U.S. Veto: Speaking With Forked-tongue.

U.S. Veto: Speaking With Forked-tongue.

US vetoes UN vote on settlements - al-Jazeera, Friday, February 18, 2011

It is common within early U.S. history to describe the communications
from the white settlers to the indigenous population as being done with
a “forked tongue,” as described clearly by Wikipedia:

The phrase "speaks with a forked tongue" means to say one thing and mean
another or, to be hypocritical, or act in a duplicitous manner. In the
longstanding tradition of many Native American tribes, "speaking with a
forked tongue" has meant lying, and a person was no longer considered
worthy of trust, once he had been shown to "speak with a forked tongue".

The U.S. tradition of speaking with a forked tongue is long and
dishonourable, as the actions taken by the U.S. for its imperial and
foreign policies are as indicated hypocritical, duplicitous, and untrue.
Today’s vote at the UN continued this manner of dialogue as Susan Rice,
the U.S. ambassador to the UN tries to explain why the U.S. vetoed the
UN vote on settlements. Her arguments and reasoning, while rhetorically
sounding firm, are at best duplicitous and at worst lying by evasion.

Rice begins saying, “The United States strongly opposed continued
Israeli settlement activity so our objection was not on that point.”
Okay, so why then over the history of the ongoing settlements has the
U.S. not done anything within its power to prevent the settlements.
Words are fine, but as the Palestinians have learned on one side of the
fence and the Israelis have learned on both sides of the fence, words
simply allow more settlements to be built, more Palestinian land to be
expropriated. If the U.S. actually wanted to do something, they could
have held back many or all of the billions in dollars of aid that it
forwards each year, and could have held back much or most or all of the
military equipment and technology it has transferred over each year.
Actions like those would speak much louder than words,.

Rice continued, “The question for us was would this resolution and its
adoption advance that goal of achieving an independent Palestinian state
or cause one or both parties to dig in and make it even harder to resume
the very necessary process of direct negotiation?” Well, yes, it would
as it would signal that perhaps the U.S. is finally reading world
opinion more correctly and is at minimum willing to change some of its
rhetoric if not its actions. Two problems remain. First, the Israelis
are already dug in, literally, as they have built their settlements,
have built their barriers, have built their bypass roads, have built
their waterworks and gas lines. They are literally dug into the
Palestinian territories, as the Palestinians are slowly being ethnically
cleansed from their own land. Secondly, the “process of direct
negotiations” has always been and always will be a failure, as one side
with no power of any kind cannot “negotiate” with a side that has all
the power, and further has all the complicit and tacit support of the
world’s largest and most powerful military and economic empire. That is
sheer and utter hypocrisy - pretending to be good, moral, and ethical,
while stealing what one wants - as the U.S. did in its imperial drive
against the indigenous peoples of North America and as they continue to
do so alongside Israel within the Palestinian territories.

On the limitations of the UN Rice says, “The United Nations cannot
create an independent state of Palestine. It won’t happen. It has to be
negotiated between the two parties.” This is an interesting statement as
it is part of the Israeli narrative of their creation that - apart from
biblical claims and following on the Balfour Declaration - the UN
“legitimized” Israel when it proposed the UN partition plan. The UN also
created a series of mandates in the Middle East that the world did not
seem to have too much trouble with, mainly because they carved the
region up for the sake of mainly the British and French imperial
interests of the time. There is no reason, other than U.S.
obstructionism, that the UN could not make a declaration that there is a
state of Palestine in such and such an area. Many countries of the
world, more recently the South American countries, have given
recognition to a Palestine using the ‘green line’ of the 1948 war as the
border. The green line is an amazing concession of territory on the part
of the Palestinians, giving up eighty per cent of their territory for
peace and a small remnant of their former territory.

