Editorial-- on Bush/Israel symbiotic relationship

[TexasLawyer]

From the Middle East Times

Opinion: King George
Uri Avnery
Published January 25, 2005

http://metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050125-075232-6576r


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Some people say, only half in jest, that the USA is an Israeli colony. And indeed, in many respects, it looks like that. President Bush dances to Ariel Sharon's tune. Both Houses of Congress are totally subservient to the Israeli right-wing - much more so than the Knesset. It has been said that if the pro-Israeli lobby were to sponsor a resolution on Capitol Hill calling for the abolition of the Ten Commandments, both Houses of Congress would adopt it overwhelmingly. Every year Congress confirms the payment of a massive tribute to Israel.

But others assert the reverse: that Israel is an American colony. And indeed, that is also true in many respects. It is unthinkable for the Israeli government to refuse a clear-cut request by the president of the United States. America forbids Israel to sell an expensive intelligence-gathering plane to China? Israel cancels the sale. America forbids a large-scale military action, as happened last week in Gaza? No action. America wants the Israeli economy to be managed according to American precepts? No problem: an American (circumcised, to be sure) has just been appointed as governor of the Central Bank of Israel.

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The ideologues who govern the thoughts and deeds of Bush are called "neoconservatives", but that is a misleading appellation. Actually they are a revolutionary group. Their aim is not to conserve but to overturn. Mostly Jewish, they are the pupils of Leo Strauss, a German-Jewish professor with a Trotskyite past who ended up developing semi-fascist theories and propagating them at the University of Chicago. He illustrated his attitude toward democracy by citing the story of Gulliver: when a fire broke out in the city of the dwarfs, he put the fire out by urinating on them. This is the way, in his view, that the small elite group of leaders must treat the ignorant and innocent public, which does not know what is good for them.

In his coronation speech Bush promised to bring freedom and democracy to every corner of the world. No less, no more. He cited the two countries in which he has already achieved this aim: Iraq and Afghanistan. Both have been devastated by American planes that dropped the message from their bomb doors. Recently the American soldiers wiped a large city from the face of the earth in order to convince the opponents of "American values". Now Fallujah looks as if it had been struck by a tsunami. It is no secret that the neocons intend to "bring democracy" to Iran and Syria, thereby eliminating two more traditional enemies of the USA and Israel. Dick Cheney, the vice-president, has already prophesied that Israel may attack Iran, as if threatening to unleash a Rottweiler.

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Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist and veteran peace activist