Nothing Worth Celebrating

This story from the NBC World Blog tells us that the current anniversary of Israel’s inception being celebrated in that country (with President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History dutifully asking “how high” when the Israelis tell him to jump) is hardly a fond memory for Palestinians, including two sisters, Fatima and Zeinab Jaber, 65 and 71.

As the story tells us…

They are haunted, too, by the memory of their mother, Nuzah, who they recall crying as she rushed members of their family to safety (while their village burned).

And they are their last recollections of their home, the village of Deir Yassin, as it was being overrun and destroyed by armed Jewish militant groups.

The attack on Deir Yassin in April 1948 is one of the most well-documented in a series of expulsions the former British Mandate of Palestine that led up to the foundation of Israel (sic) – an episode that Palestinian recall bitterly as "Nakba" ("the Catastrophe").

So while Israelis are celebrating 60 years of independence on May 14, many Palestinians will be commemorating what they call "Catastrophe Day" on May 15 – an annual day of remembrance for the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who were displaced as Israel was being born.

And this post from January tells us that Dubya actually brought up the issue of Palestinian “right of return” in a news conference upon his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, but it was systematically expunged by the Israeli and American media (sounds like our preznit was “freelancing” again, but not to worry; our corporate distracters are forever on guard, doing all they can to perpetuate the myth that Dubya is an actual leader).

And this post tells us the following about Incurious George and his supposed plan for Middle East peace (have to scroll almost to the bottom)…

From the Daily Star of Lebanon: "Bush is the delinquent foreign-policy maestro of an otherwise great country. He has failed to deal honestly and rationally with the realities of the region, preferring wishful thinking and simplistic black-and-white threats to the hard work and nuanced sensibilities that are needed to grapple with the problems, challenges and opportunities of the Arab-Asian region. His desperate, last minute, pull-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat attempt at Annapolis to achieve Palestinian-Israeli peace was clearly insincere - because he did not invest the required political capital to get it done, and did not have the required intellectual clarity and moral gumption to make it happen. He hoped to ride a runaway horse to the finish line, and ended up in a horror house of mirrors. His peace partners have proved illusory, his necessary impartiality nonexistent, and his sense of how Palestine-Israel fits into the wider picture in the Middle East totally absent."

And this quote from the Jerusalem Post is just peachy…

"While Bush may have been wrong on Iraq, he is dead right about Iran - though an ungrateful, sometimes spiteful world appears in denial."

The fact that the Israelis have refused to acknowledge that our war in Iraq has been waged on their behalf first and foremost while our media/political/industrial complex continues to perpetuate the myth that something called “al Qaeda in Iraq” (which didn’t exist before we invaded) is actually a worldwide threat worthy of our sacrifice is perhaps the most damnable, scurrilous and cowardly act of an international “friend” to this country that I can ever remember (and there’s plenty of competition in that category).