Sunday, March 28, 2010
[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.]
1.
AIPAC has "... for years molded the policies of the government of the United States in the Middle East, for example, the invasion of Iraq."
2.
AIPAC put a 39 page long document on its website with support for Israel written by 9 senators and 47 members of the House of Representatives, divided almost equally between Democrats and Republicans, something that confirms how it operates; by financing the campaigns of those who support its policies. How else to explain the support of supposedly democratic legislators for a government that practises ethnic cleansing and a peculiar form of apartheid?
3.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wants Iran to be "wiped off the face of the earth."
4.
Who am I quoting here? It's not the President of Iran and neither is it George Galloway. It's the Argentine poet Juan Gelman writing in his column Pagina/12. Let me tell readers unfamiliar with it a little about Pagina/12. It's an Argentine national daily newspaper and it strongly supports the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The word "support" may not be putting it strongly enough, only those with very finely tuned political antenna can hope to detect its very occasional and very highly nuanced murmurs of doubt about the overall brilliance and perfection of the present administration and all its works. The paper is rewarded for its attitude by generous subventions from the state in the form of government publicity in its pages.
Now imagine you work in the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires. You know that the facts about Pagina/12 are as I have just set them out. You've just read Gelman's column with your morning coffee and you are about to write your weekly dispatch for your masters in Tehran. How seriously do you think they ought to take the Argentine governments attempts to secure the extradition of the AMIA case suspects wanted by Argentina and sheltered by your country?
