Joe Liebermann’s Rogue Family
By now everyone must have heard about how the US Vice President Joe Biden was diplomatically smacked by the Israeli government. Many have blamed the hard-line conservative Israeli interior ministry for ill-timing the announcement about Israeli government’s decision to build 1600 housing complexes in the Occupied West Bank, but not the decision itself. That is, in their estimate, if the Government of Israeli (GOI) had announced the decision at a different time than Biden’s visit to the Holy Land the apparent embarrassment could have been avoided. I simply don’t accept such an explanation! How could a clear violation of international laws and repeated UN resolutions be acceptable practice if it were done at a different time?
As I said elsewhere, the US government cannot expect the GOI to take it seriously on its opposition to the settlement activities when it continues to reward the rogue state year after year with billions of dollars of economic and military aid for every such unlawful and criminal activity. The last year, it was the Gaza, some years before that it was Jenin, and now it is Biden’s visit. Who knows what is in the sleeves of these Zionist mass murderers tomorrow!
A measured response from Biden could have entailed taking an about turn and flying back home to Washington D.C. without meeting Netanyahu. As a blind supporter of the GOI all his life and an ardent Christian Zionist himself, Biden did not have the moral courage and guts to do what was needed to show Obama Administration’s seriousness about its opposition to the illegal settlement activities in the West Bank and the goal of promoting peace in the troubled area. We should have known what not to expect from the man who had famously said, “You need not be a Jew to be a Zionist!”
Well, Biden is not the only one in Washington who feels so strongly about the rogue state. When the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – the powerful Israeli lobby - holds its annual conference next week in Washington D.C., we shall be reminded by those sycophants how greatly they are committed to the interest of the state of Israel. The star-studded roster of American, British, and Israeli leaders include Secretary Clinton who will deliver her keynote speech on Monday. Israeli leaders Netanyahu and Livni are also expected to speak later that day. Tony Blair, ex-PM of Britain will speak on Tuesday. A host of U.S. lawmakers, Jewish and Christian Zionists, will also attend the conference. AIPAC, in statement released last Sunday, has already called the Obama Administration's statements "a matter of serious concern" and added, "AIPAC calls on the administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State." Only an organization like the AIPAC can get away from such audacious demands in the USA!
Those with Jewish heritage in the US Capitol Hill cannot suppress their emotional attachment to the spoiled kid within the family. Consider the statement from the Jewish senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who recently said, “Let’s cut the family fighting. It’s unnecessary; it’s destructive of our shared national interest. It’s time to lower voices, to get over the family feud between the U.S. and Israel. It just doesn’t serve anybody’s interests but our enemies’.” How wonderful! So, Israel is part of the family of the USA! I didn’t know when that transformation or family link was established.
Well, we can see some similarities in birth-marks and rearing – both were colonial enterprises that had succeeded in grabbing land that did not belong to them by displacing and killing the indigenous people, albeit one was a recent demonstration of that very sad tragedy while the other one was a much older one – more than two hundred years old. Both colonization schemes were led by the white European invaders or fortune-hunters and included some refugees escaping hunger and war. For a long time, when the civilized world in Asia, Africa and Latin America (including some enlightened ones within the heartlands of Europe – the very continent that had hitherto colonized the rest of the world and gave currency to such terms as genocide, pogroms, holocaust, ethnic cleansing and xenophobia) had agreed that apartheid was a dirty word, both these countries had clung to it and voted together in the UN, opposing any condemnation of the racist system. Eventually, the USA was able to get out of that poisonous mindset and evolve, which helped to trigger the dawn of an anti-apartheid South Africa of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo. But not Israel! She remains the only apartheid state in our time. As such, while the US domestic policy has taken a quantum leap to become internally plural and integrating, Israel -- the other racist and apartheid entity -- continues to go the opposite way deeper and deeper. Nevertheless, in the troubled Middle East, she is still deemed a partner of the USA -- a harmful one, if we can call a spade a spade!
