PAKISTAN Special

BY: BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

 “Peace for all children,” said Obama. But does he include Palestinian children? Will he continue to stand with Israel, the country that has laid waste a land and murdered or maimed hundreds?

Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were pretty close, politically and personally. They led the fight against fascism in the early 1940s, and although they had their disagreements they got on well. They were both blunt in their views, but there was no doubt who was the more powerful: Roosevelt called the shots, although Churchill had a lot of influence on him. But it would have been unthinkable for Churchill to behave in the way that the present (though not for long) prime minister of Israel did on January 8 with the (now mercifully departed) president of the United States.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, who has been forced to stand down because of allegations of corruption, telephoned George W Bush to make the latter alter his orders to his secretary of state to support a resolution in the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The barely believable transcript of Olmert’s boasting of his success is on public record.

He said: “I [Olmert] spoke with him [Bush]; I told him: You can’t vote for this proposal. He said: listen, I don’t know, I didn’t see, don’t know what it says. I told him: I know, and you can’t vote for it! He then instructed the secretary of state, and she did not vote for it.”

There is no other person in the world who could say such words to a president of the United States. And will Olmert’s successor be able to speak with Bush’s successor in the same way and with similar results?

The next Israeli prime minister could be Tzipi Livni or Binyamin Netanyahu, both steel-minded sadists and dedicated haters of Palestinians and Arabs in general. Will they be able to call President Obama to suggest forcefully that he alter the voting intention of the United States of America at the UN Security Council? And what would he do if they did?

Given the commitment to Israel of Mr Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, as was obvious in their grovelling speeches last year to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, which apparently runs American politics, there is no guarantee that either of them will utter a word in criticism of Israel.

One thing is certain: the US Congress is going to continue its unconditional support for Israel, no matter what war crimes are committed by its disgusting thugs-in-uniform. The politicians need the money, after all, which they get through political action committees, which are generously funded by American Jews. And they are scared to political death by the threat that pro-Israel agencies will destroy their careers if they dare say a word against Israel.

So the US House of Representatives rushed to praise Israel and endorse its merciless airstrikes and committed America to a motion “recognising Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza, reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

Few Americans know about the hideous barbarity in Gaza, because their networks and newspapers rarely carry pictures of disfigured blood-splashed children who have been killed, maimed or orphaned by the Israelis. But elsewhere we have access to TV channels and newspapers that are very different from the pliant pro-Zion patsies of the major news outlets in the US. (The New York Times did not print Olmert’s orders to Bush. Surprise, surprise.)

And if US TV channels carried pictures like the ones we see, there would be such outbursts of horror and indignation that even the US Congress might be forced to condemn the Israeli fascists for their barbarity. But the all-powerful Israel lobby makes sure that little of the sort will appear.

Only five honourable members of the House voted against unconditional support for Israeli killing of Palestinians, and one was Representative Dennis Kucinich who put forward the case for their vote when he said: “In Gaza, the United Nations gave the Israeli army the coordinates of a UN school, and the school was then hit by Israeli tank fire, killing about 40. The UN put flags on emergency vehicles, coordinating the movements of those vehicles with the Israeli military, and the vehicles came under attack, killing emergency workers. The Israeli army evacuated 100 Palestinians to shelter, and then bombed the shelter, killing 30 people.”

Blunt stuff, but it cut no ice with the 390 members of the House who voted to encourage Israel to continue its killing.

The Israelis have killed 1300 Palestinians, and the UN reports that at least 700 of these deaths were civilians, and that half of these were women and children. One million of Gaza’s 1.5 million people have no electricity, and about 750,000 are without water. They are living in conditions of appalling squalor and fear, with US-supplied helicopter gunships and F-16s having destroyed their houses and schools and killed their children. Yet America voted for Israel. And the president of the United States jumped to obey the Israeli prime minister.

Will there be any change under Obama and Clinton?

A year ago, Hillary Clinton told AIPAC: “we stand with Israel because of our shared values and our shared belief in the dignity of men and women and the right to live without fear or oppression.”

Last June Barack Obama told AIPAC: “Now is the time to be vigilant in facing down every foe, just as we move forward in seeking a future of peace for the children of Israel, and for all children. Now is the time to stand by Israel.”

“Peace for all children,” said Obama. But does he include Palestinian children? Will he continue to stand with Israel, the country that has laid waste a land and murdered or maimed hundreds?

If he does, the question must be: who calls the foreign policy shots in America?