投稿者 ドメル将軍 日時 2001 年 10 月 18 日 23:50:58:
The Propaganda War
By Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
17/10/2001
The following article is critical of certain elements in American media for attempting to dismiss the grievances of Muslims against U.S. foreign policy, especially of the U.S.'s support of Israel. Because it is important that such criticism not be mistaken as a legitimization of the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, I take this opportunity to state, again, what I have made clear in every column since Sept. 11: no grievance, regardless of its legitimacy, can justify the targeting of innocent noncombatants, and I, like every other responsible Muslim, condemn the attack on America as a violation of Islamic law as well as any other standards of civilized society.
How quickly the Zionist propaganda machine has been able to do a hairpin turn on the relationship between the attack on the World Trade Center and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. On the day of the attacks, someone actually floated the rumor that it was Palestinians (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP] - to be specific) themselves who had committed the evil deed. Now, confronted with the (to them) horrifying reality that the American public is seriously demanding to know why anyone, no matter how evil they may be, would hate us so much as to commit such a horrid act, the chorus of defenders of Israeli apartheid are unanimously insisting that the Palestinian issue has nothing whatsoever to do with the attack on the U.S.
Yet on the day after the attacks, Daniel Pipes (2001) wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the attacks could have been avoided if only the U.S. government had listened to Steven Emerson. Now it just so happens that less than a month before the attacks, Pipes and Emerson (2001) had written a prescription to defend America from terrorism in the same newspaper. They urged the shutting down the web sites of a variety of organizations supportive of the Palestinian cause. The disgraceful irony is that the FBI did shut down an Islamic-owned company that hosted the web sites of 500 American Muslim organizations (including some that had been targets of Emerson's McCarthyist accusations of guilt-by-association in the past) only days before the attack. While the resources diverted into that absurd exercise might have been very small, one would have wished that every penny of it could have instead been spent on a meaningful effort to anticipate and prevent what happened a few days later.
On the same day, Charles Krauthammer (2001) also included Israel in the gallery of Muslim grievances, but signaled the onset of a switch of gears by insisting that Israel was "the smallest of fish" affronting "radical Islam". Nonetheless, Fox television insisted on showing a film clip of Palestinians allegedly celebrating the attack over and over again. That the propaganda machine was making a major tactical error only became irrefutably clear when Ariel Sharon's attempted to equate the attack on innocents in the World Trade Center with the attacks by Palestinians against illegal Israeli occupiers. That was too much even for the U.S. government and prompted a sharp rebuttal from the George W. Bush Administration.
The American people have taken a keen interest in foreign affairs for the first time since Vietnam. As the "Arab street" (i.e. the grassroots Arab citizenry) has been out of sync with Arab governments for years, so now the "American street" is out of sync with the major media. Average Americans seeking factual answers to the question: "Why Would Anyone Want to Hurt Us?" are discussing the relationship of the Palestinian issue with the failure of the Muslim world to understand how wonderful this country really is, but their thoughts only surface in the media itself in rare flashes, like Joe Sobran's (2001) syndicated Internet column.
Now, suddenly, the attack on the U.S. has nothing at all to do with Palestinians. It's about Iraq, or about troops in Saudi Arabia, or about a hatred for freedom and democracy (!), or modernity, but don't anyone dare mention Palestine.
Yet how could anyone deny that illegal Israeli occupation is a main source of Muslim dissatisfaction when even Osama bin Laden, upon whom the Bush Administration lays the responsibility for the attack, gave it pride of place in his list of grievances against the United States, not only in his 1998 declaration of war on the United States, but in the videotape he gave to al-Jazeera just before the bombing of Afghanistan commenced?
The amazing reaction of the United States has been to chastise al-Jazeera for broadcasting the tape and to attempt to prevent the Western media from re-broadcasting it! Their initial excuse for this appalling intervention upon freedom of the press was that al-Jazeera was not giving equal time to the U.S. and Britain, but al-Jazeera eagerly interviewed Tony Blair and I'm certain would eagerly interview George Bush if he offered.
Then the new excuse became that bin Laden speeches may incite new terrorist acts. If this were true, it would affirm, rather than deny, the view that it is the grievances he has articulated that are the motives of the attacks. In any case, the U.S. has never in the past been willing to sacrifice freedom of the press to the fear of such a risk. Al-Jazeera is the closest thing to a free press the Arab world has, and it'll take a better excuse than this to tape their mouths without making the West look like flaming hypocrites. (Imagine if the Saudis had tried to excuse their ban on satellite dishes on the ground by saying that they didn't want bin Laden giving the go-ahead signal for another Khobar Towers bombing?)
Why is there this intense effort to disassociate so-called "Muslim rage" from the plight of the Palestinians, given that, according to a recent Zogby poll, any effect of the recent terrorism on American public opinion increased sympathy for Israel (although only to a tiny degree)? The reason for the Zionists' intense efforts to derail any meaningful discussion of the role that the persecution of the Palestinians plays in provoking violence against America is that they correctly perceive that any such discussion may bring the reality of the un-American nature of the Israeli apartheid system into focus for the American public, and thereby threaten continued U.S. aid to Israel.
Dismissing the Palestinian question as irrelevant to the terrorist threat to America is necessary because ignorance of the facts of Israeli history and policies is the lynchpin of U.S. support for Israel. The terrorist acts of September 11, seen out of context, are a plus for Israel. A protracted discussion of U.S. foreign policy blunders that made the attacks possible would be bad news for Israel.
As a recent Al-Awda (2001) alert emphasizes: "Israel has engaged in a persistent pattern of gross human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It stands in defiance of more than eighty United Nations resolutions. Israel continues to kill innocent civilians, demolish Palestinian homes, build illegal settlements on occupied lands, practice collective punishment and deny refugees their inalienable fundamental human right to return to their homes of origin."
It is in order to prevent these facts from gaining widespread recognition that the Zionists would like everyone from al-Jazeera to the "American on the street" to just shut up.
References
Al-Awda. "Al-Awda Alert: Write to Media Now," Press release (Orange, CT: Palestinian Right to Return Coalition, 10/16/2001).
Charles Krauthammer. "To War, Not to Court," Washington Post (9/12/2001) A29.
Daniel Pipes. "Mistakes Made the Catastrophe Possible." The Wall Street Journal (9/12/2001) A12.
Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson 2001, "Rolling Back the forces of Terror." The Wall Street Journal (8/13) A12.
Joe Sobran.. "Is It Worth It?" (Vienna: Griffin Internet Syndicate, 9/20/2001).
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