Such an objective fact and data-based analysis, requiring condemnation of Israel for its sabotaging and backstabbing acts, however, cannot be expected from someone like Joe Lieberman who has been an unapologetic promoter of the Israeli interest in the USA. To guys like him, Israel comes first, ahead of the USA. So, it is not difficult to understand why he did not come to defend Biden and censure his Khajarite cousins in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Instead, his censuring remarks were aimed at everyone (including the Obama Administration) that had chided the rogue state for its ungrateful act during Biden’s recent visit to Israel. To him, we should all forget the embarrassment within our dysfunctional family and go about doing our usual stuffs; Israel can harm our national interest, but it is excusable since she belongs to our family!
I refuse to accept that line of claptrap, baloney explanations from anyone, much less from an unabashed friend of the state of Israel. Sooner or later the American public must come to the realization that Israeli interest has been always and remains today detrimental to our American national interest for the region. We would have been much better off today without such a blind patronage of the rogue state and its marauding activities. We won’t have all those wars in which thousands of our American soldiers died and got injured. We won't have 9/11. We won’t have Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. We won’t have Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to deal with simultaneously. We won’t have the economic meltdown, unemployment and financial crisis that plague our economy today. Lest we forget many of those filthy rich bankers, financiers, Ponzy pyramid schemers and Wall Street crooks and frauds were dual citizens of the state of Israel, who took us for a steep downward ride in which tens of millions of our people lost all their lifetime savings, and don’t have jobs to work and homes to live in today. And yet, we continue to bankroll the rogue state while abandoning much needed stimulus activities at home. There is a term to explain our government attitude: it is called insanity. We simply have lost our minds and are unmindful of our national priorities in times of crisis. How long can we afford to behave like an ostrich with its head buried under the sand?
With her hundreds of WMDs and nuclear arsenals, the damn-care attitude in international affairs and lack of respect for human lives at home against the native Palestinians, Israel remains the most dangerous state on earth. Any objective-minded historian that has studied the past and analyzed the current activities of the rogue state will agree to this harsh review. But facts are facts and cannot be hidden under the rug, at least for too long.
In a recent press interview, broadcast by a Hebrew radio, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld (author of the book – The Culture of War) stated that Israel could find itself one day forced to exterminate the European continent using all kinds of weapons including its nuclear arsenal if it felt its demise neared, stressing that Israel also considers Europe a hostile target. “We have hundreds of nuclear warheads and missiles that can reach different targets in the heart of the European continent, including beyond the borders of Rome, the Italian capital,” Creveld said, adding that most of the European capitals would become preferred targets for the Israeli air force. As for the Palestinians, Creveld said that Israel at the present time pursues a specific strategy based on mass deportation of the Palestinian people and has intentions to expel all Palestinians without exception, but it is awaiting the right moment to take this step. Replying to a question whether Israel has fears of being classified as a criminal state if it expelled Palestinians, he said, “Israel is a state that does not care about what others say about it and you must remember the saying of former defense minister Moshe Dayan when he said that ‘Israel must always act as a wild dog because it should be dangerous in the eyes of others, rather than be harmed.’”
This statement, straight from the mouth of Israel's military historian, sums it up for Israel's attitude towards others, including the indigenous Palestinians. In his talk, Creveld highlighted that Israel must take advantage of any incident that would give it a golden opportunity to expel the Palestinians as she did following the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948. Much that the friends of Israel won’t admit in the public, what Creveld said is the ground reality since Day 1 of her occupation of the Palestinian territories. The latest Gaza massacre was only a footnote to that blood-soaked history of elimination. What has been annexed by force will not be returned to the dispossessed people! Peace is not what Israel desires but hypocrisy is -- which allows for negotiations that are aimed at extracting more concessions from the displaced while giving away nothing. So, the Israeli security concerns become the main focus of such discussions but not the land that was annexed earlier illegally.
