[THS] Robert Fisk: They`re All Grovelling and You Can Guess the Reason

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25956.htm

They're All Grovelling and You Can Guess the Reason

By Robert Fisk

July 17, 2010 "The Independent" -- It is the season of grovelling.

Only a week after CNN's Octavia Nasr and the British ambassador to Beirut, Frances
Guy, dared to suggest that Sayyed Hassan Fadlallah of Lebanon was a nice old chap
rather than the super-terrorist the Americans have always claimed him to be, the
grovelling began. First Ms Nasr, already fired by the grovelling CNN for her effrontery
in calling Fadlallah a "giant", grovelled herself. Rather than tell the world what a
cowardly outfit she had been working for, she announced that hers was "a simplistic
comment and I'm sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah's life's work.
That's not the case at all".

What is this garbage? Nasr never gave the impression that she supported "Fadlallah's
life's work". She merely expressed her regret that the old boy was dead, adding -
inaccurately - that he had been part of Hizbollah. I don't know what her pompous
(and, of course, equally grovelling) "senior vice president" said to her when she was
given her marching orders. But like victims of the Spanish Inquisition, Nasr actually
ended up apologizing for sins she had never even been accused of. Then within
hours, British ambassador Guy began her own self-flagellation, expressing her
regrets that she may have offended anyone (and we all know what that means) by
her "personal attempt to offer some reflections of a figure who, while controversial,
was also highly influential in Lebanon's history and who offered spiritual guidance to
many Muslims in need".

I loved the "controversial" bit - the usual "fuck you" word for anyone you want to
praise without incurring the wrath of, well, you know who. The Foreign Office itself
took down poor Ms Guy's blogapop on old Fadlallah, thus proving - as Arab
journalists leapt to point out this week - that while Britain proclaims the virtues of
democracy and the free press to the grovelling newspaper owners and grotty emirs
of the Middle East, it is the first to grovel when anything might offend you know who.

For that was the collective sin of Misses Nasr and Guy. What they said might have
made Israel's supporters angry. And that will never do. The reality is that CNN should
have told Israel's lobbyists to get lost, and the Foreign Office - which was indeed
upbraided by the Israeli foreign ministry - should have asked the Israeli government
when it is going to stop thieving Arab land. But as my old mate Rami Khoury put it in
the Jordanian press this week, "We in the Middle East are used to this sort of racist
intellectual terrorism. American and British citizens who occasionally dare to speak
accurately about the Middle East and its people are still learning about the full price
of the truth when Israeli interests are in the room."

Which brings us, of course, to the Grovel of the Week, the unctuous, weak-willed,
cringing figure of Barack "Change" Obama as he strode the White House lawn with
Netanyahu himself. For here was the champion of the underdog, the
"understanding" president who could fix the Middle East - finding it "harder that he
thought", according to his spokesman - proving that mid-term elections are more
important than all the injustice in the Middle East. It is more than a year now since
Netanyahu responded in cabinet to Obama's first criticisms with the remark: "This
guy doesn't get it, does he?" (The quote comes from an excellent Israeli source of
mine.) Ever since, Netanyahu has been McChrystalling Obama on a near-weekly
basis, and Obama has been alternatively hissing and purring, banning Netanyahu
from photo calls, but then - as those elections draw nearer - rolling over and talking
about how the brave Netanyahu, whose government has just destroyed some more
Arab homes in East Jerusalem, is taking "risks for peace".

Needless to say, the only good guys in this story are the courageous Jewish
Americans who oppose the thieves in Netanyahu's government and the racism of his
foreign minister, the Ahmadinejad-like Avigdor Lieberman. And which Western
newspaper was bold enough to point out that the house destruction in Jerusalem
"effectively end(ed) an unofficial freeze of such internationally condemned
demolitions"? The New York Times? The Washington Post? No, the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz, of course. And anyone who thinks Haaretz is alone in condemning the illegal
actions of the Israelis should read the excellent Jewish magazine Tikun in the US,
which goes for Israel's Likud lobbyists - for they are Likudists - like a tiger. Their latest
target was Neal Sher, the Likudist who used to be in the US Justice Department and
who is trying to persuade La Clintone to ban Judge Goldstone from America (where
he holds a university professorship) for accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza. And
whose government was it that also condemned Goldstone's report? Well, Obama's of
course.

Looking back, the Obama grovelling started in that famous Cairo reach-out-to-the-
Muslim-world speech, when he referred to the Palestinian "relocation" of 1948 (as if
the Palestinian Arabs got up one morning on the birth of Israel and decided that they
all wanted to go on holiday to Lebanon). But the moment the world should have got
wise was when Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. A man of greater dignity
would have acknowledged the honor of such an award, but explained that his own
unworthiness prevented him from accepting. But he did accept. He wanted the
Nobel Prize. It was more important to accept it even though he did not deserve it.
And now? Well, we've all been watching the little groveler this week. Middle East
peace? Further colonization of Arab land? Crisis in southern Lebanon? The continued
siege of Gaza? Forget it. Think of mid-term elections. Remember the fate of Nasr and
Guy. And grovel.

© 2010 Independent/UK