Ignorance is the bane of humanity

By Martin Love

NORTH CAROLINA - U.S. citizens will likely not anytime soon hear the end of the horrible tale of the gunman who last week went into a Pittsburgh, Pa., synagogue and killed 11 Jews who were worshipping there.

The gunman was a crazed white nationalist terrorist who no doubt had been listening to Trump for too long, but they don’t call what he did “terror”, which it is. Trump hardly appears as an anti-Semite given his overweening love affair with the Zionists, but his views generally are bound to stir up ignorant, racist whites, even neo-Nazis. It’s important to note that officially nothing is labeled “terror” unless some incident happens to be done by an “Islamist”, according to directives (since Trump took office) by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

 The very name of this governmental “department” established after 9/11 reeks of pretensions of “empire”: the notion that the U.S. physically is the “homeland” and everywhere else the U.S. has a presence, especially a military presence, are mere satellites – not truly sovereign nations. The concept is quite “Nazi” as with Germany under Hitler. And it is abhorrent, as is the U.S. under Trump.

I anyway posted a note to “Facebook” bewailing the fact that what the Zionists/Israelis have been doing is “terror”, too, and the same for what the Saudis have been doing to Yemen. “Friends” agreed, but then I don’t literally have “friends’ who are ignorant about the truth. Later, I posted a response to a Twitter conversation by a bunch of Zionist American Jews where I questioned whether what happened in Pittsburgh might be related to Zionist actions in the Mideast? The response was furious and immediate: I was labeled “anti-Semitic scum.”

My first response to this was: “I was working and living in a kibbutz in Israel before you were even born.” (Actually, during summer 1969.) That shut them up temporarily. But then someone noted that I had been writing columns for the Tehran Times, as stated on my Twitter page. And I got this response: 

“Iran just directly funds Hizballah, takes American citizens captive, attacks its neighbors, threatens Saudi and tries to get nuclear weapons. They aren’t called the Mad Mullahs for nothing. And you are on their payroll. Shame on you.” 

This comment revealed more abysmal ignorance and I continued responding:

“Iran is not perfect. No country is. Hizballah has protected Lebanon from repeated Israeli offensives and even occupations. It has no direct nuclear weapons program. Such a program has been a myth for many years. And Israel even takes dissident Jewish American captives sometimes. And NO, I take no salary as a writer.”

“We know why Iran has been sanctioned. But Iran has not on offense attacked another country in over 200 years. It also has the second largest Jewish population in the Middle East. Jews are treated far better in Iran as a minority than Arabs of whatever religion are treated west of the Jordan River, and they are not even a minority there. Duhhh.”

“It’s not Iran that is the pariah nation now. The pariah nations are Israel and Saudi Arabia and even the U.S.”

One response I received amid the verbal flurry was: “I don’t see Israel sanctioned by the U.S. for terrorism. I see Iran….” This response to my comments above demonstrated extreme ignorance with the implication that any country the U.S. sanctions has to be doing wrong. I further followed up with a comment that American Jews ought to visit the West Bank and Gaza and see first-hand for themselves the human rights abuses and war crimes perpetrated by the IDF. And I also stated that the Saudis were corrupt and cruel, that the Khashoggi murder was just one instance of such. And Khashoggi was a beloved Washington Post writer, etc. I added that I had been an editor for a bit for Aramco Magazine and learned to despise the Saudis, and that their variant of Islam was a “bloody joke”.

At any rate, it was clear what I was dealing with: Some American Jews (and others, but not all) who had bought hook, line and sinker the Zionist and Neocon propaganda about Israel and other Mideast countries. It was interesting that after I had posted my responses to their personal attacks, they went quiet, realizing that they were dealing with someone who knew far more than they about the Mideast, and had actually spent significant time in the region, including Israel. But the key point is that the attitudes expressed by these virulent people are so deeply entrenched that it is difficult to imagine how they can ever be relieved of their ignorance, and not just about Iran. Still, one must try when given the opportunity.

For beleaguered Iranians under U.S. economic sanctions, and for people of many other nations under sanction, it remains important to realize that many, many better-informed Americans do NOT agree with U.S. government postures even if they cannot really do much about them except vote, as during the upcoming mid-term elections to Congress on November 6th. The world will see how that goes soon enough.

 Meanwhile, magine the U.S. government under Trump as the Titanic headed inexorably and generally towards an iceberg, a reckoning, and perhaps incapable of turning away before disaster strikes. No country has probably ever been so badly advised by ignorant counsel and propaganda as the U.S. this century.