As
the direct fighting in Gaza slowly subsides, the struggle for peace and justice
in Palestine will increasingly take place in the media. The argument over what
caused this horrific episode and what it really means is the next battleground.
Since the Israeli position depends almost solely on the statements made by the
Israeli government, and since so many of Israel’s more obvious lies have come
directly from Prime Minister Netanyahu himself, a background and fact check of
this key player should be the order of the day.
As
many of you know, before you can get even the most menial of jobs in America
these days, one is sometimes forced to get a background check. When I applied
to the US Peace Corps years ago, the FBI did a background check. They even sent
people to my hometown to ask questions about me. I passed. This year, I
volunteered to help make snacks for the local “Peace Village”—a week long,
summer day camp that tries to teach concepts of peace and conflict resolution
to young children. They did a background check—even though I was not really
working directly with children—I was mostly chopping vegetables.
So
I am really puzzled these days that our entire country—from the president, to
both houses of congress, to the state department, to the FAA, and especially to
the media—hasn’t ever seemed to have made a simple background check on Benjamin
Netanyahu. They take every word this man says as undeniable fact.
Like
many of you, I spent a lot of money and many years acquiring several university
degrees. The importance of proper footnoting and citation is always strongly
stressed in most disciplines. So it’s strange to see that the fantastic claims
that emanate from Netanyahu and his spokespeople apparently need not make
reference to facts and reality at all—and yet are taken at face value, while, on
the other hand, if someone like me says something like “from the video, it sure
looks like Israel is firing at civilians—after all, they have precision weapons
and now 50 children are dead,” I will be pressed to provide a footnote from
some higher authority to prove this. With this sad reality in mind, I set out
to “fact check” some of Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent statements.
Who can ever forget that picture of Netanyahu at the UN,
holding a poster of a roadrunner cartoon bomb and claiming that Iran was just a
year away from having a nuclear weapon? A few months later a top Israeli
intelligence official admitted that Iran was 10 years away—if it decided to
try—and that Israel knew it hadn’t.
Remember
how Netanyahu egged the US on to bomb Syria in 2013? Two hundered America
Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists fanned out across Washington
DC to lobby for a new war that most polls showed Americans didn’t want. Netanyahu
said Syria would never cooperate and divest itself of chemical weapons—yet Syria
went along quietly and has now given up its chemical weapons arsenal. With the
ignominious collapse of the American built Iraqi army, Assad’s Syria is
actually the only major force confronting the real threat of terror in the
region—ISIS. And, of course, Israel has never ratified the chemical weapons
treaty and retains chemical weapons.
Remember
the Netanyahu story last spring about “Syrian missiles bound for Gaza.” That
too blew up. The UN report issued some time later said that the evidence showed
that the missiles had come from Iran and were bound for the Sudan. Oops!—another
typical day in the international arms trade, another Netanyahu lie. This one
was timed to derail US negotiations with Iran over its peaceful nuclear
program. That program has so far been found to be generally in compliance with
the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The few technical violations
certainly do not suggest a nuclear weapons program. And, of course, Israel has
nuclear weapons and has never bothered to sign this treaty either.
Now
these are not minor, inconsequential lies. These are the kind of lies that
start wars. They are not the pedestrian lies that go with misguided policy.
They are the kind of lies that can only be considered inherently evil. They are
attempts to incite the US into war. They are meant to undermine efforts towards
peace.
Gaza
today is another example of Netanyahu’s penchant for bloody mischief. He assures us that he cares deeply about ‘every single civilian in Gaza.’ And while
he levels whole neighborhoods he talks about ‘precision strikes’… and while he
seals the borders of Gaza so that no one can escape, he bemoans the fact that
the Palestinian leadership is “using human shields” and “placing its own people
at risk.”
Netanyahu
also claimed that Israel was under a
terrible existential threat, but just hours later he told the FAA that
American tourists would be perfectly safe
when they flew into Tel Aviv—even though flights had been forced to abort
landings in the presence of rocket fire. It is a typical Netanyahu strategy: the
safety of civilians (Palestinian children, American flyers, whoever) be
damned—anything goes if it suits Netanyahu’s convenience.
