DIANA JOHNSTONE: Genocide Meets French Devotion to Israel February 11, 2024

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By Diana Johnstone
crossposted with Consortium News
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CDG march against antisemitism in Paris, Nov. 12, 2023  (SS by SA 4.0)

Special to Consortium News

Israel’s loyal supporters in the West combat rising world indignation over the suffering of the Palestinian people by changing the subject. 

That is the line taken by most of the French media and political class.

Or there is recourse to Biblical story-telling, featuring vengeance, ethnic slaughter and prophecy of doom. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares a struggle between good and evil:

“We are the people of the light, they are the people of darkness and light shall triumph over darknessNow my role is to lead all Israelis to an overpowering victory… We shall realize the prophecy of Isaiah…”

In the United States of America, the crazed prophecies of the Israeli leader find support from an American variant of Judeo-Christianity, more Judeo than Christian, whose followers are taught to believe that gentle Jesus will zoom back to earth as a murderous Avenger while his faithful float up to heaven.

Skeptical France is very far from such fantasies. French support to Israel is longstanding and political, but tinged with semi-religious devotion rooted in recent history.

France is officially, even ostentatiously, a secular nation, considerably de-christianized over the past two hundred years. 

To a unique extent, over the past half century, this religious void has been filled by the sacred remembrance of the Shoah, as the Holocaust is usually called here.

It all began in 1954 when 27-year-old Jewish journalist named Eliezer Wiesel met the 70-year-old Catholic novelist François Mauriac in Paris.

Mauriac was deeply moved by Wiesel’s “resurrection” from his experience as a prisoner in Auschwitz, seeing him as a Christ figure. For Mauriac, the sacrifice of the Jews recalled the Crucifixion of Jesus.

With help from the prominent French writer, Wiesel transformed his copious Yiddish notes into a French memoir, La Nuit (Night), the testimony that transformed him into a major spiritual figure of the post-World War II era.

It was Mauriac, the devout Christian, who saw in Wiesel and his people the parallels with Christianity, which as the Shoah was destined to take on the attributes of a state religion in France as memories of the Nazi occupation were transformed into sacred myth.

An Alliance Against Arab Nationalism 

When the Nazis invaded France, there were approximately 320,000 Jewish people living in France, including a large number of foreign nationals who had fled from anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. 

Those unfortunate exiles made up the bulk of the 74,000 Jews who were brutally rounded up and deported under German occupation.  These deportations are the principal factual basis for what developed into a sense of national responsibility for the Shoah comparable to that of Germany itself.

However, of all Nazi-occupied countries, France is the country where the largest percentage of Jews escaped Nazi deportations.  An estimated 75 percent of Jews survived the occupation without being deported, including around 90 percent of Jews with French citizenship. [See Louis Malle's Lacombe Lucien, for example, mirroring this period.]

The reasons for this are controversial, but one result is that France has the largest Jewish population in Europe today — around half a million, the third largest Jewish population in the world, although far behind Israel or the United States (with around 7 million each). 

In recent years, many Jews have moved to Germany from Russia and from Israel itself (118,000 altogether), making France and Germany the home to more Jews than any other member state of the European Union. They are also the countries where institutionalized repentance for the Shoah is most developed. 

A difference is that a number of prominent Jews in Germany are sharply critical of Israel (which may get them in trouble with the law), whereas the French Jewish community is more solidly Zionist.  The politically influential Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), a sort of French AIPAC, fiercely defends Israeli interests.

A significant peculiarity of France is that Europe’s largest Jewish population is cohabitating with continental Europe’s largest population of Muslim origin, mostly Arab.  Although France officially avoids ethnic or racial counting, this population is estimated at around 15 million. 

While politically disorganized, this community is assumed — especially by Jewish community leaders — to be hostile to Israel. The potential for conflict between these two communities — one very small and very influential, the other very large and disparate — has for years haunted French political leaders.

Guy Mollet, by then former prime minister of France, with his wife, on right, and the Israeli politician Golda Meir, on left, during Israel’s Independence Day Parade in Tel Aviv, May 13, 1959. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)


When the Jewish State was just a dream, it was seen by some as a sort of socialist project, based on the kibbutz. Building on long-standing friendly relations between French Socialists and Zionism, France was the closest Western ally of the new State of Israel. 

In 1954, the government of Socialist Prime Minister Guy Mollet agreed to sell Israel whatever military equipment it wanted. France even helped Israel develop nuclear weapons.

At that time, Tel Aviv and Paris were allied against Arab nationalism, inasmuch as secular, left-leaning Arab States (Egypt, Syria, Iraq) sympathized with both the Palestinians and the rising national liberation movement in French Algeria. 



But this changed under Charles De Gaulle, who conceded Algerian independence in 1962, put an arms embargo on the region in 1967, and sought to build balanced relations with Arab States as part of an effort to develop friendly, post-colonial relations with the Global South.  

In June 1967, Israel’s lightning victory in the Six Days War was celebrated in the streets of Paris by joyous horn honking.  But President De Gaulle had opposed the Israeli expansion and called for a sustainable peace based on the evacuation of territories conquered by Israel and mutual recognition by the belligerent states.

In a remarkable press conference on Nov. 27, 1967, De Gaulle expressed ongoing support for the existence of Israel as a fait accompliwhile expressing strong misgivings about the future of Jewish rule over Palestinian territories. 

After recalling the shared admiration for the Jewish people and sympathy for their suffering, De Gaulle observed, in respect to the creation of a Jewish state, that: 

“Some even dreaded that the Jews, up to then dispersed, but who remained what they had always been, that is an elite people, self-confident and domineering, when once reunited on the site of their ancient greatness, might come to transform the highly moving wishes expressed for nineteen centuries into an ardent and conquering ambition.” 

De Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle in London delivering a BBC radio broadcast in 1941. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

De Gaulle recalled that he had promised that France would defend Israel from any Arab attack, but implored Israel not to use its advantage to attack its Arab neighbors. 

“We know that France’s voice was not heard. Israel having attacked, in six days of combat seized the objectives it wished to attain. Now, on the captured territories, it is organizing an occupation which cannot go on without oppression, repression, expulsions, and a resistance to all that which it will call terrorism.”

In response to these statements, prominent Jewish intellectuals and community leaders ceased to revere De Gaulle as the leader of the Resistance.  Around this time, the Resistance itself as a national patriotic myth was rapidly discredited as the public imagination of Nazi Occupation came to center on the Holocaust.

Cinema played a role. In 1967, the documentary film by Marcel Ophuls, “The Sorrow and the Pity”, convinced audiences that collaboration rather than Resistance had overwhelmingly dominated occupied France.  The film had a strong impact on public opinion, not least on young leftists who the following year carried out a libertarian revolt targeting the two political heirs to the Resistance: the French Communist Party and President Charles De Gaulle.  

In the revisionist mood of the time, national pride stemming from the Resistance gave way to national shame over the deportation of Jews.  This guilt became a sort of public ritual for audiences who watched Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour long documentary “Shoah,” released in 1985.  In 1990, France adopted a measure called the Gayssot law which can lead to heavy fines and even imprisonment for any questioning of the official version of the Holocaust.  

As I wrote in my book Circle in the Darkness, heresy defines religion. A French citizen can deny the existence of Napoleon, or any other historic event, but any questioning of the official version of the Shoah is blasphemy. Thus by sacralizing a unique historic event, the Gayssot law in effect established the Shoah as a state religion. 

The Shoah is celebrated officially and unofficially, not only in the annual Shoah commemoration but almost constantly in school rooms, trips to Auschwitz, radio and television programs, books and films.  It has de facto replaced Christianity, which had succumbed to laïcité (secularism) over a century ago, as the State religion.  It has its martyrs and saints, its holy scripture, its rituals, its pilgrimages, and everything that Christianity had except redemption.

Expanding Role of Political Islam

Meanwhile, France’s post-war industrial buildup drew thousands of workers from Algeria.  

It wasn’t until new laws in the 1970s allowed “family reunion” that regrouping of foreign workers with wives and children began to create large immigrant neighborhoods, especially in the suburbs of Paris and other large cities, with their own ethnically distinct religious practices, food and dress, especially veiled women, clashing visibly with French customs. 

The growth of these communities had a strong impact on the political environment.  The National Front, a coalition of far-right groups led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, called for stopping immigration, and the new left issued from the May ’68 movement became their champions. 

In the early 1980s, to accommodate European unification, Socialist President François Mitterrand abandoned the program of nationalizations and social measures for which he had been elected in coalition with the French Communist Party (PCF). 

The PCF left the coalition and subsequently lost its influential role both in assimilating foreign workers and in opposing unlimited immigration. The Socialists thereupon adopted human rights and antiracism as their defining issues, condemning opposition to immigration as racist. Accused of anti-Semitism, the National Front was condemned as a pariah with no fit place in the Republic.  This condemnation was ensured by Le Pen’s conviction under the Gayssot law for having stated, in an interview, that gas chambers were “a detail of World War II.” 

While the left has increasingly adopted an “open border” acceptance of immigration, it has increasingly advocated measures to ban Muslim customs seen to violate the official French doctrine of laïcité. 

French laïcité was institutionalized by the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State, which finally deprived the Catholic Church of its traditional role in education. In response to an apparent growth of religious practice among younger Muslims, laïcité was revitalized by banning religious identity signaling in public schools, notably by prohibiting school girls from wearing Muslim headscarves to cover their hair. This focus on female dress later produced a ban on wearing the burka in public. While intended to promote cultural assimilation, such measures can also feed Muslim resentment at being a discriminated minority.

Western Schizophrenia Toward Islam

Palestinian protestors confront Israeli troops in Gaza City in 1987, during the First Intifada. (Efi Sharir / Israel Press and Photo Agency, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)


In 1979, Western attitudes toward Islam entered their drastically schizophrenic period, decrying the Islamic Revolution in Iran as a political and human rights disaster, while giving full support to Islamic Mujahidin in neighboring Afghanistan.  

French political exhibitionist Bernard Henri Lévy was a most zealous supporter of Afghan Muslims opposing the Russian incursion which failed to save modernizing progressive forces in Kabul.

It was President Jimmy Carter’s chief strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski who saw the potential of militant Islam to defeat Soviet influence in Central Asia.  In the 1990s, the United States secretly backed illegal arming of Mujahideen to fight on the Islamic side in Bosnia, against Serbia, considered in Washington a miniature Russia.  For leaders of the "enlightened West", the most medieval expressions of Islam were considered a useful tool against the rival enlightenment in the East, based on Marxism.

Israel’s initial enemies were linked to secular Arab nationalism: the Popular Liberation Forces (PLF), Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).  In Gaza, the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, banned in Egypt and hostile to secular groups, looked harmless, especially since its leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, was a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair and half blind.

Yassin built an Islamic center, called the Mujamma, which gained popularity through a variety of social and charitable activities.  The Israeli overlords favored this development as it rivaled the secular resistance groups. Israel officially recognized the Mujamma in 1979 and the number of mosques in Gaza doubled under Israeli administration. 

