A blowhard I once knew morphed into a rabid Zionist. He was no prize package before that but when he started spouting hasbara, he just got ugly. He wrote a biography where he described growing up with parents who met at a séance conducted by a dead 13th century crusader & steeped his childhood in ghostly apparitions, spirit guides, star charts, & astral planes. So his embrace of Zionist irrationality just fit right in with all the other goblins.

Now this morning I received a video titled “Synagogue of Satan” by Andrew Carrington Hitchcock from a person who said we have to spread it’s truth far & wide. One minute into the video & you can see it coming: the devil’s brew of illuminati, Free Masons, & Rothschild bankers that makes up the heart of libertarian conspiracy theory (if you can call crazy theory). The new (now former) friend explained to me that Jesus was not a Jew but considered them sorcerers, vipers, hypocrites whose father was the devil–& she managed to get the antichrist & Bolsheviks in there too. At the end, reminiscent of that final scene in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” she accused me of being “one of them.”

The ability to believe kooky things contrary to all the evidence is a hallmark not just of Zionists but in almost every instance of irrational beliefs, there is a direct connection to social hatred of some kind, especially racism. Many liberal Zionists cannot accept the reality of mountains of evidence for ethnic cleansing in Gaza because they cannot break with Zionist belief in the special character & superiority of Jews nor can they break with racism toward Palestinians–which they hide behind criticisms of Hamas rockets. The political problems of Hamas have nothing to do with Israeli ethnic cleansing–which is why evidence is eschewed & irrationality embraced to defend Israel.

But irrationality employed ostensibly to defend Palestinians is just as vile. You cannot oppose racism & social hatred by spouting crazy-assed theories about illuminati & Jewish bankers. The other guy who plied that kind of crap was Adolph Hitler.

So unless you want to end up as a status on my wall, keep that crap away from here. Palestinian justice deserves better than that. You can’t serve justice with hatred.

This young boy in Rafah, Gaza is looking for belongings midst the rubble of his house.

(Photo by Hatem Ali/AP)

While Israel is taking a brief rest from slaughter, displaced Palestinians are traveling back to the rubble that once was home. These little kids who just went through a living hell are leaving a school serving as a UN refugee center in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, a few miles from the hills of Sderot where their suffering was a spectator sport. The brief respite allows those psychos to run home now to check the mail & feed the dog.

The UN reported Israel bombed six UN refugee centers & that eight UN staff member have been killed. They also report the shells hit the centers while children & infants slept next to their parents. And still the best Ban Ki-moon can come up with is a wimpy complaint to Israel & a “shame on you” to both Israel & Hamas. It isn’t that the UN isn’t on top of things; they have more access to information than the entire Twitter-sphere which sent hundreds of images of Palestinian children round the world–images which are shattering the edifice of Zionist propaganda & the romance of Exodus mythology. Nothing explains the deafening silence of the UN & its refusal to indict Israel for war crimes except collusion with Israel & it’s allies.

Many laud the actions of Latin American regimes who issued objections or recalled their ambassadors after nearly four weeks of ethnic cleansing. Admirable, but mighty insufficient when you consider the massive political power they could bring to bear on Israel & the US or the massive humanitarian aid they could mobilize if they were willing. Their ambassadors will be back in Israel shortly & the lucrative deals with Israel will not miss a beat. But at least they lent their moral authority (even though some like Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff have that in short supply) to the struggle of Palestinians–& that is something the solidarity movement needs to run with.

Israel & the US are rightly concerned about the impact of those images of Palestinian children– what Netan-psycho-yahu called “telegenically dead babies” & another Zionist pervert called “snuff with haloes”–& they’re trying to counter them with the deeply racist, dehumanizing claim (drawn from the cesspool of 19th century colonialism) that Palestinians use their children as human shields. They’re dragging out the biggest halfwits on the planet like Donny Deutsch, & the living dead like Jon Voight & former terrorist Oily Weasel, to cover Israel’s ass by vituperations against Hamas. And when they speak of “Hamas”, they really mean all Palestinians since for Hamas to use children as human shields, they would need parental collusion.

Israel has been riding high a long time on Exodus romance; it was propelled into this phase of Operation Ethnic Cleansing by irrepressible conflicts within it’s own society. The combination was deadly & when ethnic cleansing went into overkill, even those who couldn’t point to Israel on a map & don’t know Palestine from Tunisia stood aghast.