Netanyahu
also pretended to Obama for years that he would accept a two-state solution.
Just last month he openly admitted that he never would. Of course, that had
been the position of his Likud party all along. And let’s finally admit it—this
was the lie that animated Israel from the very start. In 1947 Ben-Gurion argued
to Zionists that they should accept the UN partition plan detailed in UN 181: although
it didn’t give Israel everything, he argued, it gave them a decisive foot in
the door. Metaphorically he winked—told the world he accepted the parallel Palestinian state that was explicit
in UN 181—and basically told his followers, ‘we’ll just ignore that part and
take the rest later.’
To
this day, there is still no Palestinian state, even though the Israeli
“declaration of independence” specifically grounded Israel’s “legitimacy” in
that document. Why? Because Israel effectively prevents the creation of that
state.
If you
can understand that one simple fact, then why would you even consider getting
upset about the largely irrelevant charter of Hamas? Why would it matter if an
unrecognized party, representing an unrecognized people, in turn doesn’t
recognize the people that don’t recognize it? The last sentence is ugly and
confusing, but it is a good example of how absurd the Israeli side of the
argument has gotten. In Israel today, people are even debating the
“permissibility” of genocide. Coherent language is bound to suffer when the
truth is so abused.
Even
when faced with a simple subject Netanyahu can’t tell the truth. In speaking of
the murder of a young Palestinian boy by 6 Israeli Jewish extremists (they had
burned him alive), he drew a clear distinction between Israelis and
Palestinians. I’m paraphrasing, but he basically said that the difference
between them was that ‘Israel didn’t reward murderers; it punished them. Palestinians, on the
other hand, ‘celebrated murderers.’ Israelis, Netanyahu added, never named
streets or buildings after murders.
But once
again, as we fact check, we find that the state of Israel actually elevated two
murdering terrorists into Prime ministers. Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir
were both leaders of Jewish terrorist groups that committed awful atrocities.
Both have streets and buildings named after them all over Israel. This is not
to mention streets named after dozens of less notorious but equally eager Zionist
killers. Actually, since they have NO state, Palestinians can hardly give
official names to streets. I’m sure that, since people who live somewhere end
up giving popular names to streets just to help people get around, Palestinians
do have streets named popularly after resistance martyrs like Patrick Henry… I
mean Yasser Arafat.
So
with our initial background check looking pretty bad, the question is, why would
anyone in the US EVER trust anything this man Netanyahu says? I guess we need to go a little deeper: Who is
he? How did he get into power? What did he do then? Why did he disappear for
while? What is his legacy?
Welcome to Netanyahu the inciter. On November 4,
1995, Israeli PM Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli terrorist during
the election campaign. His opponent, Benjamin Netanyahu, ended up winning the
election. As an Israeli historian wrote, “it was the culmination of months of
unprecedented riots and demonstrations against the Oslo Accords generally and
Rabin personally, who was accused of betraying the idea of the Greater Land of Israel…
Opposition figures like Sharon and the new political star Benjamin Netanyahu
played a major role in these incitements by using an unrestrained rhetoric
of blood, land and treason…Tactics included the distribution of a poster of showing
Rabin in (Nazi) SS uniform.” (p.124, Politicide, by Baruch Kimmerling).
As leader of the Likud party, Netanyahu is the
political heir to figures like Vladimir Jabotinsky, Avraham Stern, Menachem
Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. The first named was a fan of Mussolini who
collaborated with Mussolini in pre WWII Italy. The last three were all Zionist/Jewish
terrorists. Between them they were responsible for the bombing of the King
David Hotel, assassinations of the British High commissioner and Count
Bernadotte (the very first UN peacemaker sent to Palestine), executions of
British troops, and numerous attacks on Arab civilians, to name but a few
things.
