Showing the President Who's BossRecently by Justin Raimondo: The Lobby Takes the Offensive
The rapturous
reception
afforded Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he ascended the dais to address
a joint session of Congress was like the triumphs Roman generals
were honored with as they returned from their wars of conquest.
It’s true “Bibi” didn’t have President Obama trailing behind him
in chains, as the Romans dragged Vercingetorix,
the king of the Gauls, but then again, that wasn’t really necessary.
Only hours before, Sen.
Harry Reid had denied his own president and the leader of his
party, distancing himself from the Obama administration’s Mideast
peace plan, and reiterating his support for Netanyahu, while other
Democrats ran for the hills. Netanyahu’s triumph – after 56
standing ovations – was complete. The content
of the Prime Minister’s speech was almost irrelevant: it was the
usual panoply of lies, “spin,” and vaunting. Lies about how great
the Palestinian economy is doing, spinning (i.e. glossing over)
Israel’s criminal
occupation of conquered territories, and vaunting of Zionist
power – not the Jewish state’s military power, but its political
power right here in this country. When it comes down to a contest
between the chief executive of the most powerful nation in the world,
and the Prime Minister of a country that would fall into the abyss
without US support, the latter proved his superior potency. “In an
unstable Middle East, Israel is the one anchor of stability. In
a region of shifting alliances, Israel is America’s unwavering ally.
Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American.”
Only in a Bizarro
World alternate universe is Israel “the one anchor of stability”
in a volatile region. Quite the opposite is true: the Jewish state
is the primary
source of regional instability,
due entirely to its ruthlessness
and inhumanity
in enforcing a military occupation that weighs heavily on the conscience
of the world. Netanyahu has
it backwards: America is and has been Israel’s unwavering ally,
and yet, as Vice President Joe Biden found
out on his last trip to Israel, this doesn’t preclude the Israelis’
open hostility. Ambushed and humiliated by his most ungracious hosts
– who announced a new round of settlement-building the day the Vice
President arrived – Biden learned first hand that this arrangement
doesn’t work both ways. “My friends,
you don’t need to do nation building in Israel. We’re already built.
You don’t need to export democracy to Israel. We’ve already got
it. You don’t need to send American troops to defend Israel. We
defend ourselves. You’ve been very generous in giving us tools to
do the job of defending Israel on our own. Thank you all, and thank
you President Obama, for your steadfast commitment to Israel’s security.
I know economic times are tough. I deeply appreciate this.”
How many lies
can one speechwriter pack into a single paragraph? We are
engaged in “nation building” in Israel – how else are the Israelis
spending that cool $3
billion a year in “aid”? “We’re already built” – so does that
mean we can cut the Israelis off the dole, and stop borrowing
from the Chinese in order to placate Tel Aviv? Surely that isn’t
what Netanyahu meant to say. As for the
boast that we needn’t export democracy to Israel – because “We’ve
already got it” – what can one say to the ruler of a country that
has established a two-tiered tyranny, granting the members of one
religious group voting rights and the ability to move freely, and
relegating the rest to a political
limbo, and the
status of helots imprisoned in their own land? What can one
say, except: You lie? Netanyahu,
whose first response to the upsurge in Egypt was to support
Mubarak and cavil at the specter of a Muslim
Brotherhood takeover in Cairo, had the nerve to hail the “epic
battle now unfolding in the Middle East,” which, he averred, is
“between tyranny and freedom.” Yet, in this battle, Israel is on
the other side – the side of the
tyrants – and always has been. “Millions of young people are
determined to change their future,” he pontificated, to ringing
applause. “We all look at them. They muster courage. They risk their
lives. They demand dignity. They desire liberty.” That these
very young people are risking their lives, demanding dignity, in
the occupied territories is what Bibi forgot to mention.
He dares evoke those “extraordinary scenes in Tunis and Cairo,”
likening them to what happened in Berlin and Prague in 1989. Yet
surely he knows they are mustering their courage against the
IDF, which is shooting
them down in the streets of occupied Palestine. Somehow, I don’t
think Bibi means to praise these brave souls. Bibi praises the “Arab spring” of democratic hope, and goes on to bemoan the snuffing out of hope “in Tehran in 1979,” the year the mullahs triumphed in Iran. “You may remember what happened then.” Yet does he remember the role played by Israel in those events? The Mossad helped set up the dreaded SAVAK, the Iranian Shah’s ruthless secret police, which tortured and imprisoned many thousands, and crushed all opponents of the regime. This bit of history is neglected by the Prime Minister, whose memory is necessarily selective. May 26, 2011 Justin Raimondo [send him mail] is editorial director of Antiwar.com and is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement. Copyright © 2011 Antiwar.com
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