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Why Avigdor Lieberman is the Worst Thing That Could Happen to the Middle East
World Focus: I can identify Lieberman's language with the language of Messrs Mladic and Karadzic and Milosevic
Only days after they were groaning with fury at the Israeli lobby's success in hounding the outspoken Charles Freeman away from his proposed intelligence job for President Obama, the Arabs now have to contend with an Israeli Foreign Minister whose - let us speak frankly - racist comments about Palestinian loyalty tests have brought into the new Netanyahu cabinet one of the most unpleasant politicians in the Middle East.
The Iraqis produced the hateful Saddam, the Iranians created the crackpot Ahmadinejad - for reasons of sanity, I leave out the weird ruler of Libya - and now the Israelis have exalted a man, Avigdor Lieberman, who out-Sharons even Ariel Sharon.
A few Palestinians expressed their cruel delight that at last the West will see the "true face" of Israel. I've heard that one before - when Sharon became prime minister - and the usual nonsense will be trotted out that only a "hard-line extremist" can make the compromises necessary for a deal with the Palestinians.
This kind of self-delusion is a Middle East disease. The fact is that the Israeli Prime Minister-to-be has made it perfectly clear there will be no two-state solution; and he has planted a tree on Golan to show the Syrians they will not get it back. And now he's brought into the cabinet a man who sees even the Arabs of Israel as second-class citizens.
Lieberman's first visit to Washington will be a gem. AIPAC - posing as an Israeli lobby when in fact it works for the Likudists - will fight for him and Lady Hillary will have to greet him warmly at the State Department. Who knows, he might even suggest to her that she imposes a loyalty test for American minorities as well - which would mean demanding an oath of faithfulness from Barack himself. The horizon goes on forever.
In Egypt, Avigdor Lieberman will have a tough time. Hosni Mubarak can be a soft touch for the Americans but it was Lieberman who, complaining that the Egyptian President should visit Israel or "go to hell", deeply offended a man who has taken great risks in maintaining his country's peace with the Israeli state.
Egyptians have been outraged to read in their newspapers that Lieberman has talked of drowning Palestinians in the Dead Sea or executing Israeli Palestinians who talked to Hamas. Last night, a supporter of Lieberman appeared on Al Jazeera television to describe Hamas as "an anti-Semitic, barbarous organisation" - even though Israeli army officers spoke openly with this supposedly "barbarous" group both before and after the Oslo agreement.
But the growth of such an extremist administration in Israel and the hopeless response of the Obama administration to the so-called supporters of Israel who destroyed Freeman's career, can only be dangerous news for the Middle East. The Jeddah-based Arab News called the Freeman disaster "a grave defeat for US foreign policy". But while uttering all the usual platitudes, the Arab press has been playing up the pusillanimous remarks of US press secretary Robert Gibbs when asked why Obama was "standing mute" in the Freeman affair. "I've watched with great interest how people perceive different things about our policy and during the campaign about whether we were too close to one group or too close to the other. So I don't give a lot of thought to those." Asked for "straight answers", Gibbs said: "I gave you as straight a one as I can get."
This was almost as funny as The New York Times when it attempted last week to explain why Lady Hillary was frightened of offending the Israelis during the formation of the Netanyahu government when she described the destruction of 1,000 Palestinian homes as "unhelpful".
Her caution in the Middle East, it explained, was "a reflection of the treacherous landscape in the Middle East, where a misplaced phrase can ruffle feathers among constituencies back home". You bet it can - and when Mr Lieberman comes to town, we'll see who those feathers belong to.
Their owners would do well, however, to dwell on the incendiary language of Avigdor Lieberman. He speaks like a Russian nationalist rather than the secular Israeli he claims to be.
I covered the bloodbath of Bosnia in the early Nineties and I can identify Lieberman's language - of executions, of drownings, of hell and loyalty oaths - with the language of Messrs Mladic and Karadzic and Milosevic.
Lady Hillary and her boss should pull out a few books on the war in ex-Yugoslavia if they want to understand who they are now dealing with. "Unhelpful" will not be the appropriate response.
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34 Comments so far
Show AllAs a Palestinian I have to say that it's simply amazing to watch the entire Middle East tremble at the sight of a Russian immigrant to Israel.
How did this came to be? I suppose it's a long story.
But the fact of the matter remains that Arabs are their own worst enemies. This whole Israel fiasco could have been solved a long time ago if only the Arab nations bother to developed a Research & Development industry to craft the most sophisticated weapons they can think of, along with forming a NATO like alliance.
Once in place there'd be no need to fire a single bullet at Israel, nor be so afraid of any Russian nationalist prick.
Israel would have come to its senses and, with due respect, it would have signed a peace agreement with everyone.
