Nazi Tactics by Israel and America in the Phony War on Terror

NEWS YOU WON’T FIND ON CNN

— As a Jew who witnessed the loss of 6,000,000 of my fellow Jews, most likely including members of my own extended family who were still in Europe, in the brutal Nazi slaughter of the Holocaust, I believe I know Nazi tactics when I see them. Because of this deeply personal history, I am sickened by the Nazi-like tactics being used by the Israelis in Gaza and Lebanon.

These tactics are fully supported by the Bush administration as legitimate attempts at “self defense” against the alleged incursions by Palestinian and Hezbollah guerillas.

This collusion between the US and the Israelis is so similar to the Axis Powers of World War II that I believe they constitute a new “Axis OF Powers” for the 21st Century. This Axis links Israel, the most militaristic country in the Middle East, with the United States, the most militaristic country in the world, in a quest to dominate, intimidate and develop their hegemony over other countries.

So, what are these Nazi-like tactics being used by the new Axis of Powers?

TERROR BOMBINGS; CONDUCTING A BRUTAL WAR AGAINST CIVILIANS.

The “shock and awe” bombing strategy used by the US and Israel are simply another name for the brutal bombings of civilian populations used by the Nazis in World War II. The current horrific wars against innocent men, women and children are geared toward intimidation, terror and fear among the civilian population in a depraved attempt to get them to pressure their own regime to submit, abdicate or surrender. The Axis even goes so far as to deliberately and brutally target infrastructure such as power plants and even supply routes bringing food and medicine to civilians, in an effort to make life indescribably more horrible for innocent civilians.

In fact, Amnesty International has accused Israel of war crimes stating that Israel broke international law by deliberately destroying LEBANON’S (not Hezbollah’s) civilian infrastructure! These are the war strategies the US used in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel is using in Palestine and Lebanon. Tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine by these Nazi-like tactics by Israel and America.

The US and Israel don’t stop with terror bombings. Invading other countries illegally, they then continue to intimidate the civilian populations by illegal and unethical searches of peoples’ homes, dragging men and sometimes women into the street hooded and trussed up like animals. Nothing can be more humiliating to these people then these intrusive home invasions at all hours of the night where civilians are trussed up and thrown out into the street in full view of the neighbors as a warning to any one who might even express an opinion about the illegal occupation of foreign troops in their own country.

The US-Israeli war against civilians has produced deaths and humiliation but not submission. In fact, the stupidity of this Nazi strategy in World War II and its results in HARDENING opposition, not WEAKENING IT, seems lost on the leaders of the Axis of Powers.

As I write this, news is reported that the Israelis fired missiles into a village killing 15 civilians, mainly women and children, while another missile was fired at a CONVOY OF CIVILIANS FLEEING THE VIOLENCE, killing seven and wounding 22! Are these not exactly the same actions that the Nazis carried out against civilian targets?

TRUMPED UP EXCUSES FOR INVASIONS

 Afghanistan “harbored terrorists.
 ” Iraq has “weapons of mass destruction” and “threatened the US.
 ” Palestinians elected the “wrong government” and also may have kidnapped one Israeli soldier.
 Hezbollah ? BUT NOT LEBANON- allegedly kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.

In all cases, including those where the reason for invasion was shown to be lies, the results were the deaths of thousands of innocent people, most sadly because of PRETEXTS by the US and Israeli governments.

Because of American propaganda, a little known fact is that Hezbollah is not even considered to be a terrorist organization by most of the world! Indeed, only the US and its puppet governments of Israel, Canada and Britain consider Hezbollah as a terrorist organization! In fact, Hezbollah and Hamas have exchanged prisoners many times with Israel who now has decided to use the Hamas and Hezbollah “kidnappings” as their latest pretext to invade and slaughter their neighbors.

Israel and the US have violated not only the United Nations Charter, but numerous UN resolutions in their murderous wars of hegemony and imperialism. Thus, the Axis of Powers becomes the real terrorists in the Middle East, not the Palestinian, Iraq, Afghan and Lebanese forces who really are engaging in legitimate self defense against the invaders/occupying forces.

Now compare the pretexts used by the Axis of Powers with those used by the Nazis in World War II. Fake border incidents. Falsified cases of discrimination against Germans in the countries targeted for invasion. The need for “LIVINGSPACE.” Aggressor nations always develop huge propaganda machines to try to justify their actions. And when one lie is exposed ?there WERE no weapons of mass destruction- another is concocted to take its place, e.g., the need to bring “democracy” to other nations. Yet, how hypocritical is it that the US invaders are allies of many other anti-democratic nations, in that very same Middle East region, such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt? How even more hypocritical is it that Israel, with US support, in their quest to “democratize,” invade two of the only states in the Middle East with actual democracies, Palestine and Lebanon? There is no end to the lies and hypocrisy when Nazi tactics are employed by aggressor nations.