Currently, there are two Arab/Muslim narratives to dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. One, a majoritarian view, which says that America is capable of disciplining her spoiled brat - Israel; so, give her a chance to fix the problem equitably. The other, a minority view, held by some pragmatic and yet revolutionary elements within the groups like the Hamas, which says that America is not a neutral broker and cannot, therefore, be trusted to deliver on her promise for a Palestinian homeland within the pre-1967 border; and as such, prolonged struggle with Israel is the only option left open. However, the current events, especially Israel’s preference for continued settlement activities in Arab Jerusalem and other parts of West Bank, including embarrassing Biden – a long-time cheerleader for the state, show that the majoritarian view may be wrong.
As to the Israeli side, there are three narratives, according to Thomas Friedman of the New Times. In a March 17, 2010 op/ed, he writes: “Ever since Israel occupied the West Bank and its Palestinian population in 1967, Israelis have faced a dilemma: Do they want a Jewish state, a democratic state and state in all of the land of Israel (Israel plus the West Bank)? In this world, they can have only two out of three. Israel can be Jewish and democratic, but not if it keeps the West Bank, because the Palestinians there plus all the Israeli Arabs will eventually outnumber the Jews. It can be Jewish and keep the West Bank, but then it can’t be democratic; Arabs will be the majority. It can be democratic and keep the West Bank, but then it can’t be Jewish.” However, as noted by Israeli historian Creveld and others the majoritarian view today appears to favor a Jewish state without the presence of (i.e., by expelling) the native Palestinians.
If the Obama administration is serious about a peaceful resolution to the crisis, much in common with the wishes of the vast majority in the Middle East, it is high time for it to wake up to the troubling realities of Israeli actions which undermine its stated objectives and goals for the region and get its acts together. It should know that it cannot expect to discipline a bully overnight when all these years it has not only turned blind eyes to its excesses and savagery but rewarded it handsomely with billions of dollars of aid packages, a practice which continues even today to the embarrassment of many who had believed in Obama. Those tax dollars to Israel have gone into buying Caterpillar tractors that killed an American - Rachel Corrie, let alone demolished thousands of Palestinian homes and shops, and tens of hospitals and schools, and destroyed the entire infrastructure inside the Palestinian held territories. Those American handouts have also enabled Israel to buy American ammunition, tanks and planes that killed American servicemen in the USS Liberty, let alone killing thousands of unarmed Palestinian civilians including infants. It is not difficult to understand why such aids must stop. And there is no better time than right now to act on such wise measures.
But will the White House and Capitol Hill understand such ground realities and straighten its rogue ‘family member’? Or, will it continue to defend her, risking all the goodwill in the post-Bush era? Which one?
As I said elsewhere, the US government cannot expect the GOI to take it seriously on its opposition to the settlement activities when it continues to reward the rogue state year after year with billions of dollars of economic and military aid for every such unlawful and criminal activity. The last year, it was the Gaza, some years before that it was Jenin, and now it is Biden’s visit. Who knows what is in the sleeves of these Zionist mass murderers tomorrow!
A measured response from Biden could have entailed taking an about turn and flying back home to Washington D.C. without meeting Netanyahu. As a blind supporter of the GOI all his life and an ardent Christian Zionist himself, Biden did not have the moral courage and guts to do what was needed to show Obama Administration’s seriousness about its opposition to the illegal settlement activities in the West Bank and the goal of promoting peace in the troubled area. We should have known what not to expect from the man who had famously said, “You need not be a Jew to be a Zionist!”
