Juan Cole: Have Bush and the Neocons Ruined it for the Israelis?

[n2doc]

The Israeli propaganda blitz around their attack on Gaza has been greeted with uncharacteristic skepticism by the American public and even by some of the mainstream US press. Even the Jewish American community is uneasy about this one, in a way perhaps unparalelled since the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon and siege of Beirut. Jews for Peace in Los Angeles are actively protesting the Gaza atrocities, and newspaper articles from around the US on local protests held this weekend often mention mixed Arab-American and Jewish-American rallies.

If it is true that Americans are greeting Israeli talking points with more criticism this time, is it because we have been intensively exposed for the past 8 years to precisely this sort of mental manipulation by Bush-Cheney and their stable of Neoconservatives?

Let's take some of the basic techniques of propaganda practiced by Bush and compare them to those deployed by the Israeli leadership in the past 8 days.

1. Deny it all.

Bushie Examples: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld denied that there was massive looting in Iraq during April of 2003, alleging that CNN had one tape of a guy stealing a vase and kept looping it over and over again. "How many vases can they have?" he asked. In mid-summer 2003, Rumsfeld denied that there was a guerrilla war in Iraq, even though Jamie McIntyre of CNN was able to quote the Pentagon definition of guerrilla war, and it fit Iraq. Rumsfeld just replied, "No."
Cont'd/

Then there was Bush's insistence that "Brownie" had done a "heckuva job" in New Orleans after Katrina.

Kadima Examples: When French President Sarkozy requested a two-day halt in Israeli air strikes so that humanitarian aid could reach ordinary Gazans, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni replied, “there is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.”

more at link:

http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/have-bush-and-neocons-ruined-it-for.html

[Fumesucker]

1. You can fool some of the people all the time..

And all of the people some of the time..

But you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

I agree that the parallels between Israel's actions and the actions of the US over the last eight years are become obvious to the point where some Americans that wouldn't have picked up on them eight years ago are starting to get a glimmer of understanding.

[dynasaw]

2. Bush-Cheney and their stable of Neoconservatives/Obama's Position

Wolfowitz, Perl, Freith et al. Note: Obama's speech of eb 26th, 2008 "Obama divorces the Neocons and the Israel Lobby."



"Obama's Sunday 2 24 08 speech to ~100 members of the Jewish Community in Cleveland may just possibly be one of the most critically important speeches in the history of our American experiment - certainly the most important speech in the last 50 years. It will serve as the BASIS for successful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is at the basis of the 'Neocon Wars for Israel' that BushCheney and the Israel Lobby have been having us fight."

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/blutopie/gGg5bP

Any wonder that these attacks are coming in the last days of the Bush regime?

[harun]

3. +1

[achtung_circus]

4. K & R /nt

[eridani]

5. And about those tin can "rockets" --clip and save this info

http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/have-bush-and-neocons-ruined-it-for.html

Kadima examples: Israelis point to thousands of rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel, without mentioning that no Israelis had been killed by them during the truce stretching from mid-June, 2008 until December 26. That is, the prelude to the most violent Israeli attack on Gaza since 1967 was . . . not a single Israeli death at the hands of Hamas in the preceding half-year. And in 8 years, Hamas had killed about 15 Israelis with those home made rockets, during which time the Israelis had killed nearly 5000 Palestinians, nearly 1000 of them minors. The rockets were small, handmade affairs for the most part and most landed uselessly. Some did damage to property and a few wounded or killed people. That would be a legitimate assertion. But the quotation of "thousands" of rockets is a half-truth and intentionally misleading.

Another half-truth is that Israel is involved in a "peace process" or supports Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, when in fact it has gone on stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank and making Palestinian lives miserable and colonizing them.

[leftchick]

6. I have never seen that reported anywhere in our M$M

they are so fucking complicit in this slaughter.