“For leaders of the enlightened West, the most medieval expressions of Islam were considered a useful tool against the rival enlightenment in the East, based on Marxism.”

It was only during the Palestinian uprising of December 1987, known as the First Intifada, that Sheikh Yassin created Hamas, dedicated to Islamist resistance. Close to the people through its cultural and sports activities, the Islamic organization had a popular base that eventually led to electoral success in Gaza against the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 2006.

The complicated U.S. instrumentalization of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Islamist revolution in Iran, U.S. support to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq against Iran before waging war against Saddam Hussein, led in mysterious ways to the dramatic Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, whose one clear political effect was to cement the U.S.-NATO-Israeli alliance against “Islamic terrorism.”

This term has involved confounding different, often mutually hostile, groups with each other as well as falsely associating peaceful Muslims with armed groups. Israeli leaders had always denounced Palestine resisters as terrorists, including those who were Christian. But Islamist terrorism was a threat that made it easier to identify Israel as the front line in defense of Western Judeo-Christian civilization.


Oct. 8, 2023: Ruins left by Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis in the southern of Gaza strip. (Mahmoud Fareed, Wafa for APAimages)


From then on, the United States and its NATO followers have ravaged the Middle East, using Islamist extremism as an official enemy or factual ally, to destroy the three most secular and pro-Palestinian States in the region, Iraq, Libya and Syria — executing Saddam Hussein, murdering Moammar Gaddafi and persisting in illegal occupation and sanctions against Syria aimed at overthrowing Bashir al Assad.

Terrorist Attacks in France

Following the Gaullist tradition, President Jacques Chirac kept France out of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. But subsequent governments aligned with the United States, and Bernard-Henri Lévy ostentatiously goaded France into assaulting Libya.  France has paid a heavy price in blowback for its ambiguous encounters with Islam. In the last 12 years, the country has experienced an extraordinary number of authentic, Islamist, terrorist attacks against civilians by fanatics shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

[Related: How the West’s War in Libya Spurred Terrorism in 14 Countries]

–In March 2012, a man named Mohammed Merah shot dead seven people, including a French rabbi and three young Jewish children in southern France.  His stated motives included Palestine and the French ban on the burka.  

–On Jan. 7, 2015, two coordinated attacks occurred, causing a major shock to the public. Gunmen entered the offices of the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo and murdered eight well-known cartoonists and two guards, in revenge for having published insulting cartoons of the Prophet. Meanwhile, an accomplice killed several people in the course of taking hostages in a kosher grocery.

–The deadliest attack took place on the evening of Nov. 13 the same year, killing 131 people and wounding 413 more when Islamist fanatics from Belgium blew themselves up outside a major sports event, sprayed gunfire and grenades into the theater during a rock concert, and across café terraces in Paris. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) called the attacks retaliation for French bombing of Syria.


Civil service on Nov. 15, 2015, at the Place de la République in remembrance of the victims of the attacks that took place two days earlier.  (Mstyslav Chernov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)


–On Bastille Day 2016, a Tunisian drove a 19-ton cargo truck into a holiday crowd on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, killing 86 people and injuring 434 before being shot dead by police.

–Twelve days later, an 86-year-old priest was stabbed to death while saying mass in a church in Normandy.  ISIS claimed responsibility.


Shrine for Samuel Paty, killed by muslim youths

Homage to Samuel Paty

–On Oct. 6, 2020, in the course of a class on freedom of expression, middle-school teacher Samuel Paty showed his class Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet, after permitting Muslim students to leave if they chose.  Ten days later, in retribution, the teacher was stabbed and beheaded in the street by 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, an Islamic Chechen refugee accorded political asylum from Russia.  This caused an enormous shock in France, not least among the teaching profession.

–On Oct. 13, 2023, a 20-year-old Chechen political refugee shouting Allahu Akbar attacked a school in the northern French city of Arras, stabbing to death French literature teacher Dominique Bernard.

In this context, people in France are particularly sensitive to the term “Islamic terrorism,” [as if the entire religion of Islam was responsible, rather than calling it Islamist terrorism, which refers to political Islam.] 

When, on Oct. 7, fighters from Gaza succeeded in crossing into Israel, French media and politicians instantly condemned the attack as “Islamic terrorism,” implicitly relating it to the long chain of Islamist attacks in France. 

Contrary to those attacks, the well-organized Hamas fighters carried out a successful military operation, breaching the Israeli wall that imprisons Gaza and overrunning Israeli military bases.  This operation had clear objectives, in particular, the taking of hostages to exchange for some of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.  The hostage-taking was a clear invitation to negotiations, but the Israeli regime loathes any negotiations that could “legitimize” a Palestinian movement.

“When, on Oct. 7, fighters from Gaza succeeded in crossing into Israel, French media and politicians instantly condemned the attack as ‘Islamic terrorism,’ implicitly relating it to the long chain of Islamist attacks in France.” 

The government initially banned demonstrations protesting against Israel’s massive attacks on the people of Gaza. Peaceful demonstrators were brutalized and fined by police.  However, bans have been dropped and pro-Palestinian demonstrations have continued. Opposition to Israel’s genocidal retaliation against the people of Gaza is surely strong throughout the French population, especially among the youth, but it has very little political voice and so far, no pollsters are measuring it.

French media echoed wildly exaggerated Israeli reports of Hamas atrocities and the “rise of anti-Semitism.”  

