January 26, 2005


"Those looking for clues about President Bush’s second-term policy for the Middle East might be interested to know that, nine days after his reelection victory, the president summoned to the White House an Israeli politician so hawkish that he has accused Ariel Sharon of being soft on the Palestinians," writes Dana Milbank in the Washington Post ( http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArti
cle/ShowFull&cid=1106104802027 )

That Israeli politician is Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky, the Israeli minister of social and diaspora affairs and leader of Yisra’el Ba’aliyah, the Russian immigrants’ party in Israel.

It is said Bush adores Sharansky’s book, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. "Bush," writes Michael Hirsh for Newsweek, "has been pressing the book on aides and friends in recent weeks and urging them to read it. And it is clear that Bush’s speech—as well as Sharansky’s influence—could have huge consequences for America in the coming years." ( http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6867187/site/newsweek/ ).

If so, we’re in trouble.

Sharansky, regardless of the title of his book, "apparently does not believe that human rights are universal and indivisible, that is, applicable to all human beings everywhere and irrespective of their race, color or creed. Not only does he oppose any Israeli concessions that may eventually lead to the realization of the Palestinians’ right to self determination, but he advocates policies that could only mean the dispossession of more Palestinians living in Israel, and the illegally occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. No wonder that he was one of the very few people to have amicable relations with the former ultra right-wing prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu," notes the Redress Information & Analysis web site ( http://www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/sharansky.htm )

Sharansky is a big hit with Bush, Condi Rice, and the Strausscon crowd, as noted in the Jerusalem Post, an Israeli newspaper that sports Strausscon Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle as director. As Hilary Leila Krieger wrote for the Jerusalem Post last week, "secretary of state nominee Condoleezza Rice plugged [Sharansky’s] 'town square test’ as America’s new foreign policy during her opening remarks at the Senate confirmation hearing. 'The world should apply what Natan Sharansky calls the "town square test": if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a "fear society" has finally won their freedom,’ she said." ( http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArti
cle/ShowFull&cid=1106104802027 )

Depends, of course. Last week the "fear society" was on parade in Washington, as police used pepper spray against anti-Bush demonstrators during his re-coronation. "At one point near the end of the President’s oratory, a protestor letting his free speech ring was hauled off by the guardians of liberty. The crowd tried to drown him out—as they are free to do—but no one rushed to defend the protestor’s right to shout at the President. During the Inaugural parade, Bush’s motorcade sped by those demonstrating against the war. At one point, police used pepper spray to restrain the most vociferous among this group," writes Ciro Scotti for Business Week. ( http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2005/nf200501
21_6679.htm ). "And that’s pretty much the way it goes in George Bush’s America. Plenty of platitudes about liberty, truth, and justice. And then we get Attorney General John Ashcroft; terrorism suspects denied rights; others transferred to torture-happy countries; Abu Ghraib; then a new Attorney General-nominee, Alberto Gonzales, who spent much of the past four years trying to parse the definition of liberty. Even in Bush’s run for reelection, only those loyal to the President were allowed in at his campaign stops."

And that’s the way it goes in the Middle East, although the Palestinians and the Iraqis would be lucky if the Israelis and the Americans limited their violations of human rights to the use of pepper spray.

Occasionally the corporate media here in America allows comments such as Scotti’s to slip under the wire. But when it comes to Israel, the corporate media rarely wanders from the straight and narrow, acting as cheerleaders for Israeli violence against the Palestinians. If you seek more balanced reporting about what is going on in the Occupied Territories, you need turn to newspapers elsewhere, for instance Britain. According to Sharansky, however, even-handed reporting results in violence. As ABC News reports ( http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1288718.htm ), Sharansky believes "years of hostile reporting and commentary about Israel in the British press [is] now spilling into the streets" because the Guardian and the BBC have likened "Israel to a Nazi state." Reporting the truth about Israelis massacring Palestinians—for instance, in Jenin—is anti-Semitic. As Sharansky adviser, Tehila Nahalon, sees it, "You can’t brainwash people for four years that Israel is an illegitimate country and that Israelis are like the Nazis and that Israelis are monsters and expect that nothing will happen to Jews." In other words, objective reporting results in "crimes like verbal assaults and desecration of graves." It would seem Sharansky’s "town square" is reserved for those who praise Israel, while those who disagree are anti-Semites.

Only those with "moral clarity" need enter Sharansky’s "town square." For instance, peaceniks are not allowed because, as Sharansky tells us in his book ( http://www.opinioneditorials.com/guestcontributors/jbell_200
50125.html ), "in the West [they] marched alongside emissaries of the KGB who, posing as peace activists, sought to undermine the efforts of a free world to defend itself against Soviet aggression." For those select few issued tickets and allowed to enter Sharansky’s "town square," the "primary challenge is mustering the inner strength to confront evil" and understand the "critical difference between the world of fear and the world of freedom." Such Manichean averment appeals to Bush, and that’s why he is telling his staff and all who will listen to buy and read Sharansky’s book. Sharansky’s doctrine is perfectly suited for Bushzarro world where "evil ones" are opposed to invasion and occupation and the "good guys" resemble the CIA-supported terrorist and executioner Iyad Allawi.

In the larger context, however, Sharansky’s good-versus-evil philosophy is virtually meaningless because the Strausscons don’t subscribe to it, although they never tire of praising Bush’s "moral clarity" and William Kristol tells us it is "good news that the president is so enthusiastic about Sharansky’s work." Good, evil, right, wrong, freedom, liberty—all of these concepts are irrelevant and serve as a cover for the Strausscon agenda: the supremacy of Greater Israel over the Arab and Muslim hordes. For as the late Edward Said noted, "the first step in the dehumanization of the hated Other is to reduce his existence to a few insistently repeated simple phrases, images and concepts," for instance, resistance to occupation is evil and Islam is a religion of hatred and violence. "This makes it much easier to bomb the enemy without qualm. After 11 September, this has been quite easy for Israel and the US to do with respectively the Palestinians and the Iraqis as people" because they are repeatedly portrayed as evil while Israel and the United States are portrayed as good, virtuous opponents of the "fear society." ( http://www.counterpunch.org/said1019.html )Said continues:

An immense carpet of mystification and abstraction has therefore been laid down all over the Arab world by this effort at systematic dehumanization. What the eye and ear perceive are terror, fanaticism, violence, hatred of freedom, insecurity and, the ultimate, weapons of mass destruction which are to be found not where we know they are and never looked for (in Israel, Pakistan, India and obviously the US among others) but in the hypothetical spaces of the terrorist ranks, Saddam’s hands, a fanatical gang, etc. A constant figure in the carpet is that Arabs hate Israel and Jews for no other reason except that they hate America too. Potentially Iraq is the most fearsome enemy of Israel because of that country’s economic and human resources; Palestinians are formidable because they stand in the way of complete Israeli hegemony and land occupation. Right-wing Israelis like Sharon who represent the Greater Israel ideology claiming all of historical Palestine as a Jewish homeland have been especially successful at making their view of the region the dominant one among US supporters of Israel.

During the second Bush administration, this dehumanization, portrayed as a grand battle between the forces of light and dark, will grow in intensity as the Strausscons, at the behest of Israel and far-right Zionist ideologues such as Anatoly "Natan" Sharansky, continue their effort to pitch the Middle East into the abyss of World War IV, as the Strausscons describe it, and thus exact their long-held desire to make Israel the region’s undisputed hegemon. It is no mistake Bush is using Sharansky’s absurd book to foment more dehumanization and violence. Aggressors invariably cloak their barbarity and savagery under a wrap of moralistic platitudes, as did Hitler before he delivered misery and death to millions of people.