How the Arabs have become this helpless has got to be the most pathetic story of any civilization in modern history.
philistinethear. You describe the Arab countries lack of unity in opposing Israel as pathetic. You sound more Israeli than Palestinian!
The Arab countries are monarchies and dictatorships propped up and manipulated by the US & Israel. One of Israel's & the US's primary strategic goals for decades has been to sow discord, assassinate effective leaders, foment strife betweeen different groups and most critically, to crush and eliminate dissidence, resistance, anywhere, instantly. This campaign by the Mossad and the CIA and the IDF and the US Army et al is the problem. NOT the Arab victims!
No, the Arabs have only two problems. The US & Israel, who clearly are "the most pathetic story of any civilization in modern history."
Joe. An Arabophile.
All one has to do is remember Nasser and his promotion of "Pan_Arabism". The Old Imperial powers, The United States, and the Governmnet of Israel could not allow this to get anywhere.
Pan Arabism was to be SECULAR .
It was to stave of Pan_arabism that these same powers began to fund and support Islamic Fundamentalists.
Behind every "Militant Islamo-fascist terrorist" group in the Middle East, are the monies and support of past Governments of Israel, Great Britain and the USA.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: How I wish the Arabs would learn from the Iranians, secular or otherwise, who in 1979 decided to put an end to American and Israeli influence in their country, regardless of how many US dollars were thown around.
How ironic it is that Hamas and Hezbollah, whose emphasis on religion is well known, are the ones who realize that the unity between seculars and religious Arabs is a top priority for the fight against US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
Goodness, so is this it? Is this the best the Arab world can do? I mean, look at how Iran eventually reacted to the Shah and the savages he had running his Secret Service, the SAVAK.
Not even the Iranian armed forces could stomach what these bastards were doing to their own people and it was these "Men In Uniform", more than anyone else, who made the 1979 Revolution possible.
Why can can' the Arabs do the same???
They Will.
Egypt or Saudi Arabia....a matter time.
However it is not the "Arab Countries," one or another, that will finally rise like the Pheonix...it is Islam which knows no borders.
Mosul is hot as heck. Afghanistan is near run by the Taliban, Pakistan just ceded The Swat valley to the Taliban, Hebollah kicked Israel's tail in a fair fight, Iran, let us say Iran together, Hamas, Somalia, in Egypt-Militant Islam is stronger and more connected and has more territory and is better armed every day. And I tell you true, they are coming for the killers of their brothers.
Hundreds of millions are insanse with rage, many fighting back-a groundswell, you are in the process of watching it's maturation. When Israel strikes Iran, it will be on. That will be the stupidest strategic military decision since the Iraq blunder-which Israel helped precipitate-Israel will be stretched too thin, and Iran is so strong, so smart. Israel's horrors are uniting the Shiites and Sunnis against this common enemy. All those dead children shown on Al Jazeera.....
You may see the Arab unity you long for at this point. Joe.
Philistine:
Do you really believe that the Arabs would have been allowed to do what you suggest? Quite apart from the sorry state of education in the Arab/Muslim world in the early days of the State of Israel and their patent inability to prevent its enlargement either in 1948 or in 1967, consider what happened to Arab/Muslim leaders who rocked the imperialists' boat: the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran, the Suez adventure in the 1950s, multiple (actually more in the nature of continuous) interventions in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iraq, the Gulf States and North Africa . . . I can remember the shock in England when King Hussein fired John Glubb and made himself C. in C. of his own damned army. Of course he then pretty well handed it and the country over to the USA . . .
It's a nice fantasy but it couldn't have happened, and that's before we see what happened--and is still happening--when the Iraqis and the Iranians began to develop nuclear energy.
Also bear in mind that in probably the last joint exercise by the former WW2 allies, both Stalin and Truman leapt in to be the first to recognize the illegally declared State of Israel at the UN Security Council. (Stalin apparently thought that all those Zionist collective farms meant that the country was a socialist state and would join the Communist Bloc.) The Chinese (KuoMintang) did what the USA did, the Brits passed, I don't remember what the French did but the UN recognition passed, anyway, while all the small UN presence in Palestine could do was protect the people of Nazareth from the fate of the Deir Yassinis.
Zionism was as much a European imperialist enterprise as a Zionist one, and stated so quite explicitly by one of the early European leaders: We are Europeans like you! Let us settle there among the wogs (I'm paraphrasing, obviously) and be your policeman over the Suez Canal and the oilfields.) When the Brits, French and Israelis invaded Egypt when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 they were simply acting on that promise.
Rainborowe
Hey, it wouldn't have hurt to keep on trying. Isn't that what life is all about? Regardless of the obstacles you find you've got to keep on trying.
