Robert Fisk: Why Avigdor Lieberman is the worst thing that could happen to the Middle East
World Focus: I can identify Lieberman's language with the language of Messrs Mladic and Karadzic and Milosevic
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Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the extreme right-wing party Yisrael Beiteinu, who has just been named Israeli Foreign Minister
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Only days after they were groaning with fury at the Israeli lobby's success in hounding the outspoken Charles Freeman away from his proposed intelligence job for President Obama, the Arabs now have to contend with an Israeli Foreign Minister whose – let us speak frankly – racist comments about Palestinian loyalty tests have brought into the new Netanyahu cabinet one of the most unpleasant politicians in the Middle East.
The Iraqis produced the hateful Saddam, the Iranians created the crackpot Ahmadinejad – for reasons of sanity, I leave out the weird ruler of Libya – and now the Israelis have exalted a man, Avigdor Lieberman, who out-Sharons even Ariel Sharon.
A few Palestinians expressed their cruel delight that at last the West will see the "true face" of Israel. I've heard that one before – when Sharon became prime minister – and the usual nonsense will be trotted out that only a "hard-line extremist" can make the compromises necessary for a deal with the Palestinians.
This kind of self-delusion is a Middle East disease. The fact is that the Israeli Prime Minister-to-be has made it perfectly clear there will be no two-state solution; and he has planted a tree on Golan to show the Syrians they will not get it back. And now he's brought into the cabinet a man who sees even the Arabs of Israel as second-class citizens.
Lieberman's first visit to Washington will be a gem. AIPAC – posing as an Israeli lobby when in fact it works for the Likudists – will fight for him and Lady Hillary will have to greet him warmly at the State Department. Who knows, he might even suggest to her that she imposes a loyalty test for American minorities as well – which would mean demanding an oath of faithfulness from Barack himself. The horizon goes on forever.
In Egypt, Avigdor Lieberman will have a tough time. Hosni Mubarak can be a soft touch for the Americans but it was Lieberman who, complaining that the Egyptian President should visit Israel or "go to hell", deeply offended a man who has taken great risks in maintaining his country's peace with the Israeli state.
Egyptians have been outraged to read in their newspapers that Lieberman has talked of drowning Palestinians in the Dead Sea or executing Israeli Palestinians who talked to Hamas. Last night, a supporter of Lieberman appeared on Al Jazeera television to describe Hamas as "an anti-Semitic, barbarous organisation" – even though Israeli army officers spoke openly with this supposedly "barbarous" group both before and after the Oslo agreement.
But the growth of such an extremist administration in Israel and the hopeless response of the Obama administration to the so-called supporters of Israel who destroyed Freeman's career, can only be dangerous news for the Middle East. The Jeddah-based Arab News called the Freeman disaster "a grave defeat for US foreign policy". But while uttering all the usual platitudes, the Arab press has been playing up the pusillanimous remarks of US press secretary Robert Gibbs when asked why Obama was "standing mute" in the Freeman affair. "I've watched with great interest how people perceive different things about our policy and during the campaign about whether we were too close to one group or too close to the other. So I don't give a lot of thought to those." Asked for "straight answers", Gibbs said: "I gave you as straight a one as I can get."
This was almost as funny as The New York Times when it attempted last week to explain why Lady Hillary was frightened of offending the Israelis during the formation of the Netanyahu government when she described the destruction of 1,000 Palestinian homes as "unhelpful".
Her caution in the Middle East, it explained, was "a reflection of the treacherous landscape in the Middle East, where a misplaced phrase can ruffle feathers among constituencies back home". You bet it can – and when Mr Lieberman comes to town, we'll see who those feathers belong to.
Their owners would do well, however, to dwell on the incendiary language of Avigdor Lieberman. He speaks like a Russian nationalist rather than the secular Israeli he claims to be.
I covered the bloodbath of Bosnia in the early Nineties and I can identify Lieberman's language – of executions, of drownings, of hell and loyalty oaths – with the language of Messrs Mladic and Karadzic and Milosevic.
Lady Hillary and her boss should pull out a few books on the war in ex-Yugoslavia if they want to understand who they are now dealing with. "Unhelpful" will not be the appropriate response.
