere it is indeed a sad time
For my Canadian friends to say America is now the wimpy country and has lost it’s way as leaders of the free world is beyond troubling to me.
Israel is the last hope for preventing the collapse of the western tradition
Go Israel…Go deep!
bomb as much as needed
America has no fight left because the wimps took over.
Our Canadian friends indeed feel our pain. They hate that moron as much as we do.
Sorry, Carol, but under Israeli law, ALL Israeli men (except for those engaged in religious studies*) are obligated to serve in the military for a certain number of years and, even AFTER they’ve completed their active duty, they’re still liable to be called BACK to duty in the event of an “emergency”. Women, too, are obligated to serve a shorter period of active duty service (I don’t believe they’re subject to a recall, however). Pacifists aren’t even fully exempted; they’re required to perform other types of public service.
So, if you’re going to make that spurious claim that Palestinians are all soldiers, you’d better check your facts about the OTHER side because in this case, what’s good for the goose IS good for the gander.
*Interestinly, those religious studies have to follow a certain set of guidelines, and almost exclusively apply ONLY to Orthodox Jews. And, if a man engaged in these studies gets married before completing his studies, he’s PERMANENTLY exempt from his military obligation. There are a LOT of Israelis (both secular and non-Orthodox Jews) who are getting more than a bit fed up with this dispensation, since any other Israeli male who tries to elude his service will be arrested and spend that obligatory service in jail.
I said Israelis are soldiers.
I’m Jewish. I think I know.
“War is hell” is the most completely and utterly trite statement I’ve read on this post. If you were sitting in the middle of one Carol, it would be a profound cry for help and have meaning, but since you are not listening to gunfire, running for protection from incoming rockets or watching your home being bulldozed to the ground, forgive me if I’m inclined to believe it is a cruel cliche.
“Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch.”
Those are both far left wing organizations and with a long term well established anti-Israel bias.
“Blaming innocent civilians for their own deaths at the hands of an army is about as callous as you can get.”
We are speaking about Gaza and Hamas. The people there voted for Hamas with the full recognition of their charter and their positions. So don’t paint them as purely innocent. At what point does a country have the right to respond militarily after thousands of rockets had been fired by Hamas into Israel targeting civilian populations including schools and tramatizing a generation of children?
But you have a perfect right to you anti-Semitic beliefs.
Ok, now we have the anti-Semitic card being played and with the racist card that means two of a kind. Fatah was doing nothing for Palestinians. Unemployment was through the roof and they were living in a box. The election, which Hamas won, was a creation of Condi Rice and Bush. They wanted to bring Democracy to Palestine. What a dumb move. People who are suffering will vote for the group they believe will help them escape the hell they were living in. They did succeed in splitting the country, but if you’re Palestinian, if doesn’t matter if you’re living in the box of Gaza or the box of the West Bank. They are caught in the middle of Israel’s insatiable appetite for expansion and Hamas’ radical agenda. The children don’t understand. They are born in war, they live their lives in fear and they learn hate. They fight tanks and guns with rocks and watch their homes destroyed by bulldozers.
“Israel’s insatiable appetite for expansion”
Where did you get this from - Daily Kos or Al Jazeera?
The land Israel is still occupying was rightfully taken during the wars where they were invaded by all the surrounding Arab countries - not in some mythical expansionist effort trumped up by the anti-Zionist kooks.
And who exactly is the aggressor? Israel has always been provoked with horrific terror attacks on civilians and children for decades by Palestinian terrorists. Israel sat back while Hamas terrorists launched literally thousands of rockets into Israel intentionally targeting civilian populations including schools - and did nothing until they had no choice but to go into Gaza and stop them forcibly. The Hamas cowards hid behind women’s skirts, in hospitals, and used children as human shields.
You feel sorry for the Palestinan people? Then tell them to stop attacking Israelis and kick out Hamas. As you said, Hamas was not imposed on them - they voted for them.
Carol HAKA, I concur totally.
So we are to believe that we were attacked on 9-11 because of our future policy of “water boarding”?