And the American press won't say a thing about this Zionazi.Israel is the cancer on America and the world.
AIPAC, and all their sycophants in the US, need to be grabbged right by the scruff of their necks and have their sorry asses booted out of Washington permanently. Any US politician caught holding hands with AIPAC needs to be impeached, removed from office, and brought up on whatever charges would apply. As a US citizen, I'm tired of watching our politicians perform orally for Israel. We ought to start a campaign to send each and every one of them a throw cushion. That way they can kneel in comfort.
Perhaps the title or subtitle should read: Why Joe Lieberman is the Worst Thing that could happen to the United States.
A weird parallel universe indeed.
Slowly, very slowly, but surely, very surely, the Israelis commit national suicide. Avigdor Lieberman, Joe Lieberman, George Wanker Bush, Benjamin "Bugsy" Netanyahu, AIPAC, Moishe Pupik and The Imperialists . . . they're all taking Israel down the garden path, strolling behind the ghost of Meir Kahane. Shalom, you paskudnyaks, and have a nice day :-)
FYI, a little poetry honoring Avigdor Lieberman that was published in a mainstream Israeli newspaper:
Their progeny are a nightmare: How many Arabs in Israel?
Already more than a million there, and still growing, right off the scale.
Just look at them—they blacken your sight! I say this without reproaching the Jew:
The Arab is ploughing his furrow by night that his race might outnumber you.
A lunar eclipse? Does that explain it? Is it the mark of misfortune? Is it death’s kiss?
Even the cat, the locust and the rabbit are unfamiliar with lust like this!
There is no happy end in sight. They are paving the path to your tomb,
Night after night, night after night, in the Arab woman’s womb.
-Gershon Ben Ya'akov
lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2006/04/one_not_unimpor.html
m123456,
Question, have you any poetry about Iran?
Ya know, if I may, that was just absolutely terrible as even the worst poems go.
Given that so many intellectual and artistic Jews & Israelies want exterminate the Palestinians, and are doing quite nicely you are welcome, can you not come up with a better poem?
You want me to write one for you, just ask.
Your friend in cyberspace, Joe.
Please don't dignify such racist filth with the word "poetry"! Enclose in quoted and use the adjective "so-called".
Comparison's with the Nazis are often over done, but what the hell else can we compare these genocidal racist scribblings to? In an earlier time, a "poem" like this probably earned many a Hitler-youth a merit badge.
---USAn---
Israel can be as obnoxious as it wants.
If Bush could be taken seriously as a leader then so can a Russian bouncer.
We live in the age of vulgarity.
Actually we live in an age of lies and deceit. Today we reward failure. We 'support" leaders that are self-centered and greedy. We live in a world where right is wrong. Up is down, etc, etc....
Investigative journalist Philip Weiss suggests that the rise in power of the likes of Avigdor Lieberman in Israel may actually be a good thing. Weiss, himself an American Jew, suggests that most American Jews have blinders on regarding the realities in Israel and that it's time to break the silence (and funding) and speak out against the Zionists who rule Israel. Seeing Lieberman gain power shows how out of control Israel is becoming. But if the political leaders in the US criticize Israel they are met with threats from AIPAC and end up buckling under their pressure. Weiss suggests that American Jews must change this and that congress must see that there are other Jews who are not in support of Israel's current policies. If congressmen see that Jews are divided, that they have a choice and don't have to pander to AIPAC, then the stranglehold by the Israeli right-wing may loosen.
Also check out Christopher Ketchum's March 12th article in counterpunch.com on "Israeli Spying in the United States". Scary stuff.
Didn't Bush already show that conservatives can't govern?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/05-7#comment-1153094
It is finally good to read from the habituates of this site a recognition that the Arabs have been done in by the factor that is central to the decline of their civilization and their continued pauper-like state: "leadership." As long as the Arab world is "led" by their cadre of creeps whom care mostly about their own aggrandizement, it will continue to be the mess that it is for the foreseeable future. The bad flashback that is the redux of Bibi Netanyahu as power brokered by Avigdor Lieberman (whom the world would be better served if he had stayed in his former profession as a nightclub doorman in Moldova) merely aggravates the situation.
How far right does the Israel government have to go before its liberal US supporters finally see it as a truly rightwing government?
The blinders appear to be still firmly on many Americans. How romantic the little struggling state of Israel, an island of Jewish idealism and safety in a violent world, appears to them. While for decades now we have seen an increase in the violence they use on Palestinians which appears more and more like the violence once used on them. Does Hamas fire rockets on them? Ah yes, a justification for the hundred to one retaliatory strike. I believe the Nazis did something similiar and employed the same propaganda.
