UN speeches US backed peace process is dead

 
Phyllis Bennis, author of 'Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict' and a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, and Director of its New Internationalism Program, reveals all and nothing in conversation with the 'Real News's Paul Jay.

However, it is neither the possible possibilities that are now available to the Palestinians that should attract our attention; or do we actually believe that that privileged little elite at home in its "Ramallah bubble" will sacrifice itself in the name of Palestinian unity, nor is it Abbas's speech itself, which contained nothing unexpected, but rather the puerile polemic spouted out by Netanyahu.  Do these people actually believe that the decision made at Wannsee on January 20, 1942 to exterminate European Jewry is actually relevant to their, Zionist's claims, on someone else's land?

Hitler, it might be pointed out, was eight years old when the first Zionist Congress took place, Netanyahu himself talks about rights going back 4,000 years and, of course, the Zionists have no doubt that God gave them the land. Obviously, a God who didn't have an ear for King Emmanuel III's "Ma è ancora casa di alltri". Of course, the pathos which Netanyahu seeks to envoke is not based on any real grief but rather it is an attempt to gain moral and, ultimately, political capital from the slaughter of European Jewry. However, while it is the Palestinians who, in their suffering, can better empathise with those who suffered and died in the Nazi death camps, the Israeli Prime Minister's ploy is just one more example of what Norman Finkelstein calls, "the misuse of anti-semitism and the abuse of history". Once again we have the victimisers portraying themselves as the victims. However, if the aforementioned drivel just doesn't wash, It is the manner in which that theme is continued in the rest of the speech that is both offensive and worrying.

There is the link established between the Nazis and Iran, which might allow us to rightly worry about Israeli intentions and then there are the ungrateful Palestinians, who bombarded Israel with missiles for eight years, after Israel had voluntarily left Gaza. Gaza is, of course, still de facto occupied but are we being told here that there is no way Israel can evacuate the West Bank? Are we being told that a few "Bantustans" is going to be the Palestinian "state" and that if the Palestinians have their "state", they better behave themselves and do as they are told?

Of course, what happened in Gaza at the end of 2008 and January 2009 can always serve as a warning. Dr Finkelstein has written a good book on those events entitled 'This Time We Went Too Far', the problems is that these people do not understand "too far". How can they? They are pathological liars, they are hypocrites, they are murders. However, when we read of Netanyahu finishing a speech at the UN by quoting "the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago", we can better understand and in understanding we realise that not only are they liars, hypocrites and murderers, but that they are also quite mad. Of course, theirs being a collective condition, they probably don't realise that they are actually insane. Nevertheless, while we won't be able to put them all into a straight jacket, we can at least try to ignore their gobbledegook and get them to obey the law.