That’s laughable!
CAROL HAKA
I don’t believe anyone made such a comment nor did anyone SUGGEST such.
Set up your strawmen somewhere else.
Guote from the article:
“We have paid a terrible price for these crimes according to General officers who have served in Iraq; they believe that U.S. use of torture and abuse is the major incentive in the recruitment of Arab fighters to Iraq in order to conduct their own acts of terror, including suicide bombings.”
Anymore questions?
CAROL HAKA
[ADMINISTRATOR: Please don't call people stupid. Disagreement is great, but please be civilized about it. For one thing, you'll get a lot farther in convincing others.]
The article author, Melvin Goodman was writing here long before PUMA bigots infected this site. The author is a regular contributor to The Public Record, he is Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and an Adjunct Professor of Government at Johns Hopkins University. He spent more than 42 years in the U.S. Army, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense.
You Carol HAKA are just a
stupid PUMA. Being Jewish does not give you a full understanding of Middle East affairs it just makes you a stupid PUMA who happens to be Jewish.
Your stupidity of trying to link Iraq to 9/11 is telling. Your misreading of the article is even more revealing. It takes a fool not to realise our use of torture in Iraq destroyed any way of securing the hearts and minds of Iraqi Citizens. It enabled opposition groups to present the Iraq War as a war against Islam. It acted as a recruiting agent for radicals.Termo, being against extremist policies of Israel does not make you either anti semetic or Anti Israel as a State. Just as opposition to or support of whoever the incumbent President of the United States does not make you Anti-American.
how is it that all violence committed by arabs is “defensive” and a reaction to outside attacks against them, whereas all violence committed *towards* them are unjustified, aggressive attacks?
No one was aware of torture techniques at the time terrorists rushed into Iraq. No one is linking 9/11 to Iraq.
We are at war with radical Islam and it has nothing to do with someone being waterboarded or catapillars in their cell or being splashed with cold water.
Grow up!
I am a proud Jew and a proud PUMA. And watch your mouth calling me names - you have already shown your ass.
Don’t address me again. I don’t care for your lies.
CAROL HAKA
Carol there were no Arab fighters or suicide bombers in Iraq until the invasion and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Questions?
If I had any questions, I certainly would not direct them to an anti-semite.
Any questions?
CAROL HAKA
You might want to look into the context of the comments you are commenting on.
“Only president Obama can restore our moral compass”. Certainly not by apologizing for America(ns). He can apologize for the office he occupies and the rest of that branch of government for what [it] has done. But he is full of crap when he, or any other Socialist, tries to pin blame on America in general for crimes or any immoral act committed by the office he is supposed to now be in control of. Why hasn’t he apologized to America for the way that office has treated OUR AMERICAN CONSTITUTION? Because it is obvious he intends to and is doing the same thing.
He cannot be what he is not.
Obama doesn’t need a moral compass. Moral Compass is passe. Obama uses puts his finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing and then makes the most convenient decision.
Or else he uses his Blackberry as part of a sophisticated GPS system. The seductive female voice emanating from his Blackberry says “Take a left here. Now bear right. Now hide under the overpass.”
Obama has no moral compass of his own. He has a long history of criminal activity in his portfolio just waiting to be uncovered as soon as someone gets the courage to take him on, of that I am sure.
History will prove me correct.
CAROL HAKA
yes it will
Again I agree totally, Carol HAKA and foxyladi. I just hope that will happen sooner, like very much sooner, like now…
It is my impression that the Obama Administration is an extension of the Bush/Cheney administration, which I see as just a monstrous aggregation of power mongers. All of Obama’s compromises and backpedaling on campaign rhetoric endorse this notion for me. If Obama were to institute the investigations suggested by Leahy, Feinstein, and Bond, I would gladly be proven wrong. But I don’t see any other way for him to show his independence and good intentions, if they have ever been there at all.
I totally agree with your assessment!
