Juan Cole - Sharon Defies Bush

[realFedUp]

http://www.juancole.com/

Sharon Defies Bush

The AP headline gets it right: Sharon dismisses Bush Warning on Settlement Expansion.

I would have called it "large-scale land theft" rather than "settlement expansion," but it comes to the same thing.

Wait a second. Isn't that Ariel Sharon, whose government gets billions of dollars a year from the United States (who even gets some from your household if you are an American, whether you like it or not)? Doesn't he owe us anything?

He doesn't think so.

On September 11, the United States was struck a grievous and unexpected blow by a handful of fanatics. Their stated purpose was to punish the U.S. for its support of Israel's crackdown on the Palestinians. Khalid Shaik Muhammad, among the masterminds of the operation, had wanted it moved up to April of 2001 to make the point that Israel's actions of that spring were being punished.

What was the reaction of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to this horrific attack on the US? Was it at least caution, given the price Americans had paid for supporting his colonization and theft of land in the Occupied Territories? Was it a cooling-off period while we dug the bodies out of the rubble and assessed the likelihood of a further attack? Was it any show of respect at all for the needs of the United States at that parlous moment?

No.

It was a "stepping up" of Israeli attacks on Palestinians!