Will well meaning, passionate Jews in the United States continue to support the Israeli government even when they begin to wear jackboots? Or will the myth continue to prevail? Considering the violence with which the "lobby" reacts to Likud's critics there may be Liebermanites here who also worry. The best thing about Netanyahu and Lieberman is that they may help break the US stranglehold of the lobby. And it may finally become safe to speak out for fairness and sanity.
I concede that AIPAC has devolved into a Likud PR firm, and I think that more (though not quite enough) of us "liberal US supporters" of Israel are understanding that we have long ago lost our status as honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
I also hope that Netanyahu and Liberman show themselves so narrowminded and inept that we are utterly embarrassed to have EVER held their visions as "the gold standard" in the defense of Israel, though I fear it will come at even greater loss of life on both sides than we have seen to date.
The Ravings Which My Enemy Uttered I Heard Within My Own Heart
by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
The ravings which my enemy uttered
I heard within my own heart;
the secret thoughts he harbored against me
I also secetly perceived.
His dog bit my foot, he showed me much injustice;
I do not bite him like a dog, but I have bitten my own lip.
Since I have penetrated into the secrets of men of God,
why should I take glory in having penetrated his secret?
I reproach myself that through my doubtings it so happened
that purposely I drew a scorpion towards my own foot.
Like Eblis who saw nothing of Adam except his fire,
by God I was invisible to his insignificant Eblis.
Convey to my friends why I am afflicted in mind; when the snake
bit my thigh I started away from the black rope.
The blessed silent ones, their lips and eyes closed
by a way unknown to any man, still I ran into their thoughts;
Since there is a secret and perfect way from heart to heart,
I gathered gold and silver from those treasuries of hearts.
Into the thought that was like a brazen stove
I flung the dead dog;
out of the thought that was like a rose bower
I plucked roses and jasmine.
If I have hinted at the evil and good of my friends,
I have spun flax like a weaver as the choicest veil.
When my heart rushed suddenly to a heart mighty and aware,
out of awe for his heart I fluttered like that heart.
As you are happy with your own state?
How did you fall in with me?
Attend to your own business,
for I am neither shaikh nor disciple.
As far as you are concerned, brother,
I am neither copper nor red gold;
drive me from your door,
for I am neither lock nor key.
Go on as if I had not ever spoken these words;
if you had been in my mind, by God I would not have quarreled
after 15 years of activism i can now see that the only thing that can change anything is a massive outcry from the american people, but americans are too cowardly, lazy, self-centered and stupid to speak out for whats right. im so SICK of being disappointed all the time.
About the loyalty oath, doesn't Avigdor Lieberman have a point?
He compared his position to the express policy of nations around the world, saying: "In the U.S., those requesting a Green Card must take an oath that they will fulfill the rights and duties of citizenship".
He also stated, "During Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, I was appalled by the calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and for renewed suicide bombings that some Israeli Arab leaders called for at pro-Hamas rallies. Although 'responsible citizenship' had always been part of our platform, I realized that this was a burning issue that had to take top priority"
So really, why is this so controversial?
I think it boils down to the point that he is a racist bastard. This "oath" is not a way to proove loyality - it is a way to insult.
Lieberman likes to denounce all arab israelis. They treat them animals. I dont believe that they would treat them any better after such an oath.
Its like a KKK man asking black people to give an oath to the US because, you know, they are not real americans because they are black. and you know, black people are dangerous.
dumbo,
The loyalty oath is for all Israelis. It is not racist. It is a response to Israelis of all backgrounds who call for the destruction of the state of Israel. We have a loyalty oath every day in American classrooms. It is far from extreme.
As for Lieberman being some horrible right winger, I'd say he doesn't fall onto the left/right spectrum. He is in favor of self-determination for Arabs in Israel and land for peace. Compared to the party lines of Hamas, Fatah, and Hezbollah, as well as the governing styles of every other Middle Eastern nation, he's a puppy dog.
Oh, and his rise to power is a direct response to continued rocket fire. If the Palestinians actually wanted peace, they'd arrest all their little terrorists. The continued attacks will only bring hell to themselves.
And these things called settlements and ethnic cleansing? Would they be stopped and reversed if the Palestinians arrested their "terrorists"? The experiment has already been run a couple times. Peace on the part of the Arabs only accelerates the Jew's land- theft and ethnic cleansing.
---USAn---
I'm afraid your analogy is quite racist and offensive to African-Americans.
Joe hope, you really should get a life. This is a new low for you, defending Avigdor Lieberman.
I was under the impression - obviously erroneous - that Israel was a democracy. Livni won the elections, yet it is right-wing nut Netanyahu who gets to form government. And now this Lieberman radical...it is going from bad to worse. Too sad to laugh over it.