OT:
“Secretary Hillary Clinton Live from the Dominican Republic starting at 11:15 ET -
The 5the Summit of Americas Digital town Hall -
http://townhall.howcast.com/
No need to cry a river for the Palestinians, Obama has signed an executive order(E9-2488) that he determined is important to the national interest to furnish assistance to Palestinians that will allow thousands to settle in the United States at American taxpayers’ expense.He has ordered the expenditure of $20.3 million in immigration assistance including a free ticket along with housing and food allowances. Obama’s decision, according to the Register, was necessitated by “the urgent refugee and migration needs” of the “victims.”
.http://www.thefederalregister.com/d.p/2009-02-04-E9-2488…
Our new plan to “kill them with kindness”!
CAROL HAKA
Palestinians avoid leaving. There is actually quite a bit of social pressure to stay because the exodus of Palestinians out is what Israel hopes for.
If they can’t bomb, maim, kill, at least it will encourage Palestinians to leave, which is what people like Ben Gurion have pushed for since the mid 1920s.
hello sleeper cells.
Impeachment is the first and last thought of the day for me!
CAROL HAKA
“but only President Obama can restore our moral compass on the crimes of the post-9/11 era.”
Please tell me you’re kidding. Hanging our country’s morality on that twig of immorality is a scary concept.
He’s got to be cornered into doing the right thing here. Thank you Mel for bringing us this post– it is a step in accomplishing that.
“Obama” in the same sentence with “moral?” WTF?
ROFLMAO you guys are such good kidders.
Obama’s not searching for a moral compass; he’s following in the footsteps of Bush, replacing the wild, wild west amorality with a gangsta rendition.
As newbies, he and Panetta don’t want to alienate the CIA by calling for any old investigations into CIA officials who conducted torture and abuse in CIA secret prisons.
He also broke his campaign promise by not naming the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire early last century “genocide” during his recent European trip. Along with Bush, 0 believes it might *antagonize* and alienate Turkey and, you know, they border Iraq.
If we have to wait for BO to restore our moral direction, then we should all just kiss our compASSES good-bye.
LMAO Portia…so true.
The Torture Administration: Exposed; The Operatives: Indemnified & Immunized…
by Damozel | According to Ambinder, Obama has redacted the identities of the torturers, but the rest is all there. And, really, I have no words. What Greenwald said: “They are unbelievably ugly and grotesque and conclusively demonstrate the sadistic c…
Wow, another pay to play crook in the Fraudbama Scaministration….When does it stop? Moral compass? Yeah, right.
Obama Aide Eyed in Kickback Probe
A probe into an alleged kickback scheme at New York state’s pension fund has ensnared the head of Obama’s auto task force, Steven Rattner, The Wall Street Journal reports. A SEC complaint says a “senior executive”—said to be Rattner—at his former firm, Quandrangle, spoke with a politically connected consultant about a finder’s fee. The pension fund then invested in the firm, and the firm paid a $1.1 million fee. About 20 investment firms allegedly broke SEC rules and made payments in exchange for investments from the New York State Common Retirement Fund; the case hinges on whether the firms knew or should have known that paying for access to the $122 billion fund was illegitimate. An official at the Treasury Department said officials were aware of the probe when they took on Rattner during the transition.
Read it at The Wall Street Journal
that’s the criteria for working for bo,,
if you are not a crook furgetaboutit
Is this another example of Obama’s moral compass disciples?
while I am a troll, I am seriously confused by all these morality on gitmo and how well the no-5( I am not sure of it would be no-10) alqueda leader was treated.
Millions suffered and and substantial number perished in Iraq. Many American soldiers died. Billions were spent, so much attention was paid. Alliances were made, so much changed…. And then do we say that morality revolved around Gitmo ? morality looks like a shuttle, it is tossed around when there are good players. Go Obama, it is your day today.
Thus far, Obama’s executing the Saul Alinsky gameplan.
If you read Rules for Radicals, you know Barack Obama.
So true, Doc99. I’ve googled Alinsky and “Rules of Radicals” today and have a better understanding of 0. I encourage anyone who’s been as frustrated as I’ve been about who he is to do some similar reading.
