it's best to remember that state terrorism is as state terrorism does, not as it says it does....
---The USA and Israel lead the worldwide terrorist movement, they now represent a danger a thousand times greater than Stalin in his hay days....--
The UN tribunal to try Hariri's alleged killers is due to open its doors on March 1, housed in the former headquarters of the Dutch intelligence service, well known for kowtowing and complete submission to MOSSAD and AMAN for decades, on the outskirts of The Hague, the capital of ill-justice. The tribunal will also try those known to be responsible for a series of attacks on other Lebanese political and media figures, starting with the assassination of Mr. Elie HOBEIKA, Fares Sweidan, Walid Zein and Dimitri Ajram, January 24th 2002 in Hazmieh.
US President Barack Obama on Thursday vowed to support UN moves to bring to justice Hariri's killers....which is a travesty of justice in of itself and the biggest lie ever known to mankind since Adam and Eve....since the orders emanated from the oval office for the odious White House Murder INC, to commit ALL these atrocious assassinations since January 24th 2002 in Hazmieh. "As we share our grief with the Lebanese people over the loss of prime minister Hariri, we also share our conviction that his sacrifice will not be in vain," Obama said in his new and additional lie in a million others..., the biggest lie ever known to mankind since Adam and Eve....since the orders emanated from the oval office for the odious White House Murder INC, to commit ALL these atrocious assassinations since January 24th 2002 in Hazmieh.
"The United States fully supports the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, whose work will begin in a few weeks, to bring those responsible for this horrific crime and those that followed to justice." the biggest lie ever known to mankind since Adam and Eve....since the orders emanated from the oval office for the odious White House Murder INC, to commit ALL these atrocious assassinations since January 24th 2002 in Hazmieh. MP Mustapha Slouch, a member of the parliamentary bloc headed by the slain ex-premier's son and political heir, Saad Hariri, said he had no doubt that the tribunal will serve its purpose.... "There are those who had doubts about the tribunal and thought it was a political instrument but it has now become a reality," Slouchy told APO.... the biggest lie ever known to mankind since Adam and Eve....since the orders emanated from the oval office for the odious White House Murder INC, to commit ALL these atrocious assassinations since January 24th 2002 in Hazmieh. Seven suspects have been arrested in connection with Hariri's assassination. Among them are four generals, including the former head of Lebanese state security, Jamil Al-Sayyed who is the prime planner of the execution of the crimes on January 24th 2002 and February 14th 2005, together with Asef Shawkat and Raymond AZAR, on orders from the White House Murder INC, of the Siamese twins CIA2/MOSSAD of Langley and Herzlia...
The UN probe has also implicated senior officials from Syria but Damascus has strongly denied any connection with Hariri's death and accuses Washington of using the tribunal as a political weapon....an additional extravaggant and deceitful line of rhetorical moves, in tandem with Washington and Tel Aviv to obfuscate the assassinations responsibilities and cover the tracks of the Syrian KILLERS, all in a day's work of the FDDC within DOD, and the NID of Israel... The Hezbollah-led alliance in Lebanon, which is backed by Syria and Iran, for its part is demanding full transparency as far as the UN probe and tribunal. "We don't want the ongoing investigation and the tribunal to be politicized because any such move would affect credibility," Hezbollah MP Hassan Hoballah told ....
...أمل في ألا تبقى العدالة عمياء أو عوراء أو أسيرةً للسياسة فلا يكون الشهداءُ بيننا شهداءْ بمراتب
وقال كوشنير ان "فرنسا التي تقدم منذ اربعة اعوام دعمها الكامل للسلطات اللبنانية وللجنة التحقيق (الدولية) لكشف جميع ملابسات هذا الاعتداء، تأمل اكثر من اي وقت مضى ان يتم كشف المسؤولين عنه ومحاكمتهم امام المحكمة الخاصة من اجل لبنان".
وتتألف المحكمة الخاصة من اجل لبنان، التي ستباشر اعمالها في الاول من آذار/مارس في لايدشندام قرب لاهاي، من 11 قاضيا بينهم اربعة قضاة لبنانيين. وهي مكلفة محاكمة المسؤولين عن الاعتداءات الارهابية التي استهدفت شخصيات لبنانية في طليعتها ايلي حبيقة.
