Larry Derfner writes:
This week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared: “We must expose the hypocrisy of human rights organizations that turn a blind eye to the most repressive regimes in the world, regimes that stone women and hang gays, and instead target the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.”
He was reacting to the publication of a pair of long, comprehensive reports on the occupation, one by the IDF reservists’ organization Breaking the Silence, the other by Human Rights Watch.
Netanyahu’s statement, however, contained two lies. First, organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Oxfam don’t turn a blind eye to the world’s most repressive regimes; just the opposite. They report continually on dictatorships across Asia and Africa, documenting persecution of women, gays, dissidents, minorities and other victims. In fact, it’s largely because of human rights reports about such persecution that Netanyahu and the rest of us are aware of it.
Second, while Israel is a democracy at home (though not a liberal one, certainly not with the political atmosphere of the last decade), it isn’t anyone’s idea of a democracy in the West Bank and Arab east Jerusalem (nor on the border, seacoast and in the airspace of Gaza).
In the democratic world, Israel’s armed domination of the Palestinians is unique. It didn’t used to be, but now it is one-of-a-kind. This country’s occupation of Palestinian territory is the last bastion of colonialism in the free world.
People forget that. Which is why we need human rights reports like “Israeli Soldier Testimonies, 2000-2010” from Breaking the Silence and “Separate and Unequal” from Human Rights Watch – to force people to remember the simple, awful truth.
What the war criminal Netanyahu has to sat has the same value and weight of what ObaOba has to say or any other ordinary war criminal has to say…
Today there is a good interview with Julian assange on Al Jaseera. It is much better than what this dog (Netanyahu) vomits.
I don’t know how Derfner can assert that Israel is even a “democracy at home,” having duly taken care to distinguish what it is doing all around the periphery of its little Jewish ethnocracy. “At home” it’s busy clamping down on liberals, secularists, NGO’s, academics, foreigners, anti-militarists, and its own 1.5 million Palestinians. That Israel has a “limited but vital democracy” (my words) within its own narrow midst is a conventional view that should be regularly spat upon.
What Netanyahu– NO ISRAELI– refuses to recognize is that Israel is a cannibalistic fetus of a state living off of an engorged American placenta. All the Arab states we support we support out of national interest. Israel we support, according to the neocons, because we’re “dumb goyim.” But as the mother suffers ill health, so invariably does the fetus. Eventually, the mother may well go for an abortion , deeming the cannibal fetus a threat to her life. What then Bibi, just more hasbara? Can’t you see that you’re fooling no one….especially not Diaspora Jews?
You can’t have your Greater Israel. Just when you think you fooled and intimidated everyone it will slip out of your hands…and much more too. Better to become a genuine peace partner than a shyster because you ARE NOT dealing with “dumb goyim.”
Power drives them mad. Desperation when the challenge becomes greater than lie, signals either a reevaluation of priorities, or else downfall. Regardless of who initially is on top, there is always a reshuffle of the deck. Today, what happens in one corner of the World, becomes known yo the rest that same day. When your in the select group in the Middle East, it’s almost instantaneously exposed to the rest . The writing is on the wall, with countries in South America recognizing the 1967 border agreement for the Palestinians, it won’t take long before it becomes a groundswell and the majority if not the rest of the World follows suit. The U.S. may resist for a while?, but will join the others, as this situation is both an embarrassment to & a drain on the U.S. The Israelis have overplayed their hand, are now in desperate mode, short of blowing up every part of the middle east that their planes can reach, not with conventional bombs but the Nuclear stockpile. Today, Israel is acting like the bully in the sand box, and if it can’t have its way, it destroy all the other sand castles in the box.
What prevents us from getting rid of Israel is their supporters grip on the US political system, congress and on our Israeli slanted press.
These facts in themselves should tell us that something horrific has to happen that will make Americans overwhelm the above Israeli controls.
And I have no doubt it will…Israel is a junk yard bitch on the loose, she will eventually make a fatal attack.
About the only “democracy in the Middle East”:
IT is EXACTLY like South Africa under the Afrikaners; indeed, Sharon went there to study how to pig-pen the Palestinians. The following is the reality America funds today– doesn’t that suggest Obama should return his Nobel Prize?
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=165915