Monday, July 03, 2006

It's all about perspective

So, the latest from the world's most prominent unending conflict (Israel/Palestine) is that the Israelis have threatened to assassinate the prime minister of the nascent Palestininan government if a kidnapped IDF soldier is not returned to them. This, of course, has generated muted response from the Western press because, you know, it's not nice to talk openly about the barbarity of one's close allies. In fact, the collective media has done a wonderful job of framing the argument before you even get to the assassination threats.

CNN stated: Israel attacks 'radical Islamists' in Gaza. Ah. Perhaps you mean the democractically-elected government of the Palestinian Territories known as Hamas? No, no. We won't be having any of that. No one would democratically elect the 'enemy'. They'd have to conquer their way to the top, like the Taliban or those councils in Somalia... except that both of them were installed by popular sentiment... and the US supported the Taliban and is even now thinking about supporting the Somalian councils... Huh. Perhaps the US needs another client state to start a war with Somalia? Will that make it all better?

CNN also stated: Israel detains Palestinian ministers while trying to gain the release of a kidnapped soldier. See, Israel detains while Palestinians kidnap. Clear enough? Furthermore, Palestinians assassinate while Israel assa... wait.

Seriously, how long has it been since one nation vowed to murder the head of state of another nation? Even the CIA didn't publicly trumpet their intention to kill Castro. I can think back to medieval times, when Ivan the Terrible requested the hand of the Polish king's daughter and was abruptly refused. Ivan sent a message to the Polish court detailing exactly how he was digging a hole that was of sufficient dimensions for Zygmunt the Second's head. But in modern times, this kind of thing just isn't done. Unless, of course, you're a 'rogue state' that operates with almost complete impunity because you're backed up by the world's most powerful (and threatening) nation and its collection of idiots known as a populace.

The excuses, of course, have already emerged: Israel has to do those things because they're threatened with complete destruction if they don't! Here's a newsflash: Israel hasn't been truly threatened with complete destruction since 1948. Ever since then, it's been as convenient an excuse as J. Edgar Hoover used to use for the threat of communism: if we don't get them first, they'll get us and then we'll never be able to cross-dress in the privacy of our own offices again! In point of fact, there's a considerable body of evidence that Israel has initiated many of the acts of warfare conducted against it. The fact that its seriously outnumbered military was always in just the right place at the right time to secure overwhelming victory (almost as if they'd planned it...) does nothing to hinder that idea. But, here I am, talking like an anti-Semite again. Just like CNN has to spin everything in a positive direction for the state of Israel for fear of being accused of bigotry, even little private citizens like me have to heed those same artificial boundaries (e.g. criticism of Israel is inherently and irrefutably criticism of all Jews.) My response to that perspective is comprised of two words:

Piss. Off.

The Israelis are the thugs here, every bit as much as the morons who crawled through a tunnel to attack that IDF border post and decided to bring a 'guest' back with them. There are no good guys. Only innocents in the crossfire and misguided American idiots across the ocean whom will never pay attention for long enough to understand.

2 Comments:

Blogger Rob said...

Of course, Pat Robertson did recently talk about assassinating Chavez and didn't W want to take out Saddam because he had tried to kill his daddy? While the US might not be so open about assassinations, we don't have a problem displaying the heads of the fallen when it's one of Hussein's kids or Zarqawi.

2:40 PM  
Blogger Rob said...

Also, I am certainly enjoying the US seeing the true effects of democratization, that you don't always get what you want. In both Afghanistan and Iraq we've seen democratic elections which moved these countries closer to Iran, taking Afghanistan effectively out of the Pakistani sphere of influence and eliminating the threat to Iran that Iraq had always represented. The result, Iran does not feel threatened by its neighbors anymore. With US forces spread thin, this also means they don't have to worry about the West for the time being.

In Palestine, the lesson that needs to be learned by the US and Israel is that they should have bent over backwards to make sure Fatah succeeded. If that had happened, if Fatah had been able to make real progress with US and Israeli support, Hamas never would have won election. I'm sure the Americans know what it means to go with the lesser of two evils...

2:50 PM  

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