“Once again, Israel is scapegoated”. The above is the title of this week's editorial in the Washington Post, which is supposed to be liberal and respectable, and it is indeed so, except when it comes to Israel, at which point the Post becomes as Likudnik as the people responsible for its op-ed section, justifying occupation, murder, dispossession and illegal settlement building. I want to translate some parts of this editorial so that the reader can see how a prestigious American paper stoops down to the level of tabloids when the subject is Israel. The Post said, “Israelis worry that the Arab Spring is turning from a popular movement against dictatorship into another assault on the Jewish state, and their worry is not unfounded. Last week in Cairo a mob attacked the Israeli Embassy, forcing the evacuation of the ambassador and most of his staff; the previous week the Israeli ambassador to Turkey was expelled. Later this month Palestinians are expected to introduce a resolution on statehood at the United Nations, and Israel could be further isolated if, as expected, a large majority of the General Assembly votes in favor of it.” The editorial then continues by saying, “There's little doubt that plenty of Arabs and Turks are angry at Israel. But it's worth noting that, as often is the case in the Middle East, those passions are being steered by governments.” The editorial then goes on to say that the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has expelled the Israeli ambassador, because he aspires to regional leadership in the Middle East, and that President Mahmoud Abbas is going to the UN to preempt a popular uprising against him. The above is not an unusual discourse or a fringe opinion. I have before me another article ran by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which originally appeared in the New Republic. Its Likudnik writer chose for it the title of “Cairo's Embassy Riots: Anti-Israeli Sentiment in Egypt Has Nothing to Do with Palestine”. How so? He said that the Egyptian protesters are angry, because of their country's defeat in the wars with Israel. I do expect the Likudniks to write things as insolent as the above, and to turn deaf ears to the shouts of the Egyptians in front of their enemy's embassy. However, this is not how the Washington Post is and its Jewish American owners have a well-deserved liberal reputation. Nevertheless, some of the people overseeing the op-ed pages and the writers there – some and not all- become Likudnik advocates of occupation and murder, and defend the crimes Israel perpetrates in broad daylight. The editorial then turns facts upside down, because anti-Israeli sentiment in reality is not guided by governments, but rather, the people has risen against both the governments and Israel. I argue that if an overwhelming majority of countries around the world would support the establishment of the Palestinian state, then this would be nothing short of the world's verdict on the legitimacy of Palestinian rights and aspirations, as much as it would be a condemnation of the fascist occupation state. No American newspaper, even if it were the Washington Post, could really claim that it is right while the whole world is wrong. Israel's isolation was self-inflicted by the fascist government that runs its policies. In fact, this is not my opinion alone. Even Haaretz, an Israeli paper, and its writer Gideon Levy believe so. This week, Levy wrote an article entitled “Israeli pyromaniacs are setting the Mideast on fire”. Levy (literally) said: “Israel is being led with dreadful blindness by a handful of irresponsible politicians, dangerous pyromaniacs without equal, yet the public remains apathetic. The government is pregnant with danger, conducting a scandalous policy, yet there is no protest.” The Israeli writer condemned the Israeli government, because observing a fact is not like living it, and because fire scalds the most where it burns. Thus, it will be the Israelis who will ultimately pay for the extremism of their government and its crimes, not a Likudnik op-ed writer in the Washington Post, tens of thousands of kilometers away. The Likudnik American's chutzpah was such that he criticized Erdogan for expelling the Israeli ambassador, because, as he claimed, the Turkish Prime Minister is aspiring for regional leadership, and not because Israel had murdered Turkish peace activists in the high seas, and refused even to merely apologize as requested by the Turkish government, as this is the reason behind the expulsion of the ambassador before anything else. Abu Mazen, on the other hand, will not face an uprising to topple him, whether he goes to the UN or not, because the Palestinians under occupation are concerned first and foremost with an enemy that kills, destroys and steals people's homes with the encouragement of the Washington Post, the Israel lobby, and other extremist groups that place the interests of a fascist state above those of the United States itself. It is those, along with the government of Israel, who are responsible for the failure of the peace process, and not the Egyptians, Turks or Palestinians. [email protected]
