(Article changed on February 24, 2014 at 16:44)
To use one of those wonderful Hitler analogies that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu so cherishes the increasingly unstable leader of our most influential ally is now like Der Führer hunkered down in his Berlin bunker wailing at phantoms as the Russian army closed in. While the rumblings that plague Bibi are not the sound of tank treads and artillery pulverizing Berlin into rubble they are much more ominous for they are the sounds of shifting world opinion.
With the state of Israel methodically being reduced to a racist, war addicted doppelganger of the very country whose regime's heinous crimes allowed for its creation primarily due to the Netanyahu regime's increasing reliability on the most fanatical right-wing elements of his society to hold onto power what he really and truly fears is economic isolation. With the momentum building for the BDS Movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) which unlike the U.N. and the leaders of official governments (ours in particular) is pushing to hold Israel accountable for gross human rights abuses including the ongoing land theft from Palestinians to build settlements for religious zealots in a region that is incapable of discarding ancient hatred and superstition in favor of modern, progressive thinking.
With the economic pressure slowly being turned up on Netanyahu's rogue regime and the cunning and manipulative strongman backed into a corner he has come out swinging. Netanyahu has now formally denounced the BDS movement and by extension ANY who question the repressive policies of his regime as "anti-Semites". This is the desperate act of a bully who is on the brink of getting his long-deserved comeuppance and only serves as one more example of how he is always willing to exploit the historical persecution of Jews, particularly those who were murdered by Hitler during The Holocaust for political gain. Netanyahu's shtick is getting old though and the playing of the at one time most kick ass club in the bag that is the "anti-Semitism" card has lost its power due to overuse as a standard smear or any questioning of Israeli policy, particularly here in the United States. That one jumped the shark about the time when that certain inflammatory accusation was used to kick around poor old Jimmy Carter over his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" and has been increasingly ineffective as anything but a badge of honor to legitimate critics of right-wing Israeli policies ever since.
The paranoid and ill-considered outbursts of King Bibi have contributed to the now rapidly as he is finding his iron-fisted rule now threatened by young turk Danny Danon who just made a power play to loosen his elder's control over the Likud party. While the crazed Netanyahu was busily denouncing BDS and supporters as though they personally were in charge of running the showers at Auschwitz and meeting with the Mossad in order to formulate a strategy for retaliation Danon was sizing up the Prime Minister's chair just as top domestic lickspittle Eric Cantor has been doing as he has plotted his own putsch to dethrone Republican Speaker John Boehner. Congressman Cantor is leading the domestic charge to push anew for a war with Iran - something not in the best interests of the country nor the district that he is supposedly elected to represent. That Cantor is making his move was made evident by his red-meat filled speech delivered at the Virginia Military Institute on Monday - President's Day.
Bibi is now once again scrambling his winged monkeys in the U.S Congress (an institution that Pat Buchanan once referred to as "Israeli occupied territory" - recall the phrase that "even broken clock is right twice a day") to save him from his own self-destructive tendencies. While the drive for Iran sanctions has temporarily been derailed largely due to AIPAC getting squeamish over the overly partisan support of the Menendez-Kirk bill that would set the country on the course for yet another disastrous war there is a concerted effort within the Congress being made to deliver the bacon for Bibi one more time. Right-wing Israeli interests have spent millions to pander and manipulate the Christian Zionists in this country and our elected officials routinely are flown to the holy land on vacation/brainwashing junkets to secure their support for the Likudnik right-wing policies that have been so ruinous to the people of that land who have been shut out of the governing process.
Israel is viewed with much positively by a majority of Americans according to a recent Jerusalem Post poll but what the poll omits is the extremely one-sided view of Middle East events that the domestic media offers up, choosing to self-censor in order to avoid boycotts and protests by it's embedded fifth-column. It is impossible to understand or place into context anything that comes out of the state-corporate media largely due to omission. The Palestinian side of the story is rarely if ever offered and if it were to be then offending media entity and it's 'reporters' would be set upon fiercely by the same sort of lunatics who were inspirations to Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik. The run of the mill anti-Muslim bigots such as Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, David Horowitz and their ilk as well as the more 'respectable' enforcers of Israeli propaganda and institutional harassment such as Alan Dershowitz, Joe Lieberman, Jennifer Rubin etc. I find it ironically hilarious that Bibi is caterwauling over being force- fed a nice big taste of his own medicine with the BDS movement pressure but bullies never seem to have much of a taste for conflict then someone fights back.
The coming wave of 'official' condemnation of pushback against the Israeli regime's repressive policies has already sparked Illinois congressmen Peter Roskam and Dan Lipinski to push a bill that will strip academic institutions of federal funding if they support in any way whatsoever the BDS Movement. The bill, with the obligatory Orwellian title of "The Protect Academic Freedom Act" shows just how much contempt that a good many members of the U.S. Congress have for the concept of freedom of speech and is in clear violation of the First Amendment. But it is after all an election year and nobody wants to find themselves targeted for removal from the publicly funded gravy train. I would personally like to see someone with a set of stones come up with legislation stripping for life federal funding and benefits from any member of Congress who puts the interests of a foreign country over those of his/her own constituents. The list can be compiled during Netanyahu's next visit to speak to Congress likely in March, according to the Times of Israel there is already a letter being circulated by nearly a hundred of the rats who should be rapidly divested from the taxpayer dole come November.
While it would be too much to ask out of our elected representatives who continue to prove daily that their loyalty lies elsewhere whether it be the military industrial complex, the national security state, Wall Street scammers, energy cartels and in this case foreign despots they would be wise to start looking past Netanyahu for his time on the stage of history is coming to a long overdue close. With ambitious types like Danon already plotting against his old and tired ways he is a goner, it is only a matter of time and the only question is of whose fingerprints will be on the hatchet that he will one day soon find embedded in his back. Our sanctimonious frauds in Congress would be well advised to save the standing ovations this time and keep an eye on the future as they break out their kneepads when Bibi visits next month.
If Mr. Netanyahu wants to see who it is that is truly responsible for the purported "deligitimizing" of Israel and turning it into a global pariah as well as diminishing real anti-Semitism by his constant invocations of it as a political tool he needs only to look into his own mirror.
