M.J. Rosenberg

The following piece by journalist David Sheen, a Canadian living in Israel since 1999 appears in Religious Dispatches, a blog published by the Annenberg School of Journalism at University of Southern California.

I am sending it out because we need to start paying attention to the ugly racism, including calls for genocide, that have been emanating from within the right wing of the Israeli and the American Jewish community.

We all hear Jews talking about the hate within segments of the Muslim community directed toward Jews. Too few recognize that our ultras are no different. We just ignore them and pretend they don't signify anything about us. They do. And now, suddenly, following the revolting Gaza campaign, genocide is actually being discussed, including by a top Israeli official. We can't ignore this, especially when these threats emanate from the same sector of Jewish and Israeli life that incited the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. These people are our Hamas or maybe our ISIS. We can't pretend they don't exist.

Earlier this week the Times of Israel published a post, written by American Yochanan Gordon, titled “When Genocide is Permissible,” which concludes with the following question:

If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?

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Robert Parry

The controversial map developed by Human Rights Watch
and embraced by the New York Times, supposedly showing
the flight paths of two missiles from the Aug. 21 Sarin attack
intersecting at a Syrian military base.

At the first anniversary of the Sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, there is a concerted effort to reestablish the original conventional wisdom, blaming the Syrian government for the hundreds of deaths. The goal seems to be to bury the alternative narrative that later emerged.

One shouldn’t be surprised, I guess, that some wannabe-journalist bloggers are auditioning before possible mainstream employers by attacking investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh for writing a groundbreaking article implicating Syrian jihadist rebels and Turkish intelligence in the lethal use of Sarin on Aug. 21 outside Damascus.

From a sampling of these defenses of Official Washington’s old conventional wisdom – blaming the Syrian government – the chief attack line against Hersh is to repeat the initial U.S. government claim of a widespread strike involving multiple rockets.

The thinking then was that only the Syrian government had the capability to launch such a widespread assault. But this claim is outdated. The United Nations inspectors who fanned out across the Ghouta suburb of Damascus recovered only two suspicious rockets – and one was found to be clean of Sarin or any other chemical agent.

The one Sarin-laden rocket, which struck in the Zamalka/Ein Tarma neighborhood, was found to be crudely made and had a maximum range of about 2 to 3 kilometers, meaning that it would have been launched from rebel-controlled areas, not from a government zone.

But conventional wisdom is a difficult thing to shake once many “very important people” have embraced its certainties. Such VIPs don’t like to admit that they were suckered and there are always some aspiring operatives who hope to earn some brownie points by attacking anyone who deviates from the “group think.”

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Stephen Lendman

Rogue terror states wage wars the same way. America does it. So does Israel. Kiev's illegitimate fascist government operates extrajudicially. Rule of law principles don't apply. Dirty war is waged on its own non-combatant men, women and children. Residential neighborhoods are bombed and shelled. Banned chemical and other terror weapons are used.

Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) member of parliament Miroslav Rudenko said:

"According to our soldiers' information, the Ukrainian forces are using chemical ammunition on DPR territory. Once a shell bursts, a gas affecting sense organs is emitted. We have this information."

In early June, Southeastern Ukrainian freedom fighters said Kiev forces attacked Semyonovka near Slaviansk with an unknown chemical weapon. On August 6, freedom fighters claimed "irrefutable evidence" of a weapon used similar to white phosphorous. It burns flesh to the bone. It keeps burning until entirely consumed or deprived of oxygen.

The Hague and Geneva Conventions categorically prohibit use of these type weapons. It doesn't matter. Kiev uses them against civilians. So does Israel. America uses banned chemical, biological and radiological weapons in all its wars. These countries kill and destroy indiscriminately. They commit daily crimes of war and against humanity.

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