Newspapers featured growing Jewish fears of being attacked here in France. The Israeli government has deliberately exploited fear of anti-Semitism to encourage French Jews to move to Israel, but the success of the Hamas incursions risks shaking confidence in Israel as Jews’ one safe refuge — cramming half the world’s Jewish population into a small space surrounded by enemies.  

Jean Luc Melenchon

Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2019. (The Left, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)


In the days following Oct. 7, mainstream media interviewers tested every politician with the demand to condemn Hamas as an “Islamist terrorist organization.”  Almost all enthusiastically complied, emphasizing their support for “Israel’s right to exist” (whatever that might entail). 

From Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel to Eric Zemmour, founder of a nationalist party to the right of Marine Le Pen’s, French politicians were unanimous in condemning Hamas’ “brutal terrorist attack” – with one exception. The notable exception was the country’s leading leftwing politician, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Mélenchon refused to denounce Hamas as a “terrorist organization.”  Hamas killings of civilians were “war crimes,” like any killing of civilians, he said.  The attacks, he tweeted, “prove only one thing: violence only produces and reproduces itself.  Horrified, our thoughts and our compassion go to all the distressed populations, victims of it all. A ceasefire should be imposed.” 

Many parliamentary members of Mélenchon’s party “La France Insoumise” (LFI, France Unbowed) followed suit, contrary to other sections of the fragmented left.  Danièle Obono, an African-born LFI Paris MP was rudely goaded by a hostile TV interviewer into saying that Hamas “is a resistance movement, that’s what it calls itself…its objective is the liberation of Palestine… it resists occupation.”  Within a couple of hours, Interior Minister Gérard Darmanin announced that he was having her charged with “apology for terrorism.”

Danièle Obono in March 2022. (DIE LINKE, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)

Danièle Obono in March 2022. (DIE LINKE, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)


A verbal lynch mob rose up against Mélenchon, a chorus vigorously joined not only by his enemies on the right but also by rivals in smaller parties belonging to the disintegrating leftist electoral coalition NUPES (Nouvelle Union Populaire, Ecologique et Social) which he founded. Mélenchon and the LFI are denounced as “Islamo-leftists,” flattering terrorists to win over the Muslim vote.

Yonathan Arfi, the president of CRIF, angrily denounced Mélenchon as “an enemy of the Republic.”  Mélenchon, he raged, “chose not to express solidarity with Israel but to legitimize terrorism by an equivalence between Israel and Hamas.”  

Meanwhile, Serge Klarsfeld, famous as a lifelong Nazi hunter and president of the association Sons and Daughters of Deported Jews of France, rejoiced that Marine Le Pen had completely changed the ideology of her party, the Rassemblement National, from that of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. 

Marine Le Pen led her party in a Nov. 12, 2023, Paris demonstration against anti-Semitism while emphasizing her support for Israel. As a result, she has “become respectable”, he concluded. Such approval will make it hard to demonize her in future elections as in the past. 

Referring to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Klarsfeld expressed regret that “the far left has abandoned its line of action against anti-Semitism,” while noting that “the extreme left has always had an antisemite tradition.”

And thus a long-brewing political reversal is being completed, not only in France but across Europe and even America.  Israel, whose early supporters were on the left, from the Soviet Union to the French Socialists, is most vigorously championed by the right, whereas more and more people (but rarely politicians) on the left are joining the non-Western world’s shock and horror at the genocidal actions of Israel against the Palestinian people.

The War of Civilizations

The most extreme champions of Israel, including numerous commentators and Eric Zemmour, a journalist who founded a nationalist, anti-Muslim party called Reconquest to the right of Marine Le Pen, merge the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a worldwide war of civilizations. For them, Hamas is just part of an international Islamic war on Western civilization.  In this view of things, Israel is the vanguard of Western civilization whose main enemy is anti-Semitism.

Amid this turmoil, President Emmanuel Macron follows the European trends, but with notes of ambiguity confirming his position as a perfect centrist.  He hesitated before suspending funding to UNRWA, then did so claiming he intended to obtain a cease-fire. Such uncertainty can only displease both sides of the embittered national division over Gaza.  

He stayed away from the politically overcharged Nov. 12 demonstrations against anti-Semitism, but compensated by leading a Feb. 7 commemoration in Paris of the 42 French and Franco-Israeli victims of the Oct. 7 attacks. The French government chartered a plane to fly in relatives of the victims from Israel. Participants booed and shouted “fascist!” and “terrorists!” at parliamentarians from Mélenchon’s party who showed up to pay their respects.

In a cold rain, Macron read out the first names of the 42 victims whose lives, he said, were “shattered by terrorist fury.”

“On October 7, at dawn,” he said, “the unspeakable resurfaced from the depths of history,” producing “the greatest anti-Semitic massacre of our century.”   So in France, it seems, that what Oct. 7 was really about was not Gaza, nor Israel, and certainly not about the Palestinians, but fundamentally about a resurgence of the impunity wrought by the ever-present Shoah.


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Diana Johnstone was press secretary of the Green Group in the European Parliament from 1989 to 1996. In her latest book, Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher(Clarity Press, 2020), she recounts key episodes in the transformation of the German Green Party from a peace to a war party. Her other books include Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Pluto/Monthly Review) and in co-authorship with her father, Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (Clarity Press). She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr.


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Veteran correspondent Diana Johnstone provides an indispensable map to French politics

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

About the author
Diana Johnstone was press secretary of the Green Group in the European Parliament from 1989 to 1996. In her latest book, Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press, 2020), she recounts key episodes in the transformation of the German Green Party from a peace to a war party. Her other books include Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Pluto/Monthly Review) and in co-authorship with her father, Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (Clarity Press). She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr 


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DIANA JOHNSTONE: Omerta in the Gangster War

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


By DIANA JOHNSTONE



The sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has virtually announced that the war in Ukraine can only intensify with no end in sight.


