Waiting for peace in Palestine, there was today at Mandela's funerals a handshake between Obama and Raul Castro! Not bad.

Posted by: Mina | Dec 10 2013 16:15 utc | 1

The land-grab continues. This graphic explains better than words:

http://duplicitousdemocracy.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/dissappearing-palestine.jpg

Posted by: ben | Dec 10 2013 16:22 utc | 2

Even their best buddies are at loss
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/10504011/Schizophrenic-US-foreign-policy-pushing-Arab-states-toward-Russia-Bahrain-warns.html
http://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/article/2013/12/10/hamid-karzai-les-americains-agissent-en-puissance-coloniale_3528442_3216.html

Posted by: Mina | Dec 10 2013 16:29 utc | 3

raul castro better wash his hands thoroughly.

from both dirt and poison

Posted by: joe anon 1 | Dec 10 2013 16:58 utc | 4

That Hitler learned a lot form the U.S. politicians and practice is no secret.

One passage from Mark Mazower's book:

There were no historical parallels for such a project. In Europe neither Napoleon nor the Habsburgs had aimed at such an exclusive domination, but then Hitler's upbringing as a German nationalist critic of Vienna helps explain the contrast with the methods of governance pursued by the Dual Monarchy. In its violence and racism, Nazi imperialism drew more from European precedents in Asia, Africa and - especially - the Americas. 'When we eat wheat from Canada,' remarked Hitler one evening during the war, 'we don't think about the despoiled Indians.' On another occasion he described the Ukraine as 'that new Indian Empire' .

It is interesting reference to Ukraine. Some things never change, just different outfit and slogans, New Order vs Democracy.

All above has been implemented in Palestine. It is painful to read all that.

Posted by: neretva'43 | Dec 10 2013 17:26 utc | 5

The reference to American Indians is a reminder to Kerry not to be too critical.

Posted by: dh | Dec 10 2013 17:30 utc | 6

2 wrongs don't make anything right.. genocide is genocide. the usa needs to acknowledge the relationship it continues to support with israel and what it means in a bigger context.. meanwhile israel continues to move to the far right, run by fanatics..

Posted by: james | Dec 10 2013 18:43 utc | 7

"The reference to American Indians is a reminder to Kerry not to be too critical."

That is it, precisely.

But it is much more than that: as neretva'43 points out the whole Nazi enterprise was based on a recreation in the slav lands of eastern Europe, of the imperialismn that had made the colonists of North America so prosperous and so strong. It was one of the lessons that Hitler got out of the war which effectively ended when the US joined in. And which was lost, by Germany, because it ran out of food; with a new German empire including Ukraine that would not happen again. Then there were the raw material resources, from metals to fossil fuels.

My view is that Naziism was, inter alia, an attempt to reproduce the imperialism in which it had been left behind by Britain, and which gave a tiny island the power to dominate a continent.

As to the "indians" Hitler, like most young German readers of his generation, was a fan of Karl May's westerns with their depiction of the tragic but inevitable destruction of the tribal societies. He understood very well what had happened to the indigenous people and concluded that Germans had to learn to harden their hearts and wipe out their rivals for resources, reducing them to slavery.

Zionism is a C19th form of imperialism. And Revisionist Zionism, the only logical form of the philosophy-as can be seen by the way in which it has virtually eradicated "softer" "socialist" versions-with their unresolvable contradictions and blatant hypocrisies- is a form of fascism. Not fascism as a term of abuse, but real fascism as an authoritarian means of organising society to guarantee the hegemony of the economic elite.

So what the reference to American Indians also means- and it is understood as such in Canada and Australia too- is that the Israeli colonists see themselves, such is the depth of the delusion into which they have descended, as in the position of the Puritans of New England, 400 years ago.
They see themselves as sitting on the edge of a great continent-Arabia to the south, the Mahgreb and the Sudan to the west, Iran and Iraq to the east- which they are fated, it is written in the colour of their skins, to dominate, conquer, manipulate and which will turn every one of them into millionaires.

