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Wednesday, January 9, 2008

LA TIMES Blatantly Anti-Semitic Op-Ed/Cartoon

In their book The Israel Lobby and U. S. Foreign Policy, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer two fiction writers posing as Political Scientists repeatedly make the claim that pressure from Israel and the Lobby was a critical element in Bush deciding to invade Iraq. Reports have shown that Israel lobbied AGAINST invading Iraq and tried to tell the President to concentrate on Iran.

When interviewed on NPR’s On Point program, hosted by Tom Ashbrook, Mearsheimer let the truth slip out – early on the administration itself was determined to go to war against Saddam, and once the Israelis understood the die was cast, they decided not to contradict their most important ally--Basically cutting the legs out of one of the primary hypotheses of his book.

So even though one of the authors admitted he was full of cow chips, the LA Times gave them editorial real estate to spew their stereotypical Anti-Jewish venom. The Times accompanied their hateful edit with a blatantly anti-Semitic Cartoon (above) showing Uncle Sam shackled by a Jewish Star. It's the type of cartoon you expect to see a Nazi party pamphlet not a major American Newspaper.

LA Times runs Anti-Semitic Cartoon with Inflammatory Op-Ed

In a January 6th Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times, "Israel's False Friends", Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer spewed the same anti-Israel inaccuracies, historical revisionism, and moral blindness that characterized their shoddy book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy."

The Op-Ed was accompanied by a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon (see below), apparenly chosen by Times editors, that would have been more at home in a neo-Nazi publication than a supposedly major newspaper.

• Walt and Mearsheimer (W&M) allege that the presidential candidates' support for Israel is only due to "pandering" for votes. Since the controversial professors are prone to demonizing Israel, they omit any hint that politicians, and the American people, overwhelmingly support Israel because Israel shares our values of democracy, pluralism, accountability, freedom, and the sanctity of life, and its policies are, on the whole, fair and just. America and Israel also share a common enemy - militant Muslim extremists.

• W&M advocate for America to be "even-handed" between the Israelis and Palestinians, omitting the vast differences between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority, in their state-run schools, mosques and media, indoctrinate their citizens with beliefs that are anti-American, anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-women's rights and anti-gay. Polls show that most Palestinians supported the 9/11 attacks against the United States, supported Saddam Hussein over the United States, and even today, continue to cheer on the insurgents who are killing American soldiers in Iraq.

The highest aspiration of many Palestinian children, as taught to them by their educational, spiritual and political leaders, is to murder Jews (and other infidels) and to die a "martyr." The Palestinian Authority is in a state of chaos, with the extremists of Hamas ruling Gaza, and with the corrupt extremists of Fatah marginally ruling the West Bank.

Israel, on the other hand, is a modern democracy, that ensures rights for all its citizens, including the 24% of its population that are non-Jewish.

Yet despite these stark differences in values, despite the Palestinians actively supporting America's enemies, Walt and Mearsheimer think American politicians should be "even-handed" between Israel and the Palestinians.

• W&M, in a startling case of historical revisionism, imply that Israel is the obstacle to peace, that if only Israel would accept the two-state solution, peace would reign. But Israel has agreed to a two-state (one Arab state, one Jewish state) solution on many occasions, including the 1947 UN Partition Plan and the 2000 Camp David talks held with President Bill Clinton, Palestinian Authority President Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. It is the Arabs who have always rejected such a plan, not the Israelis. Arafat walked away from a two-state solution and chose instead to launch a terror war against Israel, as well as a propaganda war, calling for Israel's destruction.

• As has been characteristic of their work, Walt & Mearsheimer completely omitted any mention of Palestinian responsibility for the conflict. There was not a single word about the incessant anti-Israel terror, the daily Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel, the ubiquitous hateful anti-American and anti-Jewish incitement fed daily to Palestinian children and the general Palestinian populace. Not a word about the continued Palestinian call for the destruction of Israel or the consistent Palestinian rejection of a viable two-state solution. ("Accepting" a two-state solution, but also insisting that the millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees should immigrate to Israel, not the future Palestinian state, is obviously not true acceptance of a Jewish state living permanently alongside a Palestinian Arab one. )

• W & M are indifferent to the current challenges to a viable two-state outcome, such as the Palestinians being in the middle of a festering civil war, with the extremists of Hamas and the extremists of Fatah killing each other. They have nothing to say about Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, who may not have the ability or the will to implement any agreement he might sign with Israel. He is not even able to control the Palestinian militants and terrorists who are violently attacking his own men (and many non-combatants), let alone those who are launching daily rocket attacks against the Israelis. Some intelligence sources estimate that if the Israelis were to entirely leave the West Bank, Hamas would stage a coup and take control there in a matter of days. Is it really in America's interest to facilitate the emergence of yet another anti-American terror-state in the Middle East? Walt and Mearsheimer seem not to have pondered that as another reason for American politicians' lack of interest in pressuring Israel.

• The Op-Ed was accompanied by a grotesquely anti-Semitic cartoon chosen by Times editors depicting Uncle Sam's hands manacled in handcuffs shaped like a Jewish star.

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