Last week, Yosef Lapid, Israeli Justice minister and leader of the centrist Shinui party (one of the least radical trend in the current government coalition) harshly criticized the recent demolitions of Palestinian habitation (allegedly an effort to “secure” the Gaza strip). A few members of Sharon’s own government had already shown increasing concerns over the disastrous human and political consequences of this offensive. But Lapid went one major step further in an interview with Israel Defence Forces radio:

Referring to the TV picture, Mr Lapid said he was “talking about an old woman crouching on all fours, searching for her medicines in the ruins of her house and that she made me think of my grandmother”.

“I said that if we carry on like this, we will be expelled from the United Nations and those responsible will stand trial at The Hague,”

Source: BBC News

These comments take their full weight when you know that he “spent part of World War II in a Budapest ghetto and lost many members of his family in the Holocaust, including a grandmother who died at Auschwitz.”

Of course, this allusion to Nazi Germany when discussing domestic policies utterly infuriated his right-wing colleagues and prompted him to quickly retract his previous statement: “I’m not referring to the Germans. I’m not referring to the Holocaust,” Lapid told the Radio. “When you see an old woman, you think of your grandmother.”

But there is little doubt on the true reason of his original reaction: while he most certainly did not mean to draw a serious parallel between current Middle-East events and the horrors of the Holocaust, it is hard not to notice that the Israeli government is now assuming the ugly role of the persecutor in occupied Palestinian territories.

Of course, in this stupid conflict, both sides abound with political extremists, scary religious fanatics and blood-thirsty militants.
But only one side is claiming the legitimacy of a democratic government. And lately, it has not displayed a conduct very befitting of a democracy.

Many people tend to see Israeli politics as one single block united behind hard-line right-wingers. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The Knesset is divided between a ridiculously high number of small factions that form and break coalitions, successively putting the left or the Likud in position of power. Lately, under the rule of Sharon, undeniably a talented strategist and a very popular figure, who, incidentally, has been firmly written down in the books of a few Belgian prosecutors as a War Criminal, the Likud has enjoyed a seemingly unstoppable support and has used most of it to muddle the situation back into the mess it was two decades ago.
But if you talk to a lot of Israeli, especially the ones who do not currently live in Israel: the countless youth who have jumped on the first occasion to flee the downward spiral of violence engulfing their native country, you will hear a much dissenting opinion from what is usually considered the “Israeli cause”. Unfortunately, this moderate majority is entirely overshadowed by a vociferous minority of fanatics who are currently tearing appart any hope of a peaceful resolution to this conflict, irrevocably damaging the Jewish State’s international credit in the process.

It is also worth pointing out that the much talked-about US “neo-cons”, currently in control of every strategic position in the White House, have more than a connection in passing with the Likud.

Please excuse the crappy quality of the above pictures: they were captured with rather rudimentary tools from the low-quality streaming of an Israeli broadcast archived by France Television 2 (link to that day no longer available unfortunately). I stumbled upon this footage while watching a webcast of French TV’s excellent show: “Le Zapping” (see part 6.3 of my special Links Edition entry for more info on that show).

Yea, Albert said that. And he was not the dimmest one of the lot.

Actually, I think he would have gladly included “blind patriotic rage” under the “nationalism” umbrella. The kind of nationalism that involved sticking a flag on your SUV and cheering at Dubya’s lame western one-liners while burping your Budweiser light in front of Fox News. The same kind of nationalism that will cause even more deaths this year in Iraq than in NYC on 9/11. A nationalism, that, like any self-respecting fanatical ideology, feeds itself on its own failure…

These past two months, I have stayed away from the most important topic of all, precisely while it was entering a particularly dramatic phase of its development. Of course, I did not stay shut for lack of a strong opinion on the war or its proponents. But I guess we all get progressively numb to disgust and consternation after a while. Further more, I did not really feel like contributing to what truely is a bit of an echo chamber… I mean, call me jaded, but do we really need thousands of identical “read this article”/”this is horrible” comments, each time a statement is made or a news is published. I’m all for popular democratic involvement, but what is the point of sharing your opinion if:
1) It is the same, verbatim, as a few thousands of other blogs/websites and does not bring any new insight on the question whatsoever.
2) It will only be read by people already sold to your cause and certainly not by people who might disagree (in fact, most of us do not write for those people).

