I can speak for myself about how extensively Israel's political propaganda machine, and its systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, plus brutal demonizing of Arabs, have become transparent in the past 15 or more years. Israel and the U.S. these days appear almost comical, albeit tragically so, when they repeat their well-rehearsed mantra of "Us good, them bad" in every setting, in the face of the most outrageous inhumanity these two countries inflict upon the innocent, defenseless and poor of the world.
The blinders, I can only hope, are falling off the world's eyes. I know mine have, ever since I first witnessed on TV the relentless attacks by the Israeli Goliath upon little children in that perpetually blood-drenched and brutally sad part of the world in the early 1980s. If what Israel, with untold stashes of money provided by its ultra-rich, muscle-flexing partner across the Atlantic, has constructed on a rather tiny sliver of land is the equivalent of some kind of Biblical paradise, holy-land, or Utopia- well, I would shudder to think what Hell must be like. Is all this racial hatred, ethnic cleansing, perpetual genocide, truly a price worth paying for this pristine chosen territory?
Honestly, Israeli politicians and even other leading figures come across as absolute boors to me these days. It used to be that I held a slightly higher opinion of Shimon Peres as a more restrained, moderate voice of Israel during the Begin and Rabin years. Not any more. I recall his utterly illogical, irrational and hateful rhetoric against the victims of Israel's Gaza massacre, using the very same mantra of "we are the good ones." I was actually rather reassured when Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan could no longer take these upside-down platitudes any longer, and walked out in protest. To kill with complete impunity and abandon, armed to the teeth with the most destructive weapons (provided by the greatest possessor and user of WMDs in the history of the world)- and then blame a bunch of hapless protesters (whatever be the long, historic context of their actions) for tossing a few relatively ineffective rockets at the Occupying power for their barbarism - well, it is truly amazing to observe the human mind's capacity at compartmentalizing.
I am equally turned off these days by the pious pronouncements of the likes of Elie Wiesel. I witnessed recently on TV during the Durban II conference his angry diatribes against the usual "enemies"-Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and others on that list. As often, this was in relation to the Holocaust (denial or acceptance) issue- in the face of which, it would appear, that Israel (and the U.S. by association) has carte blanche to inflict any amount of genocide and atrocities upon the world. This "Holocaust Industry" (to borrow from Norman Finkelstein) systematically negates the suffering and genocide of others by constructing an imaginary scale of atrocities. This is inhumanity at its worst.
By defending remorselessly the indefensible, Wiesel and others have, and are doing grave injustice to victims of hatred, racism and injustice everywhere. This includes the memory of the Jewish victims of hatred as well- most notably Anne Frank. I honestly believe Anne Frank would be deeply horrified to witness what the state of Israel and its well-entrenched minions in its client-state, the U.S., are doing to the Palestinian people. I would venture to think that she might see it as Israel's "Final solution to the Palestinian/Arab problem." In the world of ironies, this ranks very high indeed!
2
2
1
