[Marxism] On wiping countries off the face of the map

[Louis Proyect]

http://www.juancole.com/
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Lieberman and Wiping Countries off the face of the Map

Avigdor Lieberman, the Moldovan night club bouncer, is now foreign 
minister of Israel. The world has had a lot of fun laughing at the 
pronouncements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who stands 
falsely accused of threatening to wipe Israel off the face of the map. 
But Ahmadinejad has protested that it would be wrong to kill large 
numbers of civilians.

In contrast, Lieberman has threatened to wipe at least two countries, 
Egypt and Palestine, off the map. Monstrously, he suggested bombing the 
Aswan Dam, which would have the effect of murdering all 80 million 
Egyptians and sweeping them into the Mediterranean in a vast continental 
African tsunami.

Lieberman promptly announced on assuming office that the Mideast peace 
process is dead. Well, at least we have an outbreak of frankness.

Whereas Ahmadinejad was humiliated by Columbia University president Lee 
Bollinger on his visit to that university, which provoked public 
protests, Lieberman's acceptance into the Israeli government has been 
greeted mildly and he was allowed to come to the Brookings Institution 
and meet with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Lieberman is a Central/Eastern 
European ultra-nationalist in the mold of Slobodan Milosevic and Jorg 
Haider, and it is shameful that he was allowed into the government and 
more shameful that this travesty has passed without a peep in the 
civilized world.

The The Electronic Intifada lists "Some of Avigdor Lieberman's infamous 
statements":

     ' # In 1998, Lieberman called for the flooding of Egypt by bombing 
the Aswan Dam in retaliation for Egyptian support for Yasser Arafat.

     # In 2001, as Minister of National Infrastructure, Lieberman 
proposed that the West Bank be divided into four cantons, with no 
central Palestinian government and no possibility for Palestinians to 
travel between the cantons.

     # In 2002, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Lieberman in a 
Cabinet meeting saying that the Palestinians should be given an 
ultimatum that "At 8am we'll bomb all the commercial centers ... at noon 
we'll bomb their gas stations ... at two we'll bomb their banks ..."

     # In 2003, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Lieberman called 
for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel to be drowned in 
the Dead Sea and offered to provide the buses to take them there.

     # In May 2004, Lieberman proposed a plan that called for the 
transfer of Israeli territory with Palestinian populations to the 
Palestinian Authority. Likewise, Israel would annex the major Jewish 
settlement blocs on the Palestinian West Bank. If applied, his plan 
would strip roughly one-third of Israel's Palestinian citizens of their 
citizenship. A "loyalty test" would be applied to those who desired to 
remain in Israel. This plan to trade territory with the Palestinian 
Authority is a revision of Lieberman's earlier calls for the forcible 
transfer of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their land. Lieberman 
stated in April 2002 that there was "nothing undemocratic about transfer."

     # Also in May 2004, he said that 90 percent of Israel's 1.2 million 
Palestinian citizens would "have to find a new Arab entity" in which to 
live beyond Israel's borders. "They have no place here. They can take 
their bundles and get lost," he said.

     # In May 2006, Lieberman called for the killing of Arab members of 
Knesset who meet with members of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.'



Nice.