I have just
spent a couple of days in New York City. Returning to Virginia on
Wednesday morning, I had a somewhat strange experience. I cleared
through my emails before leaving the hotel and also read through a
number of the featured news articles. One, in particular, caught my eye.
It described how the Democratic Party primary in Queens New York had
returned a startling result. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won over mainstream incumbent Joe Crowley,
signaling that not everyone in the Democratic Party is buying into the
Clinton model of good governance by big donors and powerful interest
groups. Many want change and even a radical departure from the political
game whereby media savvy pressure groups and narrow constituencies are
pandered to to create a governing majority.
One paragraph in
particular in the article I read was highly suggestive, the claim that
Ocasio-Cortez had been strongly opposed to the Israelis’ routine
slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, which has by now become of such
little import that it is not even reported any more in the U.S. media.
She is also allegedly a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and
Sanction movement (BDS), which pressures Israel to end its theft and
occupation of Palestinian land. The article expressed some surprise that
anyone in New York City would dare to say anything unpleasant about
Israel and still expect to get elected.
This is what Ocasio-Cortez, who called the shooting of more than 130 Gazans a “massacre,” actually said and wrote:
“No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else. Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore. I think I was primarily compelled [to speak out] on moral grounds because I could only imagine if 60 people were shot and killed in Ferguson. Or if 60 people were shot and killed in the West Virginia teachers’ strikes. The idea that we are not supposed to talk about people dying when they are engaging in political expression just really moved me.”
Five hours later, when I arrived home in Virginia I went to pull up the article I had read in the morning to possibly use it in a piece of my own and was somewhat surprised to discover that the bit about Israel had been excised from the text. It was clearly yet another example of how the media self-censors when there is anything negative to say about Israel and it underlines the significance of the emergence of recent international media reporting in The Guardian
and elsewhere regarding how Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson largely
dictates U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. That means that the
conspiracy of silence over Israel’s manipulation of the United States
government is beginning to break down and journalists have become bold
enough to challenge what occurs when pro-Israel Jews obtain real power
over the political process. Adelson, for what it’s worth, wants war with
Iran and has even suggested detonating a nuclear device on its soil to
“send a message.”
I personally
would have liked to see Ocasio-Cortez go farther, a lot farther. Israel
is a place where conventional morality has been replaced by a
theocratically and culturally driven sense of entitlement which has
meant that anything goes when it comes to the treatment of inferior
Christian and Muslim Arabs. It also means that the United States is
being played for a patsy by people who believe themselves to be superior
in every way to Americans.
The question of
the relationship with Israel comes at a time when everyone in America,
so it seems, is concerned about children being separated from their
parents who have illegally crossed the border from Mexico into the
United States. The concern is legitimate given the coarse and sometimes
violent justifications coming out of the White House, but it’s a funny
thing that Israeli abuse and even killing of Arab children is not met
with the same opprobrium. When a Jewish fanatic/Israel settler kills
Palestinian children and is protected by his government in so doing,
where is the outrage in the U.S. media? Settlers and soldiers kill
Palestinians, young and old, with impunity and are almost never
punished. They destroy their orchards and livestock to eliminate their
livelihoods to drive them out. They bulldoze their homes and villages.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency does none of that and is
yet subject to nonstop abuse in the mainstream media, so what about
Israel?
A recent story
illustrates just how horrible the Israelis can be without any pushback
whatsoever coming from Washington objecting to their behavior. As the
United States is the only force that can in any way compel Israel to
come to its senses and chooses not to do so, that makes U.S.
policymakers and by extension the American people complicit in Israel’s
crimes.
The particularly horrible recent account
that I am referring to describes how fanatical Jewish settlers burned
alive a Palestinian family on the West Bank, including a baby, and then
celebrated the deaths while taunting the victims’ surviving family when
they subsequently appeared in court. The story was covered in Israel and
Europe but insofar as I could determine did not appear in any detail in
the U.S. mainstream media.
Israeli Jewish settlers carried out their shameful deed outside a court in the city of Lod, chanting
“’Ali was burned, where is Ali? There is no Ali. Ali is burned. On the
fire. Ali is on the grill!” referring to the 18-month old baby Ali
Dawabsheh, who was burnt alive
in 2015 by Jewish settlers hurling Molotov cocktails into a house in
the West Bank town of Duma. Ali’s mother Riham and father Saad also died
of their burns and were included in the chanting “Where is Ali? Where
is Riham? Where is Saad? It’s too bad Ahmed didn’t burn as well.” Five
year-old Ahmed, who alone survived the attack with severe burns, will
have scars for the rest of his life.
The settlers were taunting Ali’s grandfather Hussein Dawabsheh, who accompanied Ahmed, at a preliminary hearing where the court indicted
a man who confessed to the murders and a minor who acted as an
accomplice. A video of the chanting shows Israeli policemen standing by
and doing nothing. The court appearance also revealed that there have
been another Molotov cocktail attack by settlers on another Dawabsheh
family house in May that may have been an attempt to silence testimony
relating to the first attack. Fortunately, the family managed to escape.
And by all
accounts this outrage was not the first incident in which the burning of
the Palestinian baby was celebrated. A December 15th wedding video showed
settlers engaged in an uproarious party that featured dances with
Molotov cocktails and waving knives and guns. A photo of baby Ali was on
display and was repeatedly stabbed. A year later, 13 people from what
became known as the “murder wedding” were indicted
for incitement to terrorism, but as of today no one has actually been
punished. Israelis who kill Arabs are rarely indicted or tried. If it is
a soldier or policeman that is involved, which occurs all too often,
the penalty is frequently either nothing at all a slap on the wrist.
Indeed, the snipers who fired on Gazans recently were actually ordered
to shoot the unarmed civilians and directed to take out anyone who
appeared to be a “leader,” which included medical personnel.
Source: Green Left Weekly
The Trump Administration could, of course, stop the Israeli brutality if it chooses to do so, but it does not think Benjamin Netanyahu’s
crimes against humanity are on the agenda. Nor did Clinton, Bush and
Obama dare to confront the power of Israel’s lobby, though Obama tried a
little pushback in a feeble way.
Someone in
Washington should be asking why the United States should be fighting
unnecessary wars and becoming an international pariah defending a
country and people that believe they are “chosen” by God? One can only
hope that the shift in perceptions on the Middle East by liberal
Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez has some legs and will lead to some real
change in U.S. foreign policy. To succeed the liberal Democrats will
need to push against some formidable obstacles within their own party,
most notably the Clinton wing and people like Senator Chuck Schumer,
Minority leader in the Senate, who describes himself as Israel’s
“shomer” or defender in the Upper House. Perhaps someone on the New York Times
editorial board should publicly suggest to Schumer that he go and run
for office in Israel since he seems to prefer it to the country that has
made him rich and powerful. But of course, the Times and all
the other mainstream media, which is responsible for what we are not
allowed to know about Israel and its American mouthpieces, will never
entertain that suggestion or anything like it.
*
This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Philip M. Giraldi,
Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a
501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more
interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Dr. Giraldi is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from the author.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Philip Giraldi, Global Research, 2018