As`ad AbuKhalil analyzes the calculations behind the recent attacks, which the Western press covered with the usual lack of realism.
By As`ad AbuKhalil
Special to Consortium News
There are two realities about Israel in the world: one projected by Western media, and the other suffered by its victims.
The first has no connection to any reality, but is constructed to present a favorable image of Israel, no matter what. In that portrayal, Israel is consistently presented as the victim; Arabs and Iran the aggressors. The racist connotations of such distinctions are not concealed. This presentation of Israel as a victim, however, is getting harder to perpetuate. It was far easier when Israel was a new (occupation) state surrounded by weak yet entrenched Arab states. Even then, Israel would refer to Arab armies as a danger to its very existence when in reality the Zionist forces in Palestine — as early as 1948 – were better equipped and organized than all Arab armies. At the end of the 1948 war, Zionist forces were three-times the size of the “Arab invasion” of Palestine.
In the second (actual) reality of victims’ experience, Israel operates according to the dictum that Arabs only understand the language of force. (This was apparent in deliberations that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, through the advice of Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami).
Israel is an occupation state that thrives by means of intimidation and massacres. In my own lifetime, Israel has attacked Tunisia, Sudan, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine. It also downed a Libyan civilian airliner in 1973. On top of this, Israel’s bombings and assassinations in faraway lands, from Iran to Europe, (even in Kuala Lumpur) go uncounted.
UNRWA building shelled by Israeli army, Jan. 15, 2009. (ISM Palestine, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
This image of the actual record of Israel remains hidden from U.S. public view. The nervousness exhibited by the Zionist establishment in D.C. (manifested through the worried pronouncements of congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and many others) is the result of a new rhetoric about Israel expressed by U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
It is often said that U.S. diplomats in the Middle East, just as British diplomats during the Mandate period, tend to quickly develop sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians once they serve in the region (although very few risk their careers by challenging the political conventions of D.C.).
Zionists Fight Expertise
Through the powerful Israel lobby, Zionists in the U.S. have fought Middle East expertise (in the government and in the academe) precisely because knowledge about the Middle East rarely leads to pro-Israel conclusions. The Zionist lobby operates on the perpetuation of ignorance about the Middle East in American popular and political culture. Any in-depth TV or newspaper coverage of the Middle East are routinely attacked by Zionist organizations. Most U.S. media have given up even trying to inform their public about the Middle East because the political price remains high.
In the last week alone, Israel has attacked targets in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon and yet the U.S. coverage has portrayed these bombing campaigns as a matter of Middle East routine.
Liz Sly of The Washington Post— one of the worst to ever cover the region classified the recent Israeli bombing as part of the effort to contain “Iranian influence in the region,” while Ben Hubbard of The New York Times describes a civilian neighborhood as housing “Iran-backed militia” supporters).
Benjamin Netanyahu on TV this week. (YouTube)
Not only has the U.S. media covered up the extent of these bombing campaigns, the scant reporting fails to point out how Israel has been attacking the same native forces that fought and defeated ISIS (from Lebanon to Iraq). For Israel, ISIS has been useful in undermining the military power of Hashd militias in Iraq and Hizbullah in Syria and Lebanon. Now, one wonders if Israel is trying to rejuvenate the power of ISIS in the hope of distracting its enemies and diverting their resources and attention.
The calculus of Israel in those recent attacks all over the region are not clear: but Israel never needs a reason or an excuse to bomb or to invade or to establish its military supremacy. To be sure, Israel has an ally in D.C. The Trump administration, like all that preceded it, will indulge any and all acts of aggression by Israel. Just as Israel invested heavily in the Lebanese civil war (in which it armed the right-wing death squads of the Phalanges and the Lebanese Forces), Israel encourages the prolongation of conflicts and wars in the region. It has invested in the Syrian war and had links with various Jihadi groups, and many of their members sought medical treatment in Israel.
