[Mb-civic] King George

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Uri Avnery is a long-time Israeli journalist and peace activist


òáøéú / Hebrew 
http://www.geocities.com/keller_adam/Avnery_heb.htm

Uri Avnery
22.1.05

    King George

     When King George V died, we got a day off from school as a sign of
mourning. Palestine was then a part of the British Empire, which ruled the
country under a League of Nations mandate. To this very day, a central
street in Tel-Aviv, not far from my home, bears the name of King George.
     George V was followed (after a brief interlude) by George VI, who was
until recently the last George in our life. Now we have a new King George,
not British but American.

     The relationship between the United States and Israel is difficult to
define. The USA has no official mandate over our country. It is not a
normal alliance between two nations. Neither is it a relationship between
a satellite and the master country.
     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.
     As a matter of fact, both versions are right: The USA is an Israeli
colony and Israel is an American colony. The relationship between the two
countries is a symbiosis, a term defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "an
association of two organisms living attached to each other or one within
the other" (from the Greek words for "living" and "together".)
     Much has already been said about the origins of this symbiosis.
American Christian Zionism preceded the founding of the Jewish Zionist
organization. The American myth is almost identical with the Zionist
Israeli myth, both in content and symbolism. (The settlers fleeing from
persecution in their homelands, an empty country, pioneers conquering the
wilderness, the savage natives, etc.) Both are countries of immigration,
with all that this implies for good or ill. Both governments believe that
their interests coincide. On Independence Day in Israel, many American
flags are to be seen next to the Israeli ones - a phenomenon that is
without parallel in the world.
     The inauguration of George Bush last week therefore had a special
significance for Israel. The state-controlled TV channel broadcast it
live. In many respects, the President of the United States is also the
King of Israel.

     George Bush is a very simple, very violent person with very extreme
views, as well as being very much an ignoramus. This is a very dangerous
combination. Such people have caused many disasters in human history.
Maximilian Robespierre, the French revolutionary who invented the reign of
terror, has been called "the Great Simplifier" because of the terrible
simplicity of his views, which he tried to impose with the guillotine.
     The ideologues who govern the thoughts and deeds of Bush are called
"neo-conservatives", 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 towards 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, 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 Falluja looks as if it had been struck by a tsunami.
     It is no secret that the Neo-Cons intend to "bring democracy" to Iran
and Syria, thereby eliminating two more traditional enemies of the USA and
Israel. Dick Cheney, the Vice-President (certainly no Virtue- President),
has already prophesied that Israel may attack Iran, as if threatening to
unleash a Rottweiler.
     It could have been hoped that after the total debacle in Iraq and the
less obvious but equally serious failure in Afghanistan, Bush would shrink
from more such actions. But as almost always happens with rulers of this
type, he cannot admit defeat and stop. On the contrary, failure drives him
on to more extremes, vowing, rather like the captain of the Titanic, "to
stay the course."

     There is no way to guess what Bush may perpetrate, now that he has
been re-elected by his people. His ego has been blown up to giant
proportions, reaffirming what the Greek fabulist Aesop said some 27
centuries ago: "The smaller the mind the greater the conceit."
     He has kicked out the hapless, feeble Colin Powell (as David Ben-
Gurion eliminated Moshe Sharett in preparation for his 1956 onslaught on
Egypt) and appointed Condoleezza Rice, his personal servant (as Ben-
Gurion replaced Sharett with Golda Meir.) 
     Now the order is "clear the deck for action". On this deck, Bush is a
loose cannon, a danger to everyone around. The results of these elections
may be viewed by history as a worldwide catastrophe.
     In domestic affairs, he may cause similar disasters. In the name of
"American values", he is about to destroy one of the foremost American
values: the separation of Church and State. His is the religion of a "born
again" convert, a primitive religion without morality and compassion.
Imposing this religion on all fields of life - from the prohibition of
abortions and same-sex marriages to the revision of schoolbooks - may push
society centuries back and void the constitution. After four more years of
this, America may be a very different country from the one we loved and
admired in our youth.
     A friend of mine asserts that there are two souls residing in the
American nation, a good and a bad one. That may be true for every nation,
including even Israel and Palestine, but in America it is much more
extreme. There is the America of Thomas Jefferson (even if he liberated
his slaves only on his death), Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, the America of ideals, the
Marshall Plan, science and the arts. And there is the America of the
genocide perpetrated against the Native Americans, the country of slave
traders and the Wild West myth, the America of Hiroshima, of Joe McCarthy,
of segregation and of Vietnam, the violent and repressive America.
     During Bush's second term, this second America may reach new depths
of ugliness and brutality. It may offer the whole world a model of
oppression. I would not want my country, Israel, to be identified with
such an America. Any advantage we can derive from it may well turn out to be 
short-term, the damage long-lasting, and perhaps irreversible.
     One of the advantages of the US constitution is that Bush cannot be
re-elected for a third term. As the popular Israeli song goes: "We
survived Pharaoh, we shall survive this, too." Perhaps this could become
an anthem for the whole world.

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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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