“Do you represent Israel before you represent America?” - U.S. Senate Candidate Kevin Zeese's query to Rep. Ben Cardin (1)

The Neocons’ scheme to destabilize the Middle East, aka “The Clean Break Document,” and to create a “safer Israel” is backfiring. (2) Instead, residents of Haifa, Israel, are running for cover from the rocket attacks of Hezbollah. Hey, that wasn’t in the plan! The Arabs aren’t suppose to fight back. They are only suppose to serve as target practice for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), like in Gaza, and/or kill each other in that scripted Civil War in Iraq. Israel's unjust invasion, and attempt to seize parts of Lebanon up to the Litani River, has to date, also resulted in 118 Israeli fatalities, including the deaths of 82 of its soldiers. Yanks and Brits dying in combat in Iraq, along with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, means little to the Neocons. Lebanon being destroyed is also inconsequential to these Wire Pullers. But, Israeli citizens and soldiers being killed, and their northern cities being damaged, well, that’s something different, indeed. None of the latter was suppose to be on the “Clean Break” agenda prepared by the Neocon wise guys years ago. (2)

Enter Hezbollah! The IOF has confessed that Hezbollah is a tenacious foe. One IOF member told a Washington Post reporter: “They are the masters of the field. They know the area better than us. They know where to hide and when to move. They always know where we are.” (3) Those remarks standing alone are a classic definition of a formidable guerrilla force, who are fighting on their own land, for their own country, and against a foreign enemy. The ultra-Rightist Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, responded to the strong defense being put up by Hezbollah by declaring that there will be “no limitations” on the IOF. Since Israel doesn’t give a hoot about International law anyway, “El Supremo's” latest ominous threat means the IOF will stop pretending that it isn't open season on civilians. To date, the IOF has killed about 1,000 innocent Lebanese and displaced a million people from their homes with its terror air strike bombing campaign of over 8,700 sorties.

Meanwhile, our fearless leader, President George W. Bush, is hiding out at his farm in Crawford, TX. He’s afraid to come out of his compound, since Cindy Sheehan, the “Gold Star Mother for Peace,” is lodged down the road from him at “Camp Casey.” (4) Bush’s illegal war in Iraq was hatched by the cunning Neocon, Paul Wolfowitz, among others. (5) It has sent 2,598 American military personnel to their early graves and has cost the treasury $306 billion. Bush is another one who doesn't have the guts to take on Israel or its Lobby. (6) It's another sign that our Republic is on life support.

Then, there is Richard Perle! (7) He’s a congenital War Hawk and one of the architects of the “Clean Break” policy statement, finalized in 1996, for the then Israeli Hard Right regime of Benjamin Netanyahu. Perle used to serve as one of the directors of the Jerusalem Post newspaper. He was also an ex-member, and chair, too, for many years, of the influential Pentagon Defense Policy Board. I have to ask, looking at just how “safe” Israel is today, thanks to the demented “Clean Break” policy: Will Perle, the Mother of All Neocons, ever be welcomed back to Israel? He has recently been pushing, probably from his villa in Southern France, for a U.S. war with Iran. This is the same repulsive character, with no conscience, who once boasted that if the Bush-Cheney Gang waged a “total war” against Iraq that “our children will sing great songs about us.” (8) Every time I read that insane line I think: Doesn’t this guy belong in a white coat, with a straight jacket on, and in a padded cell next to someone like - Hannibal Lecter? (9)

Closer to home, the people of Connecticut have had enough of that pious hypocrite, Joe Lieberman, another Neocon clone. He went down in flames in a Democratic Party primary on Aug. 8, 2006. Lieberman was to the Right of our soulless president on the Iraqi War. At times, he even made another Neocon, William Kristol, look like a Peacenik. Lieberman also pushed the USA Patriot Act into law, without a public hearing. At one of the first anti-Iraq War rallies that I went to in Washington, D.C., I noticed a poster sitting up against a tree, near the Potomac River. It read: “Sen. Joe Lieberman is an embarrassment to the good people of Connecticut.” Truer words have never been written. If he decides to run as an independent in the general election, I hope they make him register as a member of the Likud Party. Lieberman sure knew how to represent the interests of Israel in the U.S. Congress.