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http://guardian.150m.com
http://guardian.ifastnet.com
The Psychopathic Israelis Strategy for Conquest of the Middle East.
Some Facts About Palestine (Israel).
Listing and Map of Land Ownership in Palestine in 1947.
Towns and Villages Ethnically Cleansed/Destroyed by the Jews.
More on the Towns and Villages Ethnically Cleansed/Destroyed by the Jews.
Time-line of the Jewish aggression in the 1948 war.
Jewish/Israeli massacres of Palestinians and Jewish Terrorism in general.
Jews force Palestinians on Death March.
Jews create the World's Largest Concentration Camps.
Fisk doesn't seem to write much about the 'racist' bigotry of the Islamic countries that surround Israel, which treat non-Muslims very badly.
As for Hamas, Avigdor Lieberman's buddy is correct, they are very rabidly anti-semitic. They aren't just anti-Israel. Just because the person stating this fact is an Avigdor Lieberman supporter doesn't mean it's not true. An Avigdor Lieberman also said the sky appears blue on a nice day. Is that not true?
As for Egyptians, they want nothing to do with the Palestinians and especially Hamas, either.
I personally am not a fan of Avigdor Lieberman, but it seems Fisk is exaggerating against him.
"It would be better to drown these [Palestinian] prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that's the lowest point in the world."
Lieberman has called for Israel to redraw its borders to hand over Arab areas to the Palestinians while retaining major settlement blocs, and require all Israelis, including the often anti-Zionist Haredim and Arab citizens of Israel, to sign loyalty oaths or lose their right to vote.
Israel is not asking all it's citizens, it's asking ONLY their Arab citizens. If this isn't racist, I don't know what is.
Avigdor Lieberman isn't even close.
One remembers how they uprooted the Palestinians, massacred some, and sent the rest into squalid existence in refugee camps, waged wars against neighbors, refused through a standard and never-worn out procrastination to walk away from every international agreement they entered into, violated EVERY single UN resolution they didn't fancy, and created that concentration camp the politicians in the Vatican denounced, and announced, only lately the continued siege of 1.5 millions after the famous Gaza Fundamentalist Massacre...
Islamic Fundamentalism has no counterpart in Israel - never. Even that bestial booklet written by that moderate rabbi which Israeli soldiers carried on their peaceful town-planning effort in Gaza in January was planted by the Islamic Fundamentalists.
Oh the history of the Islamic Fundamentalists...
Convince them that they have no friends, and you will drive them into selecting extremists.
This is the culmination of your beliefs and actions. Keep trating people as beasts and they behave as beasts. You've told the Israelis that (about the Palestinians) and seeing that nothing they did would ever convince people like you, they've taken you to heart, and accepted your principles. You reap what you sow.
http://theunpeople.blogspot.com/
There is no limit or decency for warmongering zionists.
It also says a lot that he 'counts the Jews' in government and uses that number as some sort of negative weapon.
Only nutjobs keep ranting about "the zionists" instead of just talking about Israel.
Normal people can discuss the situation without using the word "zionist" at all.
Good for the USA, supporting Israel, instead of supporting terrorists.
That's funny
But I was amazed by the simile to Mladic et al? A closer comparison would guarantee me an entry on the EU Wanted List, and the anger of German Chancellor - for mine is closer to the well-known mass murderer of 60 years past. The victims of the Zionist ideology have suffered for... 60 years in refugee camps and under the boot of their occupiers. Some found death more palatable than life, and opted in desperation and hopelessness to seek it and sadly bring with them other living beings.
I shall read the article, but I have really had enough of 'moderation' and deserved Mary Dejevsky's sarcastic condemnation for protesting her attack on the famous Oxfam advert during the recent Gaza slaughter-fest... Of course she beat the BBC to it, as it turned out.
It is through 'moderation' that a Lieberman will be shaking the hands of the European Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers, and will be admitted as an honored representative of a Government history and recent statements suggest it is bent on more crimes against humanity...
Are these Western dignitaries the Chamberlaines of today? They will be no different from their their predecessors, anyway, nor, let's face it and stop pretending, would Mr. Lieberman be different to Prime former Minister Sharon of the Lebanon Invasion, etc., etc.
thank you .
you see the world fed up from them .
I could suggest that they "get a life" but then again I find myself posting comments too...
