by Stephen Lendman

Partners in crime. Democracy is pure fantasy. Police state ruthlessness defines both countries. Tyranny reflects the law of the land.

Monied interests rule. Hardliners make policy. Moderates don't exist. Elections change nothing. Farcical when held. Special interests control things.

Campaign promises are empty. Ordinary people have no say whatever. Neoliberal harshness is official policy. So is state terror.

Racism is institutionalized. Media propaganda glorifies war in the name of peace. Managed news enlists public support. Aiding and abetting state crimes.

Mind manipulation convinces people to back what demands condemnation. Invasions and occupations are called humanitarian interventions.

Plunder called economic development. Imperial dominance called democracy.

Might justifies right. Fiction substitutes for facts. News is carefully filtered. Dissent marginalized.

Supporting powerful interests substitutes for full, accurate reporting. Wars of aggression are called liberating ones. Israel calls them "self-defense."

Human and civil rights are suppressed for our own good. Freedom is fast disappearing in plain sight.

Terrorism is what they do. Not us. Patriotism means supporting what demands rejection.

Ordinary people lose out entirely. Monied interests never had it so good.

Republicans control Congress in January. Obama governs like one. Israel heads for March elections.

Not a dime's worth of difference separates interests in both countries. On issues mattering most.

Israeli columnist Yossi Sarid equates Israeli centrists with right-wing hardliners. "Consensus covers everyone like a warm blanket," he says.

Supporting war-making. Billions for defense and settlements. Privatizations. "(F)rom land to natural gas."

"(O)utsourcing workers - from maintenance staff to teachers." Crumbs for social needs.

"Everyone talks about the" disappearing middle class. Impoverished Israelis are ignored. Heading toward two million.

One-fourth of the population. One-third at risk. Including hundreds of thousands of children. Around 40% at risk. Deprived during their formative years.

Hunger and homelessness remain major problems. Israel and America are the most unequal developed countries. In terms of income, standard of living and social benefits.

Politicians partner against their own people. Peace, equity and justice most of all are spurned. " 'Brothers' will sit in harmony in (Israel's) next government," says Sarid. Like previous ones.

Consensus defines Israeli governance. Differences are invented for political advantage. Each election cycle everything changes. But stays the same. Business as usual persists.

National consensus reflects what special interests want. Israelis can expect years more "disappointments and groans," Sarid believes.

Like Americans. Republicans no different from Democrats. Two sides of the same coin. Representing wealth, power and privilege exclusively.

Popular interests don't matter. Obama worse than Bush. Washington is corporate occupied territory. Bankers topping the pecking order.

Licensed to steal. Make money the old-fashioned way. Turned America is into an unprecedented money-making racket.

A previous article said over 100 years of Wall Street controlled Fed policy gave us booms. Busts. Inflation. Deflation.

Economic instability. Growing poverty. Hunger. Homelessness. Systemic unemployment and underemployment.

Permanent wars for profit and dominance. Record debt and deficits. Millions of home foreclosures. Record numbers of personal bankruptcies.

Loss of America’s manufacturing base. An unprecedented wealth gap. Protracted Main Street Depression. Showing no signs of ending. Growing human misery.

America being systematically thirdworldized. Strip-mined for profit. At the expense of ordinary people. Increasingly on their own. Out of luck.

Israel no different. Both nations are warrior states. Rogue ones. Lawless. Ruthless.

Partnering in each other's crimes. Waging war on humanity. Threatening world peace.

Letting popular needs go begging. Institutionalizing inequality. Spuring peace, equity and justice.

Palestinians suffer most of all. Israel's civil/human rights record is abominable. The late Edward Said said Palestinians "are as helpless as Jews" under Hitler.

Devastated by "power used for evil purposes." Victimized by Israeli ruthlessness. Besieged Gazans most of all.

Their lives and livelihoods destroyed. Tens of thousands living in rubble. Israel remains unaccountable. Free to mass murder at its discretion.

Palestinians have no power over their daily lives. Terrorized. Living in fear. Economically strangled.

Collectively punished. Denied fundamental rights. Ones everyone deserves. Persecuted by Israeli viciousness.

Lawlessness Western leaders support. Militarized occupation harshness. Land-stealing Separation Wall construction.

Electric fences. Border closings. Checkpoints. Roadblocks. Curfews. Resource theft. Arrests, imprisonments and torture without just cause.

Targeted assassinations. Punitive taxation. Without representation. Denied basic services. Essential to life, health and well-being.

Abbas-led PA stooges serving as Israeli enforcers. Betraying their people for special benefits derived.

Zionism is the enemy of Jews and non-Jews alike. Racist. Extremist. Ideologically over-the-top. Repressive and then some.

Militant. Undemocratic. Immoral. Unethical. Lawless. Ruthless. Threatening world peace, stability and security.

Author Alan Hart calls everything most people have been manipulated to believe about Israel/Palestine is polar opposite hard truths.

Zionism is more curse than blessing. Pure evil. Reflecting Israel's insatiable "hunger for more Palestinian land," says Hart.

It's "unquenchable thirst for (its) water." Lust for Palestinian resources. "(S)top(ing) at nothing to advance" its agenda.

Former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir once saying if confronted with potential doomsday, Israel "would be prepared to take the region and whole world down with it."

Using its nuclear, chemical and biological arsenals. Long-range delivery systems. Mindless of armageddon consequences.

Lunatics run Israel like America. Ruling repressively. Waging naked aggression at their discretion.

Threatening humanity's survival. Zionists created Israel to guarantee Jewish well-being, Hart explains. Their outrageous polices threaten world peace.

"There is no such thing as a 'Palestine problem,' " says Hart. "(O)nly a Jewish problem…" An Israeli one.

Reflecting militarized occupation. Institutionalized racism. Ruthlessness harming Palestinian welfare, livelihoods and futures.

Threatening their survival. Orwell said "(t)he object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression."

"The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"

Gore Vidal called the "genius of our ruling class (its ability to "ke(ep) a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”

Marx said people oppressing others can't remain free.

Malcomb X "sp(oke) as a victim of America's so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy," he said. "All we've seen is hypocrisy."

"When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism."

"We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism."

"We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare."

Palestinians suffer the same way. So do millions of deprived Israeli Jews.

It bears repeating. Washington and Israel partner in each other's crimes. At the expense of ordinary people everywhere.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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