A Busy Day for Israeli Extremists

As Washington demurely casts its eyes to the side, Israel’s campaign of violence against the Palestinians is intensifying. Whether or not Israel’s barbarism constitutes a model of Washington’s overall attitude toward the world’s Muslim people is a question Americans need to start contemplating.

Israeli Violence.

Military Terrorism. Today, June 30, Israeli naval vessels again fired on Palestinian fishing boats. Despite the diplomatic efforts of Hamas to reach an accommodation with the Israeli occupiers, Israel continues to punish the population of Gaza by denying it food; the penalty for defying Israel’s limitations is military attack.

Piracy. In a particularly egregious move that at once served to humiliate the U.S. by its disrespect toward a former U.S. congresswoman and to slap the world community in the face by showing its utter contempt for humanitarian concerns, Israeli naval vessels highjacked the “Spirit of Humanity” on its way to provide desperately needed supplies to Gaza, reportedly in international waters. This import of this event, carefully downplayed by biased American media, goes far beyond the token supplies of food and medicine being withheld from needy Gazans. Once more, the extremists of the region have been taught that in the end, neither principles of human decency nor concerns for international law count in the eyes of Washington, a dangerous lesson, given the rising power of Iran’s military-intelligence elite and of the Taliban.

Israeli Terrorism. The settler-led and Israeli Army-protected campaign of terror against Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank continued with another attack also on June 30. If the definition of terrorism is actions against non-combattants that inspire terror, this was terrorism for sure.

Israel Insults Washington.

Israel has not only rejected Obama’s pleas to halt illegal settlements but has taken new steps to enhance its illegal campaign to populate the conquered territories exactly at the moment Defense Minister Barak visits the U.S.—in a calculated insult to apparently helpless Obama. Washington has not explained why it would countenance even discussing this issue of international law with the Israeli minister of war, rather than a qualified legal team.

Israeli media have made no bones about the crux of the disagreement between Israel and the West, noting that extremists in the regime see no point in interfering with settlement in land that Israel plans to steal from the Palestinians anyway:

Lieberman, together with ministers Benny Begin and Moshe Ya'alon of the Likud, said Israel should not compromise the future of settlements destined to remain within its borders.

Indeed!