Pressuring Its Foes
As Israeli expectations for prolonged wars in Syria and Iraq seem to have been dashed, and as Israeli allies in Yemen appear to be failing, Israel may be hoping for an intensification of pressure on all of its foes in the region. The total support of Arab Gulf despots, who in the past were too afraid to publicize their links with Israel, gives Israel a freer hand in its aggression.
One should also take into consideration the electoral factor: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a tough election and immense legal problems: his ability to win will determine whether he serves time in prison or not. This fight by Netanyahu is more personal than political. And when there is a tough election in Israel, the people of Palestine and Lebanon often pay a price. In the 1990s, the war between Labor and Likud was fought in the territory of South Lebanon where Labor and Likud leaders wanted to prove their toughness. The Qana massacre of 1996 (where Israel bombed a UN facility that sheltered 800 civilians and killed 110 people and injured 118) bore the mark of Shimon Peres who, as a prime minister, was trying to prove his toughness vis-à-vis Arabs in an election season. The Israeli war on Gaza in 2009 ended just three weeks before the 2009 Israeli election.
Netanyahu and Trump in Israel, 2017. (State of Israel via Flickr)
Similarly, Netanyahu is facing a tough challenge from former Israeli generals running against him in the “Blue and White” political alliance. Those former generals are promising a major war on Gaza and have accused Netanyahu of softness toward Hamas. Furthermore, the young people in Israel — unlike their counterparts in the U.S. — are more militant and conservative than their elders.
Israelis, and Netanyahu, need to impress those voters in order to win a decisive victory. Netanyahu, in the context of Israeli politics, and regardless of the many acts of aggression and attacks he has ordered, is faulted for not leading a major war against Israel’s enemies during his long term as prime minister. Netanyahu may thus wish to crown his political career with a major offensive or war.
There are risks for Israel in all of this. Its foes today are far better organized and armed than ever before. The axis of resistance to Israel extends from Lebanon to Yemen. Some of the Hashd militias in Iraq —`Asa’ib Ahl-Haq, An-Nujaba`, kata`ib Hizbullah — are allied with Hizbullah and may consider a battle by one party a battle for all. The foes of Israel in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq are now battle-tested and their arsenal is now more sophisticated and potent.
Netanyahu seems interested in escalation but he must know that decisive military victory against Arabs — which was a cornerstone of Israeli military doctrine for many decades — is now more elusive than ever. If Netanyahu is trying to gain political advantage from a limited military engagement, his foes may not be as patient and restrained as they have been in the last few years. In the event of a flareup, the U.S. must also be concerned about the vulnerability of its forces in Syria and Iraq (not to mention those in Lebanon who are deployed under the pretext of training and assistance to the Lebanese Army). If Netanyahu wins an election through brutality in the Middle East, it may lead the Israeli army to another humiliating defeat—worse even than the July 2006 war in Lebanon.
As’ad AbuKhalil is a Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He is the author of the “Historical Dictionary of Lebanon” (1998), “Bin Laden, Islam and America’s New War on Terrorism (2002), and “The Battle for Saudi Arabia” (2004). He tweets as @asadabukhalil
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Here’s another very good article on this topic.
“A ‘NY Times’ report hides the truth: Israel’s airstrikes across the Mideast are arguably designed to sabotage Trump-Iran talks”
https://mondoweiss.net/2019/08/airstrikes-designed-sabotage/
I’m hoping this post gets through this time. Israeli hackers are doing their best to disrupt Americans’ legitimate discussion of politics where Israel is concerned. In another example, Veterans Today has an article about their being hacked.
“Veterans Today has been repeatedly hacked. As part of these hacks, the text has been altered, photographs removed from the archives and entire databases altered or erased. We have even had servers destroyed. All this is about Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, someone we support.”
“Attack on Rep. Gabbard in April 2018 VT Article Inserted by Hacker”
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2019/08/29/attack-on-rep-gabbard-in-april-2018-vt-article-inserted-by-hacker/
Israel is in fact a miniature replica of the United States.
It is, if you will, effectively an American colony with special support and privileges and one tasked to do certain things in its region.
