"You Did It Too" - Israel's Kosovo Redux

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - So it's come back? Israel sniped this past week at the growing chorus coming out of civilized Europe against their murder spree in Lebanon, and continued practice of routine atrocity in Gaza and the West Bank, with a tart retort to the Germany's, France's, and lesser's, of their own complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo not so many years ago. The implication is simple enough to see, as is its logical presumption: "My evil is no greater than yours."

Well, then: Bombs away!

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"You Did It Too"
Israel's Kosovo Redux

C. L. Cook

PEJ News
August 12, 2006


How fitting Israel should retaliate European criticism of its murderous rampage, currently burning nicely, with its most lethal, but rarely used, diplomatic Weapon of Sass Destruction: The Truth.

Europeans, at least those that rule over the major, and aspiring nations of Europe, are complicit in the abortion of justice and abrogation of the duty to Humanity during what was the NATO scourge of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. Fitting for the lessons learnt, and practiced with precedent-following impunity in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and elsewheres.

Apt, when considering the use of cluster bombs, and depleted uranium munitions, drones, and satellites, missiles, and smart bombs, and on, and on, combined as it is with the systematic brutalisation of prisoners, and the deliberate targeting of essential civic services; services like: Water, and sewage; power, and communications; transit routes, and hospitals; houses, schools, fire and police stations; ambulances, fire trucks, and now "any vehicle" piloted by one so desperate to risk flight 'neath the IDF terror being wreaked about her, and her children's ears.

Yes, it sounds a lot like the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo.

Appropriate too, remembering the involvement of Osama, and his crew, in complicity with their then-C.I.A. paymasters, and the similar brand of carnage loosed largely against the citizenry. All done then, Israel implies now, with the official imprimatur of both NATO, and the UN.

Just so!

Amazingly, Israel - and, I beg pardon of those Arab and "fringe" Israeli's opposing the fanatical fascism currently made most starkly visible, hath spake two truths in a single day! But, the amazing parallels well exceed that, when looking a little more deeply into the goings-on, both today, and in those benighted days in the Balkans.

In those dark times, an entire people, identify racially, were driven from the land they'd lived upon for millennia; driven wholesale from their purchase. These same were strewn, the survivors of the onslaught, to the winds; scattered to find some new landing, the only certainty being they could not now, nor perhaps ever, go home.

They speaking for the so-called Israeli nation have put on notice all that would dare oppose naked, military conquest, and their neighbours too targeted should they interfere. In Lebanon, Robert Fisk reports today, leaflets falling the heavens, each one an identical indictment of international criminality; each an admission of the abandonment of the Geneva Conventions, the rules that have ostensibly guided the world in this unprecedented time.

Israel's blood-stained ministers are correct in their condemnation of NATO, its members, and the public that allowed the destruction of a nation, all conducted in the name of justice, and based on lies and blatant, criminal deception. They are correct too in wondering: "Why complain of we when doing your dirty business?"

And, that is the heart of it.

The dichotomy is an illusion: "Israel" and "America" are a single entity. This is no news to those living beneath the boot of the rising tide of oppression in those far-flung places. It seems only in the United States, where the results of a recent poll - if you believe in such things - claimed: More than half of "Americans" asked didn't know which year the rather well publicized 9/11 attacks occurred. This of course played in conjunction with the ceaseless 24/7 "news" cycle reportage of the next, newest "terrorist plot;" a convenient distraction from military reversals in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the continuing hammering of the populace in Occupied Palestine.

What differs, during the most recent outrages against humaneness is the Israeli State's official, literal declaration of war against a civil population has not been seen since the Nazi occupation of Greece. Collective Punishment of civilians is clearly indicated upon the thousands of leaflets dropped before the bombs in Lebanon; as the most knowing English-language reporter from the scene, Robert Fisk reports.

These are clearly open declarations, on the part of the current Israeli leadership, of defiance to any and all conventions yet constructed in hopes of making of this world a more equitable place. And, the lack of effective reaction to these obvious transgressions on the part of the "world" community are a Damnation of collusion in ethnic cleansing; a cleansing some are already calling "Holocaust."



Chris Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News, and host of Gorilla Radio, a weekly exploration of the muck and mire comprising what is today, laughingly referred to as civilization. You can check the GR Blog here.

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