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News item:

A British diplomat has criticized the appointment of two leading Jewish academics to the UK’s Iraq Inquiry panel, stating it may upset the balance of the inquiry.

Sir Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, told The Independent newspaper this week that the appointment of Sir Martin Gilbert, the renowned Holocaust historian and Winston Churchill biographer, and Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies and vice-principal of King’s College London, would be seen as “ammunition” that could be used to call the inquiry a “whitewash.”

Miles said the two academics were Jewish and that Gilbert was an active Zionist. He also said they were both strong supporters of former prime minister Tony Blair and the Iraq war…

“It is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available,” he added. “Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced.”

There you go. In regard to any issue which even tangentially touches on Israel, Jews are suspect. I recall someone saying, “when I read a letter to the editor about the Middle East, I immediately look to see if the writer has a Jewish name.” Then I presume she discounts whatever was in the letter. As I wrote yesterday in a different context,

Eloquence, logic, and appeal to facts are irrelevant today. Only the point of view [and apparently the religion/ethnicity of the speaker] matters.

The world is tired of hearing the Jews complain, just as they were tired of them before, during and immediately after WWII. I suppose Miles would prefer the panel to be made up entirely of former ambassadors to Arab countries. Then nobody could call it a ‘whitewash’.

I’ve noticed this myself recently. People who can’t respond to my arguments say that we should ‘agree to disagree’, meaning “just be quiet, of course you think the way you do, you’re Jewish.”

For some reason the fact that there are plenty of anti-Zionist Jews around — including famous ones like Noam Chomsky, Tony Judt, et al — doesn’t seem to make a difference. Jewishness only seems to affect the soundness of one’s arguments when one is pro-Israel.

Indeed, when a Jew or Jewish organization attacks Israel, the same people cheer. After all, if even Jews like Philip Weiss,  Norman Finkelstein or Ilan Pappé think that Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide against the Palestinians, then it must be true.

But poor Sir Martin Gilbert just can’t help being biased!

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iraq War, Oliver Miles, Martin Gilbert

Way back in January 2008, I referred to “Barack Obama’s Zbig problem” — Zbigniew Brzezinski, that is. Zbig was never a friend of Israel, and I was more than a little bothered by the suggestion that he would be a key foreign policy adviser for candidate Obama.

After quoting some of Brzezinski’s more egregiously anti-Israel remarks, I wrote,

Brzezinski supports the pernicious, even anti-Semitic Mearsheimer and Walt, he accuses Israel of ignoring collateral damage and in effect committing war crimes in Lebanon, he perpetuates the false and dangerous accusation that Israel is in some sense responsible for the US being in Iraq, and — time and again — he declares a moral equivalence between Israel and her terrorist opponents — Hamas and Arafat…

We don’t need another James A. Baker in a critical position in a future Obama administration. Obama has received criticism from pro-Israel voices like Alan Dershowitz about Brzezinski. The Obama campaign has responded that the criticism is politically motivated and coming from supporters of Hillary Clinton. Regardless, Brzezinski’s slant is clear from his own words.

Well, Zbig does not have an official position in the Obama administration, but there is no question that his voice is taken seriously.

And what he is saying is obscene. This is from an interview in the Daily Beast (thanks to Michael Goldfarb for noticing it and Dan Friedman for bringing it to my attention):

How aggressive can Obama be in insisting to the Israelis that a military strike might be in America’s worst interest?
We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?

What if they fly over anyway?
Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse.

“A Liberty in reverse”?

Just a couple of words about the USS Liberty:

The facts are that Israeli planes attacked the US naval vessel in the Mediterranean in 1967, killing 34 and wounding 171. Israel said it was a mistake caused by a series of errors and that the ship was thought to be Egyptian. The government apologized and paid compensation for the crew members who were killed and injured, as well as for the damage to the ship. The US officially accepted the Israeli explanation of the incident and the apology.

But those are just the facts. The reality is that there is a huge controversy, with survivors of the crew and others firmly convinced that the attack was deliberate, and that the US and Israel conspired to cover up the truth (a good presentation of the case that the attack was a tragic error can be found in “The Liberty Incident” by A. Jay Cristol).

The ugly part is that Jews and conspiracies go together. Every neo-Nazi website gleefully presents the theory as proof that the US really is ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government) territory. The Liberty incident is on every antisemite and anti-Zionist’s list of reasons for hating Israel and the perfidious Jews.

Including Zbiggy’s.

So not only is this mamzer advocating that the United States of America shoot at aircraft of its ally, Israel — in order to protect the nuclear weapons capability of its enemy, Iran — but he is doing so in terms which evoke the darkest impulses in his American audience.

Technorati Tags: Brzezinski, USS Liberty, Israel, Iran