Posts by stephen walker
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1. Genocide of Palestineans has been going on since 1948.
2. Pipes gave testimony to a US congress subcommittee. really unbiased, him and the two other Zionists.
3. A rabbi calling for murder. Lovely.
4. Fuck off with the "and thjat's why Hamas takes such pains.." crap. How many have died from Hamas rockets? How many from Israeli bombs and shells? why was Israel so keen to provoke Hamas into restarting the rocket firing after they stopped? starving a population of 1.5 million. that's defensible, eh?ooh, so Counterpunch is just like MEMRI? get a life, please.
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A Galaxy of Partisan Propagandists
Stephen,
it must be Cockburn's way of summing up the US politico-media-think tank complex's subservience to the Israeli killing machine. -
Just not seeing it
just not seeing what?
so, having been not criticised by the US president, US congress, US president-elect, and meekly told its behaviour was unacceptable by the EU, UNSC, et al, has the racist state of Israel suddenly changed its behaviour and stopped murdering people?
How exactly is carrying on, killing as it pleases, showing that Israel is not immune from criticism?
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Israel is Immune From Criticism
<quote>Israel, supported energetically by Washington (and using US-supplied aircraft, bombs and rockets), has caused "incidental loss of life" and general civilian casualties on an enormous scale. The Israeli military and the Israeli people knew full well that their genocidal attack on Gaza would kill civilians. The use of white phosphorous in built-up areas is worthy of the Nazis at their most brutal. Stalin and Mao would nod approvingly. It wasn't considered important that there would be countless civilian deaths. Nobody cares, and least of all American politicians. The next secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, refuses to comment on the atrocities. The incoming vice-president has been silent. President-elect Obama? As Reuters reported : "Obama . . . has not commented on the Middle East crisis since Israel launched attacks on Gaza nine days ago. His advisers insist that only President George W Bush can speak for America until then." But it was noted that "The president-elect has commented on the global economic crisis and his plans to try to pull the US economy out of recession."Of course he has. And were it not for the power of Israel in America he would no doubt comment adversely on the slaughter in Gaza, because he is a decent man.
But Mr Obama dare not criticize Israel, even for its use of chemical shells. Nor can any American who wishes to enter or remain engaged in politics. The kiss of political death in the United States of America is to censure Israel. It can't be done.
And that is why apartheid is permitted in Israel; it's why the mass-punishment blockade was enforced months before the attack went in; and it's why the near-genocide in Gaza is allowed to continue.
Does anyone remember the hearing on the so-called Israeli-Palestine peace process in the US House of Representatives in February 2007? Of course not. It was a farce. And why was it such a revolting and hideous charade? – Because it was a three card trick.
The main witness, of the three cards who were called, was one Martin Indyk, a former official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee which is the richest and most powerful lobby group in the country (two of whose members are currently under a mysteriously delayed investigation for spying for Israel). From there, inevitably, he went to be US ambassador in Tel Aviv. (And, incidentally, whose book on the Middle East was the subject of a glowing review in last week's Economist.) Another witness was David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (founded by Indyk; it's all very chummy in pro-Israel sewers), which is funded extensively by American interests that support Zionism. (Among other connections, it is closely associated with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.) And was the third witness a counter-balance to two energetic supporters of Zion? Could he or she present a rather less biased view of the Middle East? Perhaps a person who would make the point that Israel has contemptuously ignored UN Security Council resolutions concerning illegal occupation of Palestinian lands?
Not a bit. The third member was a comic quasi-intellectual character called Daniel Pipes who once declared that Muslim immigrants to the US were "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene." (Germanic? – How quaint.) Pipes founded the Middle East Forum (MEF) which encourages university students in America to report lecturers and professors who they consider to be anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian. (In Hitler's Germany there were awards given to young people who identified and reported those they thought to be pro-Jewish; I know a very elderly German lady who did this when she was 15. She is now terribly ashamed at the memory, because she actually informed on her own father. How times change. Or don't, of course.)
In 2006 Pipes was given the 'Guardian of Zion' award, an annual prize to a prominent supporter of Israel, by the Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
With a galaxy of partisan propagandists like Indyk, Makovsky and Pipes being the only people selected to give evidence on Israel-Palestine to the nation's legislators in Washington, there was no chance whatever that the Congressional Sub-Committee would be presented with a balanced view of the Israel-Palestine problem. The deck was stacked, and the legislators listened. They had no choice, because of the power of the Israel lobby. They've been shaken and baked.<quote>
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what the fuck are you on about?
the Israeli racist death machine is using US-supplied weapons and diplomatic cover to commit disgusting war crimes at this very moment.
what the fuck has Japan got to do with it, apart from being a US sicophant?
piss off with your petty bullshit, please. -
Israel is Immune From Criticism
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEYArticle two, Protocol III of the 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons states: "It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects, the object of attack by incendiary weapons."
Here is part of what is laid out in Protocol 1, Additional to the Geneva Conventions, 1977 . . . General Protection Against Effects of Hostilities: "Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: An attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated."
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grumpy conservative Paul Craig Roberts sums up Bush's subservience to the Israeli killing machine very succinctly:
Roberts quotes Olmert:
“Early Friday morning the secretary of state was considering bringing the cease-fire resolution to a UNSC vote and we didn’t want her to vote for it,” Olmert said. “I said ‘get President Bush on the phone.’ They tried and told me he was in the middle of a lecture in Philadelphia. I said ‘I’m not interested, I need to speak to him now.’ He got down from the podium, went out and took the phone call.”
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unintended irony?
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i confess, i was the cat. what would number two say if he found out?
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and some of the clips on RWP in those days were pretty mind-bending too ;-)
which surely means...
communist television (there were no ads on a Sunday back then) destroyed my brain cells! country calendar was the worst offender, i tell ya. or was it the sheep. and the dogs. never mind.