Interview with Jeremy R. Hammond

KZ: With their sophisticated intelligence apparatus, the United States and its European allies should have come to the conclusion that Iran does not have the intention of building nuclear bombs nor does it have the capability to build one. Iran has repeatedly stated that it will publicly announce once it decides to build an atomic bomb because it is afraid of nobody. Is the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program part of an agenda to derail Iran’s status as a regional superpower and isolate it internationally, or is it really a matter of ignorance and unawareness on the side of the West?

JRH: In fact, U.S. intelligence has judged that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program, in both its 2007 and 2011 NIEs, as I mentioned before. But facts like that just don’t matter, as far as U.S. policy is concerned, because the policy has nothing to do with non-proliferation. It’s partly a matter of ignorance, but it’s willful ignorance. Take, for example, the claim that has long been virtually obligatory for any U.S. mainstream commentary on Iran’s nuclear program, that Ahmadinejad has threatened Israel with a nuclear holocaust. This claim stems in part from the claim that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, and also from the claim that Ahmadinejad threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”. But that claim is false.

First, it’s a dubious translation of a comment Ahmadinejad made in a speech in October 2005. Professor Juan Cole and journalist Jonathan Steele, among others, pointed out at the time that what he actually said would be better translated as “the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time”, or something more akin to that. Second, Ahmadinejad was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini. Third, the context of the quote is not irrelevant. He was talking about the need for oppressive regimes to come to an end. He cited three examples. The first was the Shah’s regime in Iran. The second was Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The third was the Zionist regime in Israel, which had been occupying Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, for four decades.

It’s perfectly well understood among knowledgeable Western commentators that the “nuclear holocaust” claim is pure fiction, nothing more than a fabrication for Western propaganda purposes, misquoted and taken completely out of context. So you have the BBC acknowledging that there’s no direct translation for the English expression “to wipe” something “off the map”, but insisting on using that translation anyhow. And so you have the New York Times acknowledging that Juan Cole’s and Jonathan Steele’s translations are actually more accurate, that he said “regime occupying Jerusalem”, not “Israel”, and that he said “pages of time or history”, and not “map”, but insisting that it was nevertheless right and proper to say he threatened “to wipe Israel off the map”, which is, needless to say, the way the New York Times and the rest of the U.S. mainstream media have reported it ever since, often in the same sentence as the claim that Iran is attempting to build a nuclear bomb. This is virtually obligatory in the U.S. media. So, yes, there is ignorance, but it’s willful ignorance.

No doubt many commentators actually believe their own propaganda, but it’s the same way many government officials and analysts believed that Iraq had WMD, which was a conclusion that could only be arrived at by dismissing all the relevant facts and willfully choosing not to make any effort whatsoever to actually seriously examine the claims made. I mean, anyone who knows how to use an internet search engine can find this stuff out for themselves. Anyone can Google it. But facts are just irrelevant.

Again, the situation is comparable to that of Iraq prior to the invasion, such as the claim that Iraq had sought aluminum tubes to manufacture centrifuges to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb. The IAEA said they couldn’t be used for such a purpose, but were rather intended for a conventional rocket program. The U.S.’s top experts at the Department of Energy said they couldn’t be used for centrifuges, but were intended for an existing rocket program that just so happened to use tubes of the exact same dimensions. The State Department’s intelligence bureau agreed with the assessment of the DOE. Yet you had government officials like National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice or President George W. Bush publicly declaring that the tubes were intended for centrifuges, that they couldn’t possibly have any other purpose, and that we couldn’t wait for the “smoking gun” that Iraq was pursuing the bomb to come “in the form of a mushroom cloud”. There is ignorance, yes, but it’s willful ignorance. The facts just don’t matter, no matter how uncontroversial they may actually be. The truth gests too much in the way of the policy.

KZ: Israel is said to be the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. With a declared policy of deliberate ambiguity, it has prevented the international community from investigating its arsenals, and the global organizations such as the UNSC in turn have shown little interest in focusing on Israel’s dossier. Why can Israel enjoy immunity from international law and be exempted from being held accountable before the public opinion?