This is a nightmare born of nightmares, doubly distilled from the example of the British Empire and the United States (identical twins, temporarily separated at birth), refined into the NAZI attempt to repeat the work of centuries in a few years, now distilled into an enterprise which insists on regarding technologically advanced Asian civilisations as the equivalents of the aboriginal societies which, thanks largely to accidental biological "warfare", were brushed aside by capitalism.

How prescient the spirit which guide our deliberations here was, when he wrote, of the victory over fascism:
"Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again." --Bertold Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

That is what the threat to the bedouin means. That is what the demolition of Lenin's statue in Kiev means.

Posted by: bevin | Dec 10 2013 19:13 utc | 8

While reading the comments there is a lot of justified despair over this genocidal policy, but not much looking at the fact that this is just Israel making its own existence harder to sustain.

The Israeli parliament speaker comparing the situation to "as the Americans did to the Indians" highlights the flaw perfectly. The Americans were only able to successfully colonize the Western frontiers because of an unprecedented influx of new immigrants from the old world to the new. Over the space of generations, this perpetual growth allowed perpetual expansion West. Israel has no such growth, in fact it has more Jews leaving Israel than entering, while the Palestian population rises steadily.

In such a case, the smart goal would be to stick behind the 1967 lines and try to grow and consolodate the population from Jewish majority areas. Instead they are moving into the West Bank, where the settlements will prove to be mere islands in a sea of Palestinian land (and easy to attack in any war).

Expelling Bedouins from the Negev desert is just as stupid. This area gets 31mm of rain a YEAR, has poor soil and the Bedouins tribal brothers live just across the border in the Sinai desert in Egpyt. Scarcity of water and little arable soil is the reasons the bedouins are a Nomadic tribe to begin with. Once you have drained the soil and your goats have eaten what little grass is around it is easy to just move camp.

Posted by: Colm O' Toole | Dec 10 2013 20:34 utc | 9

According to the Russian Ministry of Intelligence news, the Iraqi government plans to introduce a total of 36 F-16 fighters from the United States to rebuild the war almost wiped out the Iraqi Air Force. However, the Iraqi Air Force Command has announced that the recently purchased from the U.S. F-16 fighter discovered some suspicious device may be used for spying purposes. It is reported that these devices are manufactured by the Israeli company RADA, for information reencoded. In this letter to the Iraqi Air Force has F-16 manufacturer - Lockheed Martin Corporation, called for the purposes mentioned by the Israeli production of suspicious equipment explained.

According to Iraqi military officials, on Egypt, Oman, Turkey and other countries to buy F-16 fighter jets, had also discovered the Israeli production information systems. Obviously, this is the Israeli spy devices provided by the United States in the Middle East countries warplanes to the Middle East in the next possible outbreak of war, to obtain the necessary information and get the best record.

http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=124426

"US government blocks sale to Turkish firm"

A Turkish firm has been sanctioned by the US government after Turkey agreed a preliminary defence deal with a Chinese firm also under US sanctions.

Posted by: neretva'43 | Dec 10 2013 20:44 utc | 10

"Committee chairwoman MK Miri Regev (Likud) responded, 'Yes, as the Americans did to the Indians.' "

That's just a Zionist being, well, a Zionist.

Their mindset is frozen in the early 19th century, precisely because doing the things that a Zionist oh-so-wants to do was considered perfectly acceptable Way Back Then.

So they excuse their inexcusable actions by pointing back to the past and saying: See! The Americans (or whoever, it really doesn't matter) did it then, so we should be allowed to do it now!!

They obvious retort: But the Americans wouldn't dream of doing that *now*, unlike Some People I Could Name.

Why, indeed, should Israel get a free pass just because it missed the bus marked "Age Of Empire"?

After all, The Romans used to consider it to be quite acceptable to enslave the women and children of their slaughtered foe. Would Miri Regev consider that fact - and it is a historic fact - to be justification enough for mass slaughter and enslavement in the 21st century?

