If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.~~Thomas S. Szasz, The Second Sin

Several months ago, CNN published the results of a couple of disturbing polls about Americans and their religious beliefs. The first found that more Americans are rejecting religion and thus, according to CNN, America is becoming “less Christian.” The second, a Pew survey of only 742 mostly white evangelical Protestants, revealed that more than six in 10 of them believe that torture is often or sometimes justified.

More than six in 10? What this says about those claiming to be God’s own is that perhaps they should use their Bibles for more than “thumping.” Because not one in 10 — not one in 10 thousand — not one in 10 million — Christians believes that torture can ever be justified. Ever.

Anyone who has paid attention to the growing number of evangelical zealots over the past couple of decades must be aware that there is a growing chasm between Religion and Christianity. Today, the term, “religious Christians” is nothing if not oxymoronic. It seems when folks become apocalyptic frothing-at-the-mouth religious, they ultimately stray from the light and life of Christianity, while descending deeper into the darkness and death of Religion.

Because, all religion is politics. CNN quoted Mark Silk of Trinity College, who said, “In the 1990s, it really sunk in on the American public generally that there was a long-lasting ‘religious right’ connected to a political party, and that turned a lot of people the other way.” Silk cited the obvious link between the Republican Party and groups such as the Moral Majority and Focus on the Family.

Tony Perkins, the right-wing evangelical president of the Family Research Council, told CNN not to worry. He said people will return to their faith in droves; that soon, the decline will ease and religion will be an even greater part of people’s lives. The good news, according to Perkins, is, “As the economy goes downward, I think people are going to be driven to religion.” (emphasis added)

Yes, as more Americans lose their jobs, their homes, their very reasons for living, those like Perkins see them as Manchurian congregations — flocks driven to religion like cattle — bawling, shuffling, pushing, milling around with tags in their ears, looking for a leader. Even now, they can be seen in mammoth mega-churches, some with arms raised — fists clutching at dead air — others writhing in the aisles, moaning, begging for some “sign” from their rigidly religious God. Perhaps their panic stems from the instinctive knowledge that God, unable to get a word in edgewise, has left the building.

The conservative religious right is a frightening political force driven in its efforts to divide and conquer by greed, an insatiable lust for power, and an ideology of hate. Its members, unable to drag God down to their level, have no qualms about elevating themselves to what they perceive as His level. They succeed in controlling the flock because fear — especially fear of God — is a great motivator. They use God not only as a weapon against millions who stand between them and their goals of replacing democracy with theocracy and of controlling the worlds resources and its people — but as a divine justification for the destruction they leave in their wake.

No one was more adept at giving God credit for his killing fields than former president George W. Bush, who openly bragged that God had hired him to remove evil from the face of the earth. “I trust God speaks through me,” Bush said in 2004. “Without that, I couldn’t do my job.” And, even before that, in 2003, Bush tried to round up a “coalition of the willing” for his Iraq slaughter on God’s behalf. According to Charleston Gazette editor James A. Haught, Bush told then French President Jacques Chirac that “Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.” Haught wrote…

“Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

But some presidents, such as Lyndon Johnson, were not so magnanimous. God got the blame, not the credit, for the Vietman atrocity. Ronnie Dugger, in his book, “The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson,” writes that Johnson told Austrian ambassador Ernst Lemberter in 1966 that the Holy Ghost regularly visited him…”He comes to me about 2 o’clock in the morning,” Johnson said, “–when I have to give word to the boys, and I get the word from God whether to bomb or not.”

Now, you don’t have to be a Christian to reject the right-wing bull hockey that the God who appeared in a blinding flash of light and spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus has sunk to the evangelical depths where He emits not even a glimmer as He bends our presidents’ ears on who to slaughter, urges televangelist Pat Robertson to ask a woman about her sex life, and is still deciding if He wants Michelle Bachman or Sarah Palin to be president.

Christians should be lauded for rejecting modern-day Religion. When the God they are taught to love is either credited — or blamed — for all hell on earth; when they search in vain for Jesus, and finally find Him, hanging out in a secretive townhouse on Washington’s C Street with the greedy, war-mongering gang who refer to themselves as “The Family,” it’s time to take a second look at the direction in which this nation is hurtling.