وقتل رئيس الوزراء اللبناني الاسبق في 14 شباط/فبراير 2005 في بيروت مع 22 شخصا آخر في تفجير شاحنة مفخخة.
ورأى أن الدعوة التي وُجهت الى الناس، إذا كانت تفترض أن المشاركة في الذكرى هي أيضاً لدعم المحكمة الدولية، فإن العدالة تقتضي أيضاً بألا يُنسى باقي رجالات الدولة، الذين لم تشمهلم العدالة الدولية، وبينهم رؤساء كبشير الجميل ورينيه معوض، أقفل الزمنُ والتسليمُ بمنطق اللاعدالة ملفاتِهم، وتُرك المُنّفذ ليسرح ويمرح، و يُعرف الرأسُ المدبر أساساً.
ولفت الى ان هناك ايضا صحافيين ومفكرين وجنودا وضباطا في الجيش، ورفاقا لم يُعرف مصيرُهم، ضاعوا في غياهب السجون السورية أو في مقابر جَماعية، ولم تشملهم هم أيضاً عدالة المتغيرات السياسية الدولية.
وأمل ألا تبقى العدالة عمياء، أو عوراء، أو أسيرةً للسياسة، فلا يكون الشهداءُ بيننا شهداءْ بمراتب.
واضاف كوشنير ان "فرنسا تدعم بدء هذه المحكمة اعمالها في الاول من آذار/مارس وسوف تؤازرها" مجددا التأكيد على تمسك فرنسا ب"وحدة لبنان واستقلاله وسيادته ووحدة اراضيه"....meantime France keeps hosting officially Asef SHAWKAT on a regular basis, since 1996..., in Paris for talks and coordiantion of policies with ALL its various intelligence services, and keeps offices for them in Damascus...headed by prominent French stove-pipers for years....
واكد كوشنير ان بلاده تأمل ايضا ب"استمرار مناخ الحوار والتفاهم السائد منذ اتفاق الدوحة في 21 ايار/مايو 2008 بغية اجراء الانتخابات التشريعية في 7 حزيران/يونيو في مناخ من الاستقرار واحترام المعايير الديموقراطية".
The French Government is utterly corrupt and deceitful beyond redemption also...no hope there either...and the BRITISH Government is the worst of ALL...Holland, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Australia...and other smaller countries are Kowtowing to MOSSAD and CIA as usual there...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If John O'Neill's case has been so callously treated by the US Government...imagine the real intentions towards the KILLERS of SYRIA, Asef SHAWKAT , Maher ASSAD, and Jamil Al-Sayyed who work directly for the White House Murder INC, the kind treatment which will be afforded to them...by CIA2/MOSSAD/MI6,DGSE , FDDC, NID etc. to cover the tracks of the real assassins who shower the US with such "delicatessen" by doing their dirty work for them covertly for decades...
John O'Neill and another FBI agent who still works for the bureau discovered that Emanuel was heavily involved in the decision to place Lewinsky close to Clinton. O'Neill retired after being set up in a smear operation involving a temporarily stolen briefcase in 2001, accepted the top security position for Kroll Associates at the WTC, and was killed in the 9/11 attack. Clinton reportedly had knowledge of Israeli intelligence penetration of White House communications systems, and Lewinsky, in sworn testimony before the Office of Independent Counsel, stated: He suspected that a foreign embassy was tapping his telephones, and he proposed cover stories. If ever questioned, she should say that the two of them were just friends. If anyone ever asked about their phone sex, she should say that they knew their calls were being monitored all along, and the phone sex was just a put-on. It is now known that the 'foreign embassy' was that of Israel. We have learned from US intelligence sources that Emanuel was discovered to be part of a political intelligence and blackmail operation directed against Clinton by Israel. We have also learned that the FBI investigation of Emanuel is part of a file code-named Mega, a reference to a top-level Mossad agent in the Reagan administration, who was said to have run a number of Israeli agents, including US Navy spy Jonathan Pollard... Article from: http://www.rense.com/general84/rerr.htm Rahm Emanuel: Ardent Zionist called Obama’s ‘Svengali’ americanfreepress.net More sinister than Karl Rove and potentially deadlier than Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney, his name is Rahm Emanuel, and he was recently appointed chief of staff in the president-elect’s White House. This first official act should send waves of alarm through people because Barack Obama promised change, but what we’re getting is the exact same cabal that brought us 9-11 and endless war in the Middle East. Initial media reports described Emanuel as a vulgar, Chicago-based enforcer who had an aggressive, in-your- face, pit-bull style. Others painted him as a partisan Washington insider with strong ties to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).Although these labels seem harsh, the reality is far worse. Rahm Emanuel, nicknamed “Rahmbo,” is a pro- Israel Orthodox Jew who was educated in a Talmudic yeshiva and served as a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). He is a dual citizen of Israel, which his office refused to deny when AFP