Edward S. Herman

A woman surveyed the damage near Slovyansk, in eastern Ukraine,
on Tuesday after recent mortar attacks in the region. (Y. Behrakis)

It is enlightening to see how pugnacious the U.S. establishment, led by the Peace Laureate, has been in dealing with the Ukraine crisis. The crisis arguably began when the Yanukovich government rejected an EU bailout program in favor of one offered by Russia. The mainstream media (MSM) have virtually suppressed the fact that the EU proposal was not only less generous than the one offered by Russia, but that whereas the Russian plan did not preclude further Ukrainian deals with the EU the EU plan would have required a cut-off of further Russian arrangements. And whereas the Russian deal had no military clauses, that of the EU required that Ukraine affiliate with NATO. Insofar as the MSM dealt with this set of offers they not only suppressed the exclusionary and militarized character of the EU offer, they tended to view the Russian deal as an improper use of economic leverage, “bludgeoning,” but the EU proposal was “constructive and reasonable” (Ed., NYT, Nov. 20, 2014). Double standards seem to be fully internalized within the U.S. establishment.

The protests that ensued in Ukraine were surely based in part on real grievances against a corrupt government, but they were also pushed along by rightwing groups and by U.S. and allied encouragement and support that increasingly had an anti-Russian and pro-accelerated-regime-change flavor.

They also increased in level of violence. The sniper killings of police and protesters in Maidan on February 21, 2014 brought the crisis to a new head. This violence overlapped with and eventually terminated a negotiated settlement of the struggle brokered by EU members that would have ended the violence, created an interim government and required elections by December. The accelerated violence ended this transitional plan, which was replaced by a coup takeover, along with the forced flight of Victor Yanukovich.

More »

Christoph Dreier

Yet another apostle of peace: President Joachim Gauck, who was
a Protestant pastor in the GDR (right), visited his colleague Daniela
Schadt (left) and members of the Geneva cantonal government,
the St-Pierre Cathedral. (Photo: Jean-Christophe Bott)

In recent months, President Joachim Gauck has been calling quite openly for a more robust German military presence in the world. This attempted revival of German militarism has been decisively rejected by a majority of the population. Politicians, the media and the public prosecution department are now organizing a campaign against opponents of war and preparing to launch criminal proceedings against them.

In line with this, the Facebook posting of a hitherto largely unknown Left Party politician has recently come under attack. Last Monday, 28-year-old Brandenburg state parliament deputy Norbert Müller referred to criticism of Gauck’s war policies made by a number of church pastors, and wrote on his Facebook page: “Some remain true [to their faith]. Others become federal presidents and obnoxious warmongers.”

The posting was seized upon by numerous media outlets and condemned for “defaming the president”. Such a denigration is a criminal offence in Germany, which—under Section 90 of the Criminal Code and on authorization of the federal president—can be punished with imprisonment for a term of between three months and five years. A spokesman for the Potsdam public prosecutor told Spiegel Online that the authorities were reviewing the case. On Wednesday, Gauck then sent word that he had not authorised the prosecutor to initiate proceedings.

More »

Sam Kriss

In the Hegelian system the history of mankind no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of violence, all equally condemnable at the judgement seat of mature philosophic reason and which are best forgotten as quickly as possible, but as the process of evolution of man himself. ~ Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

There was meant to be progress. Slowly at first, and then with gathering confidence, human beings were supposed to be turning the world from a Hell we couldn’t understand into a finely tuned machine that we could. We would predict the weather and split the atom and put a brushed-aluminium fridge-freezer with an ice-cube dispenser in every household, whether they wanted one or not. It was all a lie. What’s been called progress was nothing more than a war of annihilation against the ghosts. At first our odds were slim: the ghosts outnumbered us several times over. Every little copse had its nymphs and sprites; every wild animal carried the head of a god; in every home the jealous ancestors would take up their positions by the fire. It took centuries, but we pushed them back. We got rid of the strange and powerful forces that had controlled the clouds and the rain, and replaced them with tiny floating particles to form the seeds of water droplets. We slowly starved the moon-goddess to death, and replaced her with a big lump of floating rock; we even sent an expeditionary force to its surface to plant a flag there and confirm its lifelessness. All the whispering local spirits were massacred, and their ownership of the sacred sites was passed on to brutal landowners. You could be forgiven for thinking that we’d won. The universe makes sense, after a fashion; a lot of it be explained without any need for ghosts or spirits. If you want, you can now climb Mount Olympus yourself: there are regular tour buses from Athens; if the gods were ever there they’ve now moved on. Machines have been sent out into space to let us know exactly how boring it all is. But if that’s the case, and the magical forces that once haunted every inch of our world are gone forever, then just what the fuck is Tony Blair?

