http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15982.htm
Banality and Barefaced Lies
Here in America, I stare at the land in which I live and see a landscape I
do not recognise
By Robert Fisk
12/23/06 "The Independent" -- -- I call it the Alice in Wonderland effect.
Each time I tour the United States, I stare through the looking glass at the
faraway region in which I live and work for The Independent - the Middle
East - and see a landscape which I do no recognise, a distant tragedy
turned, here in America, into a farce of hypocrisy and banality and
barefaced lies. Am I the Cheshire Cat? Or the Mad Hatter?
I picked up Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at San
Francisco airport, and zipped through it in a day. It's a good, strong read
by the only American president approaching sainthood. Carter lists the
outrageous treatment meted out to the Palestinians, the Israeli occupation,
the dispossession of Palestinian land by Israel, the brutality visited upon
this denuded, subject population, and what he calls "a system of apartheid,
with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each
other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving
Palestinians of their basic human rights".
Carter quotes an Israeli as saying he is "afraid that we are moving towards
a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers
and Arabs subjects with few rights of citizenship...". A proposed but
unacceptable modification of this choice, Carter adds, "is the taking of
substantial portions of the occupied territory, with the remaining
Palestinians completely surrounded by walls, fences, and Israeli
checkpoints, living as prisoners within the small portion of land left to
them".
Needless to say, the American press and television largely ignored the
appearance of this eminently sensible book - until the usual Israeli
lobbyists began to scream abuse at poor old Jimmy Carter, albeit that he was
the architect of the longest lasting peace treaty between Israel and an Arab
neighbour - Egypt - secured with the famous 1978 Camp David accords. The New
York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print", ho! ho!) then felt free to
tell its readers that Carter had stirred "furore among Jews" with his use of
the word "apartheid". The ex-president replied by mildly (and rightly)
pointing out that Israeli lobbyists had produced among US editorial boards a
"reluctance to criticise the Israeli government".
Typical of the dirt thrown at Carter was the comment by Michael Kinsley in
The New York Times (of course) that Carter "is comparing Israel to the
former white racist government of South Africa". This was followed by a
vicious statement from Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who said
that the reason Carter gave for writing this book "is this shameless,
shameful canard that the Jews control the debate in this country, especially
when it comes to the media. What makes this serious is that he's not just
another pundit, and he's not just another analyst. He is a former president
of the United States".
But well, yes, that's the point, isn't it? This is no tract by a Harvard
professor on the power of the lobby. It's an honourable, honest account by a
friend of Israel as well as the Arabs who just happens to be a fine American
ex-statesman. Which is why Carter's book is now a best-seller - and applause
here, by the way, for the great American public that bought the book instead
of believing Mr Foxman.
But in this context, why, I wonder, didn't The New York Times and the other
gutless mainstream newspapers in the United States mention Israel's cosy
relationship with that very racist apartheid regime in South Africa which
Carter is not supposed to mention in his book? Didn't Israel have a wealthy
diamond trade with sanctioned, racist South Africa? Didn't Israel have a
fruitful and deep military relationship with that racist regime? Am I
dreaming, looking-glass-like, when I recall that in April of 1976, Prime
Minister John Vorster of South Africa - one of the architects of this vile
Nazi-like system of apartheid - paid a state visit to Israel and was
honoured with an official reception from Israeli prime minister Menachem
Begin, war hero Moshe Dayan and future Nobel prize-winner Yitzhak Rabin?
This of course, certainly did not become part of the great American debate
on Carter's book.
At Detroit airport, I picked up an even slimmer volume, the Baker-Hamilton
Iraq Study Group Report - which doesn't really study Iraq at all but offers
a few bleak ways in which George Bush can run away from this disaster
without too much blood on his shirt. After chatting to the Iraqis in the
green zone of Baghdad - dream zone would be a more accurate title - there
are a few worthy suggestions (already predictably rejected by the Israelis):
a resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, an Israeli
withdrawal from Golan, etc. But it's written in the same tired semantics of
right-wing think tanks - the language, in fact, of the discredited Brookings
Institution and of my old mate, the messianic New York Times columnist Tom
Friedman - full of "porous" borders and admonitions that "time is running
out".
The clue to all this nonsense, I discovered, comes at the back of the report
where it lists the "experts" consulted by Messrs Baker, Hamilton and the
rest. Many of them are pillars of the Brookings Institution and there is
Thomas Freedman of The New York Times.
But for sheer folly, it was impossible to beat the post-Baker debate among
the great and the good who dragged the United States into this catastrophe.
General Peter Pace, the extremely odd chairman of the US joint chiefs of
staff, said of the American war in Iraq that "we are not winning, but we are
not losing". Bush's new defence secretary, Robert Gates, announced that he
"agreed with General Pace that we are not winning, but we are not losing".
Baker himself jumped into the same nonsense pool by asserting: "I don't
think you can say we're losing. By the same token (sic), I'm not sure we're
winning." At which point, Bush proclaimed this week that - yes - "we're not
winning, we're not losing". Pity about the Iraqis.
I pondered this madness during a bout of severe turbulence at 37,000 feet
over Colorado. And that's when it hit me, the whole final score in this
unique round of the Iraq war between the United States of America and the
forces of evil. It's a draw!
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
***
Informed Comment - Dec 24, 2006
http://www.juancole.com/
Sistani Rejects New Sunni-Shiite Coalition;
by Juan Cole
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has rejected a plan for a new coalition in the
Iraqi parliament that would ally the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq with the Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party and the
Kurdistan Alliance. The plan aimed at isolating the 32 Sadrist members of
parliament and depriving them of the ability to bring down the prime
minister. The Sadrists follow young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose
Mahdi Army paramilitary has emerged as a major security threat to Baghdad.
A delegation of mainly Da`wa Party members went to the Grand Ayatollah
about the plan, floated by friendly rival SCIRI. Sistani rejected the plan
on the grounds that it would split the Shiite majority. A coalition of
Sunni Arab fundamentalists and Kurds with SCIRI would reduce the Shiites to
junior partners in the government and allow the Kurds (also Sunnis) and the
Sunni Arabs to dictate policy to them. Shiites are 60 percent of Iraqis,
and Sistani is insistent that their majoritarian position be recognized and
they receive the consequent power and influence.
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