Wednesday, July 19, 2006

The Epitome of Hypocrisy

I was sitting in a lecture yesterday when an Israeli professor was trying his utmost to give a balanced and accurate analysis of the war on Lebanon. He stressed that Iranian support for Hizbollah was an unfair and hostile intervention and an attempt to use the Shi'ite Lebanese resistance group as a proxy to carry out attacks on Israel. He further emphasized this issue by pointing the finger at Syria . The smoking gun was apparent as what appeared to be Iranian manufactured Fajr missiles landed inside Israel.

I could not help but think of the hypocrisy in all of this. The Israeli complaint is that a third party is acting unfairly in supporting its enemies. Suddenly this all sounded familiar. Ah yes... the sound of sonic booms over Gaza cause by American made F-16s comes to mind. Or perhaps the rattling of standard issue American made M-16 automatic riffles in the hands Israeli soldiers rings a bell. Even the subtle whistle of missiles leaving Apache Helicopters before the earth shattering destruction they cause points at the interference of another party.

Just think about Apache helicopters for a second. Can there be a more ironic circumstance. A an American weapon named for a tribe America dispossessed given to another dispossessed people (the Israeli Jews) so that they can disposes yet another people (the Palestinians). Yet we forget all this as it has become so commonplace but when Iran supplies Hizbollah with missiles it becomes the smoking gun needed to prove violations of international law which we only selectively enforce anyway.

In his "Wretched of the Earth" Fannon wrote that in the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized (or in this case the occupier and the occupied) the language of the dialogue is set by the colonizing party. What this means is that should the stronger party set the dialogue of violence and force the language of communication understood by the occupied is in turn force and only force.

The burden continues to fall on the stronger party, in this case Israel, to change the dialogue. With the most superior army in the region, armed by the most dominant military force in the world, and the largest per capita nuclear arsenal there is no doubt that Israel remains the regions hegemon.

So if Israel continues to follow a psychologically twisted and paranoid policy of "We will strike them till they love us" the Zionist dream of creating a SAFE and SECURE place for the Jewish people to live will never materialize.

As for the United States it is unclear what the policy in the Middle East is towards democracy. If it is the case that democracy is what the U.S. wants to see in the Mid East it is quite contrary to what has been accepted as "American Interests" in the last half century. Think about it...if a democracy is, in its most basic form, a government that represents the general will of its people than the regimes that would be created in a truly democratic Middle East would be strongly anti-American since the Arab world continues to perceive the United States as a very biased third party which has only contributed to Israeli war crimes.

So if the United States continues to follow a policy of democracy promotion while supporting an unjust Israeli occupation machine the dream of a friendly and stable Middle East will also never materialize.

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