More »

Paul Craig Roberts

The Cold War made a lot of money for the military/security complex for four decades dating from Churchill’s March 5, 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri declaring a Soviet “Iron Curtain” until Reagan and Gorbachev ended the Cold War in the late 1980s. During the Cold War Americans heard endlessly about “the Captive Nations.” The Captive Nations were the Baltics and the Soviet bloc, usually summarized as “Eastern Europe.”

These nations were captive because their foreign policies were dictated by Moscow, just as these same Captive Nations, plus the UK, Western Europe, Canada, Mexico, Columbia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Georgia, and Ukraine, have their foreign policies dictated today by Washington. Washington intends to expand the Captive Nations to includ Azerbaijan, former constituent parts of Soviet Central Asia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia.

During the Cold War Americans thought of Western Europe and Great Britain as independent sovereign countries. Whether they were or not, they most certainly are not today. We are now almost seven decades after WWII, and US troops still occupy Germany.

No European government dares to take a stance different from that of the US Department of State. Not long ago there was talk both in the UK and Germany about departing the European Union, and Washington told both countries that talk of that kind must stop as it was not in Washington’s interest for any country to exit the EU. The talk stopped. Great Britain and Germany are such complete vassals of Washington that neither country can publicly discuss its own future.

When Baltasar Garzon, a Spanish judge with prosecuting authority, attempted to indict members of the George W. Bush regime for violating international law by torturing detainees, he was slapped down.

More »

Clara Weiss

The Ukrainian government is deploying paramilitary groups in close cooperation with the army against opposition in the eastern part of the country. This collaboration has been largely ignored by Western media. While the armed actions of pro-Russian separatists are dealt with at length in the media, there is no discussion of the fascist terror against political opponents of the Kiev regime and the civilian population.

In February, armed groups from the Right Sector and the fascist Svoboda party played a decisive role in the putsch against then-President Viktor Yanukovych. Svoboda was rewarded for this with several ministerial posts and high-ranking positions in the state. Although Svoboda’s presidential candidate, Oleh Tyahnybok, received only 1.2 percent of the vote in the May election, Svoboda continues to be prominently represented in the government.

These paramilitary groups operate with the official protection of the state. At the beginning of March, the parliament decided to build a 60,000-man national guard, principally made up of volunteers recruited from the so-called Maidan self-defense groups.

On April 13, Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov released a decree that allows the formation of special units for the purpose of countering separatist currents. Since then, a number of battalions, officially operating under the Ministry of the Interior, have been founded with the financial support of certain oligarchs.

More »

Gordon Duff

The United States Army, operating from a secret base in Arizona, has declared war on independent media through hacking, blocking communications and sabotaging both radio broadcasts.

Computer security teams working with Veterans Today traced a pattern of attacks to Fort Huachuca, headquarters of the US Army Intelligence School.

This base, in the tiny town of Sierra Vista, Arizona, just north of the Mexican border, is home, not only to this spying operation but also to America’s drone program as well. Every drone attack begins there, with “pilots” trained at Fort Huachuca and drones developed and tested there.

The attacks on independent news and media organizations were discovered when a number of websites, not just Veterans Today, began noting unusual traffic patterns and clumsy hacking attempts. Security software traced these attacks to Fort Huachuca and to a number of local police computer systems around the US.

At Fort Huachuca, the internet censorship, operating to block websites worldwide that report news unfavorable to some US policies or that are critical of Israel, a pattern clearly recognized, was traced to commands tasked with training “Cyber Warfare” specialists. These training classes, funded by Congress and paid for by the American people, are intended to protect government computer systems from attacks by unfriendly governments and terror organizations.

