Thursday, April 13, 2006
Middle East Policy III
I recently came across some anti-Israeli language from Michael Scheuer, excoriated by some hack at the Weekly Standard, a publication that really should be dead to me.
No other nation on Earth has received as much money from the United States over the last fifty years.
This simple fact is not hard to understand.
So why is the most powerfully funded U.S. ally on Earth a nation in violation of more UN sanctions than any other nation on Earth?
If you’ve read my posts you already know the answer. Geopolitical politics. Oil. The world’s energy supply. Israel is in the middle of it. When push comes to shove Saudi Arabia isn’t going to stick with the US in its Middle East policy. Israel will.
So let’s take a look at the nation in violation of more UN resolutions than any other, shall we? Let’s take a look at the number one reason Arab terrorists target the US.
Ariel Sharon was the Prime Minister of Israel from 2001 to 2006. When he was a young man in the early days of Israel’s existence he headed Unit 101, a military unit that conducted reprisals against Palestinians including the Qibya massacre.
I have already written of my distaste for Ariel Sharon. He was a terrorist.
Yitzhak Shamir was Prime Minister of Israel from 1983 to 1984 and again from 1986 to 1992. He was born in Poland in 1915 but emigrated to British-controlled Palestine as a young man. He joined the Irgun, an organization of Jews dedicated to the liberation of their people from the British Mandate. When the Irgun split in 1940 he joined the most militant faction, which he called “Lehi.” He was one of its three leaders.
Lehi was responsible for the 1944 assassination of Britain’s minister of state for the Middle East, Lord Moyne; an assassination attempt against the High Commissioner of the Mandate in the same year; and, in 1948, the assassination of the UN representative in the Middle East.
Shamir, thus, was a terrorist. This terrorist became the leader of Israel.
Lehi was incorporated into the IDF when Israel was formed.
Shamir was preceded in the Prime Minister’s post by Menachem Begin, who was Prime Minister of Israel from 1977-1983. Begin joined the Irgun in 1942 and was its leader by 1947. He was a member of the Irgun when it planned the assassination of Ernest Bevin, Britain’s foreign secretary. In April of 1948, when Begin was its leader, Irgun was the primary participant in the Deir Yassin massacre. Begin founded what would later become the Likud party in Israel.
So Begin was a terrorist.
It is amazing how skewed histories of the Middle East are in this country, how Palestinian terror attacks are covered in exquisite detail while the sordid history of Israel is covered...well, not at all.
I’ll keep this post short, but just remember the way that Israelis behaved when they were an oppressed minority. Many among them chose the same dark path that many Palestinians choose. Israel should be thankful the British were kinder taskmasters than they would become.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 3:59 PM 
