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American public information or disinformation system

Walter Russell Mead, is Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy. In his essay in the July/Aug issue of Foreign Affairs, The New Israel and the Old: Why Gentile Americans Back the Jewish State, Mead builds his entire lovely canvass on a frame and a canvass well treated with truth before he applies his colour.

That lovely canvass of "An Old Woman", is actually a piece of heavy textile, stretched over a wooden frame, treated with some stabilising chemical base and daubed all over with coloured "paint" compounds. And another artist or informed aficionado of the art may perceive it as such, before he suspends imagination, and the image of a gentle and content old woman and her smile emerges. A simple critique of the writing and the style, exposing the brush strokes of the artificial colouring is one way, my way.

Mead's use of the term 'Jewish State', is biased and misleading writing and, in this case deliberately incorrect, and intentionally misleading.** (** May 14, 1948. While the UN was still meeting in special session, Clark Clifford got Eliahu Eilat (Epstein) who was representing the Jewish state, to send a note informing the President that a Jewish state had been declared (see Israeli Declaration of Independence) and asking for recognition. Lovett, informed by Clifford of the President's intentions, asked that the President wait until 10 PM, when the UN would no longer be in session. However Truman signed the letter of recognition shortly after 6 PM, giving de facto recognition to the new state and its government. In the prepared statement, written before the name of the state was announced, he crossed out the words "the Jewish State" and wrote "Israel." Likewise, he inserted the word "provisional" before the word "government.")

When Harry Truman signed the document recognizing Israel as a State, he deliberately crossed out (and initialed) the words "Jewish State" and inserted the word "Israel"

As a major historian, I must assume Mead knows this, and is therefore deliberately misleading his readers! As a leading teacher of history, he also knows that most Americans would not know this, and assume the facts to be, on his authority, as he describes them, or implies that Israel was created with the intentions of the US government to be a Jewish State. "It was not!"

He noted, "The United States and Israel also have in common their status as "settler states" — countries formed by peoples who came to control their current lands after displacing the original populations. Both states have been powerfully shaped by a history of conflict and confrontation with those they displaced, and both have sought justifications for their behaviour from similar sources. Both the Americans and the Israelis have turned primarily to the Old Testament, whose hallowed pages tell the story of the conflict between the ancient Hebrews and the Canaanites, the former inhabitants of what the Hebrews believed was their Promised Land."

I like the use of "displacing," a much more acceptable term than "genocide," "killing,' "slaughter," or some of the descriptions coming more into vogue only of late, when the displacement of so many people worldwide is becoming difficult to ignore.

Mead, I suppose, is innocent, well meaning, highly educated, ill-informed and extremely intelligent but Jewish! Like a Catholic priest whom I have met and known, who was highly intelligent, well educated, ill informed, and solidly Catholic! An innocent dupe who believed he was serving some higher cause. That is what makes them, and their work, so dangerous. They are believers in what they do!

Mead, as I mentioned, is an expert. He has style and class, and probably does it all without much thought. Including the "little" misleading inaccuracies, which creep in and colour his history.

He is NOT a liar that is the first problem. He does use facts; he just colours them delicately with this word instead of that one, etc., the subtle differences which are not apparent to the uninformed or educated eye as would be the slight, subtle differences in tone and value to the painter's or the graphic editor's eye.

Although it is what he does daily in academia, adding tone and colour to "history" to give it special appeal, it may have been of timely essence because of waning powers of influence.

At least, as I see it; popular support is either slowly decreasing, or more Americans are beginning to question; which is a difference only of where we stand on the slope of Israel losing support totally. We are still near the bottom of the curve, but there is a definite trend, and the Zionist movement sees it, because it is one of the key factors they monitor and worry about.

He affirms, "Widespread gentile support for Israel is one of the most potent political forces in US foreign policy, and in the last 60 years, there has never been a Gallup poll showing more Americans sympathising with the Arabs or the Palestinians than with the Israelis."

True, and we, are supposed to ignore the fact that popular American public opinion trends had little or nothing to do with who controlled, and still controls, the largest and most effective American public opinion molding industry in America, the Hollywood entertainment industry, to which today, they have added the rest of the entertainment industry, plus the TV and print media infotainment industries?

Need I say much more about the effects of years of concentrated propaganda and its effects on the public psyche and opinion? Read the paragraphs in his article, describing the intensive and effective "information" and media sources he cites, such as the "Niles' Weekly Register, the leading American news and opinion periodical through much of the first half of the nineteenth century...," and, if you have any doubts about its editorial sources, try to look up the ownership of these media.

Arabs and Palestinians have played a comparatively small part in the American Public Information, or disinformation system, if any part at all!

After 60 years, some of the depredations of Israel have become so egregious, outrageous, and offensive, that even the most effective propaganda and cover scheme fails to hide it, or dress it up presentably for the ballroom.

In the first global opinion poll about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict released recently, "Americans overwhelmingly said their government should not take sides — a finding that goes against the common assumption that Americans overwhelmingly support Israel. Seven out of ten Americans said they thought their country should not take sides in the conflict."

Steven Kull, director of WorldOpinion.org, told Dubai's Al Arabiya TV in an interview. Americans, said Kull, are unequivocal that US policy needs to be even handed in dealing with the situation. "There is a discrepancy in this sense between the public and government foreign policy," he added.

Confronted by the outrages of Israel, which run so contrary to the mythical ideals upon which Americans were raised to believe America is founded, they are beginning to sicken and react. Churchill was right, "Americans will eventually do the right thing, after all else has failed."

Their original myth was, and still remains, superior and preferable to the most recent myths and shams with which Zion and now American/Israeli neocons have tried to replace it.

Debbie Menon is an independent writer based in Dubai and can be reached at debbie.menon@yahoo.com