Posted by: Johnboy | Dec 10 2013 21:16 utc | 11

@11 Yep... late into the colonial game. The winds of change were already blowing in the 50s. There were independence movements in many former colonies. Nowadays a lot of Americans, Canadians and Australians feel guilt about what happened (which doesn't mean everybody is going to pack up and go back to Europe.) The American Indian thing is a talking point but Israel is probably best of with Biblical justifications.

Posted by: dh | Dec 10 2013 22:04 utc | 12

The obvious choice for appointment to be next ambassador to Israel is a someone from the First Nations.

The good news is, like Colm O'Toole said, is that every revolting display of racism and greed is just that. And each is another wedge between Israel and the Jewish diaspora in the United States and in the West, especially the among the young.

Every day that Israel continues to isolate itself not just on the world stage, but in the hearts of honest, just people everywhere, is just another day that they come closer to that agreement in which Israel "agrees" (like Syria just "agreed") to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction, a day closer to its finally being forced to live up to the UN resolutions by which it is bound, and another day closer to the day when the Palestinians will finally see justice.

It's won't come a day too soon.

Posted by: guest77 | Dec 11 2013 0:34 utc | 13

Dichotomies are so confusing.
Jews have been whining non-stop for 70 years about cruel and inhuman Nazis. Blaming them for their own inhumanity, but ultimately making them seem merciful and restrained in comparison with the degree to which they've learned to embrace and celebrate their own depravity and its effect on their victims - something their "Nazis" never got around to achieving.
Nothing exceeds like excess.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Dec 11 2013 0:58 utc | 14

Posted by: Chris | Dec 10, 2013 7:55:08 PM | 14
Crass is spelt C-R-A-S-S - not C-H-R-I-S.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Dec 11 2013 1:08 utc | 15

@14 "Both sides need to sit down and work out agreements in stages." And when they do, you'll work out the tax effect...

Posted by: guest77 | Dec 11 2013 1:27 utc | 16

@chris

certain a dose of bizarre content won't hurt, just do not overdose.
how is it a life in bubble world mr.bizarro?

Posted by: neretva'43 | Dec 11 2013 1:47 utc | 17

@chris

you offer service for those who are on foodstemps?

Posted by: neretva'43 | Dec 11 2013 1:49 utc | 18

thanks bevin... i like what colm o'toole and guest say as well.. i don't know that those supporting the direction israel are going in are that aware of these conflicts.. either that or they are supporting zionism regardless of the actions in the name of zionism..

ot - good article on the divide between rich and poor taken from the vantage point of an american. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire

Posted by: james | Dec 11 2013 2:14 utc | 19

Here is a take on what Kerry is doing in Palestine. I think this is a case of linkage between the Iran negotiations and Palestine. Obama and Kerry are worried that Israel and its US lobby are going to sabotage the Iranian negotiations. I think the US is going to let Israel do what it wants and the US will support them while they abuse the Palestinians. Abbas and company are mere pawns in this game and they will go along with whatever the US demands. Those PA officials will be handsomely paid for their services Zionism.

In exchange for US serving as Israel's lawyer, Kerry will expect (hope?) Israel and its US lobby will not sabotage the Iranian talks. Not sure if they can pull this off but if they can then some good might come from this. Peace with Iran in exchange for ethnic cleansings of Palestinians and Bedouin. Nothing new here -- the Palestinians have been screwed over for decades and I guess we will have to accept that they will be screwed over yet again. But there is good news for the Palestinian 1% -- they will get their 10s if not 100s of millions of dollars for their Swiss band accounts.

It is hard to endorse this kind of trade but if it results in a resolution to stand off with Iran, then maybe that is the most we can hope for. I would just hope that there were some Palestinian leaders that would defend the Palestinian people. They do have options but as long as those leaders accept Western and Israeli bribes there is not much we can do about it.

