Nie Trink Wasser
22nd May 2003, 06:18 AM
A guest blog from Professor Steven Plaut of Haifa University
Friends, Amnesty International is back with a new cause. Amnesty, that international organization of Israel-bashing guardians of human rights except for Jews, is all up in arms about yet another heartless brutalization of innocent people and violation of their human rights, indeed a new extraordinarily cruel form of torture. It is a mistreatment and brutalization of captured Iraqi Republican Guards and similar Saddamites in Iraq by American imperialists.
The Amnesty Activists are outraged that the Americans are mistreating the captured Iraqis by forcing them against their wills to listen to the music of Barney and Sesame Street. Really. Newsweek reports so. So does Haaretz.
Now don't get me wrong. Being forced to listen to the singing of Barney can be excruciatingly painful. Trust me, I know. Before my kids outgrew him, the purple reptile caused me endless suffering and the only way I managed to survive was by imagining that the singing lizard was really Michael Lerner from Tikkun in drag.
But subjecting captured Iraqis to this torment is unconscionable. (Never mind that Amnesty has said absolutely nothing about those mass graves that keep showing up in Iraq of Saddam's victims.) Amnesty International, the same crowd that has long denounced Israel for mistreating captured Palestinian terrorists by giving them VCRs that are hard to program, the same organization that has never gotten around to denouncing the violation of the rights of Jewish children by PLO suicide
bombers, is livid er I mean Barney-purple, with outrage at the American cruelty!!
Friends, Amnesty International is back with a new cause. Amnesty, that international organization of Israel-bashing guardians of human rights except for Jews, is all up in arms about yet another heartless brutalization of innocent people and violation of their human rights, indeed a new extraordinarily cruel form of torture. It is a mistreatment and brutalization of captured Iraqi Republican Guards and similar Saddamites in Iraq by American imperialists.
The Amnesty Activists are outraged that the Americans are mistreating the captured Iraqis by forcing them against their wills to listen to the music of Barney and Sesame Street. Really. Newsweek reports so. So does Haaretz.
Now don't get me wrong. Being forced to listen to the singing of Barney can be excruciatingly painful. Trust me, I know. Before my kids outgrew him, the purple reptile caused me endless suffering and the only way I managed to survive was by imagining that the singing lizard was really Michael Lerner from Tikkun in drag.
But subjecting captured Iraqis to this torment is unconscionable. (Never mind that Amnesty has said absolutely nothing about those mass graves that keep showing up in Iraq of Saddam's victims.) Amnesty International, the same crowd that has long denounced Israel for mistreating captured Palestinian terrorists by giving them VCRs that are hard to program, the same organization that has never gotten around to denouncing the violation of the rights of Jewish children by PLO suicide
bombers, is livid er I mean Barney-purple, with outrage at the American cruelty!!