israel/palestine
18 Jan 2008
Democracy is Poison to Arabs
President George W. Bush rmeets King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa. Photo by Eric Draper
George W Bush’s arrival in Israel and Palestine has been greeted with soaring rhetoric, writes Antony Loewenstein
During a meeting at the home of the US ambassador to Israel in 2007, Haaretz editor David Landau told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Israel was a "failed state" that needed to be "raped" by the United States. Aggressive American intervention was essential to resolve the Israel/Palestine conflict.Landau's strident comments were considered shocking because leading American Zionists remain silent in the face of Israeli atrocities. Take the settlements. Hebron in the West Bank has around 600 Jews living amongst close to 200,000 Palestinians. The settlers, with the wholehearted support of the Israeli Defence Forces, routinely beat, intimidate, harass and ruin the lives of the Palestinians.
A fundraiser was held in a flashy New York hotel late last year to raise funds for these settlers, with barely a word uttered about the Palestinians and their plight. Prospect magazine journalist Matthew Duss spoke to a spokesman for the settlers in Hebron - the recipient of the raised funds - and his racism was something to behold. "Democracy is poison to Arabs," he said. "You'll never get the truth out of an Arab. Israel should give the Arabs social rights but not give them a say in how the country is governed."
Duss explained the issue well. "Hundreds of thousands of dollars flow annually into this community from private donors in the United States like the Hebron Fund, causing thousands of Hebron's Palestinians to live a nightmare so a few hundred Israeli religious extremists can live out their biblical historical fantasies," he wrote.
If the US were serious about solving the Israel/Palestine conflict, it would shut down the flow of money immediately, including from its own coffers. The mainstream Jewish community, the vast majority of whom remain publicly silent over such behaviour, are complicit in the crimes. Half-hearted excuses will no longer do.
George W Bush's current visit to the Middle East, in the final year of his Presidency, is an attempt to solidify Washington's position towards its client states - Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Palestine - against the troublesome rising star of Iran (Bush's visit to Saudi Arabia redefined sycophancy).
The situation in Iraq is desperate. Despite the rhetoric from the US military and its media courtiers, the country is irrevocably divided and Iraqi refugees in countries like Syria are suffering terribly, with even US diplomats turning away from the mission. At least Israel's Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger greeted Bush on his arrival with praise for the Iraq debacle.
Bush's arrival in Israel and Palestine has been greeted with soaring rhetoric. Visiting Ramallah, the President said that he was confident a peace treaty would be signed in 2008 and demanded an end to the Israeli occupation. But the reality on the ground belies his optimism.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to cease building illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and told Bush that the Jewish State had the right to continue building colonies in areas that make the establishment of a Palestinian State impossible. Days before Bush arrived, the Israelis refused to release information that revealed the extent of illegal settlements built without permits in both outposts and established colonies in the West Bank.
The photo opportunities with Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are little more than giving the impression of a peace process when both sides remain miles apart (something confirmed by a former advisor to Bill Clinton).
The Hamas control of Gaza is ignored. Around 40 Palestinians MPs, seized after Hamas secured victory in early 2006, remain in Israeli prisons, uncharged. A recently released human rights report found that Israel's military court for Palestinians in the West Bank nearly always produced automatic convictions.
Finally, Jerusalem must be separated - despite the opposition of many American Zionists - and Palestinian refugees compensated for their violent expulsion in 1948.
The settlements remain one of the greatest stumbling blocks to any progress on the peace front. Leading Zionist leader Isi Leibler recently argued that Israel had the right to maintain whatever settlements it desired and should continue building on Palestinian land. These are the words of a truly irresponsible and arrogant leader who has sided with the far-Right activists who protested in Jerusalem during Bush's visit and accused Olmert and the US President of bringing a "Holocaust" upon them for even discussing the colonies.
As long as these extremists blackmail the world - and Zionist organisations, including in Australia, remain silent over their threats - the occupation will deepen.
History is a good guide when analysing the Israel/Palestine conflict. The Camp David talks in 2000, pushed by Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, have entered mythology as the opportunity that then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat missed to bring freedom to his people. A recent leaked document, written by Israel's security and political establishment in the wake of Camp David, proves that the Jewish state had no intention of evacuating the settlements in the occupied territories or offering the Palestinians anything close to a viable state.
As part of his current visit, George Bush visited Israel's Holocaust memorial and allegedly stated that the US should have bombed Auschwitz during World War Two or the railways leading to it.
The irony is tragic. Bush feels sympathy for millions of murdered Jews - and it is indeed true that the Allies often ignored the suffering of the oppressed people - but today comfortably bombs, tortures and occupies lands across the world, causing the deaths of untold thousands.
The current "peace process" is guaranteed to end the same, tragic way.
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wilko
Slowly, slowly we are ALL becoming Palestinians.
George Vickers
I would certainly agree that while Americans in particular, and the rest of the World, are susceptible to a guilt complex well and truly reinforced and sustained by Jewish propaganda and money, the situation in regard to Palestinians and Islam in general is going to deteriorate. But the Yanks are blind, do not care, prefer to believe that their mighty Imperial Armies can accomplish what untried diplomacy can not. Bomb them all into submission, is the Yankee belief. So they provide the munitions and the money for the Israelis to do the job for them in the Middle East. I do see that some Israelis, a minority unfortunately, do not agree wholeheartedly with their leaders and the Religious nutters, but they are powerless to do anything. The rest off the so-called Western World world, comfortable in their ignorance and mindlessness, look on and do nothing. Any critical comment is generally stomped on by the very active and well financed propaganda units of the Jews, as being anti-semitic, totally ignorant of the fact that these protagonists are ALL Semitic.