Back to the Middle East. What if Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Jordan and/or Egypt get trigger happy, like the Israelis have been over the capture of three of their soldiers? What if Russia decides to back Iran, if it is attacked by Israel or the U.S.? How far is humanity, thanks to Israel’s militancy, closer to WWIII? Israel’s “Clean Break” plan doesn’t look so “clean” at the moment. Why would any European country want to send its troops into Southern Lebanon to serve in that so-called “buffer zone?” Do you think their citizens have forgotten what the IOF did recently to those four unarmed UN observers? And why would Hezbollah agree to disarm with a thuggish neighbor next door, like Israel? And, if the Bush-Cheney Gang attempts to use our soldiers in that role, I suspect that even our mostly cowardly U.S. Congress, perennial lapdogs for the Israel Lobby, will say "no." (When will the citizens of Maryland begin to boo U.S. Senator, Barbara A. Mikulski? She has been nearly invisible on War/Peace issues.) As for the American people, growing numbers are appalled by what Israel’s Terror, Death & Mayhem Machine is doing in Gaza and Lebanon. I suggest that their feelings of outrage may soon reach a tipping point.

In fact, as a result of the gross barbarism of the IOF in Gaza and Lebanon, a Holocaust survivor, Silvia Tennenbaum, was moved to speak out in an insightful Op Ed piece for Newsday. She wrote: “Would the author of ‘Survival in Auschwitz,’ Primo Levi, or the poet Paul Celan demand that we slaughter the innocents in a land far from snow-clad forests of Poland? Is it a heroic act to murder a child, even the child of an enemy? Are my brethren glad of it and proud?...I am heartsick, and still I see a glimmer of hope...If Israel had worked for peace as hard as it has worked for war, might it not all be settled now?...The time is long overdue for Jews to return to their role as the world’s conscience, who come to the aid of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth. Once again, we must join those who demand the end to unjust wars-in Iraq, as well as Lebanon-and an unjust occupation in Gaza...” (10)

On the media front, windbag Bill O’Reilly got a surprise when he recently invited Noura Erakat, an eloquent advocate for Palestinian human rights on his show. She told him: “I don’t think that our viewers know that Israel actually occupied Lebanon for 18 years and that in the past six years alone it has launched 11,782 missiles over the Lebanese border...Did Americans know that? Did they know?” (11) Erakat, who spoke passionately at a demonstration in front of the State Department, in response to the Qana Massacre, on July 31, 2006, in Washington, D.C., is emerging as the Bernadette Devlin of Arab-America. (12)

Finally, as you pay $3-plus for a gallon of gas, remember the U.S. didn’t have any enemies in the Middle East, until Israel was created in 1948. (13) Also, its right of self-defense isn't a license for it to slaughter people indiscriminately, Baltimore's Mayor Martin O'Malley's opinion to the contrary. (14) George Galloway, British MP, and a magnificent Celt, has said that most people in the world see "Israel as a terrorist state." (15) The last question is this: What are you, relying on your own conscience as a guide, going to do about this Neocon-Israeli-instigated horror story? (16)

Notes:

1. www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2006/08/04/kevin_zeese_challenges_rep_cardin_on_isr
2. irmep.org/Policy_Briefs/3_27_2003_Clean_Break_or_Dirty_War.html
3. “Israeli Soldiers Find a Tenacious Foe in Hezbollah,” Jonathan Finer, Washington Post, 08/08/06.
4. www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/13598
5. www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp
6. ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011/%24File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf
7. ttp://batr.net/neoconwatch/archives/2004_12_01_neoconswatch_archive.html
8. Perle's Interview on PBS's "Wide Angle," on 07/11/02.
9. signs-of-the-times.org/signs/editorials/signs20060807_Hope.php
10. “Why Doesn’t Israel Work for Peace?,” Silvia Tennenbaum, 08/04/06, Newsday.
11. ttp://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2006/08/did-you-know-that-israel.html
12. boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/186739/index.phph
13. usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/32357
14. Check out the George Galloway interview video, here: news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0%2C%2C31200-galloway_060806%2C00.html
15. baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/13250/index.php
16. informationclearinghouse.info/article14273.htm

© William Hughes 2006.

William Hughes is the author of “Saying ‘No’ to the War Party” (IUniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at liamhughes-AT-comcast.net.