GUNTER GRASS DOES IT AGAIN! ~~ LAUDS VANUNU AS A ‘ROLE MODEL’

September 30, 2012 at 14:04 (Iran, Israel)

Image by Bendib

Germany’s Gunter Grass defends Vanunu in new poem

Nobel laureate praises Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed Israeli nuke program, as “hero” because exposed the truth to the public.

Gunter Grass

PHOTO: REUTERS

Gunter Grass, the Nobel Prize laureate in literature who is barred from entering Israel because of his anti-Israel writings and membership in the Nazi Waffen SS, launched a second poetic attack on Israel by praising atomic spy Mordechai Vanunu.

In a new book of poems titled Eintagsfliegen, which was released on Saturday in Germany, Grass terms Vanunu, a former worker at the Dimona nuclear facility, a “hero” for his decision to transfer secret information to England’s Sunday Times in 1986. An Israeli court later convicted Vanunu of espionage and sentenced him to 18 years in prison.

In the poem titled “Hero of our days,” Grass praises him as a “model” because “he helped to bring the truth” to the public.

The Nobel laureate garnered fierce criticism from Israel, as well as from German politicians and many journalists, for another poem published last April titled “What must be said.” In it he blamed Israel for endangering world peace and accused the Jewish state of seeking to obliterate Iran.

Severe sanctions were placed on Vanunu after his 2004 release from prison. In their new book Spies Against Armageddon, Israeli journalist Yossi Melman and CBS News correspondent Dan Raviv write that “Shin Bet and Malmab [the director of security for Israel’s defense community] claimed that he continued to be a security risk because of the knowledge in his head. Thus, they insisted that he banned from leaving Israel and his movements were restricted.”

German media blanketed Saturday’s coverage of Grass’s new attack on Israel. The television station n-tv wrote on its website “Grass attacks Israel again,” and the daily Die Weltwrote on its own website “Grass provokes Israel with new book of poems.”

In his new poem, Grass writes about Vanunu’s upbringing in Beersheba as the son of a rabbi, who “pursued the study of the Torah’s rules and then decided to convert to Christianity.” He depicts Vanunu as being in the same predicament as the biblical Joseph and how his brothers tossed him into a cistern.

Source

3 Comments

IT’S OFFICIAL, THERE IS NO OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE (ACCORDING TO THE BBC)

September 29, 2012 at 22:40 (Cover Up, Deceit, Hasbara, Israel, Occupation, Palestine, zionist Slander)

How the BBC denies Israel’s occupation

Amena Saleem*

No occupation to see here, according to the BBC.

There is international law, and there is the world as Israel and the BBC see it. And if Israel claims the whole of Jerusalem as its territory, contrary to international law, then it is not for the BBC to dispute this — or so its coverage would have us believe.

In its country profile for Israel, the BBC’s website lists statistics including Israel’s size in square meters, its major languages and its main exports. Shying away from giving a capital, as it does for all other recognized countries featured in such profiles, the BBC’s online editors have opted instead to give Israel a “seat of government” (“Israel profile,” 11 September 2012).

And this seat of government, according to the BBC, is Jerusalem. All of it. This is despite the fact that international law is quite clear that East Jerusalem is Palestinian territory, illegally occupied and annexed by Israel. Israel, however, refuses to accept UN resolutions on Jerusalem and continues to claim it all, undivided, as its own. The BBC, it would appear, is backing Israel up on this.

This is how Israel’s claim to Jerusalem is presented on the BBC website: “Israel profile. Seat of government: Jerusalem, though most foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv.”

The Israeli government does not recognize Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital, and so the BBC obligingly does not give a capital for Israel in its country profile — noting, instead, in its specially-created “seat of government” category, that “most foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv.”

The website also runs a profile for “Palestinian territories” and this gives an “intended seat of government.” Under this category, BBC editors have written “Intended seat of government: East Jerusalem. Ramallah serves as administrative capital” (“Palestinian territories profile,” 31 August 2012).

Concealing the truth

There are no difficulties here for the BBC in making a distinction between East and West Jerusalem. Rather, the difficulty for the BBC lies in admitting that Israel occupies the “Palestinian territories.” Nowhere in the profile is the occupation mentioned, and the land is not referred to as the “occupied Palestinian Territories” — the wording used by the United Nations — but simply as Palestinian territories. And of course there is nothing to inform the reader of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Jerusalem from 1947 onwards, and how the division of the city came about.

The UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign challenged the supposedly impartial BBC on its assertion that the whole of Jerusalem is Israeli territory, a falsehood which Israel is keen to propagate in its attempts to create facts on the ground.

The PSC pointed out over a series of email correspondences since July that it would be simple enough for the BBC to add the word “West” to let its audience know that Israel’s seat of government is not in Jerusalem, but in the western half of a divided city. This would also guarantee 100 percent accuracy, surely a priority for a major news organization.

Richard Hutt, complaints director at the BBC, sent a detailed email on 18 September to say: “It seems to me that the current content on the page for Israel acknowledges the Israeli view, but contextualizes it so that it is clear to readers that this is disputed.”

With no hint of irony, Hutt goes on to say, about a page that is subtitled “Facts”: “Although more information would have been helpful, I do not believe that the content would mislead readers as to the basic facts.”

Laughable

Hutt’s defense of the BBC position becomes laughable as he defies logical argument in his attempts to defend inaccuracy in the BBC’s news pages.

Explaining why the BBC refers to “Jerusalem” on the “Israel” profile and “East Jerusalem” on the “Palestinian territories” profile, he says: “I do not think that ‘due’ impartiality in this context would require that the language for one page mirror that of the other.”

Hutt then says he does not think readers would make the assumption that the whole of Jerusalem is Israeli territory from the BBC’s reference to the whole of Jerusalem being Israel’s seat of government.

He argues: “The only grounds I can see for reaching such a conclusion are that the content for the [Palestinian territories] page lists ‘East Jerusalem,’ whereas the reference to Jerusalem on the Israel page is not similarly qualified.”

That is the exact reason given by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to the BBC in its request for the qualifier “West” to be added to “Jerusalem” on the Israel page. Bizarrely, Hutt appears to acknowledge that argument, before concluding that no alteration will be forthcoming.

Defending criminality

Israel’s claim to an undivided Jerusalem is not the only area where BBC terminology privileges Israeli occupation and colonization.

However, just as BBC reporting consistently fails to mention the fact of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, it is similarly coy about spelling out the criminality of its settlement building, despite UN Security Council Resolution 446’s clear definition of settlements as a “serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has not been alone in asking the BBC why, without fail, in all its online reports concerning settlements, as well as in television and radio broadcasts, it uses this line: “The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this” (“Israel anger at S Africa ‘Occupied Territories’ labels,” 22 August 2012).

The line will be found buried at the end, or near the end, of any article about settlements and provides scant context for the preceding content.

What is interesting is the need the BBC feels to use this line. Settlements are not stated categorically as being illegal under international law, simply “considered” to be, and a disclaimer is added — “Israel disputes this” — as though international law is not the last word on what is legal for nations.

Tarik Kafala, the Middle East editor of BBC Online, replied to a Palestinian living in the UK, who had emailed him to question the use of this line. Kafala’s reply, sent in October 2011 and seen by this writer, explains the BBC’s reasoning for its caution, erring on the side of Israel.

“The contention that settlements are illegal … is hugely well founded in international law, but an opinion,” Kafala writes.

And then this: “We also feel that to simply state that the settlements are illegal under international law is potentially misleading. An untutored reader might wonder why, if Israel is so flagrantly breaking the law, such a criminal state is still a member of the UN, a favored ally of the US, a major trading partner of the EU and so on.”

It’s an astounding assertion from a senior BBC editor. It also lays bare the BBC’s policy on reporting on Israel and its daily violations of UN resolutions, Geneva conventions andInternational Court of Justice rulings. There is a softening, a tempering of the reality, if it is even reported at all, which is rare. An intellectual analysis for the BBC audience of why a “criminal state is still a member of the UN, a favored ally of the US, a major trading partner of the EU” is out of the question.

Such an analysis would require honesty about the political situation, not just in Palestine and Israel, but in the Middle East as a whole, and Kafala’s incredible revelation shows that the BBC is not capable of such honesty.

The resultant dishonesty, and the attempt to keep the truth about Israel’s illegal actions from its audiences, is spread across the whole of BBC programming, from news right through to entertainment.

