ROBERT FISK: AN AMERICAN BRIBE THAT STINKS OF APPEASEMENT
22. Nov, 2010
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“It is a sign of just how far America (and, through our failure to condemn this insanity, Europe) has allowed its fear of Israel – and how far Obama has allowed his fear of Israeli supporters in Congress and the Senate – to go”.
by: Robert Fisk - The Independent
In any other country, the current American bribe to Israel, and the latter’s reluctance to accept it, in return for even a temporary end to the theft of somebody else’s property would be regarded as preposterous. Three billion dollars’ worth of fighter bombers in return for a temporary freeze in West Bank colonisation for a mere 90 days? Not including East Jerusalem – so goodbye to the last chance of the east of the holy city for a Palestinian capital – and, if Benjamin Netanyahu so wishes, a rip-roaring continuation of settlement on Arab land. In the ordinary sane world in which we think we live, there is only one word for Barack Obama’s offer: appeasement. Usually, our lords and masters use that word with disdain and disgust.
Anyone who panders to injustice by one people against another people is called an appeaser. Anyone who prefers peace at any price, let alone a $3bn bribe to the guilty party – is an appeaser. Anyone who will not risk the consequences of standing up for international morality against territorial greed is an appeaser. Those of us who did not want to invade Afghanistan were condemned as appeasers. Those of us who did not want to invade Iraq were vilified as appeasers. Yet that is precisely what Obama has done in his pathetic, unbelievable effort to plead with Netanyahu for just 90 days of submission to international law. Obama is an appeaser.
The fact that the West and its political and journalistic elites – I include the ever more disreputable New York Times – take this tomfoolery at face value, as if it can seriously be regarded as another “step” in the “peace process”, to put this mystical nonsense “back on track”, is a measure of the degree to which we have taken leave of our senses in the Middle East.
It is a sign of just how far America (and, through our failure to condemn this insanity, Europe) has allowed its fear of Israel – and how far Obama has allowed his fear of Israeli supporters in Congress and the Senate – to go.
Three billion dollars for three months is one billion dollars a month to stop Israel’s colonisation. That’s half a billion dollars a fortnight. That’s $500m a week. That’s $71,428,571 a day, or $2,976,190 an hour, or $49,603 a minute. And as well as this pot of gold, Washington will continue to veto any resolutions critical of Israel in the UN and prevent “Palestine” from declaring itself a state. It’s worth invading anyone to get that much cash to stage a military withdrawal, let alone the gracious gesture of not building more illegal colonies for only 90 days while furiously continuing illegal construction in Jerusalem at the same time.
The Hillary Clinton version of this grotesquerie would be funny if it was not tragic. According to the sharp pen of the NYT’s Roger Cohen, La Clinton has convinced herself that Palestine is “achievable, inevitable and compatible with Israel’s security”. And what persuaded Madame Hillary of this? Why, on a trip to the pseudo-Palestine “capital” of Ramallah last year, she saw the Jewish settlements – “the brutality of it was so stark” according to one of her officials – but thought her motorcade was being guarded by the Israeli army because “they’re so professional”. And then, lo and behold, they turned out to be a Palestinian military guard, a “professional outfit” – and all this changed Madame’s views!
Quite apart from the fact that the Israeli army is a rabble, and that indeed, the Palestinians are a rabble too, this “road to Ramallah” incident led supporters of Madame, according to Cohen, to realise that there had been a transition “from a self-pitying, self-dramatising Palestinian psyche, with all the cloying accoutrements of victimhood, to a self-affirming culture of pragmatism and institution-building”. Palestinian “prime minister” Salam Fayyad, educated in the US so, naturally, a safe pair of hands, has put “growth before grumbling, roads before ranting, and security before everything”.
Having been occupied by a brutal army for 43 years, those wretched, dispossessed Palestinians, along with their cousins in the West Bank who have been homeless for 62 years, have at last stopped ranting and grumbling and feeling sorry for themselves and generally play-acting in order to honour the only thing that matters. Not justice. Certainly not democracy, but to the one God which Christians, Jews and Muslims are all now supposed to worship: security.
Yes, they have joined the true brotherhood of mankind. Israel will be safe at last. That this infantile narrative now drives the woman who told us 11 years ago that Jerusalem was “the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel” proves that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has now reached its apogee, its most treacherous and final moment. And if Netanyahu has any sense – I’m talking abut the Zionist, expansionist kind – he will wait out the 90 days, then thumb his nose at the US. In the three months of “good behaviour”, of course, the Palestinians will have to bite the bullet and sit down to “peace” talks which will decide the future borders of Israel and “Palestine”. But since Israel controls 62 per cent of the West Bank this leaves Fayyad and his chums about 10.9 per cent of mandate Palestine to argue about.
And at the cost of $827 a second, they’d better do some quick grovelling. They will. We should all hang our heads in shame. But we won’t. It’s not about people. It’s about presentation. It’s not about justice. It’s about “security”. And cash. Lots of it. Goodbye Palestine.
Source: The Independent
Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent of The Independent, is the author of Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (London: André Deutsch, 1990). He holds numerous awards for journalism, including two Amnesty International UK Press Awards and seven British International Journalist of the Year awards. His other books include The Point of No Return: The Strike Which Broke the British in Ulster (Andre Deutsch, 1975); In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939-45 (Andre Deutsch, 1983); and The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East (4th Estate, 2005).
