Robert Fisk: This draft shows who is running America's policy... Israel

[kpete]

Robert Fisk: This draft shows who is running America's policy... Israel
Published: 07 August 2006

So the great and the good on the East River laboured at the United Nations Security Council - and brought forth a lemon. You could almost hear the Lebanese groan at this draft resolution, a document of such bias and mendacity that a close Lebanese friend read carefully through it yesterday, cursed and uttered the immortal question: "Don't these bastards learn anything from history?"

And there it all was again, the warmed-up peace proposals of Israel's 1982 invasion, full of buffer zones and disarmament and "strict respect by all parties" - a rousing chortle here, no doubt, from Hizbollah members - and the need for Lebanese sovereignty. It didn't even demand the withdrawal of Israeli forces, a point that Walid Moallem, Syria's Foreign Minister - and the man the Americans will eventually have to negotiate with - seized upon with more than alacrity. It was a dead UN resolution without a total Israeli retreat, he said on a strategic trip to Beirut.

A close analysis of the American-French draft - the fingerprints of John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, were almost smudging the paragraphs - showed just who is running Washington's Middle East policy: Israel. And one wondered how even Tony Blair would want to associate himself with this nonsense. It made no reference to the obscenely disproportionate violence employed by Israel - just a sleek reference to "hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides" - and it made only passing reference to Hizbollah's demand that it would only release the two Israeli soldiers it captured on 12 July in return for Lebanese and other Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.

more at:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1217413.ece

[mitchtv]

1. that part of foreign policy, that is not run by

the Miami Cuban gang

[Spazito]

2. Robert Fisk; a truthteller at all costs

Thank you for posting this. Mr. Fisk is absolutely right on point, imo.

[breakaleg]

3. Someone please tell me if this resolution can be passed

if Lebanon doesn't agree to it? Can it be passed without them, with the attempt to force them to comply?

[Oversea Visitor]

4. There is Russia and China

They dont talk much.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. Well sure the UN can pass it.

But if Lebanon doesn't sign on it is rather meaningless. As is it is meaningless anyway as it simply calls on Hezbollah to surrender. Why would they do that?

[Jim Sagle]

5. This thread ain't nuthin' but Fisk..

[izzie]

7. You know I think this has set the Middle Eat back years.

I think so many countries are slowly moving to a more open society in the Middle East. Saudi start educating women and such things. It may not be what we want or fast but one have to recall just how long it took for women to become equal or so called equal in the West. Women in Iraq could work and get an education and now they are in black, can not drive and are killed for many of these things. Bush had made the zealots come out where these countries were moving a head at their own pace. That is just on the women stuff. By doing all this, we have turned on the zealots and just set it back years. The Bush that wanted to feed his ego in changing the world has sure done him self no good. This has got to be a real big step back for Lebanon also. It is just a shame.

[Tom Joad]

8. We must stop AIPAC. Go to www.stopaipac.org

That lobby does not make Bush and Blair stupid, they would have been stupid and warlike without the help of AIPAC. It does help create a environment where these militaristic views are accepted.

So go here. http://stopaipac.org/
Read up on AIPAC.

[Ghost Dog]

9. See/hear more truth from Fisk & others in this must-see video from 2003:

VIDEO (1h20m): Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7828123714384920696

[cali]

10. Anyone who believes that Israel

is running America's foreign policy is swallowing hogwash. The resolution stinks- it's way too one sided, but it constitutes nothing in the way of proof that Israel directs American foreign policy in the mideast.

[leftchick]

11. "a recipe for continuing the war"

indeed :(

<snip>

No one was fooled and few disagreed with Syria's Walid Moallem when he said the UN's draft resolution was "a recipe for continuing the war". As both the Hizbollah and the Israelis did yesterday, the former killing 13 Israelis and the latter bombing houses in Ansar - once an Israeli POW camp - which destroyed five more Lebanese civilian lives. Mohamed Fneish, a Hizbollah government minister - who scarcely represents all Lebanese but talks as if he does - thundered away about how "we" will abide by it on condition that no Israeli soldiers remains inside Lebanese land."

[Onlooker]

12. That's ridiculous

If anyone is directing things, it's Rove. The Irael-Hezbelloh war is dividing liberals and distracting most Americans from the mess in Iraq. The Republican Party has a strong interest in seeing the conflict continue. The fact that right-wing Israelis also support the conflict has no bearing on Rovian tactics.