After all, hasn’t bombing people been America’s greatest pastime in the post-WWIi era?
Well, can’t argue with that, but at the same time there are certain differences. Israel, unlike the USA, has:
* a Parliament
* healthcare and paid maternity leave
* the metric system
* larger-denomination coins (the 5- and 10-shekel coins are $1.42/€1.28 and $2.84/€2.57, respectively. Meanwhile, 40 years after its introduction, the 1-dollar coin has yet to replace the bill, and a 2-dollar coin has yet to be introduced)
* elimination of smaller-denomination coins (the lowest coin in circulation is 10 agorot, or 3 cents (whether $ or €). The US has yet to eliminate the penny.)
That being said, I can see where you’re coming from.
A succinct breath of fresh air!
Someone offering a saner opinion, founded on real politik facts on the ground, rather than perpetual pie in the sky self-delusional fantasies, based solely on the precepts of narrower bigoted hypocritical hatreds against the ‘Other’.
No doubt about it, Israel’s conduct is reprehensible, deplorable and inhumane!
A fact too: Israel wasn’t even on a map prior to the end of WW II, whereas the American forefathers were committing genocide, plundering and slaughtering their way west (and of late, since the end of WWII, in every which direction, without cease) for the past 350-plus years.
So, if all the hatred against Israel today has nothing to do with historical Judeophobia and its concomitant generational persecutions, then rightfully, in the conduct of the Israeli state, it must have some basis of legitimacy. But then, how come most Americans can’t fathom why any ‘Others’ would hate the United States.
However, the aforementioned paragraph arguments, against hatred, is a bone of contention for Jewish people the world over, especially since the end of WWII. Regrettably, and sorrowfully, but rightfully, they are unwilling to buy the duplicitous logic.
WWII was an extraordinary trauma to these co-religionists, the scars of which are very much akin to what we today recognize as scars derived from the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
In the Israeli case passed down, unbroken, through 5-6 generations. PTSD is not based on delusion and paranoia, but on actual horrors witnessed. No American alive today is a direct witness to any of the atrocities that took place in the formation of a United States, so apparently, they never happened. No PTSD scar on our body politic!
In white ruled Apartheid South Africa, the international hatred that developed worldwide, against the Apartheid policy over time, was not specifically directed towards the white European Christian settler minority, but at the forced separation of all of the peoples of South Africa by this ruling clique.
The same racial segregation was a pillar in the cornerstone of the white European Christian Pilgrims who first settled on the north American continent. So, nothing new here!
The question: why today is the American National state still unwilling to address these past facts, yet its ignorant masses are quick to expect Israel to come clean about what it is doing.
And there’s no Judeophobia involved here?
This defies a universal ethical standard. What we do (“After all, hasn’t bombing people (‘Others’) been America’s greatest pastime in the post-WWII era?”) is legitimate and unquestionable. As the U.S. sees it, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander” doesn’t apply to US.
Is it any wonder the Politicians can get away with playing us for the fools we obviously are?
America today is nothing more than a remnant simulacrum of the hope for a better world, it once may have symbolized; cloaked in rhetorical fallacies.
I stopped commenting at CS news long ago as it was pretty clear the moderator rules were arbitrary and inconsistent. CS has good articles but posting comments is pointless.
The tables will turn and missile rains will start falling on the racist scum of the earth entity Israel. Wailing and pontificating will reach unprecedented shrill levels. The rest of the world will be dancing to the music :-)
This is a well written truthful article.
I read as many pro’s & con’s about Israel and the all Arab countries. It’s hard Not to notice the attacks fron the Israelis against bordering countries,& unfounded treats against them as a excuse to do a pre-emptive strikes. Some maybe justified, but far from all.
Thankfully Trump hopefully will be gone on 01/01/20. I just hope that his replacement will be able to undo all the damage he has done.
I hope that everyone will talk instead of maiming each other one day soon. Hate brings radicals to stupid deadly actions & it unfortunately makes them “newsworthy”.