Not interested in reality

An activist with Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods spent a year in correspondence with the BBC over “Top Gear Middle East Special,” an entertainment program for motoring enthusiasts broadcast on BBC Two in December 2010. It traced a trio well-known to UK TV audiences traveling from Baghdad to Bethlehem in a convertible sports car.

As presenters James May, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond drove through Syria, viewers were given the following information about the occupied Syrian Golan Heights: “For political reasons, this was Syria and is now Israel.”

In reality, the Golan Heights is Syrian territory, illegally occupied and annexed by Israel. UN Security Council Resolution 242 makes this clear and additionally calls for the withdrawal of Israel from the Golan Heights, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

But the BBC isn’t interested in reality when it comes to Israel. What appears to be more important for this publicly-funded UK broadcaster is to shield Israel from criticism of its illegal actions by hiding the truth of those actions from its audiences. In this instance, the BBC was prepared to broadcast an outright lie about the status of the Golan Heights.

Wiped off the map

And to hide the existence of the Palestinian West Bank — where Bethlehem is located — the program used maps which named only Israel. Palestinian land was effectively wiped off the map by the BBC. This mirrors the maps used in Israeli schoolbooks and Israeli tourism guides, which show all the land which was once historically Palestine as being “Israel.” Gaza and the West Bank are not named.

To complete the deception, at no point during the drive to Bethlehem or on arrival did the presenters use the words “West Bank” or “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Instead, viewers were told that the “final border crossing” before arriving in Bethlehem would be from Jordan into Israel. The crossing from Israel into the West Bank, which has to be made in order to reach Bethlehem, was ignored by the BBC, and viewers were left to think that the city is in Israel. There was no indication of the existence of Palestinian land.

It is a narrative that would thrill the Israeli government. To justify its broadcast, the BBC’s Editorial Standards Committee ruled, in December 2011, that, because Top Gear is an entertainment program, there was no requirement to “make the location of Bethlehem explicit.” Why the location of Bethlehem had to remain hidden when the location of every other city visited by the presenters was marked clearly on the maps they used constantly throughout the program was not explained.

Nor was there any explanation for not marking the West Bank on any maps. Instead, the committee said “contrasting shading” used on the maps was sufficient to show the area as being separate from Israel. Why not just name it?

Finally, dealing with the Golan Heights reference, the committee said that it did not believe “the description used in the program was materially inaccurate or misleading, bearing in mind that the requirement [in the BBC’s editorial guidelines] is for due accuracy.”

Due accuracy, according to the guidelines, is accuracy that is “adequate and appropriate to the output.” Because Top Gear is an entertainment program, the level of accuracy displayed was, according to the committee, totally adequate. In other words, it was happy with the BBC broadcasting a falsehood.

Why, when it comes to Israel, can’t the BBC call a spade a spade? Why do the words “West Bank” and “Occupied Palestinian Territories” stick in the throats of BBC presenters, unable to see the light of day even when the presenters in question are standing on that very land? Why, if these are genuine mistakes, can’t the BBC correct them, put “West” in front of “Jerusalem” and admit that Israel illegally occupies the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights?

Rectifying these errors would be far simpler than concocting the tortuous and absurd explanations BBC employees spend so much time on to justify their misleading and biased output. But, then again, when it comes to the BBC and Israel, nothing is rational.

*Amena Saleem is active with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK and keeps a close eye on the media’s coverage of Palestine as part of her brief. She has twice driven on convoys to Gaza for PSC. More information on PSC is available atwww.palestinecampaign.org.

Written FOR

7 Comments

TOONS TO BRIGHTEN YOUR WEEKEND

September 28, 2012 at 15:04 (Associate Post, Cartoons, Humour, Iran, Israel)

Bibi’s visit to the UN as seen by Carlos Latuff …

And the ‘Red Line’ as seen by Bendib …

Here’s the speech that inspired the above works …

3 Comments

HOLIDAYS: A TIME TO LOVE OR TO HATE

September 27, 2012 at 16:03 (DesertPeace Editorial, Flashback.... from the archives, Holidays, Israel)

Preparations are underway to usher in a week long holiday in Israel. It is called Succot, or The Feast of the Tabernacles. We eat all of our meals in little booths and the ceilings are usually made of tree branches, allowing the sky to be visible. It is a reminder of the 40 years we roamed in the desert and dwelled in such structures. It is actually quite a fun holiday and a very community oriented one, it is one of my favourites.

