| http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20020731/index.php For Wednesday, July 31, 2002 Charley REESE On The Defensive At Last It's good to see that the Israelis are finally on the defensive in their long-running propaganda war. Fewer and fewer people are buying the absurd notion that one of the world's great military powers is "the victim" of unarmed Palestinians. Dropping a 1-ton bomb on one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world and then professing to be surprised that civilians were killed flew like a lead bird in Europe and the rest of the world. Even President Bush, as weak-kneed and muddle-headed as he is on the Middle East, expressed great annoyance. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, who was already boasting that it was one of Israel's most successful operations, had to do a quick bit of backpedaling when a hurricane of criticism fell on his country. The truth is that Israel's blatant, racist and contemptuous attitude toward Palestinian lives is showing through its cloak of incessant propaganda. It was hard not to vomit when watching the Israeli consul general in New York piously proclaim how Israel tries to avoid civilian deaths. If that were so, how come more than 80 percent of all the Palestinians killed in the past two years were civilians, many of them women and children? If the Israelis are so concerned about Palestinian life, then why have they committed so many heinous acts of cruelty against Palestinian civilians, like locking them down in their homes, stealing their land and refusing to allow them to get to hospitals? How come an Israeli settler who beat a 10-year-old Palestinian boy to death received as a sentence a fine and community service? Unfortunately for the Israelis, the video camera and satellite communications have allowed the world to see their thuggish brutality. The Israelis have no choice but to keep on lying, since the truth is on the side of the Palestinians. Israel occupies Palestinian land. No Palestinian occupies Israeli territory. Israel has one of the most powerful armies in the world. The Palestinians have no army at all. Israel stands in open defiance of more than 60 United Nations resolutions. The Palestinians violated none of them. The greatest concession in modern history was made in 1993 when the Palestinians agreed to accept the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in return for peace. In actuality, the Zionists have no valid claim to any of Palestine. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 was simply the last act of colonialist Europe taking other people's land away from them. Even so, the Israelis refuse to withdraw to their 1967 borders. At last, some American Jews are beginning to speak out and demand that Israel withdraw to its 1967 borders and dismantle the Jewish settlements. They have seen that the hard-nosed Zionists in Israel are making a mockery of Jewish idealism. The power of Israeli propaganda is still illustrated, at least in America, by the fact that no one in the administration even questioned Israel's assumed right to assassinate anyone it deems a political enemy. The man they killed, along with the civilians, was once in an Israeli prison, and the Israelis let him go. Why didn't they just arrest him again? Why did they decide that a 1-ton bomb dropped from an American-made F-16 was the proper tool for taking out one man in an apartment complex? The answer is that they are drunk on their military power and are corrupted by their racist attitudes and by the weakness of the American political and media establishments. The Israelis think they can do anything to anybody anywhere and get away with it. I think they have finally crossed a bridge too far. |