Netenyahu went up to Congress today, with the sweet words of a pimp talking to his stable of whores. He wanted to remind them to “stand behind Israel.” A day earlier on MSNBC and FOX interviews, he had the audacity to suggest that America should ignore Europe and pretty much the rest of the world, in favor of his self-serving counsel. By Netenyahu’s account, the President was mistaken to put pressure on Sharon and probably had a momentary lapse in judgment. But Netenyahu assured his listeners that Bush would be back on track after a few Israeli lectures on the ‘Bush Doctrine’. On Hardball, Chris Mathews made it clear that he had canceled another guest because Netanyahu decided to drop in to market Sharon’s war crimes. I bet Blair would like that kind of air time. He has to settle for CSPAN and fifteen second sound bites.
American journalists advocating on behalf of war crimes on prime time. Is this good family entertainment. It is amazing, giving this new breed of American ‘journalism’, that we don’t have journalists rooting for more car accidents or more cancer or more volcano.
Cable TV has become the incestuous sister of hate radio. Since 911, the cable gang neo-conservative crowd have obscenely advertised their ‘patriotism’ and wrapped themselves tightly in the flag. But when a war criminal like Sharon goes on a killing spree and Bush dares to tell him to put a lid on it, who does CNN back? Ask CNN’s Rudy Bakhtiar why she is so enthusiastic about the Israeli ‘incursion,’ which CNN makes sound like a necessary trip to the dentist. On one of the most intense days of shedding Palestinian blood, the CNN cameras went out to explore Tel Aviv night life. In any case, the Yiddish supremacist media morons have clearly taken the side of the IDF goon squads against the Palestinians, much like the coconspirators on Capitol Hill. Predictable? Yes. Criminal? Yes. Their ought to be a law against journalists who advocate the slaughter of innocents or consistently lie to improve the image of a repressive military occupation. If we had a law like that, I am certain CNN would have to go off shore to Tel Aviv.
Sharon, like Israeli Prime Ministers before him, is flexing the muscles of his ‘American’ constituency. The Yiddish supremacists are so arrogant about their political power that they deemed Powell’s trip a failure before he landed in Jerusalem. Maybe if he had taken a direct route to his destination, he wouldn’t be in such a mess. When he gave Sharon another extension for his mission, he probably didn’t realize that the Lobby would use the opportunity to launch a full scale Netenyahu Likudnik campaign using all their available media assets.
Of course, you can’t just rebuff an American president. First, there is the matter of arranging for the delivery of a presidential hanky to wipe off the egg on his face. The Netenyahu Likudniks also had to go to the bother of publicly instructing Bush on how to correctly apply ‘The Bush Doctrine.’
Here is the Netenyahu spin. Bush is wrong, Powell is in too much of a hurry and will waste his time when he gets there. Europe should be ignored, the Arabs are blackmailing us with their oil, the Palestinians are born terrorists and America should fight them because they have a collective personality disorder which will eventually reach America’s shores in suitcase size bombs that will make 911 look like a picnic. Israel and America must unite to fight a world full of terrorists who don’t like our ‘way of life’. Israel is like America. The Palestinian struggle is not about their resistance to occupation. Rather, their mothers just train them from when they are babes to go out be suicidal murderers. If Netenyahu has one talent it his ability to defame the Palestinians. It was his verbiage that Israel must ‘destroy the infrastructure of the terrorists’. Oh yes, according to this ex-Israeli Prime Minister, the West Bank is Afghanistan, Gaza is Kabul, Arafat is Bin Laden, the Palestinians are the Taliban. One Ex-Prime Minister of a belligerent foreign state gets more air time in two days than Blair will get in a life-time. To the average viewer, Netenyahu appears to make sense only because he goes unchallenged by the brain-dead talk show hosts who affirm his answers in their next question.
But the central campaign by these Sharon worshiping thugs centers on equating America’s battles in Afghanistan with Israel’s war against the Palestinians.
Sharon argues that he needs more time. After all America has only been in Afghanistan six months. And Israel has only been in the West Bank for 12 days.
Of course, Sharon has been at this business of launching a war against the Palestinian people since the day he was elected. And Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza for thirty five years. And the record is clear on Israel’s thirty-five years of rule by terror, land confiscation and settlement.
Netenyahu constantly equates the Palestinians with the Taliban. In America, we did not even equate the Afghans to the Taliban. America took three weeks to locate willing highly motivated tribal allies among the Afghans. After thirty-five years of brutal military rule, the Israelis cannot claim the heart and mind of a single Palestinian village. Aside from a handful of collaborators, every Palestinians is resisting the occupation. Christians, Muslims, the young, the old, the educated and the peasant all have their hearts with the people of Jenin and Nablus and Ramallah and Bethlehem. Netenyahu needs to explain why Israel has no Palestinian allies. None. Indeed, the Palestinians have never before demonstrated this level of rage. It has been decades since the Arab street erupted in support of the Palestinians. Is it possible that the ‘Netenyahu Doctrine’ doesn’t deserve another minute of air time because it will not work? Why not let Bush determine the proper application of the Bush doctrine instead of an ex-Prime Minister of Israel?
How does Netenyahu get away with his feeble arguments? Where are the illegal American settlers in Afghanistan. 911 was an attack against America launched from bases in Afghanistan? On the other hand, the Israeli occupation is a violent Israeli regime inflicted by vicious goon squads and extremist Jewish settler militias. Since the start of the uprising, the Palestinians have not once taken their fight outside the historic boundaries of Palestine. The suicide bombings did not lead to Sharon’s fits of violence. It was Sharon’s insistence on a military solution to the Palestinian problem that provoked Palestinian desperados to resort to suicide bombings.
And another thing. The whole world stood behind America after 911. Even Iran made it clear that it would cooperate fully against the forces of Al Qaida. Who stands behind Israel today? The American Jewish community with its substantial clout in the media. Oh yes, and Congress. But we already told you their sorry story. It was only yesterday that Senator McCean of Arizona accused his colleagues of ‘war profiteering’. They think nothing of making every other America complicit in Sharon’s war crimes.
Powell and Bush appear to be stomped by this ‘Palestine is our Afghanistan’ argument. The ditzy anchors who let Netenyahu roll over them with this nonsense appear to buy into it. Some are stupid, others are complicit and still others, a bit of both.
The sad reality is that the Israeli lobby and its antics invited the disaster of 911 to America’s shores. They made us enemies we do not deserve. And instead of having a deep sense of remorse for their role in the abysmal failure of our foreign policy, they turned around and used it to give Sharon further license to torment the Palestinians. Bush went along because he believed that the cost of the journey with Sharon would be a free ride. The Israel Firsters, fully entrenched in their media fox holes, launched a massive assault to further demonize the Palestinians. And now, Bush is doing his number for the campaign season, while another Palestinian catastrophe comes to a fast boil. Not that Bush or Powell would care. But, does it not seem absurd that the fate of Palestinians should be determined by incumbent American politicians groveling at the feet of an ex-Prime minister of Israel? Why does Netenyahu go unchallenged by Bush on the Hill? And Why does an extremist ex-Prime minister of Israel get so much air time in the first place? Did it occur to the Bush administration to ask the networks to stop subverting American foriegn policy by cutting Netenyahu’s air time? Is Netenyahu dictating American policy on behalf of the Sharon government?
Mr. Ahmed Amr is Editor of NileMedia.com in Seattle and a regular contributor to Media Monitors Network (MMN).