Even my child,who is a 21 yr. retired Marine agrees with me & we rarely agree on anything.
(I apologise for my spelling errors)
I live in a mostly Jewish niegborhood in the American, and hear them talk about Jewish lives lost,not all lives lost during a bombing or war.
This is a well written truthful article.
I read as many pro’s & con’s about Israel and the all Arab countries. It’s hard Not to notice the attacks fron the Israelis against bordering countries,& unfounded treats against them as a excuse to do a pre-emptive strikes. Some maybe justified, but far from all.
Thankfully Trump hopefully will be gone on 01/01/20. I just hope that his replacement will be able to undo all the damage he has done.
I hope that everyone will talk instead of maiming each other one day soon. Hate brings radicals to stupid deadly actions & unfortunately make them “newsworthy”.
“Veterans Today has been repeatedly hacked. As part of these hacks, the text has been altered, photographs removed from the archives and entire databases altered or erased. We have even had servers destroyed. All this is about Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, someone we support.”
“Attack on Rep. Gabbard in April 2018 VT Article Inserted by Hacker”
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2019/08/29/attack-on-rep-gabbard-in-april-2018-vt-article-inserted-by-hacker/
“In my own lifetime, Israel has attacked Tunisia, Sudan, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine. It also downed a Libyan civilian airliner in 1973.”
This leaves out the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.
Has any one of the mentioned countries been aggressing against Israel–except for casting complaints their way about the cold-blooded murder Israel routinely perpetrates against their citizens? Israel justifies premeditated murder by calling their victims “terrorists,” apparently on the prima facie assumption that every non-Jew on the planet is a terrorist, or at least a potential one, and the Israeli Defense Forces are merely doctors delivering prophylactic treatment on a rigorous schedule. Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, ravaged for years by wars instigated by Washington, are too terrified of Israel to even defend against the gratuitous ongoing attacks against them by Israel. They may attempt to shoot down a missile, but never a fighter jet piloted by one of the pseudo-Semitic godlike beings.
And, Iran, though it may be well-armed and prepared, obviously does not want to engage in a war with Israel in which Washington, NATO and Saudi Arabia would most certainly gang up on the Persian state, and possibly go so far as to employ nukes on Iranian soil. (Would Trump really threaten anything he wouldn’t actually do? Or is it just the way a master business tycoon brokers a deal? Dare Iran attempt to find out?) The Iranians remember the “Highway of Death” in Kuwait where Bushdaddy ordered the wanton murder of a hundred thousand defeated Iraqi soldiers simply trying to flee for their lives. They also remember “Shock and Awe” where Bushbaby leveled Baghdad with bombs and missiles trying to outdo his old man as a mass-murdering war criminal.
Destroying entire civilisations of no-count foreigners, along with the systematic dismantling of the U.S. constitution and the stripping of American citizens of their rights under that document on the pretext of “defending” Israel and American “values” has been the most notable and persistent “accomplishment” of every American president since Bushdaddy “kicked the Vietnam syndrome,” for which he so proudly congratulated himself. The rest of the world just stands by, watching helplessly while these “Commanders-in-Chief” act more like zombies doped up on ibogaine by their Israeli masters (to poach an allusion from the late Hunter S. Thompson).
The world has a serious problem: an out of control Spartan state that can do whatever it pleases knowing it will be given cover by the corporate-militarist media in the West.
Meanwhile academic journals perpetuate the Big Lie of Israel as the outnumbered, defensive, island of Democracy in the sea of turmoil.
See, for example, nonsense like this:
” Under the Shadow of an Iranian Nuclear Threat: Reactions of Holocaust Survivors Versus Non-Holocaust Survivors’
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15325024.2018.1507474
“Republican Senator Lindsey Graham […] has been calling for a ‘defense treaty’ with Israel since last April. In his most recent foray, Graham announced late in July that he is seeking bipartisan support for providing ‘blank check’ assurances to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is hoping to be able to push a complete defense treaty through the Senate by next year.
