Israel, Detached from Reality, Devolves into a Neo-McCarthyite State

Update: Obama can't afford to continue Bush's Israel policy

Israel should know that reckless, neocon militarism will result in devastation for all concerned.

Perhaps the worst crime that a government or movement can commit today is to come forward with a peace proposal overwhelmingly supported by the world community.

Ask Hamas and Hezbollah.

Read Patrick Cockburn's Has Anything Changed Since Sabra and Chatila?
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm for another sober analysis of the sickness in domestic Israel.

At first I thought that little had changed since Sabra and Chatila. Once again there were the same tired and offensive excuses that Israel was somehow not to blame. Hamas was using civilians as human shields, and in any case – this argument produced more furtively –two-thirds of people in Gaza had voted for Hamas so they deserved whatever happened to them.

But on returning to Jerusalem 10 years after I was stationed here as The Independent's correspondent between 1995 and 1999 I find that Israel has changed significantly for the worse. There is far less dissent than there used to be and such dissent is more often treated as disloyalty. ...

Intolerance of dissent has grown and may soon get a great deal worse. Benjamin Netanyahu, who helped bury the Oslo accords with the Palestinians when he was last prime minister from 1996 to 1999, is likely to win the Israeli election on 10 February. The only issue still in doubt is the extent of the gains of the extreme right.

The views of these were on display this week as Avigdor Lieberman, the chairman of the Ysrael Beitenu party, which, according to the polls will do particularly well in the election, was supporting the isqualification of two Israeli Arab parties from standing in the election. 'For the first time we are examining the boundary between loyalty and disloyalty,' he threatened their representatives. 'We'll deal with you like we dealt with Hamas.'

Last year as the Free Gaza Movement was running the illegal Israili blockade to ship in humantiarian supplies, I read the comments in Haaretz. Comments like 'let them drown' and 'sink them" are common.

UN investigator Richard Falk is the focus of a piece today in Haaretz, UN human rights official: Gaza evokes memories of Warsaw Ghetto, and the comments are not much better.

But check out the piece:

There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, UN investigator Richard Falk said Thursday.

The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Falk, speaking by phone from his home in California, said compelling evidence that Israel's actions in Gaza violated international humanitarian law required an independent investigation into whether they amounted to war crimes.

I believe that there is the prima facie case for reaching that conclusion,’ he told a Geneva news conference.

Falk said Israel had made no effort to allow civilians to escape the fighting.

‘To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime,’ Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw's Jews by Nazi Germany in World War II.

Israel has approached the brink of insanity and President Obama must put a halt to this madness through action, specifically withholding American military, economic and diplomatic support until Israel, an outlaw actor now, joins the community of nations and begins reparations to the Palestinian people.

See also Soldiers kill father and 4-year-old son and wound other family members in their home, a-Zeitun neighborhood, Gaza City for a typical report from Gaza under Israeli occupation and attack.

Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

In a typically clear eyed, fact-based assessment by Patrick Cockburn in CounterPunch, Cockburn paints a picture of Iraq that whatever the pretend nature of our enterprise, the results are a catastrophe.

This is pretty standard stuff in most of the rest of the world, but one wonders how much of the American populace either knows or cares. Not at all clear.

Cockburn concludes:

Friction between Sunni and Shia, bad though it is, is less than two years ago, though hostility between Arabs and Kurds is deepening. The departure of the US military frightens many Sunni on the grounds that they will be at the mercy of the majority Shia. But it is also an incentive for the three main communities in Iraq to agree about what their future relations should be when there are no Americans to stand between them. As for the US, its moment in Iraq is coming to an end as its troops depart, leaving a ruined country behind them.

Let's hope that most Americans do not ape Rumsfeld and say: Stuff happens.

Cockburn Debunks Iraq Surge Nonsense

Watch.

Winning in Iraq

Patrick Cockburn has an insightful analysis from Iraq. See Special Report from the Battlefields, Who's Actually Winning in Iraq?

Bush's best hope for his illegal act of aggression: An Iranian-aligned Shia government tolerating a long-term American presence in Iraq as a bulwark against Sunni and Shia rivals.

...Paradoxically, the Shia governing parties in Baghdad, ISCI and Dawa, have traditionally had closer links with Iran than the Sadrists. ISCI was founded by the Iranians in Tehran in 1982 to be their puppet if they succeeded in defeating Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. It is still heavily influenced by them, but at the end of the day neither ISCI nor the Sadrists want the Americans nor the Iranians to treat Iraq as a client state...

The MAeLstrom

[A scan of news articles and commentary on the internet.]

Bush's America: Roach Motel: Emblematic of the right-wing’s disgust with Bush over his putative immigration proposal, Ann Coulter in Human Events compares the immigrating Hispanics to roaches and America to a “roach motel" in her column title. Coulter writes: Republicans' defense of President Bush's immigration bill is more enraging than their defense of Harriet Miers. Back then, Bush's conservative base was accused of being sexist for opposing an unqualified woman's nomination to the highest court in the land. Now we're racists for not wanting to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

The New American Cold War: Stephen F. Cohen writes in The Nation: The increasingly belligerent charges and counter-charges by officials and in the media on both sides, "Cold-War-style rhetoric and threats," as the Associated Press recently reported, read like a replay of the American-Soviet discourse of the 1970s and early 1980s. And the unfolding conflict over US plans to build missile defense components near post-Soviet Russia, in Poland and the Czech Republic, threatens to reintroduce a dangerous military feature of that cold-war era in Europe.

Was General Pace Fired Because He Balked at Iran: Levey MG at opednews.com writes: This isn't good news. THIS IS EXTREMELY OMINOUS. I’ve been writing for over a year now that the Joint Chiefs have been blocking the White House’s efforts to expand the war to Iran. No matter what you might think of Gen. Pete Pace, this really is TERRIFYING news, unless you crave a wider war in the Persian Gulf and South Asia.Pace has been the most visible symbol of the push-back within the military against the Long War.

McCain (still) reaching out to Christian conservative base: Matt Stearns of McClatchy Newspapers writes: In his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Arizona Sen. John McCain is reaching out to conservative Christians, and many of them want to know how much McCain reaches out to God. McCain has written movingly of how his faith helped him survive 5 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, but he says little about the current role of religion in his life. "I think it's something between me and my creator," McCain said in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers. "It's primarily a private issue rather than a public one. ... When I'm asked about it, I'll be glad to discuss it. I just don't bring it up."

UN Warns Of 5 Million Iraqi Refugees: Patrick Cockburn in The Independent: Across Iraq, millions of people are looking for safer places to live, and not finding them. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reported last week that 4.2 million Iraqis have been forced out of their homes.There are also ominous signs that the four-month-old US security plan for Baghdad is failing to reduce the level of violence despite an extra 17,000 US troops in the capital."The situation in Iraq continues to worsen," the UNHCR announced, "with more than two million Iraqis now believed to be displaced inside the country and another 2.2 million sheltering in neighbouring states." The Iraqi refugee crisis is now surpassing in numbers anything ever seen in the Middle East, including the expulsion or flight of the Palestinians in 1948.

Frank Rich is off today at the New York Times. :( Frank Rich should not be allowed a vacation, a day off, professional time, personal time, or a bathroom break until Bush and Cheney are gone and forgotten. His column and talent are a public necessity.

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