New Trend Magazine (www.newtrendmag.org)

[Biggest Islamic web site in the U.S.]
P.O. Box 356, Kingsville, MD 21087.
Phone: 410-435-5000.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are not necessarily shared by editorial committee.
Responses (positive or negative) up to 250 words are welcome.
Names will be withheld on request.
--------------------------------------------
Bennett: Israel's $8 million man exposed

by William Hughes
[The writer, a veteran human rights activist in Baltimore, has written before for New Trend.]

Last year, between his endless playing of slot machines, William Bennett found time to write a puff piece that appeared in the Jerusalem Post, on May 7, 2002, and also on the web site of "Empower America," a think tank. It was entitled, "Why I stand with Israel."

Well, reading it was enough to make me want to throw up! It should have had this warning label: "This Trash May Cause an Upset Stomach!"

Bennett would have been better off just hanging out in his favorite gambling dens or working on his next dubious book about virtues. His pro-Zionist spiel was so bad, it could have been ghost-written by "Bend-The-Truth Yahoo" himself, a/k/a Benjamin Netanyahu, an ex-Commissar in Chief of the Israelis.

Even Netanyahu, however, wouldn't have dared to scribble this silly line: "Israel has shown the way in the Middle East, it has shown the way for freedom, democracy..." Sure, it has shown the way all right, but with endemic bulldozing, hellish detention camps, torture centers, by building an apartheid wall across the country, creating Bantusan-like enclaves and running death squads in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israel's serial Lebanon invasions, too, are another horror story. Some "way" it has shown to the world!

As for big bucks Bennett's moral compass, it is surely broken. His $ 8 million gambling habit has overloaded the poor fellow's system. I can't believe, too, that he made $50,000 per appearance on the lecture circuit. I wouldn't pay $ 2 bucks to hear him preach, especially about Israel.

Bennett continued with his rant, no doubt suffering from the insidious effects of his high-rolling life style. The moral crusader opined, "The state of Israel is a hero to many of us." Now, here is a double insult! Not only is this statement offensive to the Palestinian people, living under the fascist regime of Ariel Sharon, but it also should be to every patriotic American concerned about our national security. (Some will find Victor Ostrovsky's insightful "By Way of Deception" and James Bamford's riveting "Body of Secrets," instructive on the latter topic.)

Here we are living in America, a Republic, that has been blessed with great heroes over the years, like Washington, Jefferson and Adams; Jackson, Grant and Lincoln; Patton, MacArthur, Eisenhower and Marshall. And, what does the pompous Bennett want us to do? He wants us to hold up Israel as a "hero" model for our children. Talk about distorting history and dumbing down the culture. (See Kevin MacDonald's "Critique of Culture" for more egregious examples of this practice.)

In pondering over the 9/11 tragedy, Bennett insisted that many Israelis had said, "We are all Americans now." He added, "The truth is, after September 11, we all became Israelis." Wrong! Speak for yourself Bennett. If you want to be a Zionist lackey; fine, that's your business. I'm sure it will help fund your notorious gambling addiction. But count me out.

Unfortunately, we have too many examples, like Bennett. Some are sitting today in the U.S. Congress. However, there are others of us, mostly unheard at the moment, who don't give a good hoot for Sharon, the Likud Party, or the Israeli state. We don't identify with Israel. We see it, and militant Zionism, as impediments to real peace and justice in the Middle East, and as a drain on our treasury. Try $ 1.7 trillion since 1952!

Like an aging boxer who had taken too many hits to the head, Bennett punched on in his phony-sounding ode to Zionism. He claimed that Israel is a country "that has done more, for more people, with fewer resources..." Oh, please! Get the violin out! Stop this man before he pens another outrageous bit of rank nonsense such as this one.

It is impossible for me to understand how Bennett could have praised Israel, whose forces deliberately attacked the USS Liberty, on June 8, 1967, and killed 34 Americans, wounding 171 others. He might also want to explain how his "hero" state had hired Jonathan Pollard, a Zionist zealot, to steal some of our most valuable military secrets.

Bennett wasn't finished, he roared on in his tract. The aficionado of the gambling emporiums of Atlantic City and Las Vegas declared this to the all-too-trusting masses: "To vindicate our own virtues and cherished beliefs, we should stand four square with Israel..." Now, that we know more about Bennett's gambling addiction, thanks to Newsweek's expose, it should be easier for everyone to say "no" to his lunatic-like political ravings.

You would think, too, that after Israeli operatives took the lives of American activist Rachel Corrie, and British documentary maker, James Miller, in such a cavalier fashion, that Bennett would have recanted his fulsome tribute to Israel. No, this wasn't in the cards of that betting fool.

Questions: Now, that Bennett has fallen off his moral pedestal and landed on his own slots-filled petard, will Israel stand by him? Or, will it get out one of its bulldozers and shove this boring merchant of Zionist propaganda onto the garbage heap of history?

İİ William Hughes 2003
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

2003-05-16 Fri 20:54ct