JRH: I’ve already briefly touched on that, but to reiterate, it’s the same reason Israel can enjoy immunity from international law in regard to its ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories and illegal settlement activity. Or the same reason Israel can enjoy immunity from international law in regard to its continued violence against the Palestinians, such as its 22-day full-scale military assault on Gaza from December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009.

The narrative in the U.S. basically stated that Hamas committed a coup against the Palestinian government, had incessantly fired rockets at Israeli towns, and had violated a ceasefire with Israel. Thus, Israel responded to defend itself against the Hamas terrorist attacks. The truth is that the U.S. and Israel conspired to overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government by financing and arming Fatah, the party of P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip was a consequence of the fact that the U.S. illegally financed Fatah’s election campaign, pressured Abbas to illegally dismiss the Hamas government, and armed Fatah to use force to overthrow Hamas and expel them from government. So that was what was called the “Hamas coup” in the Western media. All of this is completely uncontroversial.

On June 19, 2008, Israel and Hamas began a 6-month ceasefire, under which Israel was supposed to lift its siege on Gaza, which it implemented to collectively punish the Palestinians for having Hamas as their leadership. Israel perpetually violated the ceasefire. It refused to lift the siege. Israeli soldiers shot across the border at Palestinian farmers attempting to reach their own land.

Two elderly men were injured in such attacks in June, and an unarmed 18-year old was killed in July. Israel stepped up operations against Hamas and other militant groups in the West Bank, provoking limited rocket fire from groups in Gaza, which Hamas actively pressured to abide by the ceasefire, including by making arrests.

On November 4, Israel launched an airstrike and ground incursion against Gaza, killing half a dozen members of Hamas. Up until that time, Hamas had fired not a single rocket at Israel, but had strictly observed the ceasefire. Israel’s violation effectively ended the ceasefire. Its official end came on December 19, the expiration of the six-month period. Hamas offered to extend the truce if Israel would lift the siege, but Israel refused the offer and instead proceeded to launch a full-scale military operation it had been planning since before the truce had gone into effect.

Again, all totally uncontroversial. So it just isn’t mentioned. The New York Times, for example, reported the November 4 Israeli violation at the time, but in subsequent accounts employed euphemisms like just saying that the ceasefire “broke down” in early November, without any further discussion as to why it “broke down”, which was because Israel violated it. As a simple thought experiment, had Hamas been the one to violate the ceasefire, the Times would never have reported that it just “broke down”. It would have been absolutely obligatory to note that Hamas had violated it. But the opposite truth is just too inconvenient, so it just isn’t mentioned.

That was “Operation Cast Lead”, which targeted the civilian population of Gaza. Israel targeted homes, mosques, schools, hospitals, and U.N. facilities. It used white phosphorus munitions over civilian areas. It leveled entire areas of Gaza and killed about 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including around 300 children. The devastation was wrought by U.S.-provided F-16s, Apache helicopters, Hellfire missiles, and white phosphorus munitions. It was bought and paid for by the U.S. taxpayers through over $3 billion in annual military grants to Israel, which is in addition to billions in loan guarantees the U.S. provides, which basically means that if Israel were to ever default on a loan, the U.S. taxpayers would be liable to cover the debt.

The condemnation of Israel’s actions was universal. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and numerous U.N. reports stated the prima facie case that Israel’s conduct had been in violation of international law. The U.N. launched an investigation headed up by Richard Goldstone, which found both Israel and Hamas guilty of war crimes and made recommendations on how to obtain justice for the victims. The U.S. stood alone in condemning not Israel, but the U.N. report, and proceeded to act to block its findings and recommendations from being adopted by the Security Council.

So this is just one illustration of why Israel can enjoy immunity. It’s because the U.S. unconditionally supports Israeli crimes, financially, militarily, and diplomatically. This is why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict persists. This is why the international consensus on a two-state solution is not implemented, because the U.S. and Israel stand against the entire rest of the world in rejecting and blocking it.