“In making his several announcements on the subject, Graham has been acting as a front man for both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and also for [pro-Israel Lobby war hawk ‘think tank’] The Jewish Institute for the National Security of America (JINSA), which wrote the basic document that is being used to promote the treaty and then enlisted Graham to obtain congressional support.
“Speaking to the press on a JINSA conference call, Graham said the proposed agreement would be a treaty that would protect Israel in case of an attack that constituted an ‘existential threat’. Citing Iran as an example, Graham said the pact would be an attempt to deter hostile neighbors like the Iranians who might use weapons of mass destruction against Israel. JINSA President Michael Makovsky elaborated on this, saying, ‘A mutual defense pact has a value in not only deterring but might also mitigate a retaliatory strike by an adversary of Israel, so it might mitigate an Iranian response (to an attack on its nuclear facilities).’
“JINSA director of foreign policy Jonathan Ruhe added that ‘An Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program would not activate this pact, but a major Iranian retaliation might. – An Israeli unilateral attack is not what the treaty covers, but rather massive Iranian retaliation is what we are addressing.’
“Israel has long been reluctant to enter into any actual treaty arrangement with the United States because it might limit its options and restrain its aggressive pattern of military incursions. In that regard, the Graham-JINSA proposal is particularly dangerous as it effectively permits Israel to be interventionist with a guarantee that Washington will not seek to limit Netanyahu’s ‘options.’ And, even though the treaty is reciprocal, there is no chance that Israel will ever be called upon to do anything to defend the United States, so it is as one-sided as most arrangements with the Jewish state tend to be.
“As the agreement between the two countries would be a treaty ratified by the Senate, it would be much more difficult to scrap by subsequent administrations than was the Iran nuclear deal, which was an executive action by President Obama. And clearly the statements by Graham, Makovsky and Ruhe reveal this treaty would serve as a green light for an Israeli attack on Iran, should they opt to do so, while also serving as a red light to Tehran vis-à-vis an ironclad US commitment to ‘defend’ Israel that would serve to discourage any serious Iranian retaliation. Given that dynamic, the treaty would be little more than a one-way security guarantee from Washington to Jerusalem. […]
“Defense means just that and treaties are generally designed to protect a country within its own borders. Israel has no defined borders as it is both expansionistic and illegally occupying Palestinian land, so the United States would in effect be obligated to defend space that Israel defines as its own. That could mean almost anything. Israel is currently bombing Syria almost daily even though it is not at war with Damascus. If Syria were to strike back and Graham’s treaty were in place, Washington would technically be obligated to come to Israel’s assistance. A similar situation prevails with Lebanon and there are also reports that Israel is bombing alleged Iranian supply lines in Iraq, where the US has 5,000 troops stationed.
“The real problem is that the Trump administration is obsessed with regime change in Iran, but it has so far been unable to provoke Iran into starting a conflict. Graham’s proposed treaty just might be part of a White House plan to end-run Congress and public opinion by enabling Israel to start the desired war, whereupon the US would quickly follow in to ‘defend Israel,’ obliged by treaty to do so. What could possibly go wrong? The correct answer is ‘everything.'”
Lindsey Graham’s Blank Check. Why a Defense Agreement With Israel Would Be a Disaster for Americans
By Philip Giraldi
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/08/22/lindsey-grahams-blank-check-why-a-defense-agreement-with-israel-would-disaster-for-americans/
Here’s another very good article on this topic.
“A ‘NY Times’ report hides the truth: Israel’s airstrikes across the Mideast are arguably designed to sabotage Trump-Iran talks”
https://mondoweiss.net/2019/08/airstrikes-designed-sabotage/
“Israel is consistently presented as the victim; Arabs and Iran the aggressors. The racist connotations of such distinctions are not concealed. This presentation of Israel as a victim, however, is getting harder to perpetuate.”
In fact, Israel promotes racist militarist ideology and teaches its children to hate: hate Palestinians, hate Muslims, hate the Arabs in general and hate anyone who supports or stands in solidarity with them against oppression.
