Voiceless in Gaza: Israeli Carnage and the American Courtiers
Written by Chris Floyd
Death and sorrow continue to pour down in torrents over Gaza. And every death is delivered with the backing of the full faith and credit of the United States. American money, American weaponry -- and unstinting, unquestioning American diplomatic support -- are underwriting the brutal carnage. There is scarcely a single voice along the commanding heights of American power to raise the slightest protest against a savage war crime being committed in broad daylight, day after day, with the approval and connivance of the "civilized" world. The hard, enclosed, impenetrable shell of American "bipartisanship" has achieved a steely perfection on the issue of Palestine; it is itself a missile -- a weapon of mass destruction -- falling on the people of Gaza.
Everyone knows that the United States government is the only force that could rein in the virulent militarism of the Israeli state, which is now reaching literally genocidal proportions. But there is no faction in American politics that has the courage, the will -- or the desire -- to offer even the most tepid criticisms of Israeli policy. At one time, the old-style "country club" Republicans -- like Bush the Elder and his gilded gofer, James Baker -- sometimes served as a counterbalance. This was not due to any far-sighted statesmanship or moral acumen on their part, of course; it was down to their deep-dyed anti-Semitism, bred into them for generations (Bush I's father, Prescott, was of course a business partner of the Nazis -- even after America and Germany were at war), and also to American Jews' historic affinity for the Democratic Party. As James Baker once famously said, when the first Bush Administration was having some PR problems after threatening to withhold some aid to Israel for continuing to steal Palestinian land: "Fuck the Jews; they didn't vote for us anyway."
But of course, the Republican Party soon threw in its lot with the knuckle-dragging Nationalist Christians who, despite a raging anti-Semitism of their own, championed Israel because of its perceived role in their lurid apocalyptic fantasies. The Israeli militarists seized on this fresh source of political influence in Washington -- despite their awareness that their new American allies (including George W. Bush) fervently believed every Jew would burn eternally in hellfire, and that Israel had no meaning for them except as a counter in their ignorant eschatological games. Thus the literally vicious circle was closed. All of the powerful factions at the imperial Potomac court were now united in knee-jerk support of the worst Israeli depredations.
There have of course been very forthright, principled objections to Israeli policy voiced in American society for many years -- most prominently by leftist and liberal Jews -- but these voices have no power, no influence. The only group in American power politics who could conceivably make an effective stand against Israel's policies without facing charges of anti-Semitism are the prominent Jewish Democrats. They could provide cover for other politicians and office-holders to denounce the current war crime in Gaza and begin to move American policy into a slightly more sane, just and productive stance toward Israel-Palestine. But this is not happening, and it will not happen. One scours the myriad news sources in vain to hear a critical word against the slaughter in Gaza even from such supposed ultra-liberal figures as Sen. Russell Feingold, much less such time-servers, cranks and shills as Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein or (God help us) Joe Lieberman.
So the killing will go on -- perhaps with the occasional pause for Israel to reload (with American ordnance, natch) -- or perhaps another "ceasefire" in which the people of Gaza are once more treated to a replication of the Warsaw Ghetto (as astute commenter Scott Douglas pointed out on this site the other day). Meanwhile, let's take a look at some of views of what is really happening in Gaza.
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http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1668-voiceless-in-gaza-israeli-carnage-and-the-american-courtiers.html
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