PEJ News - C. L. Cook - Slithered back recently into the lexicon of the Bush administration, Israel's Ohmert crowd, and their supporters in the corporate media, a new meme to help you better understand what the dated, "War on Terror" really means, and what it demands of the citizenry: "Islamo-Fascism," and its interchangeable synonyms, "Islamic Fascism," and "Islamic Terrorism" are the action phrases of the day, and as with much of the language heard coming from these actors over the past years, the au courant terms describe best their authors' values and methods.

We needn't have witnessed the systematic destruction of Lebanon last month to appreciate the nature of Israel, we need only remember the ongoing systematic destruction of the Palestinian peoples, a project escalated this summer and quaintly dubbed by Israel 'Operation Summer Rains'.

Those "rain drops" are naturally not water, but a torrent of blazing steel and lead. These "rains" don't bring life to the hills, rivers, orchards, and beasts beneath them, but terrible death and heart-rending loss. And, for the Palestinians there is no umbrella, they are caught in the storm; no United Nations troops are urged to protect them from the Rainmakers across the wall.

The Palestinians, those surviving the repeated pogroms perpetrated by their neighbour to remain depite the murderous, and continuing Diaspora, are left to scratch a living out of the rubble, while Israeli tower guards snipe at their children, and rockets destroy their civic leaders and any unfortunates within a hundred yards of them. Daily, news of the freshly killed in Gaza and the West Bank could be heard before a shot was fired in Lebanon.

Every day, more civilians killed. Remember the family cut down while they barbecued on the beach? Remember the family dismembered in their flat by a "stray" Israeli missile? Recall the doctor kidnapped from Gaza, with his young son before Palestinians attacked a military outpost, killing several soldiers, and abducting one?

No? How about the campaign of "Sonic Straifing" carried out continuously over Gaza commencing last Autumn, (a tactic deployed too against the Lebanese last month)?

What the media and the U.N. have consistently failed to address in the recent tragedy brought upon Lebanon through the agency of the Israeli leadership, in collusion with their armourers in America, and callously carried out by the Israeli military is context. The depth of the United Nations' abrogation of their duty to justice for peoples and nations, as presented in the pitiful Resolution 1701 makes clear: The truth of the matter will not be addressed; Israel will not be punished for its blatant illegalities; No reproach either offered to the United States, Canada, and others in the international community who sanctioned Israel's unilateral destruction and continued blockade of Lebanon.

Of course these, Israel's signature pursuits, identically apply in Palestine, but are of no issue. Despite Kofi Annan's, seemingly made suddenly aware of Israel's brutality in occupied Palestine, harsh words parting directed to the rogue of the region are meaningless. It's doubtful Kofi's successor to the helm of the U.N. will waiver from Annan's long-practiced inaction where Israel is concerned; and, 1701 insures that.

Littered again with Israeli land-mines, uncounted thousands of unexploded cluster bomb "bomblets," and other munitions, the land and waters polluted with oil and Depleted Uranium, Lebanon is in ruins. More than a thousand Lebanese civilian dead counted so far, more to be discovered when the wreckage of their homes and offices are cleared, and more being killed and wounded daily by Israel's "left-behind" ordnance, and not a single line in Resolution 1701 calls on Israel to make reparations. In fact, that duty, as with the "DMZ- like buffer zone" is assigned to others, and to be implemented at Israel's pleasure, most incredibly, while Israeli soldiers continue to occupy portions of Lebanon.

While rumours of a greater war in the middle east and beyond near deafening, the United Nations sees fit, at this late date, to reward recalcitrant, reprobate, scofflaw Israel for its unwarranted aggression against a sovereign nation. This is, as the soon late-to-be Saddam Hussein may have called it, "The Mother of All Crimes." And, those sitting at Nuremberg and Geneva, Washington, London, and Paris agreed. They explicitly cite: "Unprovoked war of aggression" as the ultimate war crime, a crime against the peace from which all others follow. Yet today, neither the United Nations, nor the European Union, are willing to apply the law. America stands silent on this too, naturally, as it has stood silent so many times in the past, opting instead to further embolden its "client state" to loose ever more American-made munitions upon its neighbours.

With the November mid-term elections in the U.S. drawing close, George W. Bush has brushed off the old "Islamic Fascists" doggerel in hope to carry again his disreputable Republican regime to control of both Houses of Congress. It proves the desire, and desperation of his administration for further wars. In an article, linked here, Toronto Star writer, Eric Margolis cites, Colombia University Professor Robert Paxton's 2004 book, 'The Anatomy of Fascism,' and Paxton's definition of fascism as:

"1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one's group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign 'contamination.'"

As Margolis observes: "Fascism demands a succession of wars, foreign conquests, and national threats to keep the nation in a state of fear, anxiety and patriotic hypertension. Those who disagree are branded ideological traitors."

With wars already burning in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and battered Lebanon teetering, all these of the making of the Bush administration and it's allies, those same criminals would call the world to arms to fight the "Islamic Fascists," proving again the verity of the schoolyard rejoinder: "What you say is what you are."



C. L. Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News, and hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR Blog here.

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written by admin, September 14, 2006

Cheers.

Cheers

;D

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