On the first anniversary of the beginning of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip – in my view it was a demonstration of Israeli state terrorism at its most naked – it’s not enough to say that the governments of the Western powers (and others) are complicit in Israel’s on-going collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians, 53% of whom are children.
The short answer is a failure of leadership – by presidents and prime ministers and their governments, those of the major powers most of all.
In The Independent on 21 December, Johann Hari offered this observation:
I had to struggle with myself to decide which of two headlines was most appropriate for this article – the one above or “The hard core of lunatics are pulling up the drawbridge”.
A Jewish friend in Canada drew my attention to an article in the Jewish Ledger, an independent weekly newspaper in Westport, Connecticut. The headline over it is “Saving Israel” Expert says American Jews key to Israel’s survival. I have rarely read such dangerous nonsense. It’s the voice of Zionism, deluded as ever, but with more than a hint of panic.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal (which has a preference for Israeli propaganda), Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., said that advancing a peace process now depends not on Netanyahu and his government or President Obama but the Palestinians.
I have been writing about what must happen in America if there is to be more than a snowball’s chance in hell of peace on the basis of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. (The main point I’ve been making is that unless and until enough Americans are made aware of the truth of history, no American president will have the space to break the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress). In this article, with thanks to an analysis by Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, I’m looking at what must happen in Israel if the countdown to catastrophe is to be stopped.
