Netanyahu Preaches Fascist War in U.S.

Tribunal statutes against "crimes against humanity" and international law when it comes to liquidating the Palestinian Authority, "Bibi" did not receive quite the red carpet treatment he had expected.

At an April 10 visit to the U.S. Senate, for example, where that day's Roll Call had announced that most of the 100 Senators were expected, only 20 came—and many of them questioned the rabidness of Bibi's Clash of Civilizations approach to Israel-Palestine. At the National Press Club the same day, Netanyahu had been greeted by a half-empty room and almost no applause, and pelted by hostile questions, including one from EIR's Counterintelligence Editor Michele Steinberg. She demanded a response to the revelation of EIR and others, acknowledged by Sharon spokesman Ra'anan Gissen, that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were employing Nazi SS Gen. Jürgen Stroop's model for destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, to destroy the Palestinian Authority.

Seeking to threaten President George W. Bush with the combined clout of U.S.-based Zionists and "Christian Zionists" as an election draws near, Bibi's April 15 rally drew no more than 40,000 people, where "Christian Zionists" from the co-sponsoring National Unity Coalition for Israel had been trumpeting that there would be several hundred thousand, and where Minister Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam brought more than 1 million to the same spot in 1996.

Phase One of Propaganda Blitzkrieg
On April 4, according to the Israeli Press Office, Prime Minister Sharon had met with Netanyahu to discuss the "diplomatic-communications campaign in the United States and Europe." They apparently agreed to coordinate their wartime propaganda thrust, and Prime Minister Sharon, feeling the knife at his back from the Israeli extreme right wing which has made Bibi their poster boy, told him to become a spokesman for Israel. Netanyahu set off for the mecca of all would-be Israeli prime ministers, New York City. Already, on April 7, Bibi appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation," where he described his role to host Bob Schieffer: "I told the Prime Minister, when I met with him a few days ago, that I would gladly help present Israel's most basic case, but I'm not a spokesman for [the government's] day-to-day policies." The "basic case" is that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat "must be removed," and the entire Palestinian Authority dismantled as "part of the infrastructure of terror."

At the National Press Club in Washington, Netanyahu was all aggression, calling for a two-front war that would simultaneously eliminate Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat—"Arafatistan must be destroyed like Afghanistan"—and denouncing Europe for "backing murderers" (i.e., the Palestinians) after Europe had remained silent 60 years ago when Jews were being slaughtered. The first two questions were hostile, and already got under Bibi's skin, especially a quote from columnist William Raspberry that Ariel Sharon "is no different from suicide terrorists." Then Steinberg's challenge—"Many people are comparing the attacks on Jenin exactly to that Warsaw Ghetto strategy. What is your comment on this; do you dissociate from this view?"—made Bibi furious.

"This is obscene!" he spat, and warned that Israel "could be using squadrons and squadrons of air power" if it wanted to, but is being restrained, and "protecting civilians." When Steinberg reminded him that an Israeli daily newspaper had first revealed the IDF's study of Nazi Warsaw Ghetto methods, Netanyahu denounced that paper, Ha'aretz—whose articles are used by the Israeli Government Press Office in their daily report. Finally, when Steinberg asked about United Nations Resolutions 1402 and 1403 demanding IDF withdrawal from the Palestinian Territories, Netanyahu denounced them as well: "Look, if Israel listened to the UN, it wouldn't exist!! Do you know that the UN condemned Israel for destroying Saddam Hussein's nuclear bomb in 1981 just in the nick of time?"

At the under-attended Senate event, organized by Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.), former Democratic Party Vice Presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) introduced Netanyahu. "The suicide killers in Israel," pronounced Lieberman, "are cut out of the same cloth as the suicide killers who killed 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11th." President Yasser Arafat "had hijacked the legitimate Palestinian cause," he claimed, and added that "no one was better suited to speak at this moment than his friend, Benjamin Netanyahu." Bibi in turn instructed the Senators, "I think that Israel must now do three things. First, it must dismantle Arafat's terrorist regime and expel Arafat from the region.... Second, Israel must clean out the terrorists, the weapons, the explosives from all the Palestinian-controlled areas.... And third, Israel must establish physical barriers separating the main Palestinian population centers from Israel's towns and its cities." Those steps were only to be the beginning, Bibi added, noting that the United States must destroy the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, whether or not it has any allies for the task outside of Israel. Again, he praised the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin's 1981 strike on Iraq's Isirah nuclear power plant: "When our pilots returned, we had successfully destroyed Saddam's atomic bomb factory and crippled his capacity to build nuclear weapons."

Paraphrasing Hitler
Denouncing European opposition as equivalent to passivity against Hitler 60 years ago, Netanyahu warned that Saddam was developing missiles that very soon "can overshoot Israel and reach into the heart of Europe.... And if, in a year or two or three, they are tipped with nuclear warheads, who's going to be endangered? Europe," he threatened. As for the Arab allies essential to a confrontation with Iraq, the utopian Bibi said to forget them, because they "have been paying protection money or have been funding Islamic militancy from the Philippines to Los Angeles, that have been supporting Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorism.... So the only question that really remains is not whether you should act alone.... Certainly the United States, the world's greatest superpower, can act alone if it must.... It is perfectly possible to use the resources, the weapon systems, the logistical power of the United States to achieve this end, with or without European or Arab support."