Avraham Stern, a founder of Irgun, actually wrote to
Hitler promising that, “The establishment of the historical Jewish state on
a national and totalitarian foundation, linked with the German Reich, will
safeguard and strengthen Germany’s position in the future middle East.” He
added that, “According to its worldview and structure, Irgun is extremely close
to the totalitarian movements of Europe” (Kati Marton, A Death in
Jerusalem, p.54, emphasis added) Judging
from Israel’s recent behavior in Gaza, this certainly seems to be one rare
example of an extreme Likud Zionist actually telling the truth.
What does Netanyahu’s Likud Party of today stand
for? The 1999 Likud charter emphasizes the right of settlement. It states that:
“The Jewish communities in
Judea, Samaria and Gaza* are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of
the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people
to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the
vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen
and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.” * the occupied territories
What does
the Likud party’s charter say about a Palestinian state?
The Government of Israel flatly
rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River.
The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule,
but not as an independent and sovereign state…their activity shall be
limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security and
national needs.”
In other
words, though they have told lies to the contrary, the many Likud Party leaders
of Israel have never intended to make
peace or allow the Palestinian state that has long been part of the peace
equation. They see the settlements and occupation and all the violence
inherent in those polices as perfectly justified. Their goal is not peace, it
is simply total “victory,” ( i.e. control of 100% of Palestine and the kind of
peace that will come with the complete disappearance of the Palestinian
people—by whatever means necessary).
When he first took office, Netanyahu
showed his real position towards peace by immediately appointing Ariel Sharon
as his defense minister. Sharon had earlier been thrown out of the government
for his culpability in the massacres of Sabra and Shatila—all the other
Lebanese civilian deaths he caused in the invasion of Lebanon were politely overlooked.
Netanyahu eventually lost power because of his own
political corruption. His heir, Ariel Sharon, then proceeded to derail the Oslo
peace accords completely in 2001. In the wake of 9/11 Sharon egged the US on in
towards the invasion of Iraq—but took the time too, to completely destroy any
progress towards peace in Palestine.
In 2008,
Netanyahu ran as leader of Likud again. He actually lost, but by such a small
margin that, by uniting his rightwing Likud party with a number of small, even
more extreme Israeli settler parties, he was able to form a government.
Since then he has desperately spoiled,
vilified and derailed President Obama’s peacemaking efforts. He has lied to the
US repeatedly, insulted every member of the administration from Obama to Biden
to Kerry, spied on the US, and committed serious crimes against humanity—lying
all the while. He has made monkeys of the media, whose unreserved trust in
Netanyahu has led them to file stories that will shame and disgrace them in the
years to come. Most importantly, he has basically reneged on every previous
formula for peace endorsed by the US.
All in all, Netanyahu has made
monkeys of all Americans. Apart from the obvious Palestinian victims, I think
of average American taxpayers most of all. Let’s face it. To get even a menial
job sweeping floors at night at a place like Wal-Mart, you or I would have to
answer fifty questions and pee in a cup. Our President has had to answer
questions about his birth certificate for 6 years. Yet Netanyahu can say almost
anything he likes and have it reported and
acted on, as if it were the pure unblemished truth. And all the while
even a brief review of his history exposes plenty of evidence of the kind of
man he really is.
As
reported by “Politico” on August 2nd, in a phone call with U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, Netanyahu said
the Obama administration was “not to ever second-guess me again.”
(Translation: never question my lies, no matter how enormous!)
That kind of message and that kind
of tone would never be tolerated from any other foreign leader. That it comes
from one who receives over $8 million a day in US aid is simply amazing.
So forgive me. I just don’t get why the entire media
and political establishment in this America of ours is falling down to give
Benjamin Netanyahu’s every lie their official stamp of approval. I don’t
understand why, when I live in one of the most supposedly progressive states in
one of the supposedly most progressive countries in the world, I need to watch
my president, my vice president, the leaders and rank and file of both major
parties, and the media whose job it is to bring us the truth, simply crawl on
their bellies to support every lie that Benjamin Netanyahu cares to pitch them.
It is a disgrace that a real
democracy cannot live with and survive.
Gilbert
Schramm (8/6/2014)
Gilbert Schramm
is a peace activist and international educator who currently lives in Oregon.
He has previously lived and worked extensively in the Middle East and has
studied the region for almost 35 years.