A non Jewish visitor to Jerusalem this week might get the impression that the entire city stands in solidarity with the homeless Palestinians illegally evicted from their homes by settlers. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Tents have appeared (actually booths) in preparation of the Festival

Family homes were STOLEN, many families have been living in makeshift tents for over three years…. and neither the Municipality of Jerusalem nor the Palestinian Authority gives a damn. As winter approaches, a new meaning is given to the term ‘settlement freeze’ as these homeless literally freeze in their abodes.

I had some flashbacks this morning to my Succot celebrations in Brooklyn as a child, they were much different than here. Here there is a Jewish community and an Arab community. In the neighbourhood I grew up in, there was a Eastern European Jewish Community (Ashkenazi) and a community made up of Spanish Jews and Jews from Northern Africa (Sephardi). Both communities had their own traditions and practices, but basically both were members of the same religion. One of the major differences between the two communities at the time were language, the Ashkenazi Jews spoke Yiddish; a language with Germanic roots, while the Sephardi Jews spoke a language called Ladino; a mixture of Hebrew and Spanish.

What I remembered this morning was the following;The Synagogue of the Sephardi community was situated very close to the home of my grandparents. They used to build a large enough booth to accommodate their entire congregation. As a child, I used to help them with the preparations. I remembered my grandmother screaming at me from her window to get away from them, not to play with their kids…. I could never understand why. It seemed that part of her ghetto mentality was to distrust anyone that was in any way different. These people were different than we were, as mentioned; they spoke a different language and, for the most part, had darker skins than the Ashkenazi Jews. The younger generation, like myself did not see these differences as our common language was English and skin colour was never an issue with me or my immediate family. I therefore could never understand my grandmother’s logic, or lack of…. So I secretly maintained my friendships with the kids there.

Today, I started thinking about prejudice, why it exists, how to overcome it…. It seems to exist because of ignorance and fear, two very real factors. How to overcome it? Learn about each other and the fear factor will be eliminated. Very simple! It worked in my case.Things are different today, in Israel at least. The Jewish community celebrates together. We have a common language, Hebrew. There are still some remnants of the old world prejudice, but for the most part it’s gone. Now to overcome the prejudices between the Jewish and Arab communities here. My way is to open my booth, as well as my home, to ALL members of the community, both Arab and Jew. It’s the only way to guarantee an end to the hatred… live together! So, instead of fearing the differences of the others, my philosophy is to say

VIVA LA DIFFERENCE!

Let us all live together as neighbours and brothers.Shalom-Salaam!

4 Comments

WAR: ISRAEL’S LEGACY TO ITS YOUTH

September 25, 2012 at 13:14 (Hasbara, Israel, YouTube, zionism)

Here you can see Israel’s future today …. teaching the next generation the glories of war …

3 Comments

‘NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, IT’S JUST THE MOHAMMED CARTOONS’

September 24, 2012 at 12:29 (Associate Post, Cartoons, Extremism, Islamophobia)

All images ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff

4 Comments

THE NON AUTHORITIVE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

September 24, 2012 at 12:13 (Corrupt Politics, Israel, Palestine, Palestinian Authority)

The Palestinian Authority – devoid of any authority

The Oslo Accords, initially intended to create Palestinian self-government, have in fact left them with autonomous pockets that only reinforce Israel’s rule.

By Amira Hass

Palestinians for Dignity protesting in Ramallah, with a permit from police. Photo by Amira Hass

“Everything Will Be Fine,” the enjoyable program broadcast by Army Radio, has a younger relation over at the Voice of Palestine: At “Good Morning Palestine,” the microphone is sometimes open to regular citizens with complaints about various institutions of the Palestinian bureaucracy. As at “Everything Will Be Fine,” the program hosts find it easier than regular people to locate the phone number of whoever is in charge and extract a promise that the matter under discussion will be taken care of. For example, Saturday morning, an officer in the Hebron police was put on the line to answer allegations made by a Yatta resident (who declined to identify himself ) that the Palestinian police are shirking their duty and are slow to intervene in internal conflicts of the large town. The complainant didn’t want to hear about Area A and Area C and interrupted the officer several times.

