I Knew It Was Worth Poking Through This Haystack
John T. Kennedy of No Treason finds the needle, offering the only critique of Justin Raimondo’s flailing at fragmentary London bombing reports touching Bibi Netanyahu you need to read. (Via Catallarchy.) What makes it worth reading is that he avoids throwing around anti-semitism charges, recognizing Raimondo’s own distinction between the Israeli government and “the Jews.”
I’ve defended Justin repeatedly against charges of anti-semitism because I think they are untrue, and because the slander has been used strategically to marginalize critics of the strategy and tactics of the “global war on terror” and the neoconservative program of benevolent hegemony for years now. But I won’t defend him against the charge of having gone batshit about Israel the country, and I say this as someone who thinks it’s long past time to kick Israel out of America’s basement and tell it to get a job. The irony is that, in moderately better days, Justin Raimondo himself publically admonished failed Antiwar.com columnist/Front Page Mag plant Anthony Gancarski with the words of George Washington:
I would remind Gancarski that, in addition to advising us against “excessive partiality for one foreign nation,” the Father of our country also warned against “excessive dislike of another.” On the subject of Israel, or any other foreign country, non-interventionsts aren’t for or against, they are neutral.
Justin is a good year and a half past an excellent time to sit back and take both a deep breath and his own advice, like when Tariq Ali of all people suggested there was no there there when it came to Justin’s perfunctory if repetitious efforts to prove Israeli foreknowledge of the 9/11 atrocities. I understand that the Party of Empire is so full of shit it’s enough to drive a man nuts. But anti-imperialists lose when we give in to our darkest impulses.
The London bombing episode shows, in miniature, how his thinking on Israel has gone off the rails. As Kennedy notes, none of the three stories he’s pushing separately or together amount to even any suggestion of nefarious conduct on the part of Israel. And each of them contradicts some aspect of the other. The only way you can get to a suspect interpretation of events is if you selectively ignore and credit a precise pattern of of story elements with a predetermined end in mind. If Israel were the Soviet Union, this would be Edward Jay Epstein territory. If Israel were Iraq, we’d expect this kind of thing from Laurie Mylroie.
To paraphrase Dorothy Day, let’s leave hysteria to our opponents, the War Party.
Comment by Justin Raimondo —
July 12, 2005 @ 1:28 am
John T. Kennedy is, as usual, full of it.
There are three versions of this story:
1) The AP story, which says that Scotland Yard notified Netanyahu “minutes before” the blast. The leakers was a “senior [Israeli] government official” in the Foreign Ministry. This is obviously a ploy: Scotland Yard knew nothing of the attacks in advance. If they had, they would have acted to prevent them. However, I would not discount the entire story: Netanyahu knew something in advance, and the key question is where did he get the information. So the question becomes *who* called Netanyahu, and not just when they called him.
More smoke was generated by the Stratfor “analysis”: the Israelis, we are told, knew “days” and not “minutes” prior to the explosion that something was up. They tried to warn the Brits, but Tony Blair was too busy trying to solve the problem of World Poverty (and, not so incidentally, putting pressure on George Bush to rein in his Israeli allies, meddling in affairs that are none of his business) to pay attention. The threat level was actually lowered.
This is more Israeli-generated BS: a preemptive strike aimed at … what? At this:
“Terrorism expert Tommy Preston of Preston Global in Frankfort, Kentucky, said sources in the intelligence community reported that at least one person in London, England was warned of Thursday morning’s terrorist attacks moments before the initial blast. Preston, citing sources in the intelligence community, said former Israeli Prime Minister and current Finance Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was in London this morning for an economic forum. ‘Just before the first blast, Netanyahu got a call from the Israeli Embassy telling him to stay in his hotel room. The hotel is located next to the subway station where the first attack occurred and he did stay put and shortly after that, there was the explosion, Preston said.”
So now we have a credible report — Preston worked with U.S. intelligence for 40-plus years — saying that the call came from the Israeli Embassy. No Scotland Yard, no “oh, sorry, we made a mistake: he got the call *after* the blasts.” No, Preston says the Israelis — presumably acting on intelligence acquired by Israel all on its own — called Netanyahu and informed him that a terrorist attack was imminent.