inquired. Israel is the only nation where Americans can apply for and obtain citizenship without automatically renouncing U.S. citizenship. Some Americans are unilaterally proclaimed citizens of other countries, as when an American GI marries a French girl and becomes an automatic citizen of France. But if the GI applied for and obtained French citizenship, he would lose his American citizenship. It is impossible to be a 100 percent loyal American and have an ounce of loyalty to another country; there is no #101 percent and the interests of Israel and the United States are not always synonymous. Those familiar with the 9-11 terrorist attacks know that the IDF was instrumental in training the Dancing Israelis who—from a rooftop in Weehawken, N. J.—had the foreknowledge to videotape both WTC towers being struck by kamikaze jetliners, then celebrate afterward. Mentored by members of Chicago’s corrupt party machine like convicted Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, Emanuel gravitated to Washington in 1991 after becoming Bill Clinton’s campaign finance committee director. His star rose even higher when he served as one of the primary NAFTA architects and pushed strict anti-gun legislation. After leaving his post as a policy aide for the Clintons, he used his influence as an investment banker to rake in millions during the late 1990s. With this money, Emanuel won a congressional seat in 2002, became the fourth ranking House Democrat by 2006, and is now the most powerful member of Obama’s executive office team. Family History of Violence What truly makes Emanuel dangerous is that his Israeli-born father Benjamin was an integral member of the Zionist terror group known as Irgun during the 1940s. Along with another notorious terror outfit—the Stern Gang—Irgun bombed Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946 where 96 people were killed; while also instigating the 1948 Deir Yassin Massacre. Rahm Emanuel is the son of a terrorist who directly plotted the assassination of Count Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat and United Nations envoy who tried to broker peace in Palestine. But Irgun didn’t seek treaties. It instead sought racial cleansing and genocide. According to Elisabeth Bumiller in The New York Times, Benjamin Emanuel passed secret codes to Shin Bet bomber and future Prime Minister Menachem Begin. These very same Jewish terrorists eventually became the recognized Israeli government in 1948, as well as predecessors to Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party. Obama's Svengali... Rahm Emanuel likes to brag about his role in discovering Barack Obama. “Six years ago, people on the North Side of Chicago took a bet on a young kid,” reporter D.H. Williams writes of their symbiotic relationship. “Rahm and Barack have a deep history together in Chicago politics. Emanuel has been instrumental in the rise of Barack Obama from neophyte senator to the next president of the United States. Getting virtually no media attention, Rahm Emanuel has been by Obama’s side during most of the last two years on the campaign trail.” If Karl Rove was George W. Bush’s architect, the same can be said of the Emanuel connection. When Obama bowed and groveled at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention on June 4, 2008, it was Emanuel who escorted him to meet the executive board afterward. Emanuel has been the operative who, according to the Chicago Tribune, “remade the Democratic Party in his own image.” Illinois Rep. Ray LaHood (R) seconded this notion. “He legitimately can be called the golden boy of the Democratic Party today. He recruited the right candidates, found the money and funded them, and provided issues for them. Rahm did what no one else could do.” Worst of all, Emanuel is a rampant warmonger who takes his cues from the neo-cons. In his book The Plan: Big Ideas for America, he wrote, “We need to expand the U.S. Army by 100,000 more troops.” What will America’s next target be under an Obama presidency? Sources close to Emanuel say that he has a “Zionist obsession with Iran.” To get a final idea of what we’re dealing with, consider this quote from U.S. war journalist Pat Dollard: Letme tell you right now, no exaggeration. Rahm Emanuel is the devil. He is . . . a Goebbels, a Mengele, a perfect Cromwell who would, without the faintest evidence of hesitation washing across his face for even a millisecond, order and even personally execute each and every human being he or Obama perceived to be an enemy of the regime. And if you ever personally offended him, and he had the opportunity to kill you, he would probably do it by starting with your children as you were made to watch. He is a bad guy. Some researchers have gone so far as to claim that Emanuel was the notorious “Mega” spy deep inside the Clinton administration who passed top-secret documents about Iran on to the Israeli government, causing a great deal of chaos among the various intelligence agencies. Be very wary of this man. Like the “Prince of Darkness” Richard Perle and Michael Chertoff before him (both of whom hold dual U.S.