American and Zionist imperialism

Reviewing an Unspeakable NarrativeTracking Deception, by William A. Cook, offers a sustained diatribe against Israel and the United States, comprising forty-three articles published between September, 2002, and April, 2005, when the two governments were escalating hostilities against their respective enemies of choice. Not more than thirty-two months transpired, but Cook’s articles went into print on the average once every three weeks for this entire period.

The result is something more than a book. Cook’s most basic argument, to be found in his final chapter, is that our two nations’ “monolithic belief systems” are based on collective myths that have lost their credibility. He demonstrates his thesis relevant to the current practices of both nations, but for the history and pre-history of the United States he traces these myths to a more inclusive narrative in counterpoint with what might be described as an “unspeakable narrative.”And:There is one major oversight in Cook’s line of argument. He appropriately pairs current U.S. and Zionist excesses, but draws upon our nation’s early history--and indeed that of Western Civilization as a whole--to suggest a vast prehistory of similar excesses, but without mentioning Zionism’s comparable historic record. This oversight can be misleading. For just as American history’s respectable narrative can and should be amplified by a counter-narrative that features harsh and even unspeakable disclosures, the same is possible with Zionist history. Here, too, a counter-narrative needs to be acknowledged--in this case lest the fiction of incessant victimization is used to gloss over what might seem an atypical and therefore partially justified instance of violence against others--the Palestinians now under attack by Israel.

Appropriately, Cook draws attention to earlier American atrocities that anticipate our nation’s conduct in Iraq--for example the total destruction of the Pequot tribe during the early seventeenth century and the persistent effort through the end of the nineteenth century to disperse native American societies that occupied territory sought by white-European settlers. Most obvious was the so-called Trail of Tears, when approximately 4,000 innocent Cherokee Indians died in transit. As Cook indicates, all this was entirely in accord with the wishes and intentions of our Founding Fathers, Jefferson having declared that the U.S. government was obliged “now to pursue them (Indians) to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach.” Washington suggested in the same vein that Indians deserved nothing from whites but “total ruin.” And Cotton Mather had inveighed a century earlier, “Turn not back till they are consumed. . . . Beat them small as dust” (Cook, p. 299).Comment:  For more on the subject, see The Indian-Palestinian Connection.