Finally, he threatened the United States as well: "If we do not shut down the terror factories that Arafat is hosting—those terror factories that are producing human bombs—it is only a matter of time before suicide bombers will terrorize your cities here in America. If not destroyed, this madness will strike in your buses, in your supermarkets, in your pizza parlors, in your cafes. Eventually, it is not impossible that those human bombs will supplement their murderous force with suitcases equipped with devices of mass death that could make the horrors of Sept. 11 seem pale by comparison" (emphasis added).

Bibi concluded his Senate speech with a close paraphrase of Nazi invective against the Jews: "No part of the terror network can be left intact, for if not fully eradicated, like the most malignant cancer, it will regroup and attack again, with even greater ferocity."

On April 10, he took this rant to the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute, where his appearance was being co-hosted by AEI and the Hudson Institute. (AEI is the international headquarters of Lady Margaret Thatcher's and Sir Henry Kissinger's New Atlantic Initiative.) In a speech billed as "Winning the War Against Terrorism," Bibi was introduced by Kenneth Weinstein, Hudson vice president and director of its Washington office, and by Christopher DeMuth, president of AEI. His speech played upon many of the same anti-Semitic threats to the Palestinians' existence: President Arafat is committing "a policide [against Israel] by suicide" and had run "a con job operation in the West"; Arafat's regime has to be eliminated, along with those of his supporters, especially Iraq. Nothing less, he said, will stop terrorism, so let's "just do it."

Netanyahu had an exchange with AEI fellow Michael Ledeen, whose book, Universal Fascism, dealt with the Mussolini-style fascism practiced by Sharon's 1930s predecessor Vladimir Jabotinsky, whom Israel's founder, David Ben-Gurion, referred to as "Vlad Hitler." Ledeen asked: "You came close to talking about radical Islam a couple of times. Could you address the question of how important you think Islam is and the whole war of civilizations issue? I mean, you talk about planting freedom. There are a lot of people who now suspect that it's not possible to plant seeds of freedom in the Islamic world...." Bibi pointed to Turkey, created by Kemal Ataturk's secular revolution, as a counter-example. But except for Turkey, he claimed, Islamic nations are governed by "dark dictatorships."

Phase Two: the Nuremberg Rally
On April 15 at the U.S. Capitol, neo-conservatives, "Christian Zionists," and New Democratic fascists alike turned out to support Netanyahu. Importantly, Lieberman/Gore Democrats carried the day (though they did not speak), with many Democratic Congressmen and Senators showing up, as well as right-wing Republicans. Also in attendance mixed among the crowd of 40,000 were the "stormtroopers" of the late Meir Kahane's organization, which is officially on the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organizations list—this would be the equivalent of Hamas and Islamic Jihad demonstrating en masse outside of the Capitol. They threatened anyone who questioned the insane fascism of the rally. And, various Armageddonist groups of "Christian Zionists," who carried huge signs in red and white which said: "Read the Bible! The Land of Israel Belongs to the Jews. http://www.TruePeace.org." Hence, any speaker who mentioned peace—such as Nevada Democrat, Sen. Harry Reid, who pointed out, "Shalom and Salaam are the same word"—was booed.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, of the "Wolfowitz cabal" that includes AEI's Richard Perle, the head of the Defense Policy Board, and advocates a Clash of Civilizations war against 1 billion Muslims, was sent as President George Bush's representative, although Secretary of State Colin Powell's peace mission was a direct target of the rally. Ironically, Wolfowitz too was booed, when he read the part of the White House statement that noted that "thousands of Palestinians are suffering as well."

The rally was organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the "Christian Zionist" National Unity Coalition for Israel; both the American Friends of Likud and the Zionist Organization of America provided free buses. Its host was the Jewish Federation of Washington, D.C., which took out rabble-rousing ads. Among the Senators and Congressmen who spoke were House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), flanked by ten or so Congressmen; House Majority Leader Dick Armey; Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.); Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who claimed the "homicide bombers" had been "brainwashed" by the Palestinian Authority; and, almost all the Senators and Congressmen from New York City.

Ambassador Ronald Lauder, who is the former President of the Conference of President of Major American Jewish Organizations, introduced Netanyahu. Bibi had saved his most blatant propaganda for this occasion. The former Prime Minister, who made aggressive war on Palestinian territories as head of Israel's government, incredibly demanded Palestinians emulate the "non-violence" of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King; he branded Arafat "a totalitarian." "From Hitler ... to Yasser Arafat ... totalitarianism is always wedded to terrorism," Bibi blared.

According to Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem, he will be the keynote speaker at an April 22 banquet at the annual meeting of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Through interlocking board memberships, AIPAC board members control dozens of multimillion-dollar political action committees, that have helped significantly in buying most of the U.S. Congress, including many who spoke at the Capitol Hill Nuremberg-style rally.