Bloodthirsty Liberal

When Secretary of State Clinton praised Israeli flexibility on relations with the Palestinians (specifically on settlement construction), not everyone was pleased to hear the words coming out of her mouth:

“Why, Mrs. Hillary? How much did the Zionists pay you as a bribe?”

…

“Words that treat truth with cruelty and wallow in the swamp of lies, especially coming from a person of senior position, are improper… [such are] the words of US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.”

…

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida also ran a cartoon reiterating a longstanding Palestinian claim that the US is controlled by Jews. It shows an Uncle Sam figure looking into a mirror held by a caricature of a hook-nosed religious Jew, wearing a hat with a Star of David. Instead of seeing his own reflection, the American sees the Jew in the mirror.

I love cartoons. How about a couple more?

Hysterical. And they had their intended effect:

Secretary Clinton delivered the following remarks Monday morning at a camera spray upon meeting with Moroccan Foreign Minister Fassi-Fihri in Marrakech, Morocco:

For 40 years, successive American administrations of both parties have opposed Israel’s settlement policy. That is absolutely a fact.

And the Obama Administration’s position on settlements is clear, unequivocal. It has not changed. And as the President has said on many occasions, the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.

Exactly. His noxious, hostile, biased position is very clear, and I’m sure it’s entrenched. Anti-Semitism doesn’t make much of an impression on him.

But you’d think anti-Palestinianism would:

Israel’s harshest critics claim to champion the rights of Palestinians. So we’re curious about the fallout, or lack thereof, from revelations that the Palestinian Authority regularly brutalizes its own in the West Bank while enjoying a steady flow of dollars and euros.

Senior PA official Haitham Arar was quoted in the Daily Mail more than a week ago openly discussing the abuses. That follows a Mail On Sunday report in January that detailed the Authority’s regular use of beatings, whippings, attacks with electrical drills, and other methods of torture doled out to anyone seen threatening the authority of Fatah, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas. Murder and rape are also commonplace.

As Middle East analyst Tom Gross points out, the only news here is that a Western newspaper has bothered to write about it. At least some ink is spilled documenting Hamas’s blunt methods, but much less has been made of Fatah’s abuses since Yasser Arafat took over most of the territory in 1993. What’s more, Western governments support the internecine violence with ever-increasing aid. As of Sept. 15, the European Union had delivered €268 million to the Authority this year, and in July the U.S. extended an additional $200 million.

The money will not stop now that Ramallah is no longer trying to hide the mistreatment. Westminster’s one response has been to quietly send officers to the West Bank to train Authority forces on how not to torture prisoners.

So here’s the state-of-play in the department of moral outrage. When Britain is accused of abetting U.S. interrogations, lawsuits, investigations, and threats to try Tony Blair for war crimes quickly follow. When Israel attacks Hamas in order to end rocket launches on its soil, it risks a session before the International Criminal Court. But when the West funnels billions to a Palestinian government whose abuses are brazen and ongoing, there is mainly silence.

Maybe back when we started this blog, we hoped we could change the way Israel is portrayed in the media. But we’ve matured. Now, all I want is for Israel to take care of itself and its citizens. Play along with Obama if you must, but do not ever think he has your best, or even second-best, interests at heart. He’d sell you down the river faster than you could say “daily humiliation of the Palestinian people.”