Andrew Winkler
Editor/Publisher
ZioPedia - All There Is To Know About Zionism
We have already seen how accommodating the Israel firster filled Obama administration has been to the emerging Nazi like Israeli regime, with its warm welcoming of the war criminal General Gabi Ashkenazi to Washington.
Watch out for...US to attack Iran ( with the UK in toe) and Israel to annexe the West Bank and attempt to seize Lebanon to the Litani river.
The land south of the Litalin river: Israel could take it, if they wanted. Actualy Israel has every right to invade ant take land from a country (Lebanon) that declared war in 1948, never revoked and attacked on many occasions.
I know Iraq declared war (with many other arab countries) on Israel back in 1948 and attacked on several occasions. Now can someone british tell me what are british troops doing there, why is Britain killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries that never attacked Britain?
Let's see, now. Israelis have been getting bombed, shot, stabbed and beaten to death for the past, um let's count 'em.. 61 years. To put it into perspective, that's since you were two years old, Mr Fisk (if your Wikipedia entry is accurate). Six decades of bloodshed. Why? Because we're Jewish. Or do the inaccuracies for which your works are infamous, also include the libellous claptrap that Arabs were 'driven from their homes by the Jews'? Does the fact that Israel is in complete compliance with Resolution 242 (the real one, the date of which you didn't even know) not count? Do the concessions that Israel has made concerning vast swathes of Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem not count? Does the uniltateral pull-out from Gaza in 2005 (which resulted in around 8,000 rockets, missiles and mortars fired at Israeli civilians) not count?
No. Apparently not.
Sixty years of being massacred, and well somewhat unsurprisingly, Israelis have had their fill. They're sick of it. It has become obvious that Palestinians (you know, the same Palestinians who _voted_ for the Hamas .. oops, there I go muddying the water with facts again..damn me..) are not interested in peace, and that the ultimate aim ('Oslo is a Trojan Horse) is the destruction of the state of Israel.
So in democratic elections (that fact apparently only 'counts' when it's the Palestinians who are electing terrorists), Israel gives support to a man who has said, 'enough'.
But that's wrong, too, apparently. Hmm. Seems like we can't win. Isn't _that_ a surprise..?
The loyalty tests are _not_ reserved for Israeli Arabs and if you continue to claim that they are, Mr Fisk, you are lying. Mr Lieberman has been clear: every person in Israel will have to swear loyalty to the state of Israel. That sounds whacky and not a tad fascist seen from the comfort of your armchairs in the West. But the UK is not surrounded on all sides by over a billion people sworn to exterminate every single person in the country. The UK is not required to build bomb shelters onto all of its houses to protect against the war crime (oops .. you'd forgotten that too, hadn't you ..?) of inaccurate artisanal rockets and mortars.
Crucially, the UK does not have a small core of citizens who use the freedom of speech and political liberty to preach the destruction of the country.
Why do Arab Israelis complain about these tests, when their Jewish 'co-citizens' (the word 'compatriot' would have stuck in my craw) are going to have to take them, too? Do they have something against standing up and saying that they support the right to exist of the state of Israel, and that they will not undertake any action liable to threaten that state or the lives of its citizens? What exactly bothers them in this? Did they expect to be treated as pillars of Israeli society when they sit down to sip tea and munch biscuits with the murderers of the Hamas?
Has the world gone completely mad? Is your (plural) hatred of Jews so deep-seated and so visceral that you'll suck up to anyone whose stated aim is to finish what Hitler started?
Tell me, Mr Fisk .. in all seriousness: why do you hate the Jews?
You the 4th strongest army in the world with F16 figher jets bombing babaies and you still call yourselves victims. You are always victims and vever vilains!.
With the Pro/Israeli Group in the Senate what chance for peace in the Middle East.
When Hillary Clinton was first Lady, there was hope for the Palestine then, so no hope, unless President Obama acts with a firm hand.
The problem are the lunatics outside of Israel who refuse to stop trying to destroy Israel.
After having managed to control the world media, the US and some corrupt European and Middle East goverments, and most banking Institutions, one man has got away. Robert Fisk.
If you find logic in putting Blair as peace envoy to the middle east, a man who blatantly lied to his own people in order to start a war. you will then find the logic why the israelis, this "peace loving nation" want to be led by these people.
