Israeli Power Manifest in the US Visa Waiver Program – Philip Giraldi 8/1/23

Source: Unz.com

When I began this article early in the morning last Tuesday it must have been “let’s talk about antisemitism and holocaust denial day” on the internet. On my Yahoo home page headlines display there were glaring back at me featured pieces condemning Greg Gutfeld of Fox News and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for comments made by the two men that were interpreted to be antisemitic. Kennedy, who made the mistake of suggesting that the COVID virus appeared to be made in a lab to be genetic specific, sparing inter alia Jews and Chinese ethnics who might be resistant to it, seems to be on a never ending apology tour as he has done everything but crawl on his belly as he asserts his great love for the Jewish state, and I would not doubt that the belly crawl might be coming up.

Poor Gutfeld was hammered twice, once for the “dangerous holocaust” comment that he reportedly made suggesting that some Jews survived the experience by developing useful skills in the camps, and once for the distinction of being personally rebuked by the White House. Andrew Bates, deputy White House press secretary issued a statement saying “What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday — and has so far failed to condemn — is an obscenity. In defending a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of Americans who suffered from the evil of enslavement, a Fox News host told another horrid, dangerous and extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of people who suffered from the evils of the Holocaust.”

As I settled in for my cup of coffee, I wondered what we might be hearing later in the day about Gutfeld from the hideous Jonathan Greenblatt of the reliably rabid Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who has already weighed in on Kennedy’s sins. And even as I was wondering, the ADL response popped up: “It is not clear from Gutfeld’s comments if he is arguing that Jews learned skills in the Holocaust, or that Jews who had skills had a better chance of staying alive. The latter is something that is well-documented, while the former is nonsense. That said, many millions of Jews, who, in Gutfeld’s words, had ‘utility,’ were still murdered.”

The piling on then began, with an unverifiable report that even Fox News staffers, speaking anonymously, described Gutfeld’s remarks as “disgusting,” saying “at any other place, his career would be over.” The Auschwitz Memorial and Museum also got into the fray with “We must not overlook the larger picture of the Holocaust. Nazi Germany’s ultimate goal was to exterminate all the people it considered Jews.”

And to ice the cake, an article that I had not seen about the Democrats who chose to boycott the recent Joint Session of Congress speech by Israeli President Isaac Herzog also appeared, stating that “Such behavior is virulently anti-Israel and absolutely reprehensible. Each of these folks is a shame to the United States of America. And to the Democratic Party.”

That all of the responses fit in comfortably with the Israeli and Zionist group standard holocaust narrative of perpetual Jewish suffering, together with the inflated victim count which does not stand serious scrutiny, should surprise no one and after I finished perusing the articles the first thought that came to mind was “Wow, if you needed any proof of the power of Jews in this country and their persistence in punishing critics, this is it!” But that was before I read an article that went well beyond the usual propaganda stream, one describing how Israel is apparently about to be approved for probationary access to the US Visa Waiver program, which will allow Israelis to travel freely to the United States. According to the article, Washington and Jerusalem have signed a “memorandum of understanding” as a first step to full waiver status which presumably will be granted after a trial period ending on September 30th.

There are currently 40 nations admitted to the program, mostly from Europe, enabling their passport holders to enter the US freely without a visa and allowing them to stay for up to 90 days. Israel and its friends in the US have been agitating for years to have Israel accepted into the program, which would likely lead to more free spending American tourists and more corporate investment in the Jewish state, but there has been a major hurdle that Israel has been unwilling to address seriously and that is the issue of “reciprocity.” That means in practice that if anyone carrying an Israeli passport is free to enter the United States anyone carrying an American passport must be free to travel to Israel and enter the country. And lest there be any misunderstanding, US law requires full reciprocity to US citizens seeking entry – without regard to race, religion, or national origin. This means that if an American Jew and a Palestinian-American both holding US passports arrive at an Israeli port of entry they must be treated exactly the same when processing through customs and immigration.

Israel, however, has historically not quite seen it quite that way and reserves the right to block entry by Americans, an option particularly exercised against Americans of Palestinian origin, and other Americans like myself who come up on their data bases as being critical of the Jewish state. Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has even been denied entry in a recent attempt to travel to visit her grandmother. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has been a critic of Israeli’s oppression of the Palestinians, has also been barred from entering the country….

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