Crew from the LVNS Talivaldis performing mine countermeasures training in the Baltic Sea during during the annual BALTOPS maritime exercise in June 2020. (NATO)


By Diana Johnstone
in Paris 
Special to Consortium News

Imperialist wars are waged to conquer lands, peoples, territories.  Gangster wars are waged to remove competitors.  In gangster wars you issue an obscure warning, then you smash the windows or burn the place down.

Gangster war is what you wage when you already are the boss and won’t let any outsider muscle in on your territory.  For the dons in Washington, the territory can be just about everywhere, but its core is occupied Europe.

By an uncanny coincidence, Joe Biden just happens to look like a mafia boss, to talk like a mafia boss, to wear a little lopsided half smile like a mafia boss.  Just watch the now famous video:

Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?”

Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

Able for sure.

It cost billions of dollars to lay the Nord Stream 2 pipeline across the Baltic Sea, from near Saint Petersburg to the port of Greifsfeld in Germany. The idea was to ensure safe natural gas supplies to Germany and other European partners by going around troublesome Ukraine, known for readiness to use its transit rights to siphon off gas for itself or blackmail clients.

Nord Stream 2 area map. (Berria Egunkaria, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)


Of course, Ukraine was always vehemently hostile to the project.  So was the United States. And so were Poland, the three Baltic States, Finland and Sweden, all attentive to what went on in their sea.

The Baltic Sea is a nearly closed body of water, with narrow access to the Atlantic through Danish and Swedish straits. The waters near the Danish island of Bornholm where the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged by massive underwater explosions is under constant military surveillance by these neighbors.

“It seems completely impossible that a state actor could carry out a major naval operation in the middle of this densely monitored area without being noticed by the countless active and passive sensors of the littoral states; certainly not directly off the island of Bornholm, where Danes, Swedes and Germans have a rendezvous in monitoring the surface and undersea activities,” writes Jens Berger in the excellent German website Nachdenkseiten.

Last June, Berger reports,

“the annual NATO maneuver Baltops took place in the Baltic Sea. Under the command of the U.S. 6th Fleet, 47 warships participated in the exercise this year, including the U.S. fleet force around the helicopter carrier USS Kearsarge. Of particular significance is one particular maneuver conducted by the 6th Fleet’s Task Force 68 — a special unit for explosive ordnance disposal and underwater operations of the U.S. Marines, the very unit that would be the first address for an act of sabotage on an undersea pipeline.”

In June this year this very unit was engaged in a maneuver off the island of Bornholm, operating with unmanned underwater vehicles.

Crew member from the LVNS Talivaldis in the operations room, controlling and tracking the movement of the underwater robot during the BALTOPS maritime exercise in June 2020. (NATO)


Berger considers that a major sabotage operation “could not have been carried out directly under the noses of several littoral states without anyone noticing.”  But he adds this clever observation: “if you want to hide something, it is best to do so in public.”

In order to be able to attach explosive devices to a gas pipeline halfway unnoticed, one would need a plausible distraction — a reason for diving near Bornholm without immediately being suspected of committing an act of sabotage. It doesn’t even have to be directly related in time to the attacks. Modern explosive devices can, of course, be detonated remotely. So, who has been conducting such operations in the maritime area in recent weeks? As luck would have it, exactly the same task force around the USS Kearsarge was again in the sea area around Bornholm last week.

In short, during NATO maneuvers, some participant could have laid the explosives, to be blown up at a later chosen moment.

By an odd coincidence, only a few hours after the sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2, ceremonies began opening the new Baltic Pipe carrying gas from Norway to Denmark and Poland.

The Political Significance of the Sabotage

 

A Royal Marine commando briefs Royal Marines, U.S. Marines, Royal Navy personnel and Singaporean observers in the vehicle deck of HMS Ocean (U.K.) during BALTOPS 2016. (NATO)

Due to Western sanctions against Russia, gas was not being delivered through the destroyed pipelines. However, gas inside the pipelines is leaking dangerously. The pipelines remained ready for use whenever an agreement could be reached.  And the first, dramatic significance of the sabotage is that henceforth, no agreement can be reached.  Nord Stream 2 would have been the key to some sort of settlement between Russia and the Europeans.  The sabotage has virtually announced that the war can only intensify with no end in sight.

In Germany, the Czech Republic and some other countries, movements were beginning to grow calling for an end to the sanctions, specifically to solve the energy crisis by putting Nord Stream 2 into operation for the first time.  The sabotage has thus invalidated the leading demand of potential peace movements in Germany and Europe.

This act of sabotage is above all a deliberate sabotage of any prospect of a negotiated peace in Europe.  The next move from the West has been for NATO governments to call on all their citizens to leave Russia immediately.  In preparation of what?

The Russians Did It

In this catastrophic situation, Western mainstream media are all wondering who could be the guilty party, and suspicion automatically fixes on… Russia.  Motive? “To raise the price of gas” or “to destabilize Europe” — things that were happening anyway.  Any far-fetched notion will do.

European opinion-makers are showing the result of 70 years of Americanization.  Especially in Germany, but also in France and elsewhere, for decades the United States has systematically spotted up-and-coming young people, invited them to become “young leaders,” invited them to the United States, indoctrinated them in “our values” and made them feel like members of the great trans-Atlantic family.  They are networked into top positions in politics and media. In recent years, great alarm is raised about alleged Russian efforts to exert “influence” in European countries, while Europeans bathe in perpetual American influence: movies, Netflix, pop culture, influence in universities, media, everywhere.