-Israeli citizenships), it may well be proven that his loyalties rest more with a fabricated little state in the Middle East than they do with us..... http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5772.shtml Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and the author of many books on 9-11 and the New World Order. These include 9-11 Evil: The CIA2/MOSSAD/DIA/OSP Israeli Role in 9-11 and Phantom Flight 93... Article from: http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/ rahm_emanuel_157.html |
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Obama chose Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel to be his White House chief of staff
-
http://judicial-inc.biz/Oneill.htm
John O'Neill: Assassinated Head Investigator Of The USS Cole Attack...
--
John O'Neill's Background
He had been with the FBI for 20 years, and was involved in investigating
a number of terrorist cases, including the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing. He was considered the FBI's top man on terrorism. In the late
1990s, he became very attuned to Israel's involvement in many terror
false flag operations....
Following the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, he had become
the foremost expert on the global threat from terrorism...
Abu Nidal
Abu Nidal was the leader of the infamous Black September terror
organization, and spent 30 years hijacking jets and planting bombs for
Israel's intelligence. O'Neill suspected Abu Nidal was a Mossad operative
and talked openly about it with other field agents.
O'Neill Was Sent To Investigate the USS Cole Attack
He took a team of FBI agents to Yemen, where his investigation pointed
to Israeli involvement...and it's well known to me that Yemen is swarming
Bodine, who is Jewish, was the Ambassador to Yemen. When the USS Cole
was attacked, the FBI sent a team led by John O'Neill who immediately
suspected Israeli involvement. Bodine started an intense political
battle to oust O'Neill.
Bodine wanted to control the investigation, and resented the fact that
suddenly there were hundreds of FBI personnel in the country. Albright
provided a handful of State Department personnel to watch the investigation.
Albright and Bodine Panic as O'Neill Investigation Points to Israel
Albright complains to upper echelons of the FBI about O'Neill.
Bodine wanted O'Neill to drop his bodyguards and he became suspicious of
Mossad assassination. Bodine and Madeleine Albright finally went to the
Zionist Jewish FBI Director, Louis Freeh, to remove John O'Neill from
Yemen. Then January 2001 came, and O'Neill wanted to go back to Yemen.
But, Ambassador Bodine wouldn't give him clearance. In July 2001, O'Neill
resigned from the FBI.
Larry Silverstein Offered Him a Job
In September of 2001, mere days before 9/11, he got a job offer from
Larry Silverstein (owner of WTC). Oddly, O'Neill was missing for two
days before 9/11 miraculously his body was discovered in tact in the WTC
ruins...
John P. O'Neill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._O%27Neill
Charges dropped in USS Cole terror trial
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29042139/
USS Cole suspects escape ....
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_War_on_Terror
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2940251.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ9l02p-Hvw&eurl=http://dragoscopio.blogspot.com/&feature=player_embedded
http://www.oilempire.us/books-911.html
http://seedoftruth.com/911media.html
The named suspects: the French Rothschild, part of the Biderman-DuPont family, the Sauds, (David) Rockefeller, some Dutch royals, Prince Phillip, a NY investment family named "Gold"-something (appears to be Goldman), Netanyahu, Bush Sr., Gen. Hugh Shelton (commander of the joint chiefs before and during 9-11), and others numbering some _3000-4000"--not named yet. Fritz Thyssen, the prime financer of Hitler's rise, was also mentioned obliquely (the obliqueness perhaps owing to the horrendous design of Thyssen's work--the source apparently wanted us to do the final footwork on his case). The source(s) of these reports have demonstrated a highly advanced ability to tease out breakthrough details of communications that are reported at critical junctures, here...