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noooooooo!!! not possible. remember now, you’re dealing with Abbas and also, most ethical political family ever, the Clintonstones!!
Appeasment??? Never happen. Bribery is a better term. Appeasment sounds so, how does one say; “left on the dresser” when bribery invokes visions of the old gas bag performing a Lewinsky on the co-opted traitor, Abbas.
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It is difficult to understand the world anymore. We have the debt commission telling granddad and granny to get ready to start eating dog food again. We tell our disable veterans that they are used up and they should just go live in the gutter. Then we look at the middle east and see $98,000,000 stealth fighter jets being given to the most over armed aggressive military on the planet. We are also placing several hundred million dollars of weapons to be stored in Israel but we have no money to help our people. This is not bribery or appeasment. It is pure insanity and greed. It is time to let God the almighty to take care of the chosen because we sure cannot afford them anymore. God the almighty is claimed to have started this insanity so why not take God to court. Heaven knows the greedy has sued everyone else to continue the welfare system.
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PETE Reply:
November 23rd, 2010 at 7:17 am
YOU HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD TOM. WE IT COMES TO ISRAEL SCREW THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. THESE PIECES OF SHIT WE HAVE IN WASHINTON DO NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT EATING DOG FOOD. THEY WERE ALL BORN WITH SILVER SPOONS IN THEIR MOUTH,S. THE UNITED STATES HAS LOST THE RESPECT OF THE WORLD.AS FAR AS THE VETERAN,S WHO HAVE FOUGHT & DIED IN ISRAELI STARTED RECENT WARS WHO CARES ABOUT THEM. THEY ARE ONLY THE SON.S & DAUGHTERS OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE.SINCE THE U.S. NOW HAS WOMEN FIGHTING IN COMBAT ROLES NEXT TO MEN.ITHINK IT WOULD BE A NICE PATROTIC GESTURE IF THE CONGRESS WOULD STRONGLY PUSH THEIR KIDS TO ENLIST IN THE ARMED FORCES. YEH, WHEN PIGS FLY.
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The land,Israel belongs to God who gave it to the jews as an inheritance for their generations.To make Israel a two state nation will bring the wrath of God and what scripture calls”the last days”.
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Elias Reply:
November 23rd, 2010 at 12:15 am
God is against massacre of Children. Zionisim is Evil.
Read this article
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/07/christian-zionism-the-source-of-the-problem-in-the-middle-east/
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PETE Reply:
November 23rd, 2010 at 7:20 am
ARE YOU SNIFFING GLUE MR. GUERRERO?
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Lanaki Guerrero Reply:
November 23rd, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Are u sniffin.I am Mis Guerrero.I’m on da outside lookin in.I am neither jew nor arab,I hate neither.I wish everyone could live in peace.I do believe da land of Israel belongs 2 God.And I believe da Hebrew God of OLD is da SAME YESTERDAY TODAY and FOREVA!
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Jules Reply:
December 1st, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Pete, I believe the answer to your question is “yes”. As for the two-state “solution” bringing on the Apocalypse, Ms Guerrero (a suitable name for you, by the way): heck, I’m willing to risk it. Let’s see if Jeebus shows up to rescue the violent, self-justifying and racist entity known as the State of Israel. I’m guessing the Prince of Peace already has a full appointment book that day.
I do not know why are palestinians waisting their time in all the lies . There will never be a palestinian state, because Jews cannot allow it to be, their religious books demands so , even though God has broken his covenant with them for their unchanged character of murder, genocide and disbeleif.Evangalist will still pour their blessings on the people who murdered their Jesus. 2000 yrs passed and their hatred of Christ grows
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LANAKI. you obviously have not read the Bible using LOGIC. God promised Abraham before he had any kids, the land of CANAAN as an EVERLASTING COVENANT, to his SEED, nota specific seed alone. So that would include his first son, whom God also BLESSED AND GAVE HIS NAME TO ISHMA-EL ( GOD HEARD). God also answered the prayers of HAGAR and spoke to her and before Sara, and allowed her to use his name on a well called ” BEER LA-HA-ROI”, but not Sara. God saved both Ishmael & his mum from death and sent them to a safe place , because he knew what they would do to them as they did to their prophets….Then the evil & corrupt scribes later added their own lies and human tradition to the Torah by contradicting what was originaly promuised to ALL Abraham’s seed, by stating ANOTHER covenant to Isaac alone…which makes no sense . Jesus in the Bible confirms the omittion, addition and lies by the writters of the old testament.
( Jeremiah 8:8,10) ‘How can you say, “We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD,” when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?.8… prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit.
( genesis 17:10) 9 And God said to Abraham: “As for you, YOU shall KEEP My covenant, you and your DESCENDENTS after you throughout their generations. 10 This is My covenant which you shall keep, between ME and YOU and YOUR descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be CIRCUMSISED; 11 and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a SIGN of the COVENANT between Me and you ….13 My covenant shall be in your FLESH for an EVERLASTING covenant
The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day, and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you.” (1 Samuel 15:28
READ BETWEEN THE LINES
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