When disaster strikes Europe, it can’t be blamed on America (except for former President Donald Trump, because the American establishment despised and rejected him, so Europeans must do the same).  It has to be the bad guy in the movie, Putin.

The fanatically anti-Russian former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorsky couldn’t restrain himself and joyously greeted the massive natural-gas leaks from the destroyed pipeline with a cheerful tweet, “Thank you, USA.” But Poland was certainly also willing, and perhaps even able.  So perhaps were some others in NATO-land.  But they all prefer to publicly “suspect” Russia.

Officially, so far, no NATO government knows who dunnit.  Or maybe they all know. Maybe this is like the famous Agatha Christie mystery on the Orient Express train, where suspicion falls on all the passengers, and are all guilty.  And all united in Omerta.


Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her latest book is  Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press). The memoirs of Diana Johnstone’s father Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, was published by Clarity Press, with her commentary. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr .


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A review of Diana Johnstone’s book “Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher” 

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Urval av de böcker som har vunnit Nordiska rådets litteraturpris under de 50 år som priset funnits

By Rick Sterling
 
Published by Clarity Press, Atlanta GA, 2020 

Diana Johnstone has written a compelling and insightful book. It is mostly a review and analysis of significant events from the past 55 years. It concludes with her assessment of  different trends that are being debated on the Left today including "identity politics", Antifa and censorship.  This is a book to be read, enjoyed and discussed.  

"Circle in the Darkness" gives glimpses into Johnstone's personal life. She was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and grew up there and in Washington DC. She studied and taught at the University of Minnesota before moving and living most of her life in Europe - mostly in France with stints in Germany and Italy.

Her parents divorced when she was young. She had a special love and connection with her father who, ironically, was an analyst for the Pentagon.  Evidently he also had an open and critical mind, writing the memoir "From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning". 

Diana had a daughter at a relatively young age and largely raised her on her own. She finished her PhD in French literature, then worked as a teacher, translator,  photographer and journalist.  

There are interesting observations and comparisons. As Diana and her daughter moved between Minnesota and France, she compared the different educational systems. She notes, "There is a tendency in American grade schools for the kids to gang up against whichever unfortunate schoolmate has been selected by class bullies for tormenting ..... from my observation it is not like this in France."  She also describes the difficulties being a single mother before it was more common. 

The book is full of insights based on her first hand experience living in Yugoslavia as a young exchange student, being a photographer for Associated Press, translating news reports for Agence France Presse,  reporting on the end of the Cold War for "In These Times" and being press officer for the coalition of Green Parties in the newly formed European Union.  

Grass Roots Activism 

One theme running through the book is the need to reach out and engage with regular people. She recounts her experiences opposing the US war on Vietnam.  Johnstone and her allies launched a campaign to educate and engage with regular Minnesotans, to explain what was happening in Vietnam and why the war should be opposed. She helped organize teams of students and teachers who went door to door in Minneapolis. Later, they sent a citizens delegation to Paris to meet with and hear from the Vietnamese representatives. Afterward, they reported back to communities throughout the state and country. Johnstone says these actions did not get the media attention but deepened opposition to the war in profound ways.  The students and teachers going into the neighborhoods had to educate themselves in advance; they learned from the questions (and sometimes opposition) of community members; the delegation which met the Vietnamese representatives in Paris were deeply impressed and conveyed their experience on their return.  

Johnstone is an unusually perceptive analyst. For example, her analysis of the Watergate scandal and Nixon resignation raises important but overlooked issues. Rather than seeing this as the hallmark of investigative journalism, she notes that it established the model of journalism relying on unidentified government sources. Looking back, the Watergate scandal effectively deflected attention from the ongoing slaughter in Southeast Asia. "Getting rid of Nixon was a brilliant coup that united generations, torn asunder by opposing attitudes toward the war .....Watergate washed away the national sins. It prepared America to be 'born again' first as the innocent Gerald Ford and then as the good Christian Jimmy Carter, champion of human rights."  Moreover "The shenanigans around Watergate were a distraction from the most significant acts of the Nixon administration, in particular the shakeup of the world economy by the August 1971 decision to suspend (meaning to end) the convertibility of the dollar into gold. This was a direct result of the huge U.S. debt resulting from the cost of the Vietnam War." 

The author has a stark assessment of what happened to the Left. "As for the American antiwar movement, half a century later, it has vanished almost without a trace as an influential political force. There are perhaps more intelligent critics of war than ever before, but they are largely confined to the virtual world of the web, without significant impact on a political system which is totally integrated into a military industrial complex that relies on endless conflicts."  

Critical International Events

Through her work at Associated Press and Agence France Presse, Johnstone saw how stories are selected and prioritized depending on establishment bias. She also saw how the media can promote certain types of protest leaders. There are critical assessments of some protest leaders who became famous including Daniel Cohn Bendit. She gives a scathing critique of celebrity French philosopher Bernard Henri Levy. 

Johnson has valuable insights on many events over the 1970's and 80's.  A few examples are

* the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme, who was likely behind it  and how it has led to Swedish subservience to the US 

* the causes and consequences of the assassination of Aldo Moro by ultra-leftists in Italy

* the murder of Palestinian moderate Dr. Issa Sartawi at a Socialist Party conference 

* the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II by a Turkish militant and the propaganda campaign trying to link him to Bulgaria and Soviet Union 

* the growing influence of Israel in western foreign policy 

In the 1980's and early 1990's,  Johnstone watched closely, interviewed key players and reported on the rise of detente between the USA and Soviet Union She concludes, "Not enough credit is given to Mikhail Gorbachev and to the 1980s peace movement". 

