Here is a cartoon published last week in the international edition of the New York Times, which received sweeping denunciations from every hall of power, followed by a quick retraction on the part of the Times, and a cancelling of the contract with the cartoonist. But just look at it:
It’s a miracle it made it into a mainstream publication at all, considering it mocks the highest symbol on the totem pole, the US-Israel relationship. It depicts the US being led blindly by Israel, which, of course, accurately depicts the nature of the relationship. And if anyone criticizes that relationship, they hide, cravenly, behind the race card, slinging “anti-Semite!” rapid-fire. Why is this so? Growing up in the midst of Southern Baptist obsession with the End Times, I know that that obsession made it inevitable that they would nurture a similar obsession with the state of Israel. Southern Baptists elect Southern Baptists, and so many legislatures are inhabited by people who sincerely believe Armageddon will arrive at any moment, with the Anti-Christ materializing and ready to wreak havoc on the world. Jerusalem apparently must be Jewish-controlled in order for all of this to happen. Hence the obsession, and the complacent attitude toward Israeli crimes, including the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 37 US servicemen. Also something that doesn’t keep them up at night is the obvious control Israel exercises over our own government. They operate an open-air concentration camp of 1.8 million Palestinian civilians. They control the borders, prohibit many, many goods from entering, and conduct random night-time raids to keep the Palestinians on their toes.
But Israel is an ethnic Apartheid State, brought into this world through the modern methods of terrorism: a series of campaigns of unpredictable, indiscriminate mass murders and assassinations, in order to clear space for their new nation. They’ve never attempted to get along with any neighboring country, instead building a fortress State, and becoming a permanent welfare recipient, and liability, of the United States.
It’s a shame that such a state was built by such a persecuted people in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The world’s goodwill was exploited, and Israel has bizarrely become almost a mirror of Nazi ethnic ideology: the treatment of Palestinians by Israel mirrors the treatment the Jews received at the hands of Hitler’s murderous regime.
Say any of that in public and you’ll be called an anti-Semite, or worse. Such is the power of ideology on the mind.
