Since the collapse of the Camp David negotiations 13 months ago, the Israeli state has pursued a course of military aggression and provocation calculated to arouse Palestinian retaliation, which is then used as the pretext for assassinations and further attacks on the Palestinian Authority. Barak essentially gave his backing to this policy when he defended Sharon's instigative visit to the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem in late September of 2000. When Sharon, accompanied by a retinue of police and troops, was met with spontaneous protest demonstrations, Israeli police responded by storming the Al Aqsa mosque and opening fire on stone-throwing worshippers, killing six. This bloody provocation set off a further wave of mass protests, against which Israel employed live ammunition, tanks and attack helicopters. Within the first week of the intifada Israel had killed at least 60 Palestinians and wounded 1,500 more. Sharon is one of the world's leading exponents of the policy of creating "new facts." This was the purpose of the settlement policy, which he championed. The goal was to create a major Israeli presence in occupied territories that had long been considered Palestinian. Now he is seeking to create a new set of facts-the absence of an independent Palestinian leadership.

In defense of their campaign to wipe out the Palestinian leadership, the Israeli authorities employ a combination of cynicism and deceit. One tactic is a variant of the "big lie": namely, to accuse your enemy of the crimes for which you are responsible.

Thus Israel, secure in the knowledge that its claims will be parroted by the American press, charges the Palestinians with initiating the violence and brands all critics of its methods as anti-Semites. Israeli leaders have gone so far in recent days as to accuse the Palestinians of "ethnic cleansing." The Israeli justification for the policy of political assassination is the ultimate "Catch 22" argument. They claim they only kill those who are preparing acts of terrorism. What is the proof that the targeted individuals are guilty as charged? The fact that the Israeli state has decided to kill them. No independently verifiable evidence is ever presented to substantiate the charges against those marked for assassination. The Israeli authorities do not seek to arrest the accused, put them on trial and present the factual case for their elimination. Instead, Israeli hit squads and the Mossad act as judge, jury and executioner.

Israel could not pursue such a bloodthirsty course without the logistical support of the US military and intelligence apparatus, and the political support of the American political and media establishment. The response of large sections of the US media has been to leap to Israel's defense, employing frenzied anti-Palestinian rhetoric and calling for all-out war to destroy the Palestinian resistance.

In mid-August there was a veritable eruption of propaganda in the US press defending Israel's assassination policy. On three successive days the Washington Post ran op-ed pieces labeling the Palestinians as inveterate terrorists and urging Israel to annihilate the Palestinian Authority and build a Berlin-type wall to keep the Arab population in a state of permanent subjugation.

Michael Kelly wrote in a column published August 15: " [Israel]

can win only by fighting the war on its terms, unleashing an overwhelming force (gosh, just what is called for in the Powell Doctrine) to destroy, kill, capture and expel the armed Palestinian forces that have declared war on Israel."

The following day Charles Krauthammer called for "A lightning and massive Israeli attack on every element of Arafat's police state infrastructure-the headquarters and commanders of his eight (!) security services, his police stations, weapons depots, training camps, communications and propaganda facilities (radio, TV, government-controlled newspapers)-with a simultaneous attack on the headquarters and leadership of Arafat's Hamas and Islamic Jihad allies."

Krauthammer made an explicit call for ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population, summed up in his slogan: "Strike and expel." George Will followed on August 16 with a similar diatribe that included the following prescription: "Israel needs a short war and a high wall." These and numerous other commentators in the press and on CNN and Fox TV have declared that "we" in the US would be doing the same thing as the Israelis if faced with a similar situation. Among the public defenders of Israeli assassinations is Henry Kissinger, the chief architect of American imperialist policy in Vietnam under President Nixon.

One can only imagine the international outcry, orchestrated by the US media, were Palestinian leaders to announce that they intended to reply in kind, i.e., to identify and target those Israelis involved in planning and carrying out assassinations and other terrorist acts.

The US government has responded to the Israeli campaign of assassinations with perfunctory public criticisms, delivered by mid-level State Department officials, combined with private assurances of American support from the highest levels of the Bush administration. The US posture, dripping with hypocrisy, signals the revival by Washington of its own practice of using murder as a tool of foreign policy.

If it is acceptable for Israel to "take out" its political opponents, then the same applies to the US. Washington's support for Sharon's murder incorporated signals a reversion to the methods that resulted in such atrocities as the CIA assassination of Congo independence leader Patrice Lamumba in 1961, the repeated attempts to murder Fidel Castro, and the 1986 bombing of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhaffi's residence.

Political assassinations were formally outlawed in laws passed in the 1970s following Congressional hearings headed by Idaho Senator Frank Church into the activities of the CIA. Today, even more crassly than under the Reagan administration, the US government flouts its own laws in order to support its main client regime in the Middle East and suppress the struggle of the Palestinian masses