By Kam Zarrabi, Intellectual Discourse 

The political rhetoric continues to ring its familiar tune as yet another scene of mayhem and bloodshed unfolds in the Middle East.

The timing of the event that supposedly triggered the current hostilities between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah coincided with predictions by many analysts who believed that the now rather well publicized “Clean Break” scenario for “A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” would be set into motion in July or August this year.

According to a Wayne Madsen Report, “Lebanon and Gaza invasions [were] planned last month in Colorado meetings between Netanyahu, Sharansky, and Cheney.” Let us not forget that some of the authors of the “Clean Break” proposal are top advisors to the Vice President in foreign policy matters.

In an article in www.antiwar.com by Justin Raimondo, “Israel Crosses the Line”, written on July 14, right after the Israeli forces began their relentless onslaught into Lebanon, the pertinent details of the Clean Break scenario are sketched out.

But this kind of information is certainly not for public consumption. What the public is more willing to accept is exactly the kind of news and commentary that is currently pouring out of the media floodgates, whether it be the neoconservative Fox network, or the so-called middle-of-the-road and liberal CNN, HNN, MSNBC or CBS. After all, how could journalism be an objective endeavor in an atmosphere where the ratings and the bottom-line determine what reaches the consuming public?

Publications such as The Nation or TV programs like Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now are surviving on the fringes of society, focused primarily on a narrow segment of the population that demands more than the pre-processed diet force-fed to the general public.

Our politicians, Democrat or Republican, at least those who are hoping to stay in office, must also cater to the prevailing mythology. The public perception of world affairs is the product of more than five decades of well orchestrated, persistent and unquestioned indoctrination. Any attempt to challenge the conventional wisdom is brushed off as the conspiracy theorists’ paranoia. As is the case with “objective” journalism, the average politician’s primary objective boils down to that same bottom line; procuring the job and protecting that career. Informing the public or serving the best interests of the nation thus becomes secondary to the primary goals.

Under these circumstances, and for as long as the nation can live off of its accumulated comforts and survive, the disconnection between the public’s perceptions and the realities on the ground can be ignored as inconsequential. The public remains under a constant barrage of carefully chosen bits of misinformation or myths parading as “facts” that are intended to serve various purposes; some benign, others subtle and some quite specific. Given enough time and repeated often enough, even myths or lies that are simply too fantastic to be accepted as facts gradually take the shape of strange or unusual truths before ultimately becoming part and parcel of the established historical narratives.

The history of the creation of the state of Israel and the subsequent defensive battles this tiny island of democracy and civilized values was forced to fight against the stormy ocean of hostile Islamic nations around it is a perfect example of such cunningly orchestrated propaganda that the American public has bought into. The rest of the planet knows that the wars of 1967 and 1973 were initiated preemptively and successfully by Israel with the specific aim of territorial expansion. The preemptive connotations for those wars that were planned well in advance were no different than our own excursion into Iraq under the same pretext.

Now, try to convince the average American of this little bit of food for thought, and you’ll be looked at as some kind of an anti-Semitic terrorist! The current eruption of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah guerillas did not start because the Hezbollah militants developed an irresistible urge to cross the well-defended Israeli border, attack the powerful Israeli forces, kill a few and capture a couple of soldiers. Who’re we kidding, really?

So, why shouldn’t Israel, a sovereign nation whose border was, we are told, violated by a bunch of terrorists, take every measure at its disposal to eradicate the menace? Isn’t that what the United States would do if Castor’s Cuba began to fire missiles into our cities in Florida?

Israel, we are told, has every right to defend itself, and it would be unfair, in fact a travesty, to ask Israel to stop its defensive measures before the enemy is rendered powerless.

This is really no different from what any home owner would do against pest infestation. When you call your neighborhood pest-control service, you don’t ask the crew to go easy on those parasites or to use humane methods to eradicate the termites; do you? Is it Israel’s fault that these pests they are now trying to eradicate have taken human form, they have families and children, or that they also shed tears and mourn the loss of their dear ones?

We saw our illustrious Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, express our official position during a news conference in Rome that a ceasefire now would be premature, and Israel wouldn’t accept that, at least not until a “sustainable” secession of terrorism by Hezbollah could be established. What that implies is that the pest-control tent should be spread over the entire state of Lebanon so that the exterminators do not have to be called back over and over again to finish the job.

Why bother with realities that Hezbollah, Lebanon’s major political party, represents some 40% of the population of that nation, and is the only Arab or Islamic force that has ever been able to withstand the mighty Israeli armies to liberate that country from an eighteen year occupation of their homeland from enemy occupation? We seem to flag the Security Council Resolution 1559 that required Hezbollah to put down their arms after the Israeli withdrawal. But we somehow choose to forget how many resolutions Israel violated during their nearly two decades of illegal occupation of Lebanon.

It is ironic, yet not too surprising, that the California Rep. Darrell Issa, who is of Christian Lebanese extraction, said in a speech that Hezbollah is a “cancer on the side of Lebanon”. He was joined by several other so-called Lebanese sympathizers who expressed similar views. He must surely know that, had it not been for the Hezbollah militia, Israel would have succeeded in establishing a puppet regime in Beirut, with an army that would take its orders directly from Tel Aviv. But, why not a surprise? Well, Mr. Issa wants, first and foremost, to protect his job and, second, he wouldn’t mind at all if the French colonial days were returned to Lebanon. Lebanon was the Paris of Middle East, and the affairs of the state and its economy were run by its tiny Christian elites, who, under the constitution, had the same kind of powers that Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni Ba’ath Party had in Iraq. Meanwhile, just as in Iraq in those days, the Shi’a population that formed the great majority remained disenfranchised and equated out of the affairs of the country. Very nice, Darrell! It doesn’t take a genius to know that no American politician can stand against Israeli politics and survive.

Mr. Issa’s love for his parental homeland, Lebanon, is very much like the sympathies of the fat and sassy advocates of regime-change among Iran’s former aristocracy, who don’t mind at all if that nation is destroyed, as long as they might return as scavengers and claim whatever is left of the motherland.

Now that the “pest” has been identified and is in the process of extermination, we are prodded incessantly to deal with the main source of the problem. The termite queen that can easily regenerate millions more termites if not stopped is Iran, we now believe. Just listen to the speeches by every administration official that can grab hold of a mike these days. Their references to Iran are, more often than not, unprompted; they just cannot wait to take advantage of the opportunity to prostitute themselves for the sake of the bottom line.

Well, sometimes an overzealous attempt at pest control might destroy more than just the pests. And sometimes, an overanxious, paranoid enthusiast might burn down the house or an entire block in trying to do a real thorough job of dealing with parasites.

As far as Israel is concerned, why stop voluntarily as long as you can get away with it? Would anyone? Would Iran, would the United States, India, China, or Russia?  The only problem is the possibility of miscalculations. Remember, neither Napoleon nor Nazi Germany decided to take on the rest of Europe with defeat in mind!