Israeli scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s important academic study, “Palestine in Israeli School Books” is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand some important realities about the Israeli state and Israeli society.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190726-how-israel-teaches-its-children-to-hate/
As a settler-colonial entity, real change can never come from within Israeli society. It must be imposed from the outside. Much like white South Africans, Jewish Israelis will never voluntarily give up their privileged position as settlers.
Repeat performance of ‘Dancing on the Head of a Pin’ with Fallacious Reason
There is no condoning Israel’s behavior towards the indigenous populations (Palestinians) ever since the founding of the state, but… if “real change can never come from within Israeli society”, because “As a settler-colonial entity, real change can never come from within” then doesn’t the same argument hold true, if not more so – given it’s much more significant Imperial impact on all the variables of living – to the U.S., where “Much like white South Africans, (white Americans of any class or religious denomination) will never voluntarily give up their privileged position as settlers.”
Has America, being the monolith hegemon, it is, throughout history not shown, innumerable times, its willingness to take any measures necessary to hold on to this privileged status; and what’s more, using any pretext to do so.
“(America today)” is the most destructively violent society on the face of the planet and “promotes racist militarist ideology and is teaching its children to hate: hate Palestinians, hate Muslims, hate the Arabs in general and hate anyone (deemed ‘OTHER’) who supports or stands in solidarity with them against oppression”.
“Israeli scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s important academic study, “Palestine in Israeli School Books” is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand some important realities about the Israeli state and Israeli society.”
Yet for those who are incapable of taking in global realities, I suggested, in a previous comment, to another responder, that they first look a mirror, as Nurit Peled-Elhanan was conscious, and with conscience enough to do.
Peled-Elhanan is a shining example, that the cant of dogmas is fallacious, when humane beings are concerned enough to actively dissent.
That being so, nothing is ever impossible, in this life.
Whoever would have dreamed that social Apartheid in S.A. would collapse; whoever would have dreamed the Soviet union would crumble; and East and West Germany today is Germany!
Unaided, couldn’t have said it better myself!
“Whoever would have dreamed that social Apartheid in S.A. would collapse; whoever would have dreamed the Soviet union would crumble”
Some did not restrict their activities to dreaming, and much was published in relation to opportunities and possible trajectories during the 1970’s and subsequent in both the “West” and the “Soviet Union” leading some to engage in increasing preparations and implementation/testing of strategies facilitating the present moment in the lateral process of transcendence of the “Soviet Union” by the Russian Federation and its associates by design and/or default, sometimes refered to as “colleagues”, some of whom perceived themselves to be opponents who had “won”.
Some during the same period even understood that the constructs were existentially dependent on one another, both being coercive fiat constructs, one evangelised by the undefined belief branded as “democracy” formulated to continue class bound social relations, and one evangelised by the undefined belief branded as “existing socialism/communism” formulated to continue class bound social relations, and that acceleration of the demise of both could be facilitated by the complicity of both in memory of Mr. Schrodinger and his cat.
That Mr. Schrodinger and his cat apparently continue in good health is to be welcomed.
“…privileged position as settlers.” Reading that, it occurred to me that the term “settlers” is far too kind, and that we need to start calling them what they are, “occupiers”.
Repeat performance of Hasbara Dancing and Fallacious Reasoning from pro-Israel Pinheads:
The Hasbara (pro-Israel propaganda) troll army frequently insists that Americans “first look a mirror [sic]” before doing anything rash like interrupting the precious flow of aid to Israel.
The Hasbara troll army insists that Americans ignore important realities about the Israeli state and Israeli society, and remain pre-occupied with “taking in global realities”, lest they do something rash like disrupt the precious flow of aid to Israel.
The Hasbara troll army insists that Americans must give up their privileged position as settlers instead of doing anything rash like jeopardizing the privileged Apartheid position of Israeli settlers and illegal occupiers by reducing the precious flow of aid to Israel.
