Startling Admissions from an Israeli Politician as He Drops the Pretense of Diplomacy
In a recent interview with RT, Israeli politician Amir Weitmann shockingly discards any semblance of diplomacy. Russia, he says, will "pay the price."
Every once in a while, a politician says the quiet part out loud, and that is precisely what Israeli politician Amir Weitmann did in a recent interview with the Russian media company, RT. While it's expected that war should evoke powerful emotions, Weitmann's deranged assertions about Russia's purported role in Gaza are nothing short of startling. Throughout the interview, he adamantly insists that Russia will "pay the price" for events unfolding in Gaza. The interviewer, visibly taken aback, struggles to interject as Weitmann spirals into clichéd hysterics. While history looms large in the background, Weitmann’s behavior in the interview and its potential implications are, at best, unsettling.
Still more concerning is Weitmann’s political status. He isn’t some obscure media figure voicing fringe perspectives but a prominent member of Israel's leading political party. This lends a weight to his words that would be careless to dismiss. The vehemence of his speech, coupled with its eerily familiar undertones, brings to mind the disturbing ideologies of a certain Austrian artist, ironic as that may be.
The trend in alternative media has been to downplay any potential links between the events in Gaza and Ukraine. Yet, this politician, whose name seems to morph depending on the source – be it Waitman, Whiteman, or Veitman – boldly suggests otherwise. Russia’s stance against Islamic terrorism over the past few decades is so well-documented it’s hard to imagine why that would suddenly change, especially when its military is already preoccupied in Ukraine. Equally dissociated from reality is the labeling of Russians as ‘nazis,’ particularly in light of the 27 million Soviets who lost their lives in World War II - a casualty count higher than any other nation. Is he unfamiliar with the very history of WWII he cites to validate the Israeli occupation?
Nazi atrocities are frequently invoked as a primary justification for the establishment of the state of Israel. The fact that the state of Israel was created on top of another people's suffering is, of course, never mentioned. This is the same casuistry that allows the United States to declare itself a champion of human rights while simultaneously murdering more people than any other nation on earth - the same logic that allows Israel to claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East while it continues to violate international law without reproach. Israel is no underdog - its the sole nuclear-armed state in its region with a long history of illegal military actions.
For example, in June, 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israeli forces conducted a brutal air campaign against the USS Liberty, an intelligence ship of the US Navy. The attack, which took the lives of 34 American servicemen, was meticulously recounted by James M. Ennes Jr. in his book, Assault on the Liberty. An officer on the ship at the time of the attack, Ennes over-300-page book serves as a harrowing first hand account of the bloody Israeli bombardment that wounded over 170 seamen in the Unites States Navy. I read the whole book.
How did the US government respond? President Johnson chose to not make any public statements, having initially assumed Soviet involvement before Israel took responsibility for the attack. As if dirty money could wash away the murder of 34 American sailors, Israel quickly offered to compensate the victims and their families and apologized for the attack, claiming the ship’s flag had been down and was subsequently misidentified as Egyptian. Besides the fact that American and Egyptian ships look absolutely nothing like each other and Israeli planes had been flying by the ship in strange patterns every few hours leading up to the attack, every single surviving crew member recalled the presence of the flag at full-mast. Such details lead to the Johnson administration expressing “strong dismay” to Israel’s ambassador.
Weitmann's bloodthirsty tirade on RT is not just alarming - its an expression of an underlying chauvinistic ideology. This violent militarism, wherein the end always justifies any means, is as much to blame for the death of the sailors on the Liberty as it is for the brutality of the occupation of Palestine. The harsh truth is that while politicians like Weitmann vociferously declare who they want to "pay the price" for Hamas’ actions, the people of Gaza continue to pay with their lives. Israel may have a right to exist—let’s just say for simplicity’s sake that it does—but if Hamas is a terrorist group, then Israel is a terrorist state.
-The Shultz Report by M. Shultz