Very Important Post by Glenn Greenwald today; Israelis are not afraid to criticize their government about the decision to go to war or about the conduct of the war….before, during and after:
The Israeli Commission’s stark and open condemnation of the Israeli Prime Minister for his conduct in the Lebanon War is the polar opposite of the mindset embodied by the likes of Joe Lieberman, who infamously warned his then-fellow Democrats that “that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril,” and who just recently warned that criticisms of the Leader’s Glorious Surge should be stifled because they “encourage the enemy.” And it highlights just how obnoxious and odious was Bill Kristol’s recent attempt to impose on Americans the decisively un-American duty “to remain quiet for six to nine months” with regard to the war.
Second, such sweeping criticisms of the Israeli war did not merely arise once the war was over. Objections to the war were loudly voiced by Israelis across the spectrum during the war itself, and it was those objections which likely forced the government to end the disastrous bombing campaign and counter-productive occupation.
There is much more at the link. Greenwald uses the Israeli Commission as a model to criticize rightwing Israelis in this country who trumpet any criticisms of Israel as anti-semitism. Further, he compares Israel’s aggressive self-criticism with the virtual censorship which the Bush administration attempts to impose over the war in Iraq.