Well, Biden is not the only one in Washington who feels so strongly about the rogue state. When the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – the powerful Israeli lobby - holds its annual conference next week in Washington D.C., we shall be reminded by those sycophants how greatly they are committed to the interest of the state of Israel. The star-studded roster of American, British, and Israeli leaders include Secretary Clinton who will deliver her keynote speech on Monday. Israeli leaders Netanyahu and Livni are also expected to speak later that day. Tony Blair, ex-PM of Britain will speak on Tuesday. A host of U.S. lawmakers, Jewish and Christian Zionists, will also attend the conference. AIPAC, in statement released last Sunday, has already called the Obama Administration's statements "a matter of serious concern" and added, "AIPAC calls on the administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State." Only an organization like the AIPAC can get away from such audacious demands in the USA!
Those with Jewish heritage in the US Capitol Hill cannot suppress their emotional attachment to the spoiled kid within the family. Consider the statement from the Jewish senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who recently said, “Let’s cut the family fighting. It’s unnecessary; it’s destructive of our shared national interest. It’s time to lower voices, to get over the family feud between the U.S. and Israel. It just doesn’t serve anybody’s interests but our enemies’.” How wonderful! So, Israel is part of the family of the USA! I didn’t know when that transformation or family link was established.
Well, we can see some similarities in birth-marks and rearing – both were colonial enterprises that had succeeded in grabbing land that did not belong to them by displacing and killing the indigenous people, albeit one was a recent demonstration of that very sad tragedy while the other one was a much older one – more than two hundred years old. Both colonization schemes were led by the white European invaders or fortune-hunters and included some refugees escaping hunger and war. For a long time, when the civilized world in Asia, Africa and Latin America (including some enlightened ones within the heartlands of Europe – the very continent that had hitherto colonized the rest of the world and gave currency to such terms as genocide, pogroms, holocaust, ethnic cleansing and xenophobia) had agreed that apartheid was a dirty word, both these countries had clung to it and voted together in the UN, opposing any condemnation of the racist system. Eventually, the USA was able to get out of that poisonous mindset and evolve, which helped to trigger the dawn of an anti-apartheid South Africa of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo. But not Israel! She remains the only apartheid state in our time. As such, while the US domestic policy has taken a quantum leap to become internally plural and integrating, Israel -- the other racist and apartheid entity -- continues to go the opposite way deeper and deeper. Nevertheless, in the troubled Middle East, she is still deemed a partner of the USA -- a harmful one, if we can call a spade a spade!
Such an objective fact and data-based analysis, requiring condemnation of Israel for its sabotaging and backstabbing acts, however, cannot be expected from someone like Joe Lieberman who has been an unapologetic promoter of the Israeli interest in the USA. To guys like him, Israel comes first, ahead of the USA. So, it is not difficult to understand why he did not come to defend Biden and censure his Khajarite cousins in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Instead, his censuring remarks were aimed at everyone (including the Obama Administration) that had chided the rogue state for its ungrateful act during Biden’s recent visit to Israel. To him, we should all forget the embarrassment within our dysfunctional family and go about doing our usual stuffs; Israel can harm our national interest, but it is excusable since she belongs to our family!
I refuse to accept that line of claptrap, baloney explanations from anyone, much less from an unabashed friend of the state of Israel. Sooner or later the American public must come to the realization that Israeli interest has been always and remains today detrimental to our American national interest for the region. We would have been much better off today without such a blind patronage of the rogue state and its marauding activities. We won’t have all those wars in which thousands of our American soldiers died and got injured. We won't have 9/11. We won’t have Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. We won’t have Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to deal with simultaneously. We won’t have the economic meltdown, unemployment and financial crisis that plague our economy today. Lest we forget many of those filthy rich bankers, financiers, Ponzy pyramid schemers and Wall Street crooks and frauds were dual citizens of the state of Israel, who took us for a steep downward ride in which tens of millions of our people lost all their lifetime savings, and don’t have jobs to work and homes to live in today. And yet, we continue to bankroll the rogue state while abandoning much needed stimulus activities at home. There is a term to explain our government attitude: it is called insanity. We simply have lost our minds and are unmindful of our national priorities in times of crisis. How long can we afford to behave like an ostrich with its head buried under the sand?
