Sharon Crosses Bush – Bush runs for cover

 

 

Ponder the following sentence from the Washington Post 3/30/2001 edition: “Cheney and Rumsfeld have long cautioned against heightening American involvement in trying to resolve the Middle East conflict, especially if it means crossing Sharon.” Now consider this little warning to Bush from the New York Times on 3/28/2001  In an article by Serge Schememann (NYT, 3/28/01),  they write that “Sharon has made clear he is not in a mood to hold off. The prime minister openly crossed the Americans when he declared he was not prepared to allow Mr. Arafat to travel, and his government has let it be known that it is ready to resume major military operations in Palestinian territories”.

What an extraordinary world we live in. The first completely dominant superpower in history can have its president publicly humiliated by a well documented psychotic war criminal. In response to this flogging in the international arena, Cheney cautions his president against tangling with Sharon. What is wrong with this picture? Where is their self-respect as men? Where is their pride as Americans supposedly representing the rest of us? Is this about America or some little warped political game they play with Sharon and his Yiddish supremacist advocates?

Why would Cheney take the humiliation of his president as cause to be wary of crossing Sharon? What dirt does Sharon and his American agents have on Cheney.  Is it Cheney’s advisers? Is it that they are all drawn from the ranks of the Israel First cadres in the beltway.  Is it because a certain Libby manages Cheney. The same Libby who took up the Marc Rich case even after Mr. Rich gave up his American citizenship.  The same Marc Rich who got an unwarranted Clinton pardon because so many Israeli politicians wrote personal recommendations on his behalf. Is it that Sharon can flex the muscle of the Yiddish supremacist media barons at the Washington Post and the New York Times? Can it be that Sharon can round up more ‘American’ senators than the president? Is it Enron? We can only speculate about the personal motivations of American policy makers because they are so personal that they ought to have no place in public policy.

It certainly looks like a made for Hollywood thriller. Sharon, a war criminal, is able to threaten the President of the United States with dire consequences.  The Bush administration, burns the midnight oil, trembling at the knees, wary of tangling with Sulzberger or Sharon’s senators or, for that matter, Netenyahu’s senators. The plot involves top secret Israeli files, the bounty of decades of espionage. Sheltered in these detailed files is signed documented proof of American complicity in the invasion of Lebanon, Sabra and Shatila and the laundry list of American green lights to Israeli governments dating back to the 1967 war. Sharon is just the kind of thug who will use his girth and threaten to hold your ankle as he drowns.

The abnormal behavior of this administration, especially in light of the 911 atrocities, is certainly worth pondering. The raw fear in their dealings with Sharon cannot be ignored.  You can see them break into a cold sweat every time they tip toe towards a mild criticism of Sharon’s latest crime. Sharon himself has boasted of his ability to ‘control the Americans’.  Notice how Israeli repression hardly merits a mention from a Secretary of State married to an African American who grew up in the Birmingham, Alabama of the 1950s. Instead of standing for the liberty and freedom, we have a State Department that constantly tries to intimidate the Palestinians into capitulation to Sharon’s thugs.  They merely ‘suggest’ that Sharon ‘ease up’ on the siege of every Palestinian village and every town. Collective punishment against the Palestinians is explicitly endorsed as ‘justifiable’ policy.  The murder of hundreds of Palestinians is rationalized in callous language that amounts to vilification. What exactly is America’s national security interest in repressing the Palestinians and stealing their lands? Why have the Americans lavishly subsidized insane Israeli settlement policies for thirty five years?  Why are we so closely aligned to a country that habitually elects criminal thugs to the highest office in the land? Try to get an answer to these questions from the State department.  They just gaze at you, pretend they didn’t hear the question and sign another check to subsidize IDF brutality.

What we have here is an American political conspiracy of men who don’t have the nerve to confront a war criminal on the rampage.  Because that war criminal can take them down with certain revelations about their past behavior in dealing with his past behavior.  A complicated plot that actually jives remarkably well with the historical record of a very weird Israeli-American ‘special’ relationship.

Of course, Milosovic is currently trying to do the very same thing in the Hague. In the case of this Serbian thug, the mighty mass media machine will ignore his attempts to implicate members of the Clinton administration. When it comes to Sharon, Bush knows whose side the Yiddish supremacist will be on.  They will not let Sharon be tarnished without tarnishing Bush and company. Their Israeli Prime Minister commands their loyalties and they will certainly not hesitate to wage a full assault against any government that ‘crosses’ their war criminal.