I have already discussed the uselessness of negotiations. In addition to
my earlier comments, the recent exposure of the Palestine Papers by
al-Jazeera should demonstrate that, yes, there were partners for peace,
and even more, partners for capitulation. The Palestinian Authority does
not have legitimate authority to negotiate a settlement on behalf of any
of the Palestinian people other than its own cronies and quislings
attempting to preserve their elite and relatively more powerful and
wealthy positions while being subservient to the Israelis. There is no
legitimate authority at the moment to negotiate with - not because there
are no “partners for peace” as the Israelis and U.S. have always
claimed, but because the Palestinians have not been allowed to create a
truly democratic and representative bargaining committee consisting of
representatives of the common people of Palestine.

As for the UN declaration, Rice says, “We can have declaration after
declaration but at the end of the day they don’t create facts recordon
the ground.” Well, truthfully they do, Israeli facts on the ground, as
the U.S. provides a smokescreen of useless rhetoric and the lie of
neutrality.

Twice Rice phrases a time line during which the U.S. has been “clear”
and “consistent” with its comments on the settlements. That much the
world knows, and - pardon the constant reiteration (it is what the U.S.
is also very good at) - is what allows the settlements to continue
unabated. She says, “The United States has for six administrations been
very clear we do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement
activity. There’s no question about that. We have been clear and
unequivocal.” Later she adds, “This is not the view of the Obama
administration, this is the view of the United States. We do not and
have not for thirty years accepted the legitimacy of Israeli settlement
activity.”

This can only be read as that the duplicity, lies, and dishonesty are
consistent traits of all U.S. administrations. And even though Obama
campaigned on “hope” and “change”, and then made a sort of wonderfully
conciliatory speech in Cairo (and the world knows what is happening
their and elsewhere in the Arab world) he too has accepted as part of
his worldview that speaking with a forked tongue works well in the world
of U.S. diplomacy.

When questioned on the difference between “legitimacy” and “legality”,
Rice came up with the latter statement above on the thirty years of
forked tongue speaking. The reality of international law is that the
settlements are illegal, under several sections of the UN Charter and
the Geneva Conventions. Part of international law, developing from the
Nuremberg trials, is that being passive in the face of internationally
illegal activities makes a party complicit with the crime. The U.S. is
guilty of international crimes by supporting the Israeli crimes in the
Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza both materially and
politically, as well as supporting their illegal attacks on Lebanon.

The goal of the U.S. as stated by Rice is laughable, “The goal is to
achieve a viable, independent, contiguous, and democratic Palestinian
state.” Let’s work backwards on this one. When a democratic vote was
taken in Palestine in 2006, Canada (being the first), the U.S., the
U.K., the E.U., and other U.S. mercenary states disallowed the vote and
took concrete actions, in the form of money transfers and training of
the PA authorities militias in security measures that could be used
against their own people. The U.S. plays loose and fancy with democracy,
and again recent events in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Yemen among
others demonstrates the lie of the U.S. rhetoric on democracy (with U.S.
puppet regime of Saudi Arabia remaining silent).

Next, a contiguous state is declared the goal. This in total denial of
the hypocrisy, the double standards, the basic ignorant stupidity of all
other statements about stopping settlement activity. There is no
contiguous state, only a series of cantons or bantustans, or enclaves,
perhaps prisons will do. This will not be undone through a series of
false front negotiations that the Israelis will gladly continue for the
next sixty years as they continue to claim Palestinian land. Viability
and independence are next. Another set of impossibilities for
negotiations, and another full on ridiculous statement in light of the
so called peace process and its total failure to do anything but create
more Israeli inhabited territory.

The U.S. has continually used its forked tongue for its own benefit in
any “negotiations” it has carried out. This originated from the first
negotiated treaties with the indigenous people of North America - at
least those that were not simply outlawed and made subject to massacres
and murder without recourse to any law of any kind. It continues today
with its UN rhetoric and with its rhetoric about its concerns for
Palestine and Israel. No matter how nice and kind and civilized its
word, its actions are illegal under international law, and basically
barbaric when it comes to human common sense. As the empire unravels,
even with the violence that accompanies that, it will be better than the
violence of the forked tongue empire.

ENDS

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