Posted by: ToivoS | Dec 11 2013 2:46 utc | 20

The Israelis don't invoke 5 eyes' genocides in order to 'justify' their own ... they do it to make the 5 eyes' feel guilty, to accept and defend - at least the fruits of - their own genocides, and to leave the Israelis alone to pursue their own.

The Israelis need no justification ... they have dog-eared the pages in the Holy Book they share with the 5 eyes wherein the lord commandeth genocide and His Chosen People dutifully obey. Just doin' what the lord says. Just followin' orders.

And who said that the 5 eyes ever quit their genocidal ways ? Yeah, they're 'bout out of 'redskins', Maori, and Aborigini ... but ask the descendants of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Korean war in the North, in Vietnam, Lao, Cambodia, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria ... if they don't feel a bit put upon by the 5 eyes. Serially singled out for treatment considered inhumane when applied to those dishing it out ... or to their domestic animals.

Read the papers any day of the week and discover genocidal 'piece-work' against the Blacks and Hispanics in the USSA, and against the more numerous remaining redskins in Canada, against the 'ex-subjects' in the UK ... I haven't got any information on the South Pacific colonial outposts but I'll bet genocidal racism is alive and well there too.

Someone needs to tell the Israelis that, when it comes to Palestine, the genocides of world history - past, present, and future - are irrelevant. What's under discussion is the genocide being undertaken in Palestine by Israelis right now.

The same goes for all the other instances of genocidal crimes ... of any sort of crime ... as well. What did Noam Chomski say ...

... when you are caught with your hand in someone's pocket, cry “Thief! Thief!” Don't try to defend yourself, thus conceding that there is an issue to confront: rather, shift the onus to your accusers, who must then defend themselves against your charge. The technique can be highly effective when control over the doctrinal system is assured. The device is familiar to propagandists, virtually a reflex, adopted unthinkingly ...

Posted by: john francis lee | Dec 11 2013 3:04 utc | 21

I guess your forlorn hopes will not be met ... so on to accepting 'the good that will come from it' ... eh ToivoS ?

Posted by: john francis lee | Dec 11 2013 3:19 utc | 22

And nice illustration of "Thief! Thief!" ... it's those crooked Palestinians responsible for Israeli genocide.

Posted by: john francis lee | Dec 11 2013 3:23 utc | 23

#23 john francis lee

I fully expected to see a comment from someone who has difficulty distinguishing from what "is" from "ought". I was talking about the possible thinking that is guiding Kerry. Perhaps I misinterpreted your comment but given that it is barely coherent then that might be expected.

Posted by: ToivoS | Dec 11 2013 5:52 utc | 24

The obvious retort: But the Americans wouldn't dream of doing that *now*, unlike Some People I Could Name. Posted by: Johnboy | Dec 10, 2013 4:16:59 PM | 11

I suppose that is a pretty obvious retort, but like most obvious statements, it is based on a refusal to actually think about the question. Leaving aside the actual genocidal behaviour of the US worldwide (and I have no doubt that US imperialism has killed more people since WW2 alone, than Hitler ever did during that war), let us imagine that NASA reports that (a) the Martian subsurface is full of the most fabulously valuable minerals, and (b) Mars is in fact inhabited by several billion beings with average IQs of 200+ which subsist on lichen alone and are completely non-violent. What do you think would happen to them?

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Dec 11 2013 8:53 utc | 25

@26 No, Rowan, the question is obvious, and so is the answer.

The Israelis question why *they* shouldn't be allowed to indulge in ethnic cleansing when *everyone* *else* happily indulged in such things in the 18th century.

I am correct to point out this answer: that was 2 centuries ago and nobody (not the Americans, not the Europeans, not nobody) now considers it kosher to indulge in ethnic cleansing.

RB: "Leaving aside the actual genocidal behaviour of the US worldwide"

As well you should, since that assumes that the USA actually indulges in genocide, which it doesn't.

That the death toll due to US military interventions is massive is true. No question. But that is not in and of itself indicative of "genocidal behaviour".