The book is subtitled "Memoirs of a World Watcher". Johnstone describes how radical islamists were used to undermine the socialist Afghanistan government beginning 1979.  When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US had no restraints. She summarizes "Mikhail Gorbachev was a naive negotiator, outfoxed by the Americans"  and "The total surrender of 'real existing' communism in the East contributed to the defeat of the Western Left". 

In 1991 the US seemingly invited Saddam Hussein to go into Kuwait, then built up a huge force to expel and then massacre thousands of retreating Iraqi soldiers. With operation "Desert Storm" viewed as a military success,  President Bush declared  "The Vietnam syndrome is over!" 

Yugoslavia and "Humanitarian Imperialism" 

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, neoliberal economic policies quickly dominated the globe. The European Union was formed in 1992.  Johnstone describes how the EU imposed rules and requirements that favored private banks and institutions and restricted or prevented state intervention and solutions.  Yugoslavia, as the sole remaining socialist holdout, was under increasing pressure and media attack. 

Johnstone describes how "humanitarian imperialism" emerged at this time.  With the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needed a new mandate and reason for existing.  They found this new purpose in media distortion and demonization of Serbia and Yugoslavia. NATO promoted the "Kosovo Liberation Army" and other divisive elements then bombed Serbia for 78 consecutive days. Yugoslavia was broken into pieces. 

In 2002 Johnstone wrote a book about the NATO attack, western propaganda and show trial. Her book is titled "Fool's Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions". She was attacked in the media for challenging the dominant assumptions about the conflict. She responded to the attacks saying," I do not deny atrocities, but unlike others I give them a political context."  Others strongly defended her. Canadian law professor Michael Mandel wrote, "Fools Crusade is not only the definitive work on the Balkans Wars, it is also an inspiring example of how to rescue truth from the battlefield when it has become war's first casualty". 

Western media distortion and intervention in Yugoslavia went almost unopposed. The antiwar movement was widely confused and silent.  This was followed by the US invasions of Afghanistan then Iraq. 

Along with media distortions and comparisons to Hitler and the Holocaust,  there emerged the justification for violating national sovereignty based on the "Right to Protect" (R2P). This was the pretext for overthrowing the Libyan government of Moammar Gadhafi.  Johnstone discusses how R2P has been used to confuse and silence antiwar forces, even some prominent traditional antiwar analysts. Johnstone has interacted with Noam Chomsky many times over decades and is overall very positive. But she notes that "even he might get something wrong".  She documents how the co-author of  "Manufacturing Consent" was evidently fooled into believing media reports from Benghazi Libya. Chomsky said the western sponsored uprising was "wonderful". It is now clear that media reports and NGO accusations from  Benghazi were false.  They were the pretense to launch the NATO campaign to overthrow the government. 

Western intervention, including the sponsorship of terrorist armies in Syria, has been sold to the unwitting public using this model.  Wherever the US and NATO wish to intervene, there is a "humanitarian crisis" and "responsibility to protect". 

Critical Current Issues

"Circle in the Darkness" analyzes many current issues of contention and debate on the left.  She argues that suppression of debate and free speech, whether by the Right or Left, is counter-productive. She also argues that violence and vandalism hurts the progressive cause even when it gives a spurt of publicity and media attention.  She describes many examples over the past 50 years and how frequently the instigators were government or police agents. 

Johnstone describes the spectacular growth of the "Yellow Vest" movement in France. She documents how it began, how it was supported and joined by common people and how it reached across party lines.  She contrasts the broad support of the Yellow Vest movement with narrow support of the student protests of May 1968.  She writes,  "Sociologically, this revolt was the opposite of May '68. Instead of privileged students, imagining a non-existent working class revolution in a time of prosperity, this was the working class itself , in hard times." 

Johnstone describes how French police then attacked the Yellow Vest protesters with many injuries and even deaths. She writes, "Curiously, all this heavy handed repression totally failed to prevent masked 'Black Bloc' members from taking advantage of this opportunity to attack the police, set fires, break shop windows ..... Police did nothing to prevent unidentified intruders from invading the ground floor of the Arc de Triomphe to smash up a statue of Marianne.... It is noteworthy that almost all the seriously injured were peaceful Yellow Vest protesters, whereas the Black Blocs often got away unscathed. Perhaps the Black Blocs believe they are fighting the system. Whatever their intentions, they have served as a useful auxiliary to government repression." 

Johnstone notes the massive media effort to control popular thoughts and anger. "The mainstream media have moved farther and farther away from informing the public and nearer to instructing them in what they should think and do." She thinks the Left is also infused with dogma.  Diana Johnstone recounts the falling out with Counterpunch magazine after they published a "barrage of attacks" on the analyst and writer Caitlin Johnstone (no relation).  "That was indeed the start of Caitlin's rise to great prominence in anti-war circles and beginning of CounterPunch's decline from 'fearless muckraking' to snide sniping at the genuine heirs to the independent spirit of the founder, Alexander Cockburn. The gist of the CounterPunch attacks on the Australian Johnstone were that she dared say she would join even with someone on the right against war. That is simple good sense, but it was picked up by the Antifa purification squad as proof of tendencies toward fascism. When I saw them coming after Caitlin, I figured they'd be coming after me, and that my association with CounterPunch was soon coming to an end." 