For years, conservative right-wingers have hidden out in the C Street “church,” where they are free to conduct all manner of fraud and to carry on adulterous affairs. People who have sold their souls; who have no sense of morality, and who use God as a Trojan Horse to hide their political manipulations to replace both Democrats and Democracy are quite mad, you know. Right-wing evangelicals and neocon operatives are consumed with religious hate, not Christian love. Their modus operandi is, as Weekly Standard operative William Kristol said, “go for the kill.”

And, those who are familiar with Kristol know he wasn’t referring just to health care. Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition protege, the now disgraced Ralph Reed, dubbed in 1995 by Time magazine as “the right hand of God,” was a master at evangelical politics, which he said was like Viet Cong-style guerrilla warfare. Reed said, “I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag. You don’t know until election night.”

Anyone doubting the viciousness with which Reed would “go for the kill” should have a talk with Vietnam War hero and amputee Max Cleland, who not only found himself crammed into a body bag on election night 2002, thanks to Ralph Reed, but was in there with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

But Reed and others are tyros when it comes to those most likely to cause Christians to reject religion — those whom CNN failed to mention who incite violence by preaching sermons laced with politics, religion, racism — and hate. Those like Tempe, Arizona’s Steven Anderson, who has no college degree nor formal Bible training, but is qualified to preach because he “has memorized almost half of the New Testament.” Anderson started his own church — Faithful Word Baptist — in 2005 on Christmas Day. A firey right-wing preacher, he’s against homosexuality, liberalism — and President Barack Obama.

In August, Anderson gave a breathtakingly vile speech entitled, “Why I Hate Obama,” in which he said about President Obama, among many other things…

“Obama is a madman in control of this country.”
“Obama is NOT my president.”
“Obama mocks the Bible.”
“Obama is a socialist devil murderer.”
“I hope he dies and goes to hell.”
“God looks down and says, ‘Man — I HATE that guy!’”

Anderson, and those like him, epitomize the breach between Religion and Christianity. The religious believe that God belongs to them. Christians know that they belong to God. It’s that simple. Thus, CNN polls notwithstanding, America cannot become “less Christian” as a result of members of the flock jerking the tags from their ears — and rejecting modern-day religion.

Is there anything scarier than the New York Times’ Halloween treat entitled, “Documents Detail Conditions Found at Secret C.I.A. Jails”?

Pardon my Palinese, but — You betcha! You damnbetcha!

For starters, the “conditions” the Times mentions only briefly are, in reality, depraved, corrupt, immoral, inhumane torture. According to the Times…

“F.B.I. agents who arrived at a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners “manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock,” and a C.I.A. official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including “How close is each technique to the ‘rack and screw’. . .”

What is more frightening — that the C.I.A. got its jollies by torturing, even murdering human beings in its secret sodomy frat-houses — or that the F.B.I. took one look, fled the scene and remained silent for years?

Perhaps it’s the two-page memo President George Bush had circulated seven months earlier wherein he determined — under his authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive of the United States –

“…none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world because, among other reasons, al Qaeda is not a High Contracting Party to Geneva.” (emphasis added)

[...]

“…I determine that the Taliban detainees are unlawful combatants and, therefore, do not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of Geneva. I note that, because Geneva does not apply to our conflict with al Qaeda, al Qaeda detainees also do not qualify as prisoners of war.”

Bush then added piously that our values as a nation that we shared with many nations (?) required us to treat humanely even those not qualified as humans nor entitled to such treatment. So — wink, wink — rack ‘em and screw ‘em, boys!

According to the Times, the documents were released as a result of several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch. Makes you wonder if this nation’s mainstream media, both print and electronic, has no access — nor interest — in freedom of information, doesn’t it?

The Times did provide links (see below) to the released documents — 953 pages it knew most of us would never read. To offset that, the Times assigned two of its top investigative reporters — Scott Shane and Charlie Savage — to get the critical information out.

These guys hopped right on it and, after yawning through the assignment, their bland 306-word “news” article was published on page A28.

I don’t know about you, but even for Halloween — that’s scary!