In fact, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published an article in the August 21 issue of “The New Yorker,” that confirms, based on information leaked from current and former Bush administration officials, that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon had nothing to do with the kidnappings of two Israeli soldiers. The invasion was planned by US and Israeli officials as preparation and a trial run for an invasion of Iran in 2007! Hersh wrote that “...according to a former senior intelligence official, the Israeli plan for Lebanon was the ’mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.’” George Bush never denied the substance of this article, calling it only, “wild speculation!”

A new book, “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawai’i to Iraq,” (Stephen Kinzer; 2006) provides the clearest possible evidence that “regime change” has been a strategy of American foreign policy for at least 110 years. The phony excuses and US government lies may change with the situation, but the strategy stays the same.

DEHUMANIZATION OF THE ENEMY

As the Nazis viewed Jews, Slav, Gypsies and virtually all other nationalities as inferior to their “master race” so that their soldiers would not experience guilt over their genocidal slaughters, so do the Israelis and Bush administration actually view Muslims as inferior.

The Axis sees “the other,” the “enemy,” as inferior, so that deaths of tens of thousands of “the other” seems justified while deaths on “our” side ?or kidnappings of a few in this case- are viewed by the Axis of Powers as horrendous and unforgivable.

This dehumanization occurs officially and unofficially. It occurs officially, e.g., when Bush responds to a question about how many Iraqis have been killed by casually replying “oh, about 30,000,” as though he were counting the cattle on his ranch. (As of August 2006, there are between 45,000 and 50,000 Iraqi dead according to US estimates!) It occurs unofficially, e.g., when troops on the ground dehumanize their enemy by calling them “towel heads” in the same way the US military in Vietnam called the Vietnamese “gooks.” Even the media are co-opted in this dehumanization process as witness the daily reports of total American deaths, but virtually no reports of the overall death tolls among “the enemy.”

Use of terms by US and Israeli propagandists like “Muslim Terrorists,” "Muslim Extremists," and the latest demeaning term by Bush, “Muslim Fascists,” is an attempt to taint all of Islamic religion and culture. Bush knows that the vast majority of his constituency in the US only hears the word “Muslim.” Contrast that with the number of times we hear terms like “Christian Crusaders,” "Christian or Jewish Extremists," “Christian or Jewish Neo-Nazis.” These epithets are strictly off limits in the US, no matter how accurate they may be in depicting our government. The anti-Muslim insults are all part of the dehumanization process against people who are not only NOT terrorists or extremists, but defending their countries against illegal invasion and occupation by the Christian/Jewish Axis of Power.

Even more telling of this dehumanization is that the ratio of “enemy” killed to Americans and Israelis killed or kidnapped approaches hundreds to one. This is reminiscent of the same strategy used by the Nazis in WWII: slaughter of tens to hundreds of civilians when the Resistance killed even one German. Sadly, the US-Israeli ratio of our dead to their dead even exceeds the kill ratio of the Nazis! Can there be any clearer evidence of the view that “they,” the “enemy,” are seen as less worthy of life and dignity than “us?”

UNETHICAL AND ILLEGAL ENTRIES, SEARCHES AND DETENTIONS; USE OF TORTURE

There seems to be little disagreement, even from many US sources, that the Axis has violated international law and basic human decency by its violent repression of civilian populations. Both the US and Israel have deemed it their right to break in to any home in occupied territory that they wish in the search for “the enemy.” Television news displays almost nightly present the images of Iraqi civilians screaming and crying in protest and desperation as occupation troops break into their homes, search any where they want, and then place hoods over the men, tie their hands behind their backs and roughly shove them to their knees. TO THEIR KNEES!

The US and Israel also hold THOUSANDS of prisoners from the lands they have invaded and occupied with basic human rights denied to many if not most of those prisoners. Even the puppet government of Britain has called for the release of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, hundreds of whom have been held incommunicado FOR YEARS, with no contacts with family or legal representatives allowed. Meanwhile, the media have uncovered reports of secret prisons around the world where CIA victims are spirited to and never heard from again.

The visual reports from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq show the widespread use of torture there, and many international organizations ?from the United Nations to the Red Cross to Amnesty International- have provided evidence and protested the widespread use of torture by Americans and their allies, approved AS POLICY by the Bush administration!

All of these tactics are EXACTLY the same as the ones used by the Nazis in WWII. Are these prisons, those that are known and the many that are secret- not American concentration camps?

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Of course, I want Israel to survive and flourish as a state, but alongside the equally flourishing Palestinian and Lebanese states whose autonomy and actual statehood Israel continues to deny, financially, militarily, and economically. As an American and as a Jew, my heart is broken; I cringe in disbelief and horror at the terror my own people have spread.

Terror bombing, illegal invasion of other countries using trumped up excuses, dehumanization of the enemy as inferior, widespread use of torture; these are exactly the same tactics the Nazis used. But these tactics will NEVER produce either the peace or victory the Axis of Powers claim they want. Remember WWII. The Nazis lost!

Joel Fischer Professor University of Hawai’i School of Social Work Honolulu, HI