Deliberate Deceptions still going strong

In 1993, former U.S. Congressman Paul Findley wrote Deliberate Deceptions
subtitled "facing the facts about the U.S. - Israeli relationship. The book consists of a series of fallacies, each followed by the truth that refutes it. Fully annotated, Findley goes to great lengths to back up what he writes with history and quotes from the people involved.

What hit me most powerfully is what he writes in the epilogue, remembering that this was written almost 20 years ago and George Ball was saying essentially the same thing 40 years ago. These points still hold today.

> Israel is an embattled state largely because of is long history of aggressive territorial expansion at the expense of Arabs, especially Palestinians.

> In its zeal to control the Arabs whose land it seized, Israel engages in inhumane practices that violate international law and the idealistic vision that brought Israel into being

> Israel will remain an embattled state until it ends its occupation of Arab land, its subjugation of the inhabitants, and its discrimination against Arab citizens

> The United States provides the support without which Israel could not maintain its repression of human rights and territorial expansion. This collusive relationship severely damages U.S. influence worldwide. It has led our government into the disgraceful practice of turning a blind eye to Israeli violations of both international and U.S. law, a habit widely noted by foreign leaders.

If anything, the United States has become "Israelified", now doing things typical of Israel such as extra-judicial targeted killing about which it openly brags (bin Laden) and the absolute refusal to see any responsibility for growing international chaos that is driven by what ones own country does. Thousands upon thousands of Iraqis and Afganis are dead from the pointless U.S. interventions in two countries, yet we look upon the slaughter as righteously motivated, just as Zionists think nothing of the woe they lay upon the Palestinians.

I cannot begin to calculate how harmful to the U.S. has been its relationship to Israel, yet the voices in Congress keep trumpeting the "special relationship" in what will one day be seen clearly as a great perversity in American history.