Links to released documents via New York Times
A.C.L.U. vs. C.I.A. (SDNY) (13 pages)
A.C.L.U. vs. D.O.D. (DDC2) (441 pages)
Judicial Watch vs. C.I.A. (DDC) (34 pages)
A.C.L.U. vs. D.O.D. (SDNY) (98 pages)
A.C.L.U. vs. D.O.D. (DDC2) (61 pages)
A.C.L.U. vs. D.O.D. (141 pages)
Feinman vs. C.I.A. (DDC) (163 pages)
Judicial Watch vs. D.O.J. (DDC) (2 pages)

I didn’t know Van Jones. I didn’t know Van Jones was a friend of mine — at least not until the stench billowing from the Fox Hate Channel became so foul I was forced to take a closer look at this terrifying creature. No — not Jones, whom President Obama wisely had hired as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality — but the sobbing, lying, deliriously insane Glenn Beck.

According to Beck, who began his assault on Jones in a July 23 disjointed rant, wherein he claimed Jones is not only “a communist-anarchist radical,” but a former black nationalist, avowed communist-anarchist radical. Or something. Anyway, according to Beck, Jones is really really dangerous — a racist just like Obama, who has a “deep-seated hatred for white folks” and whose entire agenda is restructuring America into a land of reparations, social justice and jobs for minorities.

The appalling thing about the intellectually challenged Beck, like the Limbaugh-loon he so desperately struggles to impersonate, is that he is given a podium from which to spew his hate. Even more appalling is that he is allowed — encouraged — to do so with no reservation, no regulation, and no repercussion. Unless, of course, you consider the multi-million-dollar salary he receives for telling lies and for whipping paranoid masses of gun-toting racists into glassy eyed fury, then it’s easy to see Beck is hitting the repercussion jackpot — over and over again.

As Alexander Zaitchik points out in his three-part Salon series on Beck’s background, Beck has always been desperate for two things — attention and ratings. And he learned early in his career that nothing works as quickly nor as well with the media as personal insults, public humiliation and character assassination.

With few exceptions, the mainstream media fawn over him, laugh at his blatant lies, his death threats and his fake tears. Beck has long been obsessed with destruction — even murder. In March 2001, he fantasized about killing Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) with a shovel as well as lining up several others and shooting them in the head. On his May 17, 2005 Glenn Beck Program, he chortled…

“Hang on, let me just tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out — is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus — band — Do, and I’ve lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, “Yeah, I’d kill Michael Moore,” and then I’d see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I’d realize, “Oh, you wouldn’t kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn’t choke him to death.” And you know, well, I’m not sure.”

And more recently, on his Aug 6 Fox program, Beck regaled at least himself by giggling about putting poison in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s wine….

Not a pretty picture. No — not Beck, who should have the FBI nipping at his heels like other “homegrown terrorists” for threatening the lives of legislators and sowing dissent within the government — but the media, going all Hunter Thompson on us, curled up at Beck’s feet like so many chimps in a zoo cage, feverishly pumping out masturbatory praise for the low-class dirty trickster.

When Jones, rather than sink to Beck’s level, resigned his position over the Labor Day weekend, some in the media were ecstatic. NBC Deputy Political Director Mark Murray whooped it up in his 8 Sep “First Read”…

“Van Jones resigns: Speaking of distractions, Glenn Beck got his man — Van Jones, who resigned from the administration over the weekend. And judging by how Beck responded to the news of the resignation of the mid-level staffer, he won’t be satisfied with this scalp. Beck made it sound like he might even have a list of “Who’s next,” which will embolden defenders of the administration to start focusing on Beck and others. [...] As for Jones, clearly, that 9/11 stuff made him indefensible and does call into question the White House’s vetting process. The irony in all of this: Beck never lost his job for calling Obama a racist, but Jones did…”

Time Magazine, a partner of CNN, has led the charge to cover Beck’s every move, every word, every teardrop in a desperate effort to get a piece of Beck’s attention-and-ratings action. See here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Then, of course, there’s Time’s photo gallery” and the much-heralded Sep 17 cover story wherein author David Von Drehle takes 3,598 words to debunk his own headline, “Mad Man: Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?” and to paint Beck as nothing more than a feisty, lovable — albeit controversial — little whippersnapper…