Just my opinion, but I believe anyone whose compass uses the assumption that OBAMA IS ALWAYS IN THE WRONG as its sole magnetic north is pretty much clueless about their own true position on the map.
No, drip. Since our compass always points to magnetic north and he’s not not anywhere to be found along the way, his compass must be screwed up (as is your idiotic logic). Why don’t you go bluster, about whatever the voices in your head are screaming at you about this time, somewhere else–like your Mother’s basement or your skid row flop house.
Funny Cyanide,
I would say those that can excuse away who Obama is, what he did to get where he is, the company - those in jail included, he kept, and the truth about his agenda for America are the ones with the incredibly broken moral compasses!
Cynic’sCredulous’ compass is the second-hand on his watch.Mr. Mel Goodman, I saw you named almost everybody commiting atrocities,but I hope not purposely you forget to mention the palestinians commiting atrocious attacks toward their own people and toward the jewes population. Just for fairness. BTW, I’m not jewes but I like to be fair.
Suppose, Israel will accept Palestine as State. But the Palestinians declaration was clear.NEVER ACCEPT ISRAEL AS STATE. Conform what they declared, Israel has to be wiped out from the Map. How somebody will find the WAY for peace. I wish to know.
Lisabona, history is a good place to look for answers, but not necessarily solutions. Here are some quotes from David Ben-Gurion, one of the first Prime Ministers of Israel, Golda Meir, Rabin, Sharon and others . Ben Gurion was called the “Architect of the State of Israel. Please take note of the dates:
“We must expel Arabs and take their places.”
– David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.
“There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
– Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122.
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
– David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.
“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.”
– David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.
“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
– David Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth’s Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).
David Ben Gurion
Prime Minister of Israel
1949 - 1954,
1955 - 1963
“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.”
– Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.
“How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.”
– Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.
“Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen.”
– Golda Meir, 1961, in a speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner, October 1961
“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.”
– Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971
Golda Meir
Prime Minister of Israel
1969 - 1974
“We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?’ Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said ‘Drive them out!”
– Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.
“[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat.”
– Yitzhak Rabin (a “Prince of Peace” by Clinton’s standards), explaining his method of ethnically cleansing the occupied land without stirring a world outcry. (Quoted in David Shipler in the New York Times, 04/04/1983 citing Meir Cohen’s remarks to the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee on March 16.)
Yitzhak Rabin
Prime Minister of Israel
1974 - 1977,
1992 - 1995
“[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs.”
– Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the ‘Beasts,”‘ New Statesman, June 25, 1982.
“The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized …. Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever.”
– Menachem Begin, the day after the U.N. vote to partition Palestine.
Menachem Begin
Prime Minister of Israel
1977 - 1983
“The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya (=Jewish immigration), and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country.”
– Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders, November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service.
“The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It’s that simple.”
– Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997.
“(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.”
– Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
Yizhak Shamir
Prime Minister of Israel
1983 - 1984,
1986 - 1992
“Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.”
– Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.
Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister of Israel
1996 - 1999
“The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”….
– Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000
“If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force….”
– Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000.
“I would have joined a terrorist organization.”
– Ehud Barak’s response to Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Ha’aretz newspaper, when Barak was asked what he would have done if he had been born a Palestinian.
Ehud Barak
Prime Minister of Israel
1999 - 2001
“It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.”
– Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
“Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours…Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”
– Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.
“Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.”
– Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online
Read these quotes, Lisabona, and decide for yourself. I was raised in a household where the concept of Jews as God’s chosen people was accepted and the right of the State of Israel to exist was unchallenged. I also believe Israel has that right. On the other hand, I will never support aggression by any country and I’m an American first and I believe Israel has used the friendship of the US for their own agenda which is to expel all of the Arabs from lands they believe is theirs by divine right.
All over Face Book and Drudge report. America Hating Hugo Chavez and President Obama shares a Semi Thumb Fist Power Hand Shake Pump.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1526535&id=68526244856&ref=mf