Israel is winning propaganda war
Tuesday January 13 2009
A number of recent contributions, including Kevin Myers' article a few days ago, prove just one thing: Israel is winning the propaganda war.
By controlling access of journalists to the war zone, Israel makes sure that what the West sees is what Israel allows it to see and it is free to carry on its despicable acts away from scrutiny by the International community.
Nevertheless, it is still a surprise that anybody can be so ill-informed as to describe Israel as a "(beleaguered) democratic state". There is nothing democratic about Israel and certainly not about Israeli treatment of the Arabs. I would refer to the article by Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim in last Wednesday's 'Guardian'. The distinguished Professor Shlaim, who served in the Israeli army, states that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war was and is illegal, had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. So much for democracy.
Any reasonable observer viewing a map of the area as it was just before the disastrous UN Partition Plan of 1947 and as it has been redrawn by Israeli conquests in the interim must come to the conclusion that the Israelis have been engaged from very early days in ethnic cleansing on a grand scale.
The Palestinian population has been crammed into open prisons -- concentration camps in effect.
In June, 1948, the diplomat Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the British foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders".
Sadly, the events of the past 16 days demonstrate that the leadership of Israel is still of the same ilk and of course they are still receiving the unconditional support of the Americans. Hopefully, the incoming Obama administration will take a different tack.