Another radio program provides airtime to family members of people imprisoned in Israel. It is a particularly important show for prisoners whose parents, wives and children aren’t allowed to visit them for obscure, unspecified “security reasons.” Some relatives make do with a brief, “How are you, habibi? We’re all fine, don’t worry about us. We hope you’re taking care of yourself and your health, and that you’ll be released soon – you and all the other prisoners.” Others go on at length, especially the women. A mother will tell her son that she sent him money for snacks or that his younger brother is out of control and that she’s worried. She’ll speak as if the conversation weren’t one-way and part of a broadcast to which lots of people are listening – cab drivers, their passengers, store clerks and several hundred other prisoners.

Speaking of cabs: As a result of a string of fatal traffic accidents involving taxi drivers, the Palestinian Ministry of Transportation has issued an order limiting the speed of all public transportation vehicles on intercity roads to 90 kilometers per hour. From now on, all new cabs will be modified mechanically to disable higher speeds.

Between a talk show and a news edition, one may hear a public service announcement encouraging people to pay off their debts to the electric company because non-payment strengthens the occupation. A recent installment of “Women’s Voices” was dedicated to an extensive discussion of the phenomenon of men preventing their ex-wives from seeing their children, and of the legal means available to women to fight this injustice.

Speaking of injustices: The Coalition for Palestinian Human Rights Organizations has criticized unnamed figures in the office of President Mahmoud Abbas who, according to the coalition, ordered the police to violently suppress demonstrations held two months ago by the new group Palestinians for Dignity. The youths were protesting the invitation extended to Shaul Mofaz to meet with Abu Mazen. But the criticism had its impact. Two weeks ago, the police allowed the group to march as far as the Muqata wall in Ramallah and shout, without interference, “Traitor, traitor, our government is a traitor.”

What is the common denominator of these anecdotes? What is this compilation doing here? It’s my way of addressing an assertion made in the book, “The Bureaucracy of the Occupation: The Regime of Movement Permits 2000-2006,” by attorney Yael Barda, recently published by the United Kibbutz Movement and Jerusalem’s Van Leer Institute. The book is based on her master’s thesis in the sociology and anthropology department at Tel Aviv University. The research started with Barda’s stubborn slog through the trenches while representing Palestinian laborers who got lost in the intentionally repressive labyrinth of official red tape. Barda argues against the conclusion drawn by Neve Gordon in his book, “Israel’s Occupation” (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2008 ), which she summarizes as follows: “Since the Oslo Accords, the force used against the Palestinians has changed and is now a sovereign power employing legal control by means of the law and policing forces; it does not intervene in civil decisions and does not distinguish between those who oppose the occupation and those who accept it …”

By contrast, Barda’s conclusion is as follows: “After the administrative and regional separation enacted as a result of the Oslo Accords, control over the lives of the Palestinians and interference in their civilian matters did not decrease; on the contrary, it grew.” Barda has accompanied hundreds of laborers on their Via Dolorosa to an entrance permit to Israel and has interviewed many functionaries within the system. That is how she has learned up close how invasive, non-transparent and unsupervised the Israeli authorities are – from the Shin Bet security service to the Supreme Court – that dominate the lives of Palestinians seeking to realize their right to freedom of movement, and come up against walls of concrete, orders and injunctions.

I have not read Gordon’s book, but I assume he saw the range of prohibitions in force during the period of the direct occupation: on construction, reading and writing, unionizing and broadcasting opinions, plays and movies, on planting and seeding. The people in charge in the civilian offices were Israeli bureaucrats/military personnel. They carefully parceled out permits to hook up a telephone line here or build another floor there, while putting petitioners through a gauntlet of depressing humiliations. The offensive, intentional neglect of infrastructure was always a key part of the mechanism of dominating the natives. Even getting a driver’s license was a grind through the same mechanism. The Shin Bet used collaborators even before the ban on freedom of movement that started in 1991, preceding the implementation of Oslo by three years. It’s enough to think about the terrifying presence of the Border Police, Special Patrol Units and National Insurance Institute inspectors in East Jerusalem neighborhood and villages, turned into choking pockets of poverty by the Israeli government, in order to remember the potential of direct control and its predatory nature. It’s enough to remember Area C in which Israel will not allow an old Palestinian community to build toilets or install a solar energy system.