“Glenn Beck: the pudgy, buzz-cut, weeping phenomenon of radio, TV and books . . . The old American mind-set that Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style” — the sense that Masons or the railroads or the Pope or the guys in black helicopters are in league to destroy the country — is aflame again, fanned from both right and left. [...] No one has a better feeling for this mood, and no one exploits it as well, as Beck. He is the hottest thing in the political-rant racket, left or right. A gifted entrepreneur of angst in a white-hot market.
[...]
Beck is 45, tireless, funny, self-deprecating, a recovering alcoholic, a convert to Mormonism, a libertarian and living with ADHD. He is a gifted storyteller with a knack for stitching seemingly unrelated data points into possible conspiracies — if he believed in conspiracies, which he doesn’t, necessarily; he’s just asking questions. He’s just sayin’. In cheerful days of yore, he was a terrific host of a morning-zoo show on an FM Top 40 station. But these aren’t cheerful times. For conservatives, these are times of economic uncertainty and political weakness, and Beck has emerged as a virtuoso on the strings of their discontent.”

Not to be outfoxed by her peers, on Sep 22, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric premiered her new one-on-one high-profile online interview show “@katiecouric” with Beck, whom she introduced as a “one-man cottage industry.” Beck fielded Couric’s painfully shallow questions, such as, “Do you feel that you’re…you’re kind of being divisive?” with sly grins and winks. “Let me see, here,” Beck said, giggling and rolling his eyes while tapping his forehead, “how can I answer that? You’re just trying to make some news — you just want me to give you a sound byte…”

But the most interesting — and entertaining — take on Beck comes from Fox News’ Chief Beckerhead Chris Wallace, who boasts that he “is on the Glenn Beck bandwagon,” and insists that “Beck is a meteor here at Fox News.” Wallace was taking the irrepressible Shepard Smith to task for not giving Beck the proper respect; even accused Smith of being jealous of Beck’s fame. “Oh no,” Smith proclaimed, fighting back fake tears — “We are here to celebrate, worship and adore…” You gotta watch this.

Most mainstream media — if they acknowledge Beck’s attacks — present them as news, such as the czars fiasco, the fake Fox ACORN videos, etc. However, there are some, even on the right, who are concerned enough about the damage being done to sound the alarm. The New York Times’ David Brooks writes about not only Beck, but Limbaugh, Hannity and others whose lust for power (attention and ratings) knows no bounds…

“For no matter how often their hollowness is exposed, the jocks still reweave the myth of their own power. They still ride the airwaves claiming to speak for millions. They still confuse listeners with voters. And they are aided in this endeavor by their enablers. They are enabled by cynical Democrats, who love to claim that Rush Limbaugh controls the G.O.P. They are enabled by lazy pundits who find it easier to argue with showmen than with people whose opinions are based on knowledge. They are enabled by the slightly educated snobs who believe that Glenn Beck really is the voice of Middle America.
So the myth returns. Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist.

They pay more attention to Rush’s imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it’s more interested in pleasing Rush’s ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity. The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer’s niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician’s coalition-building strategy.

The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the G.O.P. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.”

Like Chris Wallace says, they are all just meteors exploding across this nation’s sky. Perhaps someone should remind Wallace and others in the media that the shining streak they’re hanging onto is nothing but a trail of gas, and when it enters Truth’s atmosphere, it will disintegrate — taking the Beckerhead Bandwagon with it.

If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political monsters; you finally hand over your brothers~~Albert Camus

There is no subject more restricted nor more controlled in the United States than a critical discussion of Israel. Balanced argument is ignored while each word is parsed — and condemned. It’s strange that we are free to rant and rave and point out the war crimes of our own administration — of all other administrations throughout the world — but not those of Israel. The few who dare to question the damage Israel has wrought throughout the Middle East for decades are immediately labeled “anti-Semitic,” and are in danger of losing their friends, jobs, their reputations and, if they persist, their country — for America has zero tolerance for those who recognize Israel’s brutality.

Why is this? Are not crimes against humanity just that, regardless of who is committing them? For example, when one-and-a-half million human beings are imprisoned like caged animals, with no food, electricity, medical care, clean water, and then are exterminated like so many insects — cut to pieces, burned to a crisp with illegal weapons banned by the Geneva Conventions — is that not a crime against humanity? Are the men, women and children trapped behind the walls of Gaza with nowhere to run — nowhere to hide — not human?

