“Calls for democracy … stem from …an inner hunger for freedom.” - Tzipi Livni, Washington Post, 2/24/11
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| From a hill just outside the Gaza Strip, Israelis watch the air assaults on Gaza and dance in celebration of the attacks, 8 January 2009. (Newscom) |
Courageous thousands demand their rights as human beings, she intones, there is an inner hunger for freedom abroad in the land. But those courageous thousands have lit a fire that is a beacon for Israel, if it heeds it, a warning that it alone of all the states in the Middle East could be left defying the peoples’ demands for human rights and freedoms.
Yet Livni, and Edward Koch last week, went to the media not to announce that Israel would alter its treatment of the Palestinians, they simply ignored the existence of the Palestinians; in the words of Edward Koch, “These uprisings clearly demonstrate that it is not the issue of Israel that is rocking the Arab world, but the presence of arbitrary and repressive regimes.” (Newsmax.com, 3/1/11).How convenient. Israel alone stands immune from the repression and arbitrary policies of the abusive regimes that face the multitudes in the streets. Indeed, Livni charitably intones that “The values and experiences of the Jewish people demand that we embrace the promise of real democratic change, not merely express concern about uncertainties associated with it.”
Certainly in these uncertain times Israel can be a beacon to warn those who have an “inner hunger for freedom” that there are dues to pay before they can be granted such freedoms because “world leaders are required to shape events so that our collective aspirations, rather than our fears, become reality.”
 Artwork by the amazing Artist Carlos Latuff, friend of Salem-News.com, in Rio de Janeiro |
It’s obvious now that Israel and its Golem, the United States, have entered the lists of this new world order, thrust on them by forces they did not anticipate, created in the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, and Lebanon, with lances drawn and swords displayed. Their response remains, as always, military might exposed for the world to see bolstered by policies of delay and coercion seeded by fear of instability and uncertainty. They remain the only two powers capable of bringing stability to the region even if it must be done by establishing new dictators sympathetic to their interests.
To achieve their ends, the Israelis and the Obama administration have sent their legions around the world to control discussions of the impending changes and response to them. Two major thrusts emerge as guidelines for control: delay and denial. Delay takes the form of concern for the “inner hunger” that must be fed with care that the wolf at the door (read Muslim Brotherhood or al Qaeda) doesn’t devour the food (read freedoms), because not enough time was devoted to preparation for “real” democratic reforms.
“The free world has long recognized that democracy is about values before it is about voting,” says Livni silently passing over Israel’s destruction of its neighbors as it demonstrates to the world how “real” democracies operate by occupation and repression. As an example of values, Livni notes that “In Israel parties are ineligible to participate in elections if their platform embraces racist or anti-democratic doctrines.”
Denial takes the form of omission: she failed to remark on Avigdor Leiberman’s comment, Head of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, an essential component of the present Netanyahu government, describing Arab members of the Knesset that meet with Hamas as "terror collaborators", (and) called for their execution: "World War II ended with the Nuremburg Trials. The heads of the Nazi regime, along with their collaborators, were executed. I hope this will be the fate of the collaborators in [the Knesset]." (Wikipedia). So much for no racism or anti-democratic actions on the part of members of Israel’s government.
Ha’aretz carried an article by Dr. Emily Landau and Dr. Carlo Masala that noted “…the West has forgotten how long the road to democratization can really be.” It can only happen when its population “embraces the concepts of tolerance and the protection of minority rights.”
Here too, of course, the denial continues: they fail to mention Israel’s founding on May 14 of 1948, a simple declaration by the Zionist consultancy issued through the Jewish Agency that the Jews declared Israel as their state; not even the UNSC was involved as the Partition Plan composed by a committee of the UN never made it to that body.
That was not a long process unless one wants to use the terrorists of the clandestine Jewish Agency and its armies that went to war against the British Mandate government as preparation for a democracy. Nor did they mention Israel’s denial of minority rights as Occupiers of another people under International Law.
Then there is the delay caused by the Palestinians who refuse to engage in peace talks, not because Israel refused to stop the building of settlements, even with Obama’s bribe as an inducement, but because they desire to thwart Israel’s “eagerness to return to the negotiating table” by going directly to the UN to force a vote on acceptance of a Palestinian State, what Joel Mowbray calls the “Palestinian Smoke Screen” reported in the Washington Times.
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William A. Cook is Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California where he served for 13 years as Vice President for Academic Affairs before assuming his faculty position in 2001. Prior to coming to California, he served as a Dean of Faculty, Chair of Department of English and faculty member at institutions large and small, public and private in four eastern states. He is an activist and a writer for numerous Internet publications including Counterpunch, Salem-News.com, Pacific Free Press in British Columbia, Dissident Voice and Information Clearing House, serving as senior editor for MWC News out of Canada, and contributing editor at the Palestine Chronicle, the Atlantic Free Press in the Netherlands, and the World Prout Assembly, his polemics against the Bush administration and the atrocities caused by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert in Israel, now our 51st state, have been spread around the Internet world and translated into French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Italian. Cook also serves on the Board of the People’s Media Project, interviews on radio and TV in South Africa, Canada, Iran and the United States and contributed for five years yearly predictions to the Hong Kong Economic News. This volume follows his Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine and continues his scourge against the hypocrisy, deceit, and destructive policies that have characterized American mid-east policy and its destructive alliance with the Zionist forces that have turned Israel into an apartheid state determined to destroy the Palestinian people. In addition to his polemics, he writes plays (The Unreasoning Mask, co-authored with his wife, D’Arcy, and The Agony of Colin Powell), satires (see “Advancing the Civilized State: Inch by Bloody Inch” in The Rape), and poetry (Psalms for the 21st Century). His most recent fictional work creates a morality tale based upon real life figures that haunt our lives, The Chronicles of Nefaria He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com..
The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction is a collection of voices from around the world that establishes in both theoretical and graphic terms the slow, methodical genocide taking place in Palestine beginning in the 1940s, as revealed in the Introduction. From Dr. Francis A. Boyle’s detailed legal case against the state of Israel, to Uri Avnery’s “Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing,” to Richard Falk’s “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” to Ilan Pappe’s “Genocide in Gaza,” these voices decry in startling, vivid, and forceful language the calculated atrocities taking place, the inhumane conditions inflicted on the people, and the silence that exists despite the crimes, nothing short of state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians.River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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