http://msanews.mynet.net/MSANEWS/200103/20010321.9.html
The Godfather as "Honest Broker"
By Edward S. Herman
The Palestinians have repeatedly called for a UN or other
international presence to protect them against the brutalities
of the Israeli occupation force in their land, and the UN high
commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, as well as Amnesty
International, have also called for such a presence. But Israel
doesn't want any such observers or armed force any more than
Slobodan Milosevic wanted them in Kosovo prior to the Nato
bombing. The difference in the two cases is hardly one of more
severe abuse in Kosovo: on the contrary, that was a civil war
with undoubted brutalities by the superior Serb forces, but
Israel in the occupied territories represents a true case of
ethnic cleansing, with Palestinians driven from their lands and
with houses demolished in a long-term process of "redemption of
the land" for the "chosen people." Serb destruction of houses in
Kosovo was not to make room for Serbs, it was done in a struggle
to contain an armed Albanian resistance. It was savage, but
Israeli treatment of the Palestinian "grasshoppers" (Yitzhak
Shamir) during two separate Intifadas, and before and between
them, has also been savage. What is more, Israeli abuses are in
occupied territory supposedly under UN and international
protection and with the Fourth Geneva Convention applicable,
whereas Serb abuses were being carried out within their own
national territory.
The crucial difference is strictly that Israel is the
Godfather's client whereas Serbia had gotten itself on his hit
list. That is enough at this point in history to determine a
result no matter how seemingly arbitrary and unprincipled. The
client is free to ethnically cleanse, and no international
intervention to protect victims will be permitted, by rule of
the Godfather--as Richard Holbrooke explained, "no force would
be supported without Israeli approval," so that is that. Kofi
Annan and everybody else with a small modicum of decision-making
power recognize that U.S. approval would be necessary for
international intervention, so the matter is settled by the U.S.
veto. A similar process applied in East Timor, where the
position of the Clinton administration was that this was an
internal Indonesian problem and that nothing could be done
without Indonesian approval, although here also, as in the case
of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the abuses were being carried
out in territories recognized by an international consensus--but
not by the Godfather--as illegally occupied. In this instance
the Clinton administration did, finally, and very belatedly,
under international pressure, tell this client to get out, but
only after East Timor had been effectively destroyed and the
majority of the population had been made refugees.
It will be recalled, also, that in the case of Kosovo,
international observers, which the Serbs had already permitted
and whose presence they were prepared to reaffirm at
Rambouillet, were deemed insufficient to protect those victims.
There a full Nato military occupation was required. The
Godfather declaring this to be so, naturally the mainstream
media and intellectuals agreed-- "ethnic cleansing" is very bad
and must be ended by external intervention.
So how do the media and intellectuals rationalize the
Godfather's veto of an international presence to protect the
Palestinians, victims of a REAL and long-term ethnic cleansing
process that, as Amira Hass stresses in Ha'aretz, gets more
brutal year by year? Key features of the rationalization are
massive suppression of the ethnic cleansing facts and a focus on
the "irrational" retail and responsive violence of the oppressed
(see my "Israel's Approved Ethnic Cleansing: Part 2, Official
U.S. and Media Protection," forthcoming in Z Magazine in May).
But another important mechanism of rationalization is simply
taking it for granted that no international protection of the
victims is necessary because the Godfather and client say so,
and even making such protection unnecessary because the
Godfather is serving as an "honest broker."
In the few news articles and op-ed columns that deal with the
subject it is reported that Arafat has appealed for UN and
international protection, but that Israel and the United States
reject this and therefore it isn't about to happen. The secret
here is utter superficiality, with no discussion of the
conditions and Israeli behavior that might call for such
intervention, no mention of the Fourth Geneva Convention that
Israel has been brazenly violating for many years, and of course
no comparisons in substance between the U.S. and "international
community" stance on the need to protect Kosovo Albanians and
Palestinians. Trudy Rubin, the Philadelphia Inquirer's
lightweight and undeviatingly establishment oriented foreign
policy editor, even notes that the United States supported
intervention in Kosovo, but not in Israel, which she takes as
unchallengeable fact; the discrimination and implied U.S. veto
over anything the world might want to do does not call for any
further comment.
Most spectacular, however, is the frequent assumption that the
Godfather is truly an honest broker. Thomas Friedman cites
Clinton's approval of Barak's peace plan as if this demonstrated
its merits for all parties ("Arafat's War," NYT, Oct. 13, 2000).
The bloodthirsty fanatic William Safire decries the fact that
the United States is so impartial, because "Israel Needs an
Ally, It does not need a broker" (NYT, Oct. 12, 2000). The New
York Times editorializes that "Israel rightly resists any shift
to a more international format. Only the United States has
sufficient authority and credibility with both sides to help
them bridge their remaining differences" (Nov. 13, 2000).
Given the fact that the United States has armed Israel to the
teeth, rushes to supply it with guns and money every time its
ferocious stone-throwing victims put it "under siege" (Albright)
and force it to kill in the face of "violence," has vetoed
literally dozens of resolutions condemning Israeli mistreatment
and expropriations of Palestinians in the occupied territories,
and has joined with Israel for decades in rejecting
implementation of overwhelming international consensus votes
calling upon Israel to return their land to the Palestinians,
this kind of statement captures well a bias that is not only
blatant but one that has contributed much to protecting Israeli
ethnic cleansing and state terrorism.
The owners, editors and reporters of the Times have bloody
hands, but they share this characteristic with many others in
the U.S. media and political and intellectual establishment.