In reality however there are other issues as well. America protects her secrets but those secrets are, more often than not, how the American government violates America’s laws. The Cyber Warfare specialists of Fort Huachuca, operating well outside the authority of the US Constitution, censor the internet, run “sock puppet” websites spreading propaganda and disinformation, orchestrate smear campaigns against journalists and activists who are not under total control and use electronic countermeasures to silence freedom of speech.

More »

(G. Gorodetsky)
Introduction by Gilad Atzmon

Photo: Ivan Maisky (second from left), the Soviet ambassador to London between 1932 and 1943, with Winston Churchill at the Allied ambassadors’ lunch at the Soviet embassy, September 1941. General Władysław Sikorski, prime minister of the Polish government in exile, is second from right.

Forthcoming in G. Gorodetsky (ed.), "A Red Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s: The Diaries of Ivan Maisky, 1932-43". - The following is a unique historical document. It is an extract from The Diaries of Ivan Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador to Britain from 1932 to 1943. As far as I am aware this is the debut online appearance of this invaluable document.

Maisky, a former Menshevik of Jewish origin, kept a highly personal diary. He recorded conversations with five British prime ministers, as well as with many other prominent British politicians.

In this extract, written on 3 February 1941, Maisky recounts his brief meeting with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, later the first president of Israel. Maisky provides crucial insights into the history of Zionism including the brutality of the Jewish plan for Palestine and the Middle East. Noticeably, the document reveals that an intention to expel the Palestinians was explored by Zionist leaders as early as 1941.

More »

Paul Craig Roberts

June 25, 2014. A final number for real US GDP growth in the first quarter of 2014 was released today (June 25, 2014). The number is not the 2.6% growth rate predicted by the know-nothing economists in January of this year. The number is a decline in GDP of -2.9 percent.

The negative growth rate of -2.9 percent is itself an understatement. This number was achieved by deflating nominal GDP with an understated measure of inflation. During the Clinton regime, the Boskin Commission rigged the inflation measure in order to cheat Social Security recipients out of their cost-of-living adjustments. Anyone who purchases food, fuel, or anything knows that inflation is much higher than the officially reported number.

It is possible that the drop in first quarter real GDP is three times the official number. Regardless, the difference is large between the January forecast of +2.6 percent growth and the decline as of the end of March of -2.9 percent.

Any economist who is real and unpaid by Wall Street, the government, or the Establishment knew that the +2.6 percent forecast was a crock. Americans’ incomes have not grown except for the one percent, and the only credit growth is in student loans, as those many who cannot find jobs mistakenly turn to “education is the answer.” In an economy based on consumer demand, the absence of income and credit growth means no economic growth.

More »

Barry Mason

“Laid to Waste”, a report by the Dutch Catholic NGO Pax Christi International, confirms that US forces in Iraq used depleted uranium (DU) weapons in civilian areas during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

More than a decade later, DU is still harming people’s health. The impact of the use of DU in 2003 added to that resulting from the Gulf War of 1991.

Pax made field trips to Iraq in November 2013 and January 2014 to collect data for the report, visiting sites containing scrap metal remnants resulting from DU attacks. They interviewed people living or working nearby.

DU weapons are formed into dart-like projectiles from the remains of natural uranium, left when it is enriched to make nuclear weapons or for use in a nuclear reactor. It is mildly radioactive, but is extremely dense—1.7 times that of lead.

As well as being radioactive, it is chemically toxic. It was developed as a weapon to use against armour-plated objects like tanks and can be fired from planes, tanks or armoured vehicles. When fired the DU core of the projectile (the penetrator) penetrates the armour plating and burns fiercely, producing a radioactive and toxic dust.

More »

Peter Schwarz

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Cameron, and Merkel,
nominally the Chancellor of Germany, but in reality Washington’s
& Tel Aviv's complete whore.

The president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, is opening today’s EU summit in the Belgian city of Ypres. The 28 heads of state and government are due to pay tribute to the hundreds of thousands of troops who died on the battlefields of the First World War around the town in Flanders. “It will be a moving ceremony as we will be testifying to what Europe is: a project of peace, solidarity and cooperation”, Van Rompuy commented.

