President George W. Bush is the King of Israel
by
URI AVNERY
(Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism. )
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The relationship between the United States and Israel is difficult to define. The USA has no official mandate over our country. It is not a normal alliance between two nations. Neither is it a relationship between a satellite and the master country.
Some people say, only half in jest, that the USA is an Israeli colony. And indeed, in many respects it looks like that.
President Bush dances to Ariel Sharon's tune.
Both Houses of Congress are totally subservient to the Israeli right-wing much more so than the Knesset.
It has been said that if the pro-Israeli lobby were to sponsor a resolution on Capitol Hill calling for the abolition of the Ten Commandments, both Houses of Congress would adopt it overwhelmingly.
Every year Congress confirms the payment of a massive tribute to Israel.
But others assert the reverse: that Israel is an American colony.
And indeed, that is also true in many respects. It is unthinkable for the Israeli government to refuse a clear-cut request by the President of the United States.
As a matter of fact, both versions are right:
The USA is an Israeli colony and Israel is an American colony.
Much has already been said about the origins of this symbiosis.
American Christian Zionism preceded the founding of the Jewish Zionist organization. The American myth is almost identical with the Zionist Israeli myth, both in content and symbolism.
On Independence Day in Israel, many American flags are to be seen next to the Israeli ones a phenomenon that is without parallel in the world.
The inauguration of George Bush last week therefore had a special significance for Israel.
The state-controlled TV channel broadcast it live.
In many respects, the President of the United States is also the King of Israel.
George Bush is a very simple, very violent person with very extreme views, as well as being very much an ignoramus. This is a very dangerous combination.
The ideologues who govern the thoughts and deeds of Bush are called "neo-conservatives", but that is a misleading appellation. Mostly Jewish, they are the pupils of Leo Strauss, a German-Jewish professor with a Trotskyite past who ended up developing semi-fascist theories and propagating them at the University of Chicago.
It is no secret that the Neo-Cons intend to "bring democracy" to Iran and Syria, thereby eliminating two more traditional enemies of the USA and Israel.
Dick Cheney, the Vice-President has already prophesied that Israel may attack Iran, as if threatening to unleash a Rottweiler.
There is no way to guess what Bush may perpetrate, now that he has been re-elected by his people.
His ego has been blown up to giant proportions, reaffirming what the Greek fabulist Aesop said some 27 centuries ago: "The smaller the mind the greater the conceit."
He has kicked out the hapless, feeble Colin Powell (as David Ben-Gurion eliminated Moshe Sharett in preparation for his 1956 onslaught on Egypt) and appointed Condoleezza Rice, his personal servant (as Ben-Gurion replaced Sharett with Golda Meir.)
Now the order is "clear the deck for action". On this deck, Bush is a loose cannon, a danger to everyone around. The results of these elections may be viewed by history as a worldwide catastrophe.
In the name of "American values", he is about to destroy one of the foremost American values: the separation of Church and State. His is the religion of a "born again" convert, a primitive religion without morality and compassion.
After four more years of this, America may be a very different country from the one we loved and admired in our youth.
A friend of mine asserts that there are two souls residing in the American nation, a good and a bad one.
There is the America of Thomas Jefferson (even if he liberated his slaves only on his death), Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, the America of ideals, the Marshall Plan, science and the arts.
There is the America of the genocide perpetrated against the Native Americans, the country of slave traders and the Wild West myth, the America of Hiroshima, of Joe McCarthy, of segregation and of Vietnam, the violent and repressive America.
During Bush's second term, this second America may reach new depths of ugliness and brutality. It may offer the whole world a model of oppression.
I would not want my country, Israel, to be identified with such an America. Any advantage we can derive from it may well turn out to be short-term, the damage long-lasting, and perhaps irreversible.
One of the advantages of the US constitution is that Bush cannot be re-elected for a third term.
As the popular Israeli song goes: "We survived Pharaoh, we shall survive this, too."
Perhaps this could become an anthem for the whole world.
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