Kill Them All

If you’ve been listening to the Israeli leadership for the past 60 years, the last 10 years — the last year — you know very well that Palestinians are many things, but not human. In 1982, former Likud leader and prime minister Menahim Begin said Palestinians “are beasts walking on two legs.” The next year, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces Raphael Eitan gloated, “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” And, in 1988, Yitzhak Shamir, a Likudnik elected Prime Minister twice, told the settlers taking over the Palestinian land, “The Palestinians will be crushed like grasshoppers…heads smashed against the boulders and walls.”

But it was our own Evangelical, oxy-moronic (sic) Judeo-Christian (sic) cloven-hoofed Pat Robertson, who chats often with God who gave us the real lowdown on Israel’s “moral” savagery. Robertson explained God’s rationale to his 700 Club members in May 1985…

“The wars of extermination have given a lot of people trouble unless they know what was going on. The people in the land of Palestine were very wicked. They were given over to idolatry; they sacrificed their children; they had all kinds of abominable sex practices; they were having sex, apparently, with animals; they were having sex men with men, and women with women; they were committing adultery, fornication; they were worshipping idols, offering their children up; and they were forsaking God.

“God told the Israelites to kill them all — men, women and children, to destroy them. And that seems to be a terrible thing to do. Is it? Or isn’t it? Well, let us assume there were 2,000 of them, or 10,000 of them living in the land, or whatever number there was of them. I don’t have the exact number. Pick a number. God said, ‘Kill them all.’ . . . the abomination was there like a contagion. God saw that there was no cure for it. It wasn’t going to change; their hearts weren’t going to change; and all they would do is cause trouble for the Israelites, and pull the Israelites away from God, and prevent the truth of God from reaching the Earth. So, God, in love, took away a small number that he might not have to take away a large number.”

Beasts. Insects. Victims of a relentless, methodical genocide that grinds away, day after day, year after year, with no analysis, no reflection, no questions — subsidized with US equipment, US political support, US taxpayers’ money. How easily we have not only excused, but given our blessing to Israel’s crimes — handed over our brothers — from the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty using US-financed French aircraft leaving 34 dead and 174 injured American sailors, to massacres using US-furnished weapons in Jenin, Rafah, Sabara, Shatila, Lebanon, and repeatedly in Gaza.

How silently we stood on March 16, 2003 when an Israeli soldier in a US Caterpillar bulldozer crushed to death 23-year-old Rachel Corrie — shot and seriously wounded 26-year-old Brian Avery on April 5, 2003 — and, on April 11, 2003, shot and killed 21-year-old Tom Hurndall while he was attempting to save three terrified Palestine children who were being shot at as they played.

Political Monsters

Israel’s grotesque 22-day foray into Gaza earlier this year shocked the world with its savagery — with one notable exception — the United States. Perhaps that’s because, according to the Australian Herald, one week before the invasion, the US shipped 989 containers of munitions, including white phosphorous, to Israel. Three months earlier, Congress approved a $77 million sale to Israel of 1,000 Boeing Corp. GBU-39 bunker-buster bombs which arrived just in time to wreck havoc on the Gaza infrastructure.

Despite the layers upon layers of justification Israel cites, there is only one reason it continues its heinous extermination of the Palestinian people — because it can. Because the United States supports such atrocity. Because the United States finances, arms and equips Israel, and — more important — protects it from having to account for any of its crimes. So, who’s to blame here? From whose hands does the blood of Palestinian men, women and children run? Israel or the United States? Who are the monsters?

Speak, memory.

Scarcely a week after the “war” on Gaza began, the jubilation in both houses of Congress was palatable. Members elbowed each other out of the way to co-sponsor and vote for resolutions condemning Hamas for forcing Israel to maim and kill its Gaza population. Resolutions were submitted and passed by voice vote on Jan. 8. The Senate Resolution had 34 co-sponsors; the House Resolution chalked up 116. The votes and the blame were shamefully one-sided, with Hamas being blamed for both the war and the death of its own citizens. Israel did not receive a single rebuke; was praised throughout — ironically, for facilitating “humanitarian aid to Gaza with hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian assistance and numerous ambulances entering the Gaza Strip since the war began.”