Let's not forget that they assassinated the only man who dared campaign for peace in 1995 Mr Yitzhak Rabin. At least we knew then that 100.000 Israelis who attended the Peace Rally actually wanted peace.
Who in Israel gives a damn what Fisk says or thinks - his anti Israel stance - his pro Arab position means that nobody south of the Litani cares who he wants or approves
If Israel now has to concern it with reporters living in Beirut passing banal comments then the World is in real trouble.
The reality is that Israel has the right to chose who it wants - for better or worse
Hopefully now with a rightish wing government about to take power, Israel will do what it should have been doing properly all these 60+ years. Are you not jealous you subjugated sheeple in Britain or are you under the mistaken impression that you are a 'higher form of life? -' boy have I got news for you.
Did you enjoy the Luton parades of our soldiers returning from duty? Don't you realise Britain with it's pathetic softie attitudes has become a worldwide joke?
Bibi's Likud will never contemplate closing down any settlements. When Ariel Sharon, Likud's former leader, gifted Gaza to Hamas in a devilish ploy to strengthen the Jihadi terrorist organization, thus undermining the Palestinian Authority and giving Israel a permanent excuse - Hamas's terrorism - to pretend it had "no partner for peace," Likud mutinied and forced Sharon out. The fascists of Likud derive their ideology directly and historically from Hitler's "blut und boden" brand of fascism and will never willingly yield an inch of their illegally-occupied land, even when doing so gives them a tactical advantage over their sworn enemies the Arabs. Begin only gave back the Sinai because Carter twisted his arm, reminding him that if it hadn't been for the US 7th fleet's jets, Egyptian t-72's would have rolled into Tel Aviv in the Yom Kippur war of 1973.
In contrast, Lieberman is much more flexible, having declared that he will gladly give up his own settlement home for peace. Avigdor Lieberman's main concern is neither the Arabs nor Israel's security, it's his own personal welfare:
Avigdor Lieberman is nothing but a common crook laundering money for the Russian mob in Cyprus while opportunistically manipulating the Russian immigrants who vote for him to become a political power-broker. The Israeli Jews form Russia have no understanding of why Palestinians hate them. All they know is that they came to Israel hoping for a better life and they ended up jobless and penniless stuck in a desert town next to a bunch of Arab Jihadi nutters who keep lobbing rockets at them. Lieberman is one of them and is seeking to turn his predicament into an opportunity, using demagoguery and Russian mob money to catapult himself out of poverty and into oligarchdom.
Although the Israeli constitution forbids Beiteinu from taking on a justice portfolio while its leaders is under investigation, Lieberman has made a deal with the current Labour justice minister, allowing him to keep his job in the new right-wing government in exchange for holding the prosecutors off and keeping Lieberman out of jail.
Lieberman may or may not end up in the slammer but the Likud-Beiteinu coalition's life-span is more likely to be shortened by the bungling and mismanagement for which Bibi Netanyahu is notorious. Bibi is personally responsible for Israel's shockingly high poverty rates and he is guaranteed to deliver more of the same, only worse, because of the global depression.
As Fisk reminds us, Bibi has made his hard-line position very clear: No return of the Golan, no closing down settlements, no sharing of Jerusalem, no no no. Bibi is the real threat to peace, Bibi and his love-child Hamas, which he armed and financed during the 2nd intifada, encouraging it to launch a terrorist campaign that would terminally scupper the Taba peace process.
Than You.
The targets are shooting back now, David will defeat Goliath sooner if not later.
This is what Hitler gas chamber victims have become now; Total monsters. The fourth strongest army in the world bombing babies, women and children. Where is the International Criminal court when it comes to this illigal state that did not exist before 1948?
Unfortunately, he represents the average person in a certain part of the world.
"Ethnic cleansing": Arab population in Israel only grow in spite of this "ethnic cleansing".
"Nazis": Where Christian europeans and arabs from Palestine (an area, never a country - and under British control at that time) sided with the Nazis.
"Middle ages": Jewish history is 5.000 years old, in that land, the land of Israel. When Jew Jesus was born (in Judean, from Jewish parents) Judaism was already a few thousand years old.
Jews get out of the Middle East if you don't like Arabs!