John T. Kennedy, you’ll notice, glosses over the Preston report without going into too many details. But I’ll take Preston’s contacts inside the intelligence community over the fulminations of some “libertarian” flake any day of the week.
I won’t defend my thesis that the Israelis had some idea that a major terrorist attack was imminent in the U.S. prior to 9/11. But no one has debunked — or even confronted — Carl Cameron’s 4-part Fox News series, making exactly that point. Why would Fox News — a pro-Israel venue if ever there was one — come up with such a story seemingly out of the blue? No one has even talked about the revelations in Die Zeit, which are maintain that Mossad agents lived “Next Door to Mohammed Atta” (that’s the title of the piece) and tracked him and his cohorts all across America.
The editor of Die Zeit is Jewish: is he an anti-Semite? Somehow I doubt it. Then there is the Salon piece on the Israeli “art students”: admittedly, this is vaguer, but the anonymous source who is quoted extensively gives a fascinating and entirely plausible account of a major Israeli spy operation in the U.S. — one that effectively derailed our efforts to detect the 9/11 plotters simply because our attention was directed elsewhere.
Governments act in their own interests, and the Israeli government takes that instinct to an extreme, and understandably so. They believe their survival is at stake. What’s important to understand is that those interests are, in many instances, directly opposed to American interests.
The strategy of the Israel Firsters is to simply dismiss all this as “anti-Semitism.” That is supposed to stop anybody from even asking any questions, let alone coming to the conclusions I have drawn. The idea is to conflate Israeli ultra-nationalism with Judaism itself, and point to any critique of the former as evidence of the latter.
If you look at my initial blog posting on the Netanyahu issue, I added all sorts of qualifications and conditional clauses to what is in effect a strong suspicion. But in the context of the material gathered together in “The Terror Enigma,” there is ample reason for coming to the conclusion that the presence of so much smoke requires at least a substantial amount of fire. At the very least, the interdict against any inquiry into this subject should be ignored.
Comment by Ray —
July 12, 2005 @ 3:24 am
The story that Scotland Yard knew in advance is obviously wrong, _and yet_ also supports the story that Israel knew in advance and warned Scotland Yard, which is _also_ wrong, but also supports the real story, which is that a US intelligence analyst says the Israeli Embassy warned Netanyahu just before the first bomb. Sure, we don’t have any real evidence for this third story, but we do have all the corroboration from the first two!
I won’t defend my 9-11 claim. But what about this! And this! And that!
Comment by sean —
July 12, 2005 @ 6:36 pm
I suppose that someone could pick Israel, out of all the countries in the world, as the country about which to go batshit for reasons other than anti-Semitism. I just can’t think what a plausible reason would be.
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 12, 2005 @ 6:42 pm
Think harder. Maybe it’ll come to you.
Comment by sean —
July 12, 2005 @ 9:14 pm
Mr. Henley, if I were a member of a tiny, powerless, reviled minority (I refer to your political beliefs), I wouldn’t be so snotty all the time. But then, I’m not you.
Comment by not sean —
July 12, 2005 @ 10:02 pm
“I suppose that someone could pick Israel, out of all the countries in the world, as the country about which to go batshit for reasons other than anti-Semitism. I just can’t think what a plausible reason would be.”
– because it is the largest recipient of US aid
– because it operates a chronically abusive occupation on said aid
– because its supporters routinely engage in ad hominem innuendo like the above and deserve a focused kick in the teeth to challenge political correctness
– because its supporters are often the loudest cheerleaders of imperial overstretch
— because its actions affect the opinions of the population in which the enemy’s revolution swims
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 12, 2005 @ 10:19 pm
sean, perhaps only snottiness is adequate to the times. Anyway, two years of honey didn’t catch enough flies. Vinegar at least provides a measure of personal satisfaction.
.
But I often say nice things about comic books. And why would I care for the opinions of this apparently overwhelming majority that reviles me, anyway?
Comment by Johnathan —
July 13, 2005 @ 6:25 am
Jim, I think the time has gone long past when JR could be taken seriously.
What I would like to ask these folk is that if they have such wonderful sources, corroborated, etc, why don’t they perform a public service (!) and publish handy information in advance of the killings, so we Londonders, New Yorkers etc have a sporting chance of surviving?
Come on Justin, old chap, do something that does not involve showing off like some pathetic attention-seeking teenager, for once.