I mean, get real: the US military killed millions of Japanese in WW2 but that does not mean they intended to wipe out the Japs. It is what it is, and that's a manifestation of the USA's ruthlessness in waging war.

RB: "let us imagine that NASA reports that (a) the Martian subsurface is full of the most fabulously valuable minerals, and (b) Mars is in fact inhabited by several billion beings with average IQs of 200+ which subsist on lichen alone and are completely non-violent."

Well, yeah, that's quite an imagination at work....

RB: "What do you think would happen to them?"

I have no idea, Rowan. Maybe they'll turn that 200+IQ to good use by forming the Lichen Lobby and buying off the US Congress.

Posted by: Johnboy | Dec 11 2013 10:23 utc | 26

I read something else into it:
I don't think he is calling people “time bomb” because he is not talking, or thinking, about them. All is seen in the prism of Israel. So if he sees a time bomb threatening Israel it is that he recognizes “the Jewish will not endure.”
Of course he is still far from putting such words on it but the substance is there. Or is it not?)

Posted by: emmanuelle | Dec 11 2013 11:28 utc | 27

I meant the Jewish state, but you clever lot would have figured that.

Posted by: emmanuelle | Dec 11 2013 11:33 utc | 28

'Force cannot defeat or defuse the demographic time bomb.'

lets not be too joyed at this: demographic bombs can als affect places like europe, where there is a possibility one day of numbers forcing sharia law

Posted by: brian | Dec 11 2013 21:01 utc | 29

@30
"lets not be too joyed at this: demographic bombs can als affect places like europe, where there is a possibility one day of numbers forcing sharia law."

Don't be silly. You are assuming that, decades after their forefathers arrived in Europe, young muslims would be putty in the hands of wahhabi sponsored imans in the mosques. That conclusion depends upon so many assumptions, some unlikely, most close to impossible, that it makes the "Yellow Peril" of racist nightmares a century ago, seem relatively straight forward.

Posted by: bevin | Dec 12 2013 0:17 utc | 30

Really good thread this is turing out to be. One only has to read the good natured back and forth among honest people here compared to when the trolls come around.
....

The problem with Kerry using the term "time bomb" is not just that he is taking the Israeli line. The bad part - the truly pathological part - is that he is comparing young love and kissing and fucking and the happy, burgeoning love filled homes of Palestinians with a violent destructive device - which of course it is most certainly not.

Kerry may say "they cannot defeat or defuse it" and likely (if history is any guide) he is right. But I have no doubt that there are some among the Israelis - like the Nazis before them - who have alternate ideas of ways to deal with those those happy Palestinian families...er, "time bombs". Perhaps they intend ethnic cleansing or even outright genocide. We can't be sure but history shows that humanity, even to this day, doesn't shy away from these acts.

But the problem is in the initial formulation. As long as "the honest broker" can compare the lives of born and unborn millions with a deadly device - it is only one more step down that road to say whatever happens to deal with it is automatically okay.

This is worse than simply calling people cockroaches like fascists are so fond of. Far worse.

Posted by: guest77 | Dec 12 2013 2:44 utc | 31

"....and Kerry are worried that Israel and its US lobby are going to sabotage the Iranian negotiations. I think the US is going to let Israel do what it wants and the US will support them while they abuse the Palestinians"

Toivo # 20.....

You gotta be kidding. So whats our excuse for the DECADES of us enabling these racist murderous pieces of shit zionists to treat the Palestinians and the Bedouins like animals??? This ain't the first "relocation" of the Bedouins, and its been going on waaaaay before this Iranian "agreement".

Sometimes, Toivo, I don't think you think through your comments. You wanna defend something thats pretty much indefensible, so, well, you punt.

Posted by: PissedOffAmerican | Dec 14 2013 3:58 utc | 32

But gee, I'm really glad to hear that if it wasn't for this Iranian deal, Washington would be screaming to high heavens about Israel's treatment of the Bedouins.

Um, uh, yeah.....uh huh.

Posted by: PissedOffAmerican | Dec 14 2013 4:35 utc | 33