In fact, Ypres is likely to be a symbol for the opposite: national discord, social conflict and war; and for the end of the European Union in its current form.

In the run-up to the summit, the conflict over who should be the future president of the European Commission escalated to a point that makes any compromise virtually impossible. British Prime Minister David Cameron is determined to prevent the election of former Luxembourg government leader Jean-Claude Juncker, who is supported by the majority of the EU parliament and of government heads. A vote, which Cameron will lose, seems inevitable. For the first time in the history of the EU, the influential head of the Brussels bureaucracy with its 33,000 employees will not be determined by consensus.

More »

Barry Grey

The long-suppressed Justice Department memo released Monday establishes that the president of the United States, Barack Obama, in the most calculated and criminal manner, authorized the murder of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki.

Reading this document, with its crude arguments supporting the targeting and drone killing of a man far from any battlefield, who was never charged with a crime, is itself a chilling experience. The tortured pseudo-legalisms of its author only underscore the premeditated character of the act.

The drone attack that killed Awlaki and three others in Yemen on September 30, 2011, including a second US citizen, Samir Khan, was not carried out in the heat of battle. Neither was the drone attack one month later that obliterated Awlaki’s teenage son.

Obama’s secret decision to place Awlaki on his “kill list” was leaked to the press in April of 2010. The memo by the then-head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, David Barron, claiming that the Constitution and US laws gave the president the power to kill a US citizen, without charge or trial, was sent to Attorney General Eric Holder in July of 2010. Awlaki’s father filed a suit in federal court to remove his son from the kill list, but the case was thrown out in December of 2010. Thus the murder of Awlaki was organized over a protracted period of time. It was a cold-blooded extra-judicial killing by the state.

More »

Paul Craig Roberts

June 24, 2014. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is trying to save the world from war. We should all help him.

Today Putin’s presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov reported that President Putin has asked the Russian legislature to repeal the authorization to use force that was granted in order to protect residents of former Russian territories that are currently part of Ukraine from the rabid Russophobic violence that characterizes Washington’s stooge government in Kiev.

Washington’s neoconservatives are jubilant. They regard Putin’s diplomacy as a sign of weakness and fear, and urge stronger steps that will force Russia to give back Crimea and the Black Sea naval base.

Inside Russia, Washington is encouraging its NGO fifth columns to undercut Putin’s support with propaganda that Putin is afraid to stand up for Russians and has sold out Ukraine’s Russian population. If this propaganda gains traction, Putin will be distracted by street protests. The appearance of Putin’s domestic weakness would embolden Washington. Many members of Russia’s young professional class are swayed by Washington’s propaganda. Essentially, these Russians, brainwashed by US propaganda, are aligned with Washington, not with the Kremlin.

More »

Marc H. Ellis (on Gilad Atzmon)

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: I learned this week that Professor Marc H. Ellis - regarded by many as the contemporary leading Jewish theologian, came to the conclusion that yours truly, is the new Jewish prophet.

Here are some quotes I found in the final chapter of “Future of the Prophetic”, Ellis’ new epic treatise:

“Like the ancient prophets Atzmon exposes Jews. At the same time, Atzmon believes that the Bible, from which the prophets spring, is bogus….Atzmon provides no hiding place for Jews anywhere.” (Future of the Prophetic, Marc H. Ellis, p. 332)

“Atzmon is extreme but, in his extremity, he is much like the biblical prophets.” (p. 332)

“Atzmon performs the prophetic for our time. Like the biblical prophets he does not acknowledge, Atzmon believes we are at the end of Jewish history, a history, like the prophets, he no longer believe exists or, if it does, is not worthy of being carried forward. Irony of ironies, he witnesses to the continuity of both.” (p. 334)

More »

Matt Carr

As a result of its continuing offensives in Iraq, the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIS) has become the latest Islamist threat to civilisation. If the rightwing Internet website World Net Daily is to be believed however, the US government may have inadvertently played a direct role in ISIS’s creation, through a military training program which began in the spring of 2012.