Area C, the 61-62 percent of the West Bank over which the Oslo Accords give Israel full authority, surrounds pockets of Palestinian self-rule in which direct Israeli control over civilian matters has, in fact, become very tenuous despite frequent military incursions, Israel’s authority to arrest any Palestinian at any time, and restrictions on movement. In these pockets, autonomous moments and spaces of a civilian community are created and experienced despite the huge shadow cast by the ever-present occupation. People get used to the internal logic of these pockets. Is the normality only a mirage? A self-delusion? No. The regime created is a confusing hybrid of military-colonial state of emergency and civilian autonomy. The duality and all its contradictions are the glue that makes it hard to undo what there is, i.e. the Palestinian Authority.

This, too, is the genius of the authors of Oslo, who formulated a vague business contract open to opposing interpretations. And since the interpretation of the strong wins, we’re left with autonomous pockets that only reinforce Israel’s rule.

Source

1 Comment

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY WAKES UP TO THE REALITIES OF APARTHEID

September 23, 2012 at 08:23 (Apartheid, Israel, Occupation, Oppression, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian Statehood)

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that…

“The establishment of a politically and economically viable State of Palestine is impossible without ending the Israeli occupation of the whole West Bank and Gaza Strip, including East Jerusalem.”

Israel logjam threatens statehood, Palestinians warn

A Palestinian baker removes unleavened bread off a tray at a traditional bakery in the Palestinian Rafah refugee camp, in the southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday (AFP photo)

RAMALLAH — The Palestinian Authority warned on Saturday that long-standing lack of movement towards peace with Israel was threatening the concept of a two-state solution and could lead to Palestinians being left in an Israeli-run “apartheid” state.

“Without a tangible shift from a conflict management approach towards a just and lasting political agreement… Israelis and Palestinians will inevitably slide into one state governed by the principles of apartheid,” it said in a report prepared for a meeting of international donors in New York on Monday.

“The status-quo is not sustainable neither politically, nor economically,” the report in English wrote.

“The establishment of a politically and economically viable State of Palestine is impossible without ending the Israeli occupation of the whole West Bank and Gaza Strip, including East Jerusalem,” the 22-page document, published on Saturday, said.

It called on donor members of what is known as the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee to pressure Israel to dismantle its checkpoints in the West Bank and allow unhindered development of all areas, including so-called Area C, which is under full Israeli control and which covers some 60 per cent of the West Bank.

It also asked them to make diplomatic protests to Israel over its demolition of Palestinian homes.

A coalition of global NGOs said in a statement on Friday that demolition rates had hit a three-year high.

Citing UN statistics, the group of 30 aid, development and human rights organisations said demolitions of Palestinian property had tripled in the past three years, rising to an average of 64 per month in 2012, up from 23 in 2009.

The monthly average of people displaced as a result had doubled, increasing from 52 in 2009 to 103 in 2012, it said.

Direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have been on hold since late September 2010.

Source

1 Comment

NETANYAHU: THEN AND NOW

September 23, 2012 at 08:03 (Corrupt Politics, Guest Post, Hasbara, Iran, Israel)

The beast then …

The beast now …

That Was Now, This Is Then: Netanyahu Edition

Nima Shirazi

“Would I counsel, necessarily, a preemptive strike on Iran? I’m not sure. I would be very careful about that.”

– Benjamin Netanyahu, September 12, 2002

Journalist Jim Lobe has done a tremendous service to those of us who follow the warmongering propaganda of American and Israeli officials over the Iranian nuclear program. This week, Lobe reminded us of the testimony then-former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered before the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight on September 12, 2002 in which he marshaled nearly every hackneyed talking point about weapons of mass destruction, support for terrorists and the benefits of regime change in an effort to push the United States to illegally invade and occupy Iraq.

Six months later, he got his wish.

While Lobe has already masterfully laid out the ignorant assumptions, egregious lies, hysterical hasbara, and shameful bellicosity of Netanyahu’s performance, it should also be noted that, when it comes to trying to bully the United States into setting “red lines” or even perhaps initiating a war of aggression, thereby committing once again – in the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal – “the supreme international crime,” Netanyahu has stuck to the same script for a decade now.

Of course, as we all know, then it was Iraq and now it is Iran. In his frenzied and frustrated warmongering efforts, Netanyahu has apparently forgotten to come up with some new zingers, instead hoping that what worked for him in 2002 would work again in 2012 (spoiler: it won’t).

Here are some of his greatest hits.