Except for Israel. George Bush declaimed in his second inaugural address yesterday a stirring, total commitment of his Administration to "freedom" (a word that appeared in his speech 27 times, along with 15 references to "liberty"). An editorial in today's New York Post hilited these excerpts:

"We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people. * * *

"The rulers of outlaw regimes can know," said Bush, "that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: 'Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.'"

The Post asserted, in its tedious, endless campaign of lies about the Bush Administration's aggression against defenseless, innocent Iraq:

Not once during his speech did Bush refer directly to Iraq or Afghanistan, which saw pro-terrorist regimes toppled by U.S. intervention.

So Iraq was governed by a "pro-terrorist regime", was it? The implication is that Saddam was supporting and training Islamist fanatics to attack the United States. In truth, Saddam never attacked the United States, and any "terrorist[s]" he may have supported were guerrillas working only in his own region to strike back at Iraq's enemies, including Israel — which had bombed Iraq despite the lack of a common border or any prior attack by Iraq upon Israel.
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The U.S. has consistently supported Israel's aggressions against all its neighbors, including those hundreds of miles from its borders, and Israel's infliction of endless discrimination, death, and destruction upon Arabs under its control, in Israel proper, Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, in a campaign that almost the whole of this planet regards as "state terrorism".
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Decent, progressive Jews know that the behavior of Israel is terrorist, but too many have been intimidated (terrorized?) out of speaking aloud the disgust and shame they feel at the behavior of the Israeli government. In the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun, Lev Grinberg, an Israeli dissident, asks:

Who should be arrested for the targeted killing of almost 100 Palestinians? Who will be sent to jail for the killing of more than 120 Palestinian paramedics? Who will be sentenced for the killing of more than 1,200 Palestinians and for the collective punishment of more than 3,000,000 civilians during the last eighteen months [before May 2002]? And who will face the International Tribunal for the illegal settlement of occupied Palestinian lands, and for disobeying UN decisions for more than 35 years? When is Sharon going to be defined as a terrorist, too? [Emphasis added]

I and most of the world define Sharon as a terrorist. Dubya does not. So let us speak aloud George Bush's unspoken exception to all pronouncements on decent treatment of human beings by governments. Such bold statements of principle apply to every government on Earth — except Israel.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:34 PM