Israel as the New Rogue State

The people who have thrown their lot in with what poses as a political movement but is in fact more like a Two Minutes Hate against Israel – liberal commentators, left-wing activists, Islamists – are the same people who criticised the Bush regime for dividing the world into Us and Them, Good and Evil, Decent and Rogue. Yet the anti-Israel lobby does the same thing, only its pet rogue is Israel rather than Iraq, and it has won the backing of academics, the serious media and the liberal bourgeoisie rather than colonels and the white-haired right. Fundamentally, the anti-Israel spasm in respectable Western circles is driven by the same urges that underpinned the Bushites’ clumsy interventions into foreign affairs: a desire to escape political stasis at home by seeking the super moral clarity of a fantasy apocalyptic stand-off on the world stage.

Anti-Israel activists’ reliance on the template vocabulary of the Western foreign-policy establishment is striking. They recycle the kind of language that actually should be ruthlessly critiqued and studiously avoided. Left-wing journalist John Pilger says the flotilla incident confirms that Israel is a ‘rogue state’, echoing various other respectable writers that also have branded Israel a ‘rogue’ (Pilger goes on to say: ‘“Rogue” is too soft. Israel is a criminal state.’)

Brendan O'Neill, Spiked

Rogue State America

The Rogue State

The USA is a rogue state bent on world domination with or without people. Thoroughly cowed the native population is unable to confront or change the leadership. The 2008 elections will change a few faces at the top, but will leave the military/industrial complex intact.

The preemptive attacks staged by the US have given common cause to the nations of Asia. As never before, they are exploring new areas of co-operation.

The Americans are mostly bluster, bluff and blunder. They have borrowed enormous sums to lose three wars. They rely on international gangsters to administer food and fuel prices.

The world nations can blunt America's sword by calling in her debts. The WTO and the IMF should be removed from the world stage. To gain our good graces, she should do away with the CIA, the FBI, the INS and the Federal Reserve. The US government should fire its employees and join the British Commonwealth of Nations. Retired British civil servants should man key posts in the Cabinet and in the bureaucracy.

There are alternate choices. If the Americans continue on the perpetual war path, the nation can become a radioactive cinder.