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| Blood-stained rain Iraq |
Holding to deadly precedent, Peace-Prize War maker pays the pipers
Re-reporting by Carolyn Bennett
Blood-stained
PERES
Shimon Peres (original name Shimon Perski) was born in
Poland in 1923, immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1934; joined the
Haganah movement, a Zionist military organization under the direction of David
Ben-Gurion, in 1947. Ben-Gurion became political mentor to Peres.
Cowardice camouflaged
More than 65 years one of Israel’s most influential politicians,
Shimon Peres was a hawk turned “un-hawk” and claimed to support Israeli engagement with
people in territories occupied by Israel. But he went along with the status quo, stopping far short of fulfilling his claim, as evidenced by current deplorable conditions in the Occupied
Territories, West Bank, the Gaza Strip. So it is questionable that Peres was ever serious or had the courage to act on his claim.
This protégé of Ben-Gurion, the Zionist statesman (original
name David Gruen) and political leader, Israel’s first prime minister (1948–53,
1955–63) and defense minister (1948–53; 1955–63), Peres stood against engagement with
the Palestinian Authority Organization in the 1970s and early 1980s. Though he pretended to distance himself from Israeli settlement expansion and claimed
interest in a “territorial compromise” concerning Israel and the West Bank and
Gaza, Peres apparently lacked courage to use his considerable political stature
to achieve the ends he claimed to support. Reference sources report Peres ultimately “avoided making
an outright commitment” to policy positions he claimed to support.
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| Palestinians protest occupation |
Rewarded
For his failure, Simon Peres has been rewarded handsomely with long
entrenchment, 66 years, in Israeli governance and foreign relations. His high
level diplomatic and military posts extend from the 1940s to the present day. Twice
he has held Israel’s premiership, once Israel’s interim prime minister; he has been
a member of 12 cabinets, having been elected to the Knesset in November 1959
and, except for a three-month break in early 2006, he held a seat continuously
until 2007, when he assumed the presidency. Shimon Peres is the ninth and current president
of Israel.
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| U.S. war on Iraq |
Blood-stained ALBRIGHT
Confronted with the report of half a million deaths of children
caused by U.S.-supported sanctions against Iraq, deaths exceeding the number of
children killed in the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, Madeleine Albright infamously
said, “We think the price is worth it.”
Albright later complained she had been trapped and she regretted
coming “across as cold-blooded and cruel.” At least she seemed to see the blood
on her hands.
Two years later, in 1998, when there was a U.S. threat of war
on Iraq, Albright drew boos from U.S. citizens opposed to that invasion of
Iraq.
President
William Jefferson Clinton ordered a four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in
December 1998; the bombing coincided with the start of full congressional
debate on Clinton’s impeachment. In 1999 U.S.-led forces of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted a three-month bombing campaign against
Yugoslavia.
Serbian physician, author, and politician Radovan Karadžić
reportedly divulged information at his trial for war crimes before the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia saying, “Albright offered him a chance to
relocate to Russia, Greece, or Serbia and open a private clinic, or to go to the
Bosnian town of Bijeljina. Karadžić reportedly claimed fear for his life (from
then- Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke or Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright), saying he “[did] not know how long the arm of Mr. Holbrooke or Mrs.
Albright is ... or whether that arm can reach me here.”
Madeleine Albright was born Marie Jana Korbel to a Jewish
family (1937) in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), and fled with her
family to England.
Rewarded
Albright, not unlike Peres, has been rewarded lavishly by officials of the U.S.
Government. She was President William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton’s ambassador to
the United Nations in 1993 and his secretary of state confirmed unanimously by
the U.S. Senate in 1997.
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| Iraqi child in war |
In 2008, this friend of the Clintons endorsed and supported
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for the U.S. presidency and reportedly became
Mrs. Clinton’s “top informal advisor on foreign policy matters.” The
president-elect, Barack Obama, in late 2008 nominated then-Senator Hillary Clinton
as his secretary of state; and later Albright reportedly became a “top advisor to
U.S. President Barack Obama (with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) in a
working group on national security.”
A professor at a leading university in Washington, D.C., and
director of the Council on Foreign Relations Board, Madame Albright also heads a
Washington-based consulting firm, the Albright Group.
In
May 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
to Madeleine Albright née Marie Jana Korbel.
On
June 13, 2012, at a White House dinner in the East Room, President Obama awarded
the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Shimon Peres née Shimon Perski.
Sources and notes
2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom Ceremony, May 29,
2012, President Obama presents
exceptional individuals with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2012/05/29/2012-presidential-medal-freedom-ceremony;
http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2012/06/13/president-obama-awards-shimon-peres-presidential-medal-freedom
Background notes
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright
Britannica
Images
An Iraqi boy walks past a blood-stained rainwater puddle the day after a ..., thewe.cc
Iraqi child in war, http://linjensen.com/
__________________________________Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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