With her hundreds of WMDs and nuclear arsenals, the damn-care attitude in international affairs and lack of respect for human lives at home against the native Palestinians, Israel remains the most dangerous state on earth. Any objective-minded historian that has studied the past and analyzed the current activities of the rogue state will agree to this harsh review. But facts are facts and cannot be hidden under the rug, at least for too long.
In a recent press interview, broadcast by a Hebrew radio, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld (author of the book – The Culture of War) stated that Israel could find itself one day forced to exterminate the European continent using all kinds of weapons including its nuclear arsenal if it felt its demise neared, stressing that Israel also considers Europe a hostile target. “We have hundreds of nuclear warheads and missiles that can reach different targets in the heart of the European continent, including beyond the borders of Rome, the Italian capital,” Creveld said, adding that most of the European capitals would become preferred targets for the Israeli air force. As for the Palestinians, Creveld said that Israel at the present time pursues a specific strategy based on mass deportation of the Palestinian people and has intentions to expel all Palestinians without exception, but it is awaiting the right moment to take this step. Replying to a question whether Israel has fears of being classified as a criminal state if it expelled Palestinians, he said, “Israel is a state that does not care about what others say about it and you must remember the saying of former defense minister Moshe Dayan when he said that ‘Israel must always act as a wild dog because it should be dangerous in the eyes of others, rather than be harmed.’”
This statement, straight from the mouth of Israel's military historian, sums it up for Israel's attitude towards others, including the indigenous Palestinians. In his talk, Creveld highlighted that Israel must take advantage of any incident that would give it a golden opportunity to expel the Palestinians as she did following the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948. Much that the friends of Israel won’t admit in the public, what Creveld said is the ground reality since Day 1 of her occupation of the Palestinian territories. The latest Gaza massacre was only a footnote to that blood-soaked history of elimination. What has been annexed by force will not be returned to the dispossessed people! Peace is not what Israel desires but hypocrisy is -- which allows for negotiations that are aimed at extracting more concessions from the displaced while giving away nothing. So, the Israeli security concerns become the main focus of such discussions but not the land that was annexed earlier illegally.
Currently, there are two Arab/Muslim narratives to dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. One, a majoritarian view, which says that America is capable of disciplining her spoiled brat - Israel; so, give her a chance to fix the problem equitably. The other, a minority view, held by some pragmatic and yet revolutionary elements within the groups like the Hamas, which says that America is not a neutral broker and cannot, therefore, be trusted to deliver on her promise for a Palestinian homeland within the pre-1967 border; and as such, prolonged struggle with Israel is the only option left open. However, the current events, especially Israel’s preference for continued settlement activities in Arab Jerusalem and other parts of West Bank, including embarrassing Biden – a long-time cheerleader for the state, show that the majoritarian view may be wrong.
As to the Israeli side, there are three narratives, according to Thomas Friedman of the New Times. In a March 17, 2010 op/ed, he writes: “Ever since Israel occupied the West Bank and its Palestinian population in 1967, Israelis have faced a dilemma: Do they want a Jewish state, a democratic state and state in all of the land of Israel (Israel plus the West Bank)? In this world, they can have only two out of three. Israel can be Jewish and democratic, but not if it keeps the West Bank, because the Palestinians there plus all the Israeli Arabs will eventually outnumber the Jews. It can be Jewish and keep the West Bank, but then it can’t be democratic; Arabs will be the majority. It can be democratic and keep the West Bank, but then it can’t be Jewish.” However, as noted by Israeli historian Creveld and others the majoritarian view today appears to favor a Jewish state without the presence of (i.e., by expelling) the native Palestinians.