Three days later, investigative journalist Max Blumenthal covered a 10,000-strong rally in New York City. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) whipped the crowd into a frenzy, shouting about the morality of Israel text-messaging Palestinians to “vacate their homes because there were weapons in them…” Schumer, giddy with pride, his fist waving in the air, cried — “What other country would do that!”

According to Blumenthal, the rally was pulsating with hate. He said…

“Right in front of the stage, a man held a banner reading, “Islam Is A Death Cult.” Rally attendees described the people of Gaza to me as a “cancer,” called for Israel to “wipe them all out,” insisting, “They are forcing us to kill their children in order to defend our own children.” A young woman told me, “Those who die are suffering God’s wrath.” “They are not distinguishing between civilians and military, so why should we?” said a member of the group of messianic Orthodox Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch group that flocked to the rally.

“No one I spoke to could seem to find any circumstance in which they would begin to question Israel’s war. No number of civilian deaths, no displays of extreme suffering — nothing could deter their enthusiasm for attacking one of the most vulnerable populations in the world with the world’s most advanced weaponry. There are no limits, no matter what Israel does, no matter how it does it.”

As I watched those caught up in the shockingly racist excitement of that rally, I could not help but wonder what these people — what US politicians — would do if the children being blown to bits, the homes bombed and bulldozed, the families mutilated, the livelihoods destroyed — were theirs. And, I also am forced to wonder — is the inability to hold back tears at the sight of so much inhumane lust for blood anti-Semitic — even anti-American?

Blame the Jews?

Perhaps I am the wrong person to address this issue. I was raised, for the most part, in the wilds of New Mexico by parents completely devoid of racism, bigotry or hate. Those ugly ideologies weren’t just ignored — they didn’t exist. This may sound naive, but I never met a Jew until I was married, my husband was in the Army and stationed at Fort Monmouth in Long Branch, New Jersey. We rented a bedroom “apartment” from the Brodskys, a Jewish family — wonderful, joyous, good-natured people who welcomed us into their midst as if they had been waiting for us all their lives. For me, for years, the Brodskys personified all Jews.

So, when I look to the Middle East and see human beings abused, without food or adequate health care, their infrastructure destroyed, their children slaughtered for sport, it is difficult for me to believe such barbaric savagery is being committed, or even condoned, by Jews who are aware of what is happening. American Jews, Jews in Israel, Jews around the world are vigorously opposed to such treatment. Far more Jews than non-Jews in this country speak out about Israel’s relentless execution of Palestinians. They protest, engage in “die-ins,” hold 24-hour vigils with signs heralding their dissent. They scream to heaven — but their voices are silenced and the media steadfastly refuses to cover their views.

There was no mention of the rally in New York City in support of Gaza on the same day as the Schumer Screamer; no mention of IDF soldiers who refused to serve because of the violence against innocent Palestinians; no mention of the 700 Israeli citizens arrested in the first two weeks for protesting the assault; and no mention of a Jan 8 meeting of prominent Canadians who spoke out against the war on Gaza.

Toronto psychotherapist Judith Weisman, a Jew who is a member of Independent Jewish Voices, Jews for a Just Peace, the Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation of Palestine, and a founding member of Not In Our Name, said, “Zionism is the scourge of the Jewish people. It is Zionism that has created all of this.”

Weisman, herself a former “committed Zionist,” said, “it took many years for the scales to literally fall off of my eyes and for me to see what Israel has wrought among the Palestinians.” Weisman says she is frightened at the influence Israel now has around the world, and the “power that Israel and the United States are using to control so much of what is happening around the world.”

It’s not that nobody is listening, it’s that — for those hog-tied to the US media — there’s nothing to hear but silence, propaganda and lies. Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz that fully a third of those killed were children. Levy said…

“The public’s shocking indifference to these figures is incomprehensible. A thousand propagandists and apologists cannot excuse this criminal killing. One can blame Hamas for the death of children, but no reasonable person in the world will buy these ludicrous, flawed propagandistic goods in light of the pictures and statistics coming from Gaza.”

No matter. We here in the United States have moved on. We have given our blessing to the great political monsters. It is as George Orwell wrote in his prescient 1984…

“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”