The Grovelling President of USA resorting to bribes?

Here are two telling excerpts of how low and humiliated Obama has become these days............

Obama is fresh from groveling before Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He pleaded with Israel’s leader to impose a short, token freeze on settlement building in exchange for a multi-billion dollar bribe from Washington of advanced US F-35 stealth warplanes, promises of UN vetoes, and raising the value of US arms stockpiled for Israel’s use to $1 billion. Rarely has a US president crawled so low.

Israel will likely take Obama’s bribe, with more sweeteners, but not before rubbing his face in the dirt to show who really runs US Mideast policy and as a warning not to mess with Israel. The last US president to challenge Israel’s colonization of the West Bank, George H. W. Bush, was ousted in 1992 after one term. (ICH, Eric Margolis)

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.

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 Hillary Clinton 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 about 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. (The Independent, Robert Fisk)

The Aid Flotilla

The Incident

Israeli commandos conduct a bloody raid on a humanitarian flotilla in international waters seizing crew, passengers and ships. Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine. The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back.

Turkish Response

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed it most forcefully in a televised speech last week: "You [Israel] killed 19-year-old Furkan Dogan brutally. Which faith, which holy book can be an excuse for killing him? I am speaking to them in their own language. The sixth commandment says, 'Thou shalt not kill'. Did you not understand? I'll say again. I say in English, 'You shall not kill'. Did you still not understand? So I'll say to you in your own language. I say in Hebrew, 'Lo Tirtzakh'."

US Response

"We communicated with Israel through multiple channels many times regarding the flotilla. We emphasised caution and restraint, given the anticipated presence of civilians, including American citizens," a State Department spokesman said in a statement.

Israeli Response

The usual claim that Israel offers time and again in order to justify its vicious repression of the Palestinian people is that it has the right to defend itself. Few would argue that it doesn't. But it can only do it legally. For decades now Israel has been engaged in provocative actions on Palestinian territory - appropriating land that belongs to Palestinians, destroying century-old olive groves, diverting water to Jewish settlements, leaving an inadequate supply for Palestinian farmers, and on and on.. When people object, Israel goes into its "we are victims mode." Like the schoolyard bully who runs crying to the teacher when a classmate finally fights back.

From Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz: "Recently an intelligence official actually called the absence of Palestinian terror a 'propaganda problem.'"

Israeli Contempt

British consulate officials were treated contemptuously. One example: the British consulate official from Jerusalem tried to have a private conversation through a prison cell door--we weren't allowed to meet face to face--with two British citizens. The junior prison guard refused to move. When he was asked to move, he brought two other prison guards. When the diplomat explained that under all international treaties, protocol and the law, he's entitled to speak to his nationals privately, the junior guard said, "Go to your international tribunals, go to your law, we don't care."

In another incident, Ann Wright, ex US diplomat had been seen in a videotape of detainees being brought into Ashdod, an Israeli port. In an interview, she said she was held at a "brand new Israeli prison" in Barsheba, where she was treated well. But she said that law enforcement officials upon her departure, airport law enforcement officials were "laughing, giggling, commenting on (the) wounded and dead. It was a very pitiful, pitiful performance by law enforcement people."

Israeli Sarcasm

A video mocking the humanitarian activists was distributed officially by the Israeli government before being pulled back due to vehement protests of its blatant insensivity. Mark Regev, Israeli government spokesman, defends the attack which killed nine passengers on the Freedom Flotilla and commented on the video. "I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny, it's how Israelis feel" he said.

Prior to the storming of the Turkish ship, the Israeli GPO (Government Press Office) sent an e-mail to journalists sarcastically recommending that while covering "alleged humanitarian difficulties," journalists should dine at one of Gaza's few restaurants. "We have been told the beef stroganoff and cream of spinach soup are highly recommended," the e-mail said.

Humour or black comedy does not always side with Israel or its supporters. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show said Charles Krauthammer, columnist and fervent Israel supporter, made the stupidest @#$& thing anyone ever said about the Middle East. Krauthammer said that there was no need for the flotilla since there was no humanitarian crisis and no one was starving in Gaza. Stewart smirked and paused and said that whatever anyone thinks of the Israeli leadership or Hamas, or religious beliefs, if someone fails to see the suffering in Gaza that needs to be alleviated, then his heart is so dead that "tourists flock there to float their backs in it".

Obama's Meek Response

Here’s what we’ve got. You’ve got a situation in which Israel has legitimate security concerns when they’ve got missiles raining down on cities along the Israel-Gaza border. I’ve been to those towns and seen the holes that were made by missiles coming through people’s bedrooms. So Israel has a legitimate concern there. On the other hand, you’ve got a blockade up that is preventing people in Palestinian Gaza from having job opportunities and being able to create businesses and engage in trade and have opportunity for the future.

Robert Fisk's Observation

I wasn't personally at all surprised at the killings on the Turkish ship. In Lebanon, I've seen this indisciplined rabble of an army – as "elite" as the average rabble of Arab armies – shooting at civilians. I saw them watching the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians on the morning of 18 September (the last day of the slaughter) by their vicious Lebanese militia allies. I was present at the Qana massacre by Israeli gunners in 1996 – "Arabushim" (the equivalent of the abusive term "Ayrab" in English), one of the gunners called the 106 dead civilians, more than half of them children, in the Israeli press. Then the Israeli government of Nobel laureate Shimon Peres said there were terrorists among the dead civilians – totally untrue, but who cares? – and then came the second Qana massacre in 2006 and then the 2008-09 Gaza slaughter of 1,300 Palestinians, most of them children, and then..

Apartheid 2010

The most likely outcome is that Greater Israel will become a full-fledged apartheid state. There are already separate laws, separate roads and separate housing in the occupied territories, and the Palestinians are essentially confined to impoverished enclaves. Indeed, two former Israeli prime ministers — Ehud Barak and Olmert — have made just this point. Olmert said that if the two-state solution collapses, Israel will face a "South African-style struggle." He went so far as to argue, "as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished."

It is already there. It is apartheid in its lowest and banal form.

(various news and media sources)