I should add that a sustained effort was made to tease out and test and further details about the subjects. Corroboration, sometimes tacit admission was seen--sometimes from quarters that few would normally suspect. Again, these sources are unusually capable and they work outside the nominal structure of the named suspects...
-----
As 2009 gets underway, it is obvious that the so-called "War on Terrorism"
has not only failed miserably but has turned into its opposite.
Osama bin-Laden has not been captured, and he recently delivered another
public message - but he and al-Qaeda, the organization he leads that was
responsible for the 9/11 attacks, have become only minor, entirely secondary
players in the global terrorism offensive.
Two other organizations have seized the leadership of the worldwide
terrorist movement, and they now represent a danger a thousand times greater
than al-Qaeda and all the other real and imagined terrorist groups put
together.
Over the years the new outlaw chiefs wormed their way into terrorist
leadership by deceiving world nations into believing that they actually
opposed terrorism - all the while committing horrendous violence against
civilian populations from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza and the West Bank.
What makes these two terrorist groups all the worse is that instead of
slingshots, box cutters, and rifles, suicide belts and imprecise short-range
rockets, they command huge, heavily equipped armies, unparalleled air
supremacy, and the most cutting edge weapons of mass death and destruction
including nuclear warheads and delivery systems.
Above all, they hold state power and, absurdly enough, this allows them to
get away with mass terror against civilian populations and the torture of
suspects under interrogation.
We speak, of course, of the United States and its junior partner in the
Middle East, Israel.
The senior partner has been responsible for the deaths of over a million
Iraqi citizens as a consequence of its unjust, illegal and immoral invasion
and occupation for nearly six years. Another million Iraqi civilians died
from the killer sanctions and frequent bombing raids conducted by this same
state terrorist from 1991 to 2003, ending with the invasion. The U.S. has
killed many thousands in Afghanistan as well during more than seven years of
war and is preparing to vastly increase the number of its troops in that
country, insuring that the slaughter of civilians will expand exponentially.
The junior partner - supported and enabled by its patron - launched hi-tech
wars in the summer of 2006 against its neighbor Lebanon (killing over 1,400
Lebanese civilians and destroying the homes of 30.000 more families), and
destroying Lebanon's infrastructure, roads, factories and more, all the while
leaving an ecological and medical disaster for decades with depleted uranium
munitions and other toxic munitions. In the Palestinian Territory of Gaza,
suffering few casualties of its own.
Between the end of the first Gaza war in 2006 and the start of the second a
few weeks ago, well over a thousand Gazans were slain in various Israeli
attacks, compared to less than 20 who fell in Israel.
The 23-day Gaza war that began Dec. 27 continued state terrorism's penchant
for disproportionate casualties. The terrorists destroyed or badly damaged
the homes of 25,000 families (leaving 50,000 people homeless); they
destroyed or damaged eight clearly identified hospitals, 26 health clinics;
they targeted ambulances, schools, some 20 mosques, 50 UN facilities
including food storage warehouses, 1,500 workplaces and factories, and 16
main government buildings including parliament- a war crime of extraordinary
magnitude that was totally and publicly supported by the bigger state
terrorist. Much of the destruction was caused by over 2,300 air strikes and
from tanks. Gaza has neither airplanes, tanks or anti-aircraft weapons.
The state terrorists killed over 1,400 people on the Palestinian side,
mostly civilians including about 415 children, compared to 13 deaths on the
aggressor side - soldiers (some by "friendly fire") and three civilians.
Instead of an eye for an eye, they gouged more than 100 eyes for each eye -
state terrorism's reinterpretation of the biblical law of retribution. If
God's on your side, or better yet the United States, you can rewrite any
rule.
About 5,500 Gazans were wounded, some suffering terrible agonies after being
burned with white phosphorus. It's illegal to direct this toxic substance at
civilians, but then again the entire operation was illegal in international
law, unjust in terms of the ethical definition of war, and immoral for those
with consistent religious or secular principles. Israel will never suffer
substantial sanctions or censure from the UN Security Council or the
European Union because the powerful United States always comes to the aid of
its junior partner.
