A call to violence
A right-wing US lawmaker urges Israel to ignore the truce and go on killing Palestinians, writes Ali Abunimah* from Chicago snip
As President Bush met with Palestinian premier Mahmoud Abbas and his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon in Washington last week, one of Bush's closest allies in Congress was in Israel. Tom DeLay, the influential leader of the Republican majority in the US House of Representatives was accorded the privilege of addressing members of the Knesset on 30 July. His speech was so extreme it prompted Labour Party lawmaker Danny Yatom to comment, "Geez, Likud is nothing compared to him."
In his speech, DeLay, a representative from a suburban district near Houston, Texas, dismissed the unilateral cease-fire by Palestinian factions, which has resulted in a virtual cessation of violence against Israeli civilians and occupation forces, as nothing more than a "90-day vacation" for "terrorists" and "murderers". He urged Israel to ignore the truce and go on killing Palestinian activists. DeLay informed the Israeli lawmakers that he was an "Israeli at heart", and acknowledged that Palestinians "have been oppressed and abused", though only by their own leaders, never by Israel. DeLay's central point was that the entire burden of ending the decades-old conflict lay on the shoulders of the Palestinians. Knesset members gave DeLay a standing ovation.
DeLay has spoken recently of a US-funded "Marshall plan" to aid Palestinians, but this is merely an effort to distract from the core of his message which is anti-Palestinian.
Michael Brown, executive director of the Washington-based Partners for Peace said that DeLay used his speech "solely to demagogue, burnish his credentials with the extreme right in Israel and the US, and savage the Palestinians".
more...
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/650/re1.htm
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