As I suggested, in many previous comments, to other Hasbara troll “respondents”, such “arguments” are fallacious on their face.
Comrade “Em Sos” couldn’t ‘splain’ it better than any other Hasbara troll.
That being so, nothing is ever impossible, in this life.
So it’s possible that someone other than a pro-Israel Pinhead may attempt to advance such fallacious “arguments”.
That doesn’t make the cant of Hasbara propaganda dogmas any less fallacious.
One thing is certain:
Israeli apartheid is by no means unaided by the United States.
American aid to Israeli apartheid comes in the form of government aid, private aid, trade and investment.
The nightmare of apartheid Israel would collapse without aid from the United States.
So in addition to securing that precious flow of American aid to Israel, the pro-Israel Lobby is busy promoting Israel’s racist militarist ideology, spreading pro-Israel propaganda, and encouraging Americans to hate Muslims, hate the Arabs in general, and hate Palestinians in particular.
Actively participation in the international BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement helps stop aid to Israeli apartheid.
That’s why the Hasbara troll army is out in force, marching on comments boards all over the internet.
Thanks for the demo, comrade.
Abe –
Are you familiar with the 1979 Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism (JCIT)?
Be well.
Very similar to western financial capitalism, people instinctively fear and resist change, until a sufficient proportion begin to believe that ANY change must be better than the current system or situation.
“Polarisation” is the order of the day in much of the world, indicating an imminent tipping point in that proportion.
There’s nothing Conservative about ruined Israeli youth (excluding toddlers), unless you are equating ‘Conservative’ with ‘fascist’. There may be Conservatives who are reasonable (Peter Lavelle, Alexander Mercouris), a throwback if you like, but I haven’t found any of them to be completely honest.
Would someone PLEASE stop using all these political labels. Have labels ever done anything good for the world? The only time things get done are when people work together, and those times sadly only occur when a major disaster of some sort brings people together in crisis. The phony 911 crisis, being able to withstand factual disproval because the American public is brainwashed 24/7 by a CIA-infested media that leads the gullible American public around on a leash of false perceptions! This nation is supposed to be held together by a Constitution that EVERY public servant/employees vows to protect when sworn in for duty. How many of these “public servants” ever truly put their gonads on the line standing up for REAL Constitutionality? When Congress people raise a storm about REAL FACT-BASED issues, like the recent storm about Israel banning two Congress people from entering their nation because they hurt their itty bitty feelings. And if/and/or when Netanyahu cold-heartedly “mows the lawn:” again, massacring thousands of innocent Palestinians before the world political altar, this obvious massacre will be once again cheer leaded by the US Congress, an almost unanimous consent by the US Congress to approve mass murder on a grand scale, by the “most moral army in the world”! It is truly sickening to me to stand here and watch USA Congress people grovel and act like total robots in service to Israel! I truly admire Israeli people. But they, like their American counterparts, do NOT live in a democracy, as we are all brainwashed to believe. Anyone who has ever been in a position to challenge the power and threaten the wealthy powerful interests that control this planet has ALWAYS been eliminated in some way. What to do? Let the present corrupted political “fortresses” around the world built on similar lies and deceits, collapse once and for all upon their own palace of lies, and leave the waste land for the liberated masses to repair!
Here is an article that clearly explains the pro-Israel bias in America’s mainstream media:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-pro-israel-skew-in-american.html
This study shows us that the pro-Israel narrative has become so firmly entrenched in the American mainstream media that it is almost impossible for news consumers to discern the truth about the situation in Israel and Palestine. This has greatly benefitted Washington which has made it abundantly clear that it sides with Israel in this decades-old conflict.
Not just American mainstream media. There was a survey in UK a few years ago in which most respondents were so confused they thought it was Palestinians occupying Israel! There’s only one place in the West where even the Conservatives are not anti-Palestinian, Ireland:
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/deep-empathy-of-irish-for-palestinians-is-in-no-way-anti-semitic-1.3780678
Could it have something to do with the centuries of British occupation they suffered under?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a42H2ehgsfw