by MIKO PELED
(Miko Peled provides a distinctive critique on Netanyahu’s appearance on Bill Maher’s show, having personally known the former Israeli prime minister.)
In a recent interview with Katie Halper on “The Katie Halper show”, we talked about Bill Maher having former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his show. Maher has proven himself to be a rude buffoon and an Islamophobe for sure, but in this case, he shamelessly gave a platform to a known war criminal. Netanyahu has dedicated his life to three heinous crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people: genocide, ethnic cleaning and apartheid, all of which are designated as “Crimes Against Humanity” by the United Nations.
The actual questions Maher posed to Netanyahu made a mockery of the grave reality in which Palestinians live. Rather than holding him accountable for the killing and destruction that Palestinians experience every day, Maher gave Netanyahu a platform in which to spew lies and repeat outrageous accusations against them.
THREE QUESTIONS
“I have three questions for you,” Maher said to Netanyahu, after quoting accusations made by “certain members of Congress.” These accusations, he said, would be more appropriate had they not been made by members of the United States House of Representatives, but by Hezbollah – which, in Maher’s world, means they must be absurd.
“Are you massacring Palestinians, are you ethnically cleansing and are you an apartheid state?” Netanyahu lied of course replying, “No, no and no.”
In a piece in The Daily Beast, written in reaction to the interview, Marlow Stern writes,
“As prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu lorded over what UN rights experts call an apartheid regime, cozied up to one of the most nakedly corrupt presidents in U.S. history in Donald Trump, and proved so corrupt that he was pushed out by his government after being indicted on bribery and fraud charges (owing to his allegedly receiving bribes from Hollywood producers and pushing legislation beneficial toward a newspaper group in exchange for favorable coverage).”
Stern then rightly asks, “did Maher ask Netanyahu about any of his corruption charges?” and the answer is, of course, “no, he did not.” In what seems as a love affair between the racist Islamophobe Maher and the war criminal Netanyahu, raising the issue of corruption would be too impolite. He even referred to him as “Prime Minister Netanyahu.”
WILL ISRAEL RETALIATE?
Maher also mentioned Kanye West’s DEFCON 3 remark about Jewish people and then asked, “will Israel retaliate?” While there is no reason a comedian cannot make political jokes and even make jokes about serious issues, antisemitism in not funny and neither were the issues that were raised in the comments made by Kanye.
But what is worse is the insinuation that the head of a racist, brutal government known to murder civilians should “retaliate” because a rapper made a hateful remark about Jewish people? While in the deluded mind of American Zionists Israel “retaliating” is imagined as heroic air strikes by U.S.-made F-18 or F-35 warplanes, killing bad guys, or perhaps the Mossad in a cover operation assassinating the master mind terrorist, the truth of the matter is that when Israel “retaliates”, it means horrific suffering for thousands of innocent people.
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