[Alan Sabrosky was my guest Tuesday 3/30 on The Kevin Barrett Show, 9-10 a.m. Pacific, right after Democracy Now - listen to the archive here.]
"I have had long conversations over the last two weeks with contacts at the Army War College and the headquarters, Marine Corps, and I’ve made it absolutely clear in both cases that it is 100% certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation.’ Period.
"The Zionists are playing this as an all-or-nothing exercise. If they lose this one, they’re done….." - Alan Sabrosky
Alan Sabrosky's forceful and unequivocal statement that the Israeli Mossad did 9/11 has sent shock waves through the 9/11 truth movement. Some have cheered his forthright honesty and heartfelt sincerity. Others are afraid of the PR blowback. A few have attacked Sabrosky, calling him a provocateur or even an anti-Semite, which seems odd since Sabrosky is part Jewish and obviously concerned for the welfare of Jewish Americans in the coming post-9/11-truth world.
A fellow academic I respect recently emailed me suggesting that Alan Sabrosky's work struck him as "racist" (i.e. anti-Semitic). I responded that I saw no evidence of racism in Sabrosky's work. The fellow academic responded: "Seems like racism -- I realize the language is designed to avoid that implication but you know it when you smell it."
My reply:
Sounds like that Supreme Court justice's famous definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it!"
While this, like other fallacious arguments, isn't necessarily wrong, it barely even rises to the level of a fallacy, since it explicitly opts out of rational-empirical discourse altogether: "I just know you're a racist even though I can't explain how anything you said or did was racist." That would be a pretty weak defense in a libel suit.
Having seen nothing to suggest that Alan is racist, I wonder why you would think and say that. One possible explanation: Those who verbally attack Israel and Zionism are routinely smeared as racists by Zionist apologists, who have been forced to defend the indefensible by developing a gargantuan edifice of irrational and deceptive rhetorical techniques which are themselves ultimately based in pro-Jewish racism--the notion of a genetically/biologically identifiable "chosen people" with special rights, beginning with the special right to Palestine. (See M. Shahid Alam's Israeli Exceptionalism.) This irrational and mendacious mythos, redolent with bad faith, completely dominates Western discourse on the question of Zionism. Might you be an unconscious participant?
Ironically, Dr. Sabrosky himself has just published a new article on anti-Semitism. My response:
Good article!
(Quoting Sabrosky): "The oddity is that as individuals without an organized Jewish state, what one sees is admirable achievements instead of aggressive abominations. Without a Jewish state, the dark side of Judaism has no way to express itself, so the admirable side of the Jewish cultural coin -- and there is a great deal to admire -- shines instead. Getting there without a catastrophe is our task in the years ahead."
The admirable side of Judaism -- skeptical, questioning, iconoclastic, and genuinely ethical/idealistic -- may have grown out of the core story "We're waiting for Zion and the Messiah, but they aren't here yet." If so, perhaps those who embrace the state of Israel as their false god have lost this story, and are now atheists and/or idolators.
Douglas Rushkoff's book on Judaism celebrates many of these good qualities. His take on Judaism resonates with mine on Islam. I interviewed him on this a few months ago, archived at http://noliesradio.org/archives/category/archived-shows/kevin-barrett-show .
Looking forward to our conversation next Tuesday!
Kevin