According to WND, ‘dozens of ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq.‘

Evidence to support this thesis comes from ‘ informed Jordanian officials’ and is rather thin on the details. WND does not say, for example, how US military trainers knew that they were training ISIS, given that the group has only emerged as a military force in Syria in the last 12 months. Its reporters also quote ‘a high official in the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’ who says that the US was aware of more recent training and support provided to ISIS by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

These are hardly reliable or conclusive sources, especially coming from a conservative website which undoubtedly has more interest in advancing conspiracy theories involving the Obama administration than it might have done say, if George Bush had still been in power. Nevertheless, it is not outlandish to suggest that Isis may be – in part – yet another of the unexpected consequences or ‘blowback’ of the clandestine backchannels through which US/ Western strategic interests are pursued. From the earliest period of the rebellion against Assad, the Syrian opposition was receiving money, weapons and training from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf States.

More »

Barry Grey

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Monday released a redacted version of the hitherto secret Obama administration memo arguing for the legality of presidential assassinations, without charges or trial, of US citizens. The 47-page memo, dating from July 2010, was drafted and signed by then head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, David Barron, and addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The memo constitutes prima facie evidence of crimes against international law, the US Constitution, and the democratic rights of the American people. It could serve as a key exhibit in impeachment proceedings and criminal prosecutions against high-level American officials, beginning with President Barack Obama, Attorney General Holder, US intelligence and military leaders and the author of the memo, Barron. The document is a travesty of legal and constitutional analysis. It begins with the desired aim—to justify the negation of the Bill of Rights’ guarantee of “due process” and sanction the arrogation of quasidictatorial powers by the executive branch—and employs a grab bag of sophistic and cynical arguments to arrive at the desired conclusion.

More »

Wayne Madsen

«Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.»

These are the words from «1984», George Orwell’s fictional novel. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.

This is an eerily correct prognostication of future events from geopolitics to the loss of privacy and the rise of the surveillance state. Oceania fictionally represented the British Isles, North and South America, southern Africa, and Australasia. In Orwell’s world, Eurasia was comprised of Russia and Europe while another power, Eastasia, included China, Korea, and Japan.

Today, a modified form of the dystopian future world map of Orwell is becoming reality as Russia and China increasingly cooperate economically, politically, and militarily to ensure that the forces of Oceania – centered in Washington, London, Berlin, and Paris – do not overrun Eurasia.

More »

Eric Zuesse
Washington's Blog

The Western news media have not been showing the footage of this action by the U.S. Administration, but U.S. news media also covered up the Administration’s constant lies about “Saddam’s WMD” (which the U.N. had quietly verified were completely destroyed in 1998), and so Americans supported invading Iraq on the basis of outright lies, and we did so: the U.S. is no longer an authentic democracy, which requires an honest press.

America is now doing something that might be even more shocking than that — outright modeled upon the Hitler-movement. The present news report is being distributed to all U.S. news media, so that we’ll all get to see which U.S. media suppress this information, and which ones break the U.S. silence about it — the first-ever blatant ethnic-cleansing program carried out in any foreign country by U.S. Government agents or under U.S. control.

Here are photos of what we (our nation’s appointed agents in Ukraine) have been doing since 18 February 2014, and which is being backed up by U.S. tax-dollars under the fake rubric of “national security.” These still-photos are all taken from live videos many of which the present reporter has previously provided the links to, and all of which have been checked thoroughly and verified to be authentic by this reporter, and none of these photos has been found to be doctored.

The only organization that checks for doctored “evidence” regarding the situation in Ukraine is Stopfake.org, a website that was recently established by an independent group of journalism students in order to defeat propaganda that is being created and spread by both sides (almost entirely by “our” side) in the Ukrainian civil war; these students are doing this so that honest news reporting can be separated out from that which is based upon, and spreading to the public, lies.

They are performing a terrific service in this matter, and all honest journalists owe them a debt of gratitude.

More »

Chris Marsden

The week-long “unilateral ceasefire” announced by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko is already being exposed as a fraud. Since it was declared operational Friday at 10 p.m. local time, Ukraine’s armed forces have continued what they describe as an “anti-terrorist” operation in eastern Ukraine against pro-Russian separatists opposed to the Kiev regime installed by the Western powers.

