Tony Blair joins in praise of Ariel Sharon

Tony Blair, the official representative of the Quartet (US, EU, Russia & UN)  was among those heading the list of visitors who gathered outside Israel's parliament building for a ceremony to commemorate and praise Ariel Sharon. In his speech Mr Blair described the corrupt butcher as "tough...indomitable...a servant to his people, a warrior to create his country...wise enough to know that war alone could not secure its future," Supervising the occupation of the West Bank General Sharon gave instructions to his soldiers to deal with demonstrators: “Cut off their testicles.” while his Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan told the soldiers that "the only good Arab is a dead Arab", (Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, p.238)

Sharon "was a giant of this land" for Blair, our official bringer of peace to the Middle East, but his blood-sodden path through Palestinian society was at one time, 1982, so foul that even official Israel forced him to resign as Minister of Defence and declared him unfit to hold public office. For that moment he was too dirty even for the rulers of the apartheid State, having provided a ring of security and floodlighting for his Christian Falangist militia allies to butcher over 1,000 Palestinian women, children and old men in Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Lebanon.  The US had negotiated the departure of Palestinian fighters to faraway Tunis on a promise to protect their families.

Thrown out of office, Sharon came back less than ten years later, elected as Prime Minister as Israeli public opinion and political parties maintained their commitment to mass murder of Palestinians - and who better that Sharon to epitomise the commitment to naked violence to prosecute the Zionist dream-nightmare of replacing the native Palestinians with jewish immigrants.

Sharon is dead but he will certainly be succeeded by someone equally or even more racist and violent.  There is no shortage of candidates.

Shimon Peres of the "Shimon Peres Peace Centre" mourned "my dear friend, Arik Sharon...a brave soldier and a daring leader who loved his nation and his nation loved him...We all loved him and he will be greatly missed."  The Guardian called the mass killer a "fearless – and controversial - soldier". They never call Al Qaeda "controversial".

Tony Blair's eulogy is fitting from a blood-soaked notorious liar to a corrupt butcher of innocents.  The difference was that Sharon actually led from the front, sometimes risking his own life to kill large numbers of Arabs.  Tony Blair is even worse - a millionaire politician sending young British men to invade and massacre Iraqis and Afghans while himself safe behind the lines.  Sharon was an unoriginal savage -Israeli opinion that "The only good Arab is a dead Arab" is plagiarised from a US General, Philip Sheridan, over 100 years earlier.  Settler-colonial regimes such as Israel and 19th Century North America have regular massacre in their DNA and a built-in tendency towards genocide. Sharon's death changes nothing; the ethnic cleansing continues and Tony Blair continues to slouch around the Middle East on his mission to support the butchers - at our huge expense.

As for Ariel Sharon, he is dead but he is revered by a huge section of the Israeli public.

Mick Napier
Wanlockhead
13 January 2014