Blaming the Victims

Don't expect objectivity from me. You see, for the last few weeks I have not had the benefit of the mainstream media to give me a balanced picture of the situation in Palestine. Instead, I have been living in the middle of the events in Bethlehem, witnessing army brutality and civilian misery. While staying at the Al-Azzeh camp, I obviously missed all the terrorists, the anti-Semites and the fanatics that the Israeli army and the BBC see as infesting the refugee camps.

It doesn't take a genius to be suspicious of the capitalist media -- anyone who's been on a political action is used to being misrepresented and smeared. But the campaign of lies waged against the people of Palestine beggars belief. Resting on old colonial prejudices and modern Islamophobia and racism, it has the objective of blaming the victims in this conflict; presenting Israel as a democratic state under attack from unreasonable semi-humans. I am not even going to talk about Jenin. I am too angry(...)

It was with recognition of these underlying factors that the Palestinian- led International Solidarity Movement has organised groups of international volunteers. Following on from the December 2001 campaign, this Easter was to see similar work replanting olive trees and dismantling roadblocks -- aiming, in fact, to use non-violent methods of direct action to give the Palestinians a chance to be non-violent themselves. Unfortunately, the Israeli army decided otherwise. Having only pulled out of the Bethlehem area two weeks previously, the APCs (Armoured Personnel Carriers) and tanks rolled in again. In our affinity groups, we decided that our places was to act as observers in the nearby refugee camps, home of the radical and dispossessed, thus a favourite target for Israeli army repression, arrests and random shelling. Sitting in the neatly kept, poverty-stricken, living room of our host family, with the Apache helicopters and robot drones flying overhead, I experienced for a few days the terror that these people live through. Sitting drinking endless cup of tea with young men who know they could be dragged out and shot; staying up all night because sleep is impossible. Times like these were almost enough to turn me from an anarchist into a liberal national reformist.
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The solution is the problem
The US presents itself as the peace-broker in the Middle East. The reality is different
by Noam Chomsky

No one can seriously doubt that the US role will continue to be decisive. It is crucial to understand what that role has been, and how it is internally perceived. The version of the doves is presented by the editors of the New York Times, praising President Bush's "path-breaking speech" and the "emerging vision" he articulated. Its first element is "ending Palestinian terrorism" immediately. Some time later comes "freezing, then rolling back, Jewish settlements and negotiating new borders" to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. If Palestinian terror ends, Israelis will be encouraged to "take the Arab League's historic offer of full peace and recognition in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal more seriously". But first Palestinian leaders must demonstrate that they are "legitimate diplomatic partners".

The real world has little resemblance to this self-serving portrayal - virtually copied from the 1980s, when the US and Israel were desperately seeking to evade PLO offers of negotiation and political settlement. In the real world, the primary barrier to the "emerging vision" has been, and remains, unilateral US rejectionism. There is little new in the current "Arab League's historic offer".
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Our Vichy Congress
A Congressional Staffer Details Israel's Stranglehold on Capitol Hill:
"We are All Members of Likud Now."

In March, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma took the Senate floor and said the September 11 attacks were punishment by God in response to U.S. policy toward Israel. Asserting that Israel is "entitled" to the West Bank, he also criticized his fellow citizens who counselled the Israelis to use restraint, in effect blaming them for the terrorist attacks of September 11: "One of the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America is that the policy of our government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them."

According to this Tornado-Belt St. Augustine, God in effect allowed airliners to be flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because U.S. actions towards Israel offended the Almighty. In other words, the United States was punished because the Bush administration had been insufficiently worshipful towards Israel (the $3 billion annually that Congress squeezes out of the taxpayer as tribute to the Jewish State is apparently not sufficient in the opinion of this self-styled "fiscal conservative"--and in the opinion of the Almighty Himself, Whose inscrutable will Inhofe claims to be able to interpret).

Like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, Inhofe believes America suffered divinely-ordained punishment; but the Senator adds a new twist: those 3,000 innocent Americans died, he believes, because their government demonstrated insufficient obeisance to a foreign country. For sheer treacherous Quislingism, Inhofe's statement is hard to top.

But top it we can.
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