Rather than be daunted by the criminality, the solidarity movement must run with the truth. We need to pressure those Latin American regimes to increase pressure on Israel, we need to put the heat on the US & the stooges of the US Congress, we need to badger the UN, but mostly we need to organize massive protests, speak-outs, forums, teach-ins; we need to have Palestinians tour; & we need to evangelize for the economic boycott of Israeli products (barcode beginning 729). The source of our power is in truth & in our numbers. Just ask the Vietnamese.

(Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP?Getty Images)

This must be what Zionist apologists for ethnic cleansing mean when they claim Palestinians use their children as human shields. This man has no where to go with his small child since Israel is taking out homes, markets, mosques, hospitals, & UN refugee centers. There’s no place to go, no place to keep your children safe & where you aren’t a sitting duck. But hasbara is clinging to that human shield story because it is frantic to undo the damage of hundreds of photos of mangled & dismembered Palestinian children. Those wee martyrs have become Israel’s undoing. May they RIP.

Some witnessing this carnage are bereft that massive protests haven’t stopped Israel but if you think Israel & it’s allies aren’t sweating bullets about those protests, take a look at some of the war propaganda Zionist apologists are frantically barfing out. Some of it is completely indistinguishable from burlesque. Brigitte Gabriel, a shady, half-baked character, is the queen of farce in this regard. Gabriel, who has a couple names (probably from running from the law), is a hateful Islamophobe who claims she was used as a human shield by Palestinians in Lebanon. According to her, Palestinian fighters (in 1975-76) would park rocket launchers in front of each house, shoot off a cannon, & move on to the next house to make the evening news. You don’t have to be an artillery expert to recognize folly.

She’s a nasty piece of work too, claiming Palestinians “cannot win militarily against Israel so what they do is they use their own children as disposable collateral in order to win the war of public opinion against Israel.” She’s described by book venders as “fiercely articulate & passionately committed” when the pithy “unhinged” would be much more suitable. But when it comes to finding people to peddle this crap, beggars can’t be choosers. Hasbara takes what it can get.

This is the hay day of the Islamophobe who usually live isolated lives since even feral cats & mad dogs want nothing to do with them. A case in point would be witless, right-wing comedian Pat Condell, the UK’s own version of the contemptible Bill Maher. He posted a several-minute rant hating on Arabs who he calls “a bloody nuisance to human civilization.” Our man has no respect for anything except the sound of his own croaking. In denouncing Palestinians for using their kids as human shields he claims Hamas used child labor to build the tunnels between Gaza & Israel. Where did he get that information since Israel claims it didn’t know about those tunnels? Does our man have metaphysical sources of intelligence? Or like the rest of hasbara, does he simply make stuff up? It’s clear now why the mad dogs want no part of him, not even a ragged bone.

Hasbara thinks it really snagged a live one when they interveiwed retired Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan. To enlightened minds, not the best authority to address justice but again, beggars can’t be choosers. This interview is where you confirm crackpot Zionism has taken over the hasbara factory. He claims–contrary to IDF press releases–that Israel did not bomb a hospital & refugee center in Gaza; they were in fact bombed by misfired Hamas rockets. The rare (& entirely questionable) images of Hamas rocket damage in Israel are the size of potholes. Is our man actually claiming that one of those took out an entire hospital & a refugee center?

The only thing of value this military servant of neoliberal colonialism says is that the people of Britain have been deeply affected by the photographs of Palestinian children. To counter that, he claims Hamas falsifies these photos & includes images of Israeli children as dead Palestinian kids. His lies are even topping the state of Israel which has not claimed any deaths from Hamas except among the occupying soldiers.

This human shield story is obvious crap but it’s all Israel has got left. So this sorry-assed fool claims the high number of children killed in Gaza are because Hamas used them as human shields as a “key element of their strategy.” Listen to the jackass in his own words: “They want to lure & force Israel to kill civilians. And so you see images of dead babies, dead boys on the beach, women screaming about their children, & no reality can overcome those images. It’s understandable in a way, because it is heart-wrenching, I’ve seen firsthand what shrapnel can do to a baby, & it’s horrifying, & the problem is that there’s no reference, no open-mindedness to the fact that the only reason these children have been killed is because of Hamas’ aggression towards Israel.” The devil made them do it!

It isn’t that Hamas uses kids as a key element in their military strategy but that hasbara uses that racist accusation drawn from the rancid well of 19th century colonialism as a key element in their war propaganda.

The most powerful way to answer this racist rubbish is to continue public protests denouncing Israeli ethnic cleansing in Gaza. The official lies aren’t stacking up, millions of people have seen the photos of small Palestinian children & know that something stinks in the state of Israel. It’s up to us to hammer home the truth & stand for justice.

Stand publicly for Palestinian justice! Honor the economic boycott of Israel (barcode beginning 729).

(Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP)