THE renowned writer Arthur Koestler warned a decade ago that Israel risked becoming “a nasty little Sparta”. Ten years later Israel, grown rich on US military and financial aid, has become a very nasty big Sparta.
Pat Buchanan, President Richard Nixon’s close aide, wrote “Capitol Hill has become Israeli-occupied territory”. He has been exiled to the political wilderness for this heresy.
The current Gaza conflict tells us how much Israel dominates Congress and the Democratic Party, which gets a likely 50% of its funding from pro-Israel donors.
Moderate pro-Israel groups have been marginalised. Those in the media have been sidelined or fired. It is the McCarthyism of the 21st century. As the great Mark Twain said, if you do not read the US media you are uninformed. If you do follow America’s media, you are misinformed.
Britain, Canada and Australia fall into the same media prison. The old Soviet media, as I remember, was freer in its opinions and more robust in its criticism.
None of this is new, just worse. Over 20 years ago, the Palestinian refugee prison of Gaza tried to build a small seaport and airport. Both were denied by Israel. As a result, even modest food aid for starving Palestinians has been blocked.
The US, which has been supplying Israel with 2,000lbs bombs and targeting information has resorted to the public relations stunt of air-dropping stale sandwiches to the famine-stricken Palestinian refugees.
No one in the tightly controlled US media or the Rothschild-dominated British Conservatives party dares bring up the fact that the Warsaw Ghetto ravaged by the Nazis had 50,000 people as compared with Gaza’s 2.1 million trapped people.
Egypt, almost as guilty as Israel and the US, keeps Palestinians locked in the open-air prison. The Mideast’s biggest police states are Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Morocco. Add Algeria, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
We still know next to nothing about the Oct 7 attack on Israelis that triggered this conflict. I will not call it a war since it pits only lightly armed civilians against the mighty, US-supplied and directed Israeli armed forces. The lines of burned-out cars around where the initial Hamas attacks occurred look very much like the result of air attacks. We need to know more.
The infamous arms dealer Basil Zaharoff retorted to criticism in the British parliament: “Who cares about that little jabber house.” The same applies today to the US Congress. Even President Joe Biden dare not confront Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden and State Secretary Anthony Blinken cannot even tell Netanyahu to end his massacre. Israel always knows it can get away literally with murder before the US elections.
Israel’s far-right coalition, whom the illustrious journalist Uri Avnery calls “Jewish Nazis”, appears firmly in power. Netanyahu has so far avoided criminal proceedings by stoking the war in Gaza.
Killing Arabs is still popular in Israel. Polls show almost 80% of Israelis support the savaging of Gaza. Most honourable Israelis and their foreign supporters are silent in the face of a massive propaganda campaign that runs on lurid reports about raped women and burned babies worthy of World War I British propaganda over Belgium.
While Palestinians are being slaughtered or starved, Israel is busy trying to goad Iran into a major war. This past week alone, Israel destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing two Iranian generals who were advising resistance forces.
The US has been waging a medium-intensity war against Iran, which threatened America’s Mideast empire and which I call “the American Raj”.
Netanyahu is provoking war with Iran to divert attention from the Gaza massacre and his legal problems. Israel has long coveted southern Lebanon up to the Litani River and more Syrian land next to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
I was with the invading Israeli Army in 1982 when it attacked Lebanon and I have walked the strategic Golan Heights.
Israel is also hungry for large offshore oil deposits near the Gaza prison. It wants the Palestinians out and access to the oil and gas.
America has become the champion of Israeli expansionism. The Israeli tail continues to wag the bumbling American dog. Instead of engineering a cease-fire, Washington has blocked all efforts at the United Nations to stop the mass murder in Gaza. The rest of the world will remember this.
The writer is a syndicated columnist. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
