Biden on Ariel Sharon: A man of "Incredible hospitality"

Sabra 1982, Sharon's work

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The war criminal Tony Blair was at Ariel Sharon’s funeral to pay his respects, one brutal murderer to another.  Joe Biden, the clown of US politics was there too, and it was sickening to have to listen to it.

Biden brought the “sympathies of the President of the United States and the American people…” to the event telling the whole gang that was present that for them losing Sharon is beyond losing a leader, “..it feels like a death in the family.”  The part of Sharon’s family that Biden felt most deeply for were his “beloved IDF”, the proud bulldozer’s of Palestinian homes, torturers in Israeli jails and invaders of Gaza with their white phosphorous and high tech US weaponry.

                                                                                                                                   

Most Americans wouldn’t have a clue who Sharon is of course but that is of no consequence; better they don’t and better most of us could not point to Israel on a map. We just have to be sure to see the Zionists as victims.

Sharon was a brutal killer. I was watching Democracy Now tonight which covered some of his murderous past. He commanded Unit 101 the elite force that massacred more than 60 defenseless villagers in Qibya in the West bank in 1953, two-thirds of them women and children. Many were burned alive as they slept.  This is one massacre this writer can only read about and an event swept in to the annals of history by the western mass media.

He was the orchestrator of the 1982 war in Lebanon the aim of which was to install Israel’s Christian Maronite Phalange allies in power, expel Syrian influence and strengthen Israel’s hegemony in the region. This war cost an estimated 20,000 lives and was a disaster.  It culminated in the massacre by Israel’s Phalange allies of anywhere from 800 to 3000 Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps; people my age can remember this well.  Sharon had Israeli forces surround the camps and assisted the Phalange terrorists, a fascist organization, in entering, even illuminating the area with lights. The massacre was so cruel, the Zionist regime actually fired Sharon as Israeli Defense Minister, mildly rebuking him for playing an “indirect” role in the murders.

Sharon came back as Prime Minister and was also behind the expanding settler movement, the fascist front lines of the Zionist expansion policy.  He boasted of having the right to go anywhere in Jerusalem and visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque there in 2000 accompanied by 1500 armed police.  This set off the Intifada.  He knew this was a provocation, but provocation is the Zionist’s method, provoke an opponent that has no planes, no ships no missiles no army and no state and retaliate with the most powerful and modern weapons of mass destruction supplied willingly by the US taxpayer. The Palestinians must be driven out of their homeland and there are some 7 million of them living in exile.  Those in their homeland are increasingly reduced to slivers of land behind concrete walls, another Sharon project there to protect perhaps the US or South African businessman who wants to retire in the land God gave to him.

Biden spoke fondly of his friendship with Sharon the killer, as Hilary Clinton did about Mubarak the killer reminding us of, “…how incredible his hospitality was.”.  The US VP talked of Sharon’s commitment to, ..”the survival of the State of Israel and the Jewish people…”  Israel the victim, the Palestinians must get sick of hearing it.  Had they put the state of Israel in Bavaria or the Peak District the stuff would have hit the fan. 

Jews placing their hope and survival in the hands of US imperialism, and it is US imperialism that allows Israel to commit its atrocities unpunished, is a guarantee of nothing but being an accomplice in the colonization and plunder of the wealth of the region and a junior partner in the robbery. The Gentile bourgeois have no love for their Jewish colleagues and would incite anti-semitism here in the US without a thought if it benefited them. Despite their influence in government and the economy, Jews are a tiny minority in the US and much of the old style anti-semitism still exists here.

I am reminded of the real reason for Israel’s existence and acceptance after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the vacuum it created in the aftermath of World War 1. The first British governor of Jerusalem referred to the creation of a Jewish state in the region as Britain’s “Loyal little Ulster in the Middle east”, referring to Ireland’s six northern counties kept under British rule after partition in 1921.  The revolutionary potential of the Arab masses and their hatred of their western backed leaders makes them an unreliable ally in the region.  A Jewish state surrounded by hostile forces makes a much more sensible choice.

Biden continued his sickening diatribe of dishonesty saying of Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza, “The political courage it took, whether you agreed with him or not, when he told 10,000 Israelis to leave their homes in Gaza in order, from his perspective, to strengthen Israel.” He said,  “I can’t think of much more controversial; as a student of the Jewish state, I can’t think of a much more difficult and controversial decision that’s been made.”

Biden’s first shameless omission is an accurate description of the settlers in Gaza; they are like most of them, fascists, religious extremists and racists. They hate Arabs and brutalize them daily protected by the misnamed IDF troops. And they had to be defended by a huge military force.  Gaza has a water issue and it wasn’t viable.  The fascists would better save Israeli expansion in the West Bank.  Biden had the gall to compare Sharon’s “love” of the land to Joyce’s love of Dublin who said, “When I die, Dublin will be written on my heart.”  To use the name of Joyce alongside Sharon is enough to make one throw up.

So all the liars and murderers were there, the folks whose phony diplomacy---the diplomacy of thieves---- was revealed to the world by Wikileaks whose founder is confined to house arrest because of it.  Whose activities were brought to us by Bradley (Chelsea) Manning serving 35 years; whose fear and hatred of us all was cast in to the light by Edward Snowden in Exile in Russia.

As one of the guests on Democracy Now said tonight, Sharon should have been dragged to the World Court in The Hague. Better still, he should have been dumped in the middle of Gaza on a cold rainy night without the protection of his personal army, brave man that he is. In a way it is a reflection of our lack of democracy, our lack of control over our own political and economic lives that people claiming to represent “all Americans” or “All Britons” etc. can represent us at an event like a funeral for a mass murderer without recriminations.  Tony Blair an envoy?  Of what, death?  Hollywood produces thousands of movies about the murder of Jews in Europe, the killing of Jewish Israeli athletes like those at Munich in 1972; we should remember these atrocities.  But Sabra, Shatila, the present day brutality of Palestinians in Gaza, no epic from Speilberg Inc. about these.

We trade the truth for a peaceful life----a six pac and a playoff game.

But we can celebrate for a short while, Sharon, the racist, the Arab hater, Sharon the murderer is gone from this world.

You can read Biden’s remarks here.