Then why post now? Well, even if I do not put the slightest claim on any groundbreaking analysis or much originality altogether, there are a few small items I felt like sharing:

• Regarding the Abu Ghraib “Scandal”: for as shocking and vile as these treatments are, anybody who claims to be surprised at such a behaviour being condoned by US officials is either lying through his teeth or very poorly informed. Abuses are not new, they are not even a secret. The only new factor is that, this time, the whole world is looking at it and it’s hard to keep it discreet. However, many papers (not in the US, need I precise) have been pointing for a long time at the constant trampling of the Geneva Convention rights in places such as Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo. Of course, US officials are quick to point out the “extra-territoriality” of Guantanamo, in effect preserving some appearance of respectability in the face of international law. But no legal loophole will amend the fact that the US have officially recognized using “physical intimidation” and other gulag-style methods to extract information from their illegally detained prisoners (most of whom have not been charged by any qualified tribunal). The US also does not hide the fact that they routinely use the “assistance” of other countries in interrogating their suspects. In practice, it has meant shipping “suspected terrorists” to countries known for their less-than-stellar record on human-right issues and let them handle the dirty work for them. A certain Canadian traveler who had the misfortune to tick off some US airport officers certainly know something about that.
• Common knowledge too that US media coverage of the war in Iraq is laughably bad. Actually, US media altogether have long collapsed to a rather low level of propaganda-relaying for a conglomerate of various political and corporate interests. But that’s just my personal opinion (or rather: Noam Chomsky’s, and I share it).
  Of course, this peremptory judgement admits many exceptions, most notably Sy Hersh‘s amazing investigative work for the New Yorker (the dark irony that he had to be the very person to uncover the inconvenient Abu Ghraib scandal is certainly not lost on some people in Washington: history has strange hiccups sometimes).
  
  Otherwise, the Guardian. consistently brings such a strong cover of every aspects of US domestic and international policies that it will quite often precede US newspapers.
  
  For people who can read German, the Frankfurter Allgemeine keeps a slightly more conservative approach, though as critical of the US administration, of current affairs (I think a translation of major articles is also present on the English version of their site).
  
  Another great reading (in French) are the pages of Courrier International which culls the best of the press worldwide and presents a compilation of translated articles written by journalists of every nationalities.
  
  My personal favorite among politics/war-related blog is definitely Whiskey Bar were both content and form are a pleasure to read. Beside, any man who can quote both Monty Python and Pontecorvo’s movie Battle for Algiers in a perfectly meaningful political analysis has to be my hero…

And that will be it for tonight, as I will have to handle another kind of international conflict pretty soon if I do not close this computer immediately…

Performing a methodical dismantling of Dubya’s last interview to point out the usual million blatant inaccuracies and other flat-out lies, is a hopeless exercise, the futility of which doesn’t escape me…

However, it is fascinating to note how, despite the widely-known fact that he very much dodged the draft, George thinks himself as a “War president“. In fact, he did not mind using the word “war” more than twenty times during the interview, the SF Chronicle reports.

Some people might be tempted to point out that being a “war president” is not exactly a title of pride. But it seems that, in this man’s warped conception of the world, waging improbable wars and raising “alert” levels every other week so as to keep your people in a perpetual state of paralytic anxiety, is a perfectly fine program in itself for a presidential mandate. One would have thought that working on, say, keeping budget deficit under control, fighting unemployment and soaring poverty rates: these would be deemed worthy of making the first-place in a president’s list of achievement; or even: salvaging the last remaining shreds of environmental protection laws that have been so viciously dismembered by his administration over the past three years (like this one’s gonna happen…).

But obviously, there is a much more important priority for the US: “War”.

See, despite appearances, “War” is not just a good pretext to hide all your dirty influence peddling back at home, while a few hundred US GIs and ten times more foreign civilians get blown to pieces: it is also meant to “protect” the American people. From what? certainly not the categorically-imminent-but-not-so-imminent threat of Saddam’s WMD-that-exist-or-will-exist-as-soon-as-we-manage-to-plant-them-somewhere.

From what then? but, why: from terrorism of course!

Remember: all along, we’ve only been going after a single enemy: Terrorism. Protecting sacrosanct american values of [non-dissenting] free speech and right to bear an AK-47 while parking our gas-guzzling SUV, against evildoers from abroad.

But, some may point: it’s now been more than two years, and nothing, absolutely nothing, has happened in the US, not the slightest attempt at bombing a Taco Bell or anything of any remotely symbolic value, in the name of Allah or some other unshaved non-christian pagan god.
Of course, there’s been waaay more than 4,000 violent US deaths in the past year alone, but these were all due to good ol’ american way of crime, nothing involving nasty furriner’s plots.

In this case, inquisitive minds may increasingly inquisitively inquire, why are we still talking about “war against terrorism”? when it seems so obvious “terrorism” has gone on vacation to some warmer coast and left it up to the US to kill themselves skillfully as they’ve always been good at.

Well, rather than referring you to the painfully obvious truth or Dubya’s even more painfully contorted justifications, here is a little joke…

There’s this guy carefully placing ping-pong balls every 5 feet on the ground around Time Square, when another guy comes up to him and ask ” – Say, why are you putting these ping-pong balls all around?”
” – to keep the rhinos away…”
” – but there’s no rhino here!”
” – see, it works!”

You knew it? yea, me too… but apparently G. W. Bush does not, seeing as he’s been playing variations of it in every last one of his speech for the past two years…