It worries me that Hillary Clinton looks like getting the Democratic Party nod in the USA. She has always been a very strong and unthinking backer of the Israelis, keeping in mind that her power base in New York is pretty much owned by Jews.
I note from The Age today that the Jewish propaganda system is very much alive and well in Australia, keeping up their usual line of bulls..t!
Dazza.
Dazza, you might find a site by a girl called Sophie Allem worth browsing. Here is the link:-
http://www.ziomania.com/
The site includes the particularly interesting private diaries of Israel’s second Prime Minster, Moshe Sharett, translated from Hebrew to English by Livia Rokach.
I can still feel the anger it prompted in me to hear how Livia Rokach was found dead in her hotel room in Rome. This was after Uri Avnery brought international attention to the diaries by going to court to stop their publication. These diaries are a must read for anyone who still harbours any misguided romanticism that Israel is a benign state or that Zionism is but an innocent desire to live on somebody else’s land.
In any event, the diaries and their contents, given that they are those of an israeli Prime Minister, make a complete mockery of the Bush visit to the Middle East being about peace. You can bet your bottom dollar it is war and occupation which is on the agenda.
George Vickers
Thanks for that link, George.
I have been looking at Western media sites around the World, US, UK and AU, in regard to the latest blockade of necessary supplies to Gaza by Israel, with Bush backing. Almost uniformly, it has been totally suckh..e to the Israeli interests. Which proves to me that all these media are totally scared of the jewish Lobby, and the very active pressure they apply immediately to any deviation from the Israeli Zionist line. How many innocent people are going to be allowed to die before the West gets some guts and tell these Jewish thug organizations to go away and die the same horribe death they are inflicting on totally innocent others, just because they do not go along with the Bush/Israeli/Fatah games in the Middle East. And games they are, because Israel has no intention of ever giving up the land they have occupied, they are more concerned with taking more, on a daily basis. Bush and his toadies well know this!
Would love to know what Abu Marsen has been offered by Bush in order to betray his own people.
Dazza
This may help you a little Dazza see:-
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080119/twl-lebanon-hezbollah-israel-relig…
Go hezbo!
and if I may, Israel is mostly secular and so it is neither accurate nor constructive to assume that these problems are attributable to the world’s Jewish people simply because some of the thugs you refer to claim to either belong to the Jewish faith or to represent it.
May I refer you to this link Dazza:-
http://jewishvoices.squarespace.com/shabbat-va-yikra/ so that rabbi Goldberg might help you to understand that we are, in reality, all in the same boat.
Jewish money, Jewish lobby, Jewish propaganda….
Ay carumba!
Is the author of this article Jewish propaganda?
After G dubya’s histrionic visit to Jerusalem to give the final kiss of death to the road map for peace in the M.E.
the place again erupted in flames.
Whilst as an Aussie jew I see certain parallels to our indigenous peoples’ plight here, with the one major difference, that we would get a little bit upset if a trip to say sydney’s cbd resulted in dozens of casualties a year from rocket attacks from nearby Redfern or say any other region with aboriginal settlements.
The reality is for the Israeli on the street, who does live in a democracy that their unfortunate legacy from an arrogant bully like Sharon and a hapless idiot like Olmert,is that their only security exists by erecting a wall, fence, electronic barrier, whatever you care to call it to cut their death toll from hundreds per annum to a dozen or so a year.
The really sad reality is that just as a Japanese victory in the Pacific would have rendered an official apology to the aborigines with compensation a mere formality, In the M.E. Israel’s Palestinian solution will unfortunately pale into insignificance with an all out war with Iran looming and total conflagration of the whole area.
Revilo: Jews (and some Arabs) may live in a version of democracy in Israel but the Palestinians almost exclusively live under an Israeli dictatorship. Allowing some people in your country to vote between a few parties and brutally attacking and destroying the livelihood of others is hardly the sort of "democracy" that should be lauded.
A two state solution needs to be fair or this conflict will never be settled. I still think a one state solution is the best option - the problem would just be getting the elite in Israel to agree to a democracy where an Arab vote is the same as a Jewish vote.
And how is Iran "looming"; the only looming i see is the US trying to create another excuse to attack their old enemy in Iran (using some surprisingly similar tactics to their pre-Iraq invasion build up).
Any critical comment is generally stomped on by the very active and well financed propaganda units of the Jews, as being anti-semitic, totally ignorant of the fact that these protagonists are ALL Semitic.
While I agree that there is this excessive (and very tedious) tendency to brand anyone criticizing Israel as an anti-semite I think it must also be ackowledged that ‘anti-semitism’ as in the hatred of Jews (it’s original European meaning) is becoming alarmingly fashionable in the Middle East.
Those in the area who criticized the actions of Israel (or even its existence) used to take care to stress that they were not
anti-semiticJew haters they were anti-Zionist.The distinction is no longer stressed.
In fact the conflict is characterized on both sides as an inter-religious struggle with both side demonzing the other as sub-human. Often those who see both sides cop it both ways. This is the mentality of savage and total war which will not be good for anyone in Israel/Palestine Jew, Christian Muslim or unaffiliated.