Poroshenko assumed power June 7 following a ballot in which only 54 percent of Ukrainians participated, with large parts of the east boycotting the election. He has advanced what he calls a 15-point peace plan, offering decentralisation of power, early elections, a 10-kilometre buffer zone on the Ukrainian-Russian border, and a supposed amnesty to separatists.

However, an Interior Ministry statement made clear that this was little more than an ultimatum to anti-Kiev forces to surrender. The statement declared: “This is being done to allow terrorists to lay down their arms. Those who do not do this will be destroyed.”

On Thursday, the day before the ceasefire was to begin, intense fighting occurred near Krasnyi Liman, east of Slavyansk. A government spokesman boasted that 200 rebels were killed and hundreds more wounded.

Igor Strelkov, commander of the Donbas People’s Militia, said his men were far outnumbered and outgunned and would probably retreat from their positions in the area. Appealing for aid from Russian President Vladimir Puttin, he said, “I hope that they have enough conscience left in Moscow to take some measures.”

On Saturday, Pavel Gubarev, the self-proclaimed governor of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said there was no ceasefire near Slavyansk. “There is shooting all the time, and this ceasefire that Poroshenko is talking about is just fake. The Ukrainian forces are either not under his control, or he is just a liar.”

More »

Kevin Barrett

Did you know that the CIA manufactures terrorist devil-dolls? According to the Washington Post, CIA operatives have admitted that they fabricated Osama Bin Laden devil-dolls as part of a psychological warfare operation against Pakistan. The dolls looked like Bin Laden – at first. But Bin Laden’s face was painted with heat-dissolving material designed to peel off and reveal the face of the devil.

Terrorizing Pakistani children with Osama Bin Laden devil dolls – it’s all in a day’s work for the CIA.

But wait a minute – wasn’t Osama Bin Laden himself a sort of CIA devil-doll? Bin Laden’s career as a self-professed jihadi began when he was recruited by the CIA and its Saudi proxies to fight against the Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan. Under the code name “Tim Osman” he toured US military bases and received insurgency training from the CIA.

Later, during the 1990s, Osama Bin Laden was manipulated by the CIA (or its Zionist faction) into becoming a plausible patsy for the coming wave of false-flag terrorism designed to ignite a clash of civilizations. As the Muslim world listened to Bin Laden’s eloquent litany of grievances against the West, it was shown a handsome, bearded face with large, soulful eyes. The Western world, however, was shown a demonic caricature – a devil doll created for propaganda purposes.

On September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center skyscrapers were blown up in explosive controlled demolitions, many observers claimed to see a bearded, demonic face in the pyroclastic smoke and dust clouds billowing from the exploding buildings. According to the ensuing wave of propaganda from the Zionist-dominated corporate media, the face of the devil behind the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11 was Osama Bin Laden.

More »

David Walsh

Mavi Marmara Massacre Whitewash Redux
UN Report on Mavi Marmara Massacre

The decision by New York City’s Metropolitan Opera to cancel its plans for worldwide high-definition video transmission and radio broadcast of John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer is a scandalous and cowardly capitulation to right-wing forces, with far-reaching implications.

Adams’ opera, with a libretto by Alice Goodman, recounts the October 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship by four members of the Palestine Liberation Front, during which the terrorists killed 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, confined to a wheelchair, and threw his body overboard.

The claim that the work is “anti-Jewish” (per the cover of Rupert Murdoch’s gutter New York Post on June 18) is libelous and absurd. It can only be credited by those who have neither seen the opera nor read the text of its libretto—or who have an ideological axe to grind. The musical piece, which opens with choruses of “Exiled Palestinians” and “Exiled Jews,” respectively, is a poetic, somber effort to come to terms with the historical tragedy of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The only anti-Semitic lines (often cited by opponents of the opera) are given to a character nicknamed “Rambo,” an obvious sadist and thug.

The opera’s real crime is to give a voice to the Palestinian people and identify their oppression. The “Chorus of Exiled Palestinians” begins, “My father’s house was razed/In nineteen forty-eight/When the Israelis passed/Over our street.” Any reference to the historical reality of the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians is intolerable to the pro-Zionist elements. Munich, the 2005 film written by Tony Kushner and directed by Steven Spielberg, was subject to a similar smear campaign.

More »