For the last few decades the Tel Aviv government has initiated wars so
disproportionate in violence and cruelty that David and Goliath by
comparison were virtual equals in strength. Israel has been following a
conscious policy of targeting Palestinian civilian populations and the civil
infrastructure in order to inflict so much damage that all resistance to its
illegal occupation and domination of the Palestinian Territories is broken
for good. Virtually every significant target hit by Israeli bombs and tanks
was pre-selected in the months leading up to the latest war.
We oppose the intentional targeting of civilians by any side, but it is
self-serving and transparently dishonest and cynical to equate the
small-scale violence of the oppressed with the massive violence of the
oppressor.
The leadership in both Washington and Tel Aviv is changing. Will this result
in more or less state violence?
In the United States, new President Barack Obama is superior to President
George W. Bush, the departed war monger. The new government cannot help but
put a better face on things after eight years of leadership by an individual
recently described as a "blood-soaked moron" by Israeli peace movement
figures....
But will an Obama Administration pressure Israel to totally withdraw its
troops, administrators and all its settlements from the Palestinian
Territories it has illegally occupied since 1967, paving the way for the
start of serious negotiations to bring about two equal states? (A single,
bi-national state of Jews and Arabs living in harmony, an ideal solution
still advocated by some, remains a far distant possibility.) Will the new
administration insist, or mildly suggest, that the Israel it supports
economically, militarily and politically dismantle the virtual prison it has
constructed around the people of Gaza?
Referring to the recent war, which Israel suspended as planned just before
the inauguration of Barack Obama, the new president on Jan. 22 condemned the
Hamas government for the rocket fire into Israel and supported Israel's
bombardment and invasion of Gaza. He did not see fit to mention the obvious
war crime of intentionally targeting a mass civilian population. Obama did
indicate that his administration supported a two-state solution to the
ongoing crisis, as have several U.S. presidents before him, and he declared
that "our hearts go out to" the suffering civilian population of Gaza."
Politically, Obama lined up with Israel in brushing aside the democratically
elected Hamas government and urged Palestinians and Arab nations to get
behind the weak and dependent government of President Mahmoud Abbas.
The new U.S. administration may be less callous toward the Palestinians than
the Bush Administration, but to the extent there will be any change at all
in U.S. policy, we believe it will be cosmetic unless Washington is willing
to sharply confront the Tel Aviv authorities. Look at it this way:
President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, State Dept. Middle East expert Dennis Ross,
National Security Council Middle East expert Daniel Shapiro, and all the
congressional and Democratic Party leaders are solidly pro-Israel and
pro-Zionist, and have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not friends of
the Palestinian people. Just days ago, both the Senate and House of
Representatives voted overwhelmingly to support Israel's terrorist onslaught
against Gaza. Only four House Democrats and one libertarian Republican voted
"no," and 22 Democrats (including Rep. Maurice Hinchey from the Hudson
Valley) voted "present." This hardly augurs well for the Palestinian people.
The new Israeli government to be elected Feb. 10 will either be led by the
far right Likud Party, backed by similar far right parties, or a combination
of the right wing Kadima party (Ariel Sharon's split off from Likud that is
occasionally and erroneously termed "centrist") and the center-right Labor
Party (the third strongest), as now. Public opinion polls indicate a close
race with a tilt toward Likud. No matter who wins, both parties are
committed to the status quo, or worse.
The present Kadima/Labor coalition government is led by the disgraced
President Ehud Olmert (a former Likud member not running for reelection, and
an unindicted war criminal, just like Bush) who initiated the new offensive
against Gaza in hopes of winning his party's reelection after what many
believe was a disastrous blunder in conducting the unjust Lebanon war two
summers ago.
If Likud wins, its chairman, extreme rightist former Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, will take power. He will not lead Israel to finally withdraw from
the Occupied Territories, thus obliterating the chance of peace on his
watch. On Jan. 13, Netanyahu insisted that Israel must remove
democratically-elected Hamas from power in Gaza. Olmert wanted to do this
too, but failed, which means another war may be on Israel's agenda.
