THINGS MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME By John Chuckman
2 September 2014
Despite my title, this is not a memoir, dealing as it does with some of the most deadly serious subjects on the planet.
I was brought up by a hard-working, fiercely honest woman. She was brave in the most profound way, not the momentary,
over-hyped stuff of soldiers and sports stars, but the unsung stuff of facing great odds and painful situations and
doing her duty, not for moments or days, but for year after year. She was unusual for the early 1950s, a time of great
social conformity in America, for having left my father whose drunken abuse she refused to endure. She set off on her
own with two very young boys and never looked back. She always set an example of high standards, expecting the same from
my brother and me, made us regular church-goers, and generally bestowed a great deal of love on us.
For the greatest part of my life, I believed in the same values and precepts she taught although I parted with
church-going before I was a man. I was not without cynicism about many things I observed through life, but now, in my
old age, I realize forcefully how entirely different are the rules which actually govern human affairs, and especially
those pertaining to international affairs. Virtually everything my mother taught me, and my church too, was mistaken.
We hear a good deal these days about the problem of bullying in schools, and my instincts always put me on the side of
victims and make me question teachers and authorities who do not step in to protect the innocent. But just look at the
major political and economic leaders of our time: virtually every one of them has been an unqualified bully. It appears
that being a bully features prominently on the road to success.
And we all believed that the bad guys never won and that time would see victims receive justice. The painful truth is
though that the bad guys, at least all the clever and well-connected ones, always win and their victims almost never
receive justice.
My mother had no tolerance for lying, and obvious lies still try my patience, but lying is in fact one of the chief
occupations of those who govern us. Messrs. Obama, Netanyahu, Cameron, Harper are all the grossest liars, as were
Sharon, Clinton, Blair, Bush, Cheney, and a very long list of others notable for their positions and the headlines they
generated. Most of these individuals, along with a good many others, likely have never, in their entire careers, uttered
a single truthful sentence, discounting the platitudes and bromides they are accustomed to delivering.
The issue of lying most comes into prominence in the case of war. I have seen so many wars in my lifetime, and it is
painfully clear that every one of them was based on lies. The poor citizens of every land are never told why their lives
are being snatched and their wealth squandered. They are certainly never consulted about whether so terribly serious a
measure as war should be undertaken. Instead they are lied to. The ghastly horror of Vietnam, all that vast work of
death and destruction on a genocidal scale – carpet bombing, napalm, and poisons dropped - was about nothing which
mattered to almost all ordinary people, it was about blood-drenched lies their leaders told them.
And how can you possibly have meaningful democracy when the voters are lied to daily by those running for office and
those holding office? You cannot, clearly.
And today, the whole Middle East is either in flames or has recently passed through war or revolution – Palestine,
Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Libya, and still others. We are given many reasons for this phenomenon, but at the
heart of the matter, there really is only one cause, and that cause is never mentioned in our press.
In all cases, American is found either covertly directing affairs or at least pouring money and weapons into countries
to de-stabilize them. And why does it do this? It reflects a vast effort to mold the Middle East into a shape
comfortable for the rather unusual requirements of its colony in the region, Israel. Why unusual requirements? What
other small country in the world seems to need to control and dominate everything around it for at least a thousand
miles? And this is only necessary because Israel refuses to obey almost any of the laws and customs of nations as we
have grown to understand them in modern times. Israel continues to rule areas conquered in what itself was a fraudulent
war, the Six Day War, nearly fifty years ago, and it doesn’t just rule these places against all international law and
conventions, it treats their millions of residents as entitled to no law or justice, no hopes or aspirations, and not
even entitled to hold the property they have because whenever a chunk of it appeals to Israelis, they simply take it.
Such is the behavior of the self-designated “only democracy in the Middle East,” a glib and meaningless phrase which
completely ignores the fact that half the people ruled by Israel have no votes and no human rights. Actually, it is a
good thing there are not more such “democracies,” or the region would be total hell on earth. Democracy for some is not
democracy at all. Think of Orwell’s precept in Animal Farm, a book intended to satirize Stalin’s Soviet Union, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal.” That could have
been just as well written about modern Israel. Israel’s embrace of neighbors who are virally anti-democratic – from
Egypt to Saudi Arabia – again says something profound about the nature of Israeli “democracy.”
And the much bigger country which likes to style itself, the world’s oldest democracy and the land of the free, not only
supports Israel in its disregard for law, customs, and international conventions, it finances a great deal of the
tyrannous behavior. Where is the regard for democracy, rights, or even due process in that?
The always-tolerated violation of accepted principles by Israel which seems most remarkable to me is its regular theft
of homes and farms. Americans are comfortable with bombings and assassinations and torture, at least judging from their
national behavior over a good many decades in a number of countries, but when you consider how Americans revere property
rights above all else in their society, it does seem it should be another matter when it comes to property being swiped
in public. Property and profits are the truest guiding, long-term principles in American society. So you might think,
despite the shower of lies in which Americans are immersed concerning Israel and its neighbors, public theft would stir
something deep in their hearts. So why don’t we see American leaders, even if they can’t get worked up over endless
occupation and abuse and killing and apartheid-like laws, at least strenuously objecting to Israel’s regular,
high-handed thefts of property?
America’s politicians always back Israel because America’s government is constituted on the fallacious and unethical
concept that money is free speech when it comes to political campaign contributions – fixed by a Supreme Court whose
history includes vigorous support of such other glorious principles as slavery. When you allow such a political
financing system to dominate your politics, it follows, ipso facto, that those able and willing to give very large sums
as campaign contributions (as well as favorable press coverage, there not being a single major newspaper or network in
America which does not play the game of boosting Israel) receive access and have their voices heard to the virtual
exclusion of others.
What is certainly one of the most efficient and untiring lobbies, the Israel lobby, understands America’s system
perfectly and has adapted over time to work it perfectly, resulting almost in a custom-designed, industrial-scale
machine for turning out loyal and uncritical politicians in one country concerning the acts of a foreign country. Again,
there’s very little truth and even less democracy in that way of conducting politics.