SUPPORT PALESTINE - DEFEAT ZIONISM

Saturday 24 September, 2012

‘…..Support Palestine Defeat Zionism…’

Hameed Abdul Karim

Coming hard on the heels of the of the vilest of movies ‘The Innocence of Muslims’ and the subsequent blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the French magazine Charle Hebdo, there is this outrageous advertisement on New York busses carrying  a vicious racist message.   The ad reads “In Any War between the Civilised Man and the Savage, Support the Civilised Man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad’. This spiteful ad made its debut in San Francisco on city busses. And now it’s in New York. The timing seems perfect considering the UN is having yet another of its talking shops.

The nice men and women of New York would think this might insult the delegates at the UN sessions. And they would be right because that’s the precise intent of the people behind this uncivilised advertisement when you consider the timing. Most of the delegates are indeed ‘savages’ or were referred to as such during the days when they were the ‘White Man’s Burden’.

The ethnic ‘Red Indians’ who were slaughtered in their millions by the ‘civilised’ Europeans in the largest genocide known in history, would not take too kindly to this wicked advertisement either. The White man described them as ‘savages’ too as they went about their ‘God given responsibility to exterminate the ‘savages’ from the land that Columbus ‘discovered’ and purge it from all ‘impurity’ for the ’Pale Faces’. Neither will the ‘Black’ man, for exactly the same reason. A similar genocide took place in Australia. And there is one taking place in Palestine as we speak.

The person behind this racist advertisement is the anti Muslim and Islamophobic Pamela Geller. She also happens to be a hard core Zionist Jew.  In an interview over RT TV she says there is no harm in mocking the Prophet Muhammad or Jesus Christ or the Buddha. ‘This is America’ she points out ‘where freedom of speech reigns supreme’. But up until today there is not a single case where we had seen the Prophet Moses or the Prophet Abraham being mocked at in any way at all. It’s not that we would want this to happen, but this gives you a clue of the identity of the people behind the slander of holy personages of faiths other than Judaism.

In all fairness let it be said that the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority rejected the heinous advertisement when it was brought before them for approval. So Pamela Geller went to court and the federal judge ruled in her favour saying that the ad is protected speech under the First Amendment. How would the good judge react if the advertisement read ‘In Any War between the Civilised Man and the Savage, Support the Civilised Man. Support Palestine. Defeat Zionism’? Would he have resorted to the First Amendment and rule in favour of the ad? If he did he would be condemned as an anti-Semite if he’s a Goy (Gentile). If he were a Jew he would be denounced as a ‘self hating Jew’ like so many Jews who stand up against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. The First Amendment does not protect anybody who speaks against Zionism, Israel’s version of Apartheid. So much for the First Amendment and ‘free speech’ in the ‘land of the free and the brave’!

Sure there is such a thing as ‘hate speech’ but this was introduced to punish anybody who criticises Israel or Zionist Jews, not Islam or Muslims or any other faith or people.  For example no one is allowed to question the holocaust and indeed many have paid heavy prices for daring to do just that. Some have been thrown into jail in Canada and Europe simply for questioning the number of Jews that the Europeans, especially the Germans, killed.

Coming to the First Amendment itself, in his book ‘A People’s History of the United States’ Howard Zinn says, ‘The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights shows that quality of interest hiding behind innocence. Passed in 1791 by Congress, it provided that “Congress shall make law…abridging the freedom of speech or of the press…” Yet, seven years after the First Amendment became a part of the Constitution, Congress passed a law very clearly abridging the freedom of speech’. This was the Sedition Act. Under this act any ‘false, scandalous and malicious statements against government, Congress or the President with intent to defame them, bring them into disrepute or excite popular hatred against them’ was banned.

‘This act seemed to directly violate the First Amendment. Yet it was enforced. Ten Americans were put in prison for utterances against the government and every member of the Supreme Court in 1798-1800 sitting as an appellate judge, held it constitutional’. Sounds very much like the Florida Supreme Court that ‘selected’ George Bush jnr. as President of the United States of America! So what chance did we have of a federal court judge classifying Pamela Geller’s scurrilous advertisement as ‘hate speech’?

If you wish to relegate Howard Zinn’s version of history to that of a bygone era, you might want to focus your thoughts on the recent ‘Patriot Act’ and ‘Homeland Security’. These acts have dwindled Americans’ civil rights as Americans themselves claim. All this new legislation, as some silly talking head might say on Fox TV, is to ‘curtail democracy to protect democracy’. But hate mongers, fear mongers and rabble rousers like Pamela Geller will continue to flourish under the First Amendment. You can bet your devalued bottom dollar on that.