Both Likud and the Kadima/Labor coalition are seeking support from key minor
parties such as Shas, and Yisrael Beiteinu. Some sources still believe the
Kadima/Labor alignment will trump Likud and its allies in the end, possibly
bringing former Likud member Tzipi Livni to power. She is Kadima/Labor's
hard-line foreign minister (and justice minister simultaneously). Waiting in
the coalition's wings for her to fail is the current defense minister, Labor
party chairman Ehud Barak, evidently the main civilian directing the recent
Gaza war.
The key player in this entire situation is not to be found in Tel Aviv or
Gaza/West Bank, but in the United States, the world's self-appointed
unipolar hegemon and only military superpower. Washington has been Tel
Aviv's enabler for four decades, increasing to the point where some
speculate, incorrectly, that the tail is wagging the dog.
Israel may have the most powerful army in the Middle East, and an
exceptionally strong propaganda apparatus in the U.S. (including most of the
American corporate media), but it remains quite dependent upon Washington's
support. If the U.S. were to threaten to terminate its huge annual subsidies
and supply of war weapons, and end its blocking of UN Security Council
censure and sanctions and other measures that would take Tel Aviv to task,
Israel probably would come around quickly enough. Such a development would
benefit not only the Palestinians but without a doubt the people of Israel
as well.
This is what makes it so important for American progressives to focus
intense pressure on the Obama Administration to adopt a balanced position in
regard to Israel and the Palestinians. Peace will come to the region when
Washington withdraws its support for Israel's intransigence and obliges the
Tel Aviv government to pull back to its pre-June 1967 borders and engage in
genuine negotiations with the Palestinians. And both Washington and Tel Aviv
must discontinue their policy of splitting the Palestinian people, and start
talking to Hamas now.
This will take some time, and Washington will resist. But it remains the
only solution to 60 years of almost continual crises that have caused
historic displacement and hardship for the Palestinian people, insecurity
for the Israeli people, second class citizenship for Israeli Arabs, and
severe disequilibrium throughout Middle East. Success will mean a great
reduction in regional tensions and the removal of Israel from the ranks of
state terrorists.
Of course, this will leave one state terrorist standing, the grimmest of
reapers in terms of lives lost and hopes crushed:
The one that slaughtered several million Vietnamese and Cambodians in a
gratuitous, illegal war; the one that 10 years ago illegally and unjustly
bombed Serbian Yugoslavia every day for nearly three months; the one that
has caused terrible injury to the people of Iraq; the one that has bombed,
invaded, or violently subverted scores of countries over recent decades; the
one that succeeded in overthrowing the democratically-elected secular
government in Iran, that led to a brutal monarchy eventually dispatched by
the present theocracy; the one that overthrew the democratically-elected
government in Chile, leading to many years of fascist dictatorship; the one
that helped to overthrow the leftist government in Afghanistan that
ultimately led to the Taliban, al-Qaeda and 9/11; the one that tried but
failed to overthrow the democratically-elected government in Venezuela a few
years ago; and the one that has been trying to destroy socialist Cuba for 50
years.
We are writing this article in the hours after watching President Obama's
inauguration on TV. His speech was moving, as always. The immense crowd was
euphoric. The hope for change was palpable. His talk was about how America
became great, and how his administration will make it greater still, and how
he will see to it U.S. leadership is going to prevail in the world. He
talked about making our country stronger and winning the war against
terrorism.
There wasn't a word about the terrible violence and terrorism Washington has
let loose upon a continuous succession of countries and peoples until this
very day; nor was there a word about ending it. There were no hints of
substantive changes to come in foreign and military affairs.
We agree that more time must pass before final conclusions are possible
about the Obama Administration's international policies. The possibility of
a positive change to one degree or another cannot be ruled out entirely. But
on the basis of the situation today, it seems to us that militarism in quest
of hegemony, the use of mammoth force against small countries, and building
an ever more deadly military machine will remain a principal aspect of
American policy during the Obama Administration as it has for every previous
administration since the end of World War II.
We hope to be proven wrong, but in the meantime it's best to remember that
state terrorism is as state terrorism does, not as it says it does....