Johnstone argues in favor of working for peace with all forces which agree on that issue, whether or not they agree on all issues of "identity politics".  She argues that we should not be distracted from the root causes of war and social inequality.  When the Left focuses on the fringe right, the establishment is not only happy, they encourage and promote this diversion. 

"The specialty of the AntiFa is to situate the threat of tyranny on the powerless margins of society - from isolated groups of costume party neo-Nazis to outspoken persons on the left accused of 'red-brown' tendencies. This amounts to keeping the Left herded into its sheep pen, while the wolves roam freely." 

Johnstone is  hopeful and encouraged by two things: a new generation of truth seekers and the fact that life is full of surprises.   

This book is full of insights and analysis about where the world is at and how we got here. It includes important ideas and thoughts about what we can do to resist the drift toward global war and catastrophe. Above all, Diana Johnstone argues for the importance of discussion, debate and keeping it real. 

__________________

Rick Sterling is an independent journalist based in the SF Bay  Area. He can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com

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Circle in the Darkness – Memoir of a World Watcher: Latest Diana Johnstone book reviewed

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Jim Miles


Circle in the Darkness - Memoir of a World Watcher.  
Diana Johnstone.  Clarity Press, Atlanta Georgia. 2020.


[dropcap]D[/dropcap]iana Johnstone has done a masterful job of writing her autobiography, Circle in the Darkness, that provides many details of her life, her early influences, and the various stages of her career throughout the second half of the Twentieth Century and the first part of Twenty-first.  It is a wild ride through various aspects of society, concentrating on the historical events of her era.  

Much of what she writes is not news to those who do follow alternative news sites, but what is added is a strong personal perspective based on - not surprisingly - facts and truth, both from her own experiences in regions of concern and a wide arrange of conversations with both people of significant influence and those with no influence but feeling the impact of developments in their country.  The details Johnstone adds are a strong and valuable retort to mainstream media disinformation that has “moved farther and farther away from informing the public and nearer and nearer to instructing them in what they should think.”

Themes

One of three themes that impressed me and are developed throughout the book, the media, takes a large hit.  While discussing NATO crimes of the Balkan, she writes,  “The journalist was no longer asked to dig for new information and provide fresh analysis, but to contribute to the “common narrative”” as originated by NATO and the media.  When discussing mass media and the Military Industrial Complex she writes, “those private interests coincide quite closely with those of the U.S. government, since the same economic powers are behind both.”  Relying on “open sources and thoughtful analysis of known facts” rather than “spook revelations” her work is significantly more accurate than the mainstream.  

NATO and European unity covers another large thematic area.  She discusses how NATO and the European Union actively promote the neoliberal order as conditioned by the U.S. and other global hegemonic financial powers against the best interests of their own people and against the best interests of many sovereign states in the world.  

When discussing the idea of Joint Criminal Enterprise as argued by the U.S. in relation to Serbia (essentially all Serbs are guilty of war crimes) she reverses the argument with clear examples, and summarizes, “U.S. strategy basically boils down to the implicit or explicit threat to wipe out the whole nation it is attacking….This war is not the result of a clever plan by some ragtag Balkan clan leaders.  This war was deliberately planned and carried out by the real Joint Criminal Enterprise: NATO.”  

The third theme was her development of ideas concerning the development of the “left”.  It has changed from operating with the best interests of the people in mind - anti-war, support for workers and societal infrastructures - to becoming a supporter of war and more interested in the distractions of identity politics, “The Left has evolved from a program to  an attitude.”   Certainly there is merit in people’s identity but it comes at the cost of no longer working against class structures that keep workers down, and keep the rich getting richer.  Johnstone follows the developments in France to its present day neoliberal U.S. supporting government of Macron; and follows the developments in Sweden as it turned away from the left of Olaf Palme towards a strong non-NATO supporter of all NATO adventures.

A host of other ideas

Many other ideas are presented in Circle in the Darkness.  

Israel is discussed directly only briefly but Zionism’s influence is related throughout.  While discussing false flags, the USS Liberty attack is mentioned threading into the theme of the media as ”the mainstream media have persisted in ignoring what happened, even as evidence mounted that General Moshe Dayan personally ordered the attack.”

The relationship between the dropping of the gold standard and the introduction of the petrodollar is touched upon, a topic that is rare if ever in mainstream journalism.   Again just touching on it she discusses the “debt trap” on a personal level when two local Minnesota farmers commit suicide after being enticed to overextend themselves into debt.  

In general however, this is Diana Johnstones’ story of the many people she meets and interviews, or argues with, debates with, or simply discusses the many issues of her career spent mostly within European journalism.  That overlapped with her employment by the German Green party and how she watched it change from an anti-war truly green party, to a pro-war neoliberal supporter of capitalism.  

She continues to write as an independent journalist today, with her work published globally in several alternate new sites.   While I am familiar with the same history background as Ms Johnstone, I do not have the expertise of overseas experience, the philosophical background,  and the wide range of contacts she has had available throughout her career.   Circle in the Darkness covers an amazing and productive lifetime and provides valuable insights and factual details in support of her views and reporting.

It is entertaining - not in the distractive sense but for the quality of the writing and her combination of anecdotal stories combined with researched ideas. Thus it is a very strong informative work on our modern history, an important read to more clearly understand the machinations of the modern political-military scene.   


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About the author(s)
 Jim Miles is a Canadian educator living in British Columbia. He writes regularly about the Middle East and its militarization and economic subjugation. His concerns include the commodification of the world by corporate governance and the American government. He writes book reviews and opinion pieces which are published here, as well as in The Palestine Chronicle and Foreign Policy Journal. His work is widely distributed across the Internet.”



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