If the Obama administration is serious about a peaceful resolution to the crisis, much in common with the wishes of the vast majority in the Middle East, it is high time for it to wake up to the troubling realities of Israeli actions which undermine its stated objectives and goals for the region and get its acts together. It should know that it cannot expect to discipline a bully overnight when all these years it has not only turned blind eyes to its excesses and savagery but rewarded it handsomely with billions of dollars of aid packages, a practice which continues even today to the embarrassment of many who had believed in Obama. Those tax dollars to Israel have gone into buying Caterpillar tractors that killed an American - Rachel Corrie, let alone demolished thousands of Palestinian homes and shops, and tens of hospitals and schools, and destroyed the entire infrastructure inside the Palestinian held territories. Those American handouts have also enabled Israel to buy American ammunition, tanks and planes that killed American servicemen in the USS Liberty, let alone killing thousands of unarmed Palestinian civilians including infants. It is not difficult to understand why such aids must stop. And there is no better time than right now to act on such wise measures.
But will the White House and Capitol Hill understand such ground realities and straighten its rogue ‘family member’? Or, will it continue to defend her, risking all the goodwill in the post-Bush era? Which one?
PRETRIB RAPTURE POLITICS
ReplyDeleteMany are still unaware of the eccentric, 180-year-old British theory underlying the politics of American evangelicals and Christian Zionists.
Journalist and historian Dave MacPherson has spent more than 40 years focusing on the origin and spread of what is known as the apocalyptic "pretribulation rapture" - the inspiration behind Hal Lindsey's bestsellers of the 1970s and Tim LaHaye's today.
Although promoters of this endtime evacuation from earth constantly repeat their slogan that "it's imminent and always has been" (which critics view more as a sales pitch than a scriptural statement), it was unknown in all official theology and organized religion before 1830.
And MacPherson's research also reveals how hostile the pretrib rapture view has been to other faiths:
It is anti-Islam. TV preacher John Hagee has been advocating "a pre-emptive military strike against Iran." (Google "Roots of Warlike Christian Zionism.")
It is anti-Jewish. MacPherson's book "The Rapture Plot" (see Armageddon Books etc.) exposes hypocritical anti-Jewishness in even the theory's foundation.
It is anti-Catholic. Lindsey and C. I. Scofield are two of many leaders who claim that the final Antichrist will be a Roman Catholic. (Google "Pretrib Hypocrisy.")
It is anti-Protestant. For this reason no major Protestant denomination has ever adopted this escapist view.
It even has some anti-evangelical aspects. The first publication promoting this novel endtime view spoke degradingly of "the name by which the mixed multitude of modern Moabites love to be distinguished, - the Evangelical World." (MacPherson's "Plot," p. 85)
Despite the above, MacPherson proves that the "glue" that holds constantly in-fighting evangelicals together long enough to be victorious voting blocs in elections is the same "fly away" view. He notes that Jerry Falwell, when giving political speeches just before an election, would unfailingly state: "We believe in the pretribulational rapture!"
In addition to "The Rapture Plot," MacPherson's many internet articles include "Famous Rapture Watchers," "Pretrib Rapture Diehards," "Edward Irving is Unnerving," "America's Pretrib Rapture Traffickers," "Thomas Ice (Bloopers)," "Pretrib Rapture Secrecy" and "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty" (massive plagiarism, phony doctorates, changing of early "rapture" documents in order to falsely credit John Darby with this view, etc.!).
Because of his devastating discoveries, MacPherson is now No. 1 on the "hate" list of pretrib rapture leaders!
There's no question that the leading promoters of this bizarre 19th century end-of-the-world doctrine are solidly pro-Israel and necessarily anti-Palestinian. In light of recently uncovered facts about this fringe-British-invented belief which has always been riddled with dishonesty, many are wondering why it should ever have any influence on Middle East affairs.
This Johnny-come-lately view raises millions of dollars for political agendas. Only when scholars of all faiths begin to look deeply at it and widely air its "dirty linen" will it cease to be a power. It is the one theological view no one needs!
With apologies to Winston Churchill - never has so much deception been foisted on so many by so few!