Just a few days ago, I offered to eat my words, expecting they would not show up on the menu. But, I just noticed that there is only one item on today’s menu; the words I wrote in my last article, titled “Enhancing the Prospects of Beirut.”
The words now look like year old stale bread. These are the words I regret writing : “I have always believed that if America gets serious about resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, it will get resolved. If I am wrong in calling this major shift in American policy, I will be the first to eat my words. In the meantime, the whole Middle east is depending on a second chance in Beirut.”
It all came down to whether Bush would put Sharon in his place. I believe that place is the Hague and Americans will be the first to rejoice when this particular Israeli war criminal gets the attention of international law. It is my conviction that the only leverage against Sharon is the promise of a good dose of justice for Qibya and Sabra and Shatila. Until the day he shares a bunk with Milosovic, his list of crimes against humanity will continue to increase, as will his barbaric assaults to torment the Palestinians.
What happened to the Saudi peace initiative? For one thing, Congress rallied to its paymasters and interceded with ‘advice’ to the president to ‘not pressure’ their favorite thug, Ariel Sharon. Bush had the option of taking on Sharon’s half of the Senate or facing a mass migration to Tel Aviv. Why the president would be concerned with these Senators and Congressmen taking a hike to ‘their country’ is beyond my comprehension. Take Hillary form Arkansas to New York to Tel Aviv and she will still be Hillary, the first bigot. To further discourage our hapless administration from doing the right thing, our dirty dozen media monopolies weighed in with a little smear campaign against the Saudis. That was enough for Bush to throw in the towel.
Today, the White House dismissed the Beirut conference as being so unimportant as to not require attendance. So, if no one shows up, they had an official Bush administration pass to be somewhere else. Just because Sharon and his willing ‘American’ collaborators were intent on diminishing the prospects of Beirut. The Washington Post went so far as to threaten further escalation in the violence. The Donald Graham clique apparently was not satisfied with the most recent Palestinian body count in the refugee camps. And the New York Times again put the blame on who else but Arafat. NBC, which reported the mass murder in the camps as “Israeli patrols” was positively giddy that it had again triumphed in promoting the extremist Likudnik agenda.
Judith Miller, who has toiled in Sulzberger’s Yiddish rag for years as an ‘expert’ on the Middle East, was on MSNBC again lumping the Palestinian cause with ‘Islamic terrorism’ and suggesting that Sharon had no other option but to disrupt the Saudi/American peace initiative. Miller’s lines sound oddly familiar, especially when she invokes the wisdom of ‘Bibi Netenyahu’ who presides over the Likud party wing that is positioned to the right of ‘Baby Arik.’ After all, Sulzberger would not settle for a Yiddish supremacist hag who can’t stomach a full dose of militant Israeli repression. Bizarre and frustrating as this may be, an extremist Likudnik cult has grown deep roots at The New York Times, the daily ruse.
Beirut and the Palestinians, after suffering decades of insufferable ethnically biased American policies; having witnessed the wholesale destruction of a way of life for an entire people; having paid the price of cheap American political whores in senatorial garb; having endured Israeli repression, mayhem and mass murder; Beirut deserved serious American attention.
Americans should take a real good look at every politician, every media tycoon, every slime ball ‘journalist,’ who is aligning with Ariel Sharon. Never trust these people. They are liars. They are complicit in tormenting an innocent people. They hate liberty as much as they crave power. They worship a foreign war criminal as a personal deity and they appear to be organized in an orchestrated campaign to champion Israeli repression. For the Sulzberger clan, telling the truth about the Palestinians is tantamount to confessing to three generations of journalistic lies about Sharon’s war criminal past and the true nature of the Israeli occupation. Sure, Ha’aretz can probe the mask of Israeli mythology. But the gray lady has to constantly demonstrate that it can deliver the goods for Israel. Anyone familiar with the history of the Sulzberger clan knows that they relish power struggles with American presidents, if only to demonstrate their clout. So, let the son of a Parisian whore who runs the joint on 43rd street, know that his escapades in bed with Sharon will not go unrecorded in the history books.
As things now stand, Mubarak will stay in Cairo to demonstrate his solidarity with the Palestinians, as will Hussein of Jordan. Arafat will not abandon his people in Ramallah for the temptations of Beirut. In the span of a month, the American policy has gone from approving Sharon’s all out assault against densely populated refugee camps, to cautiously probing the Saudi peace initiative, to restraining Sharon, to warmly embracing the prospects of Beirut, to pressuring for a return to peace negotiations, to threatening worst mayhem down the road via the semiofficial Washington Post, to dismissing the importance of attendance at the Beirut conference, to who knows what next week.
So, if I am forced to eat my words, it is because I am once again baffled by whatever the Bush administration is up to in the Middle East. Whatever America’s policy de jure is, it is not considered in the ‘national interest’ to clarify it for the people of the region or to the humble citizens of these United States. It is a secret policy. If they told you, they would have to kill you. If you don’t know and you are Palestinian, they might just kill you for sport. That is why I am constantly forced to take my best guess. So, if you were a doubter, you were right. I was wrong. Even after 911, the Yiddish supremacist media barons and a servile corrupt congress will put Sharon’s needs above any consideration of American national interests. Sulzberger and his crowd are determined to satisfy Israel’s real estate fantasies no matter the mounting cost in American, Egyptian, Lebanese, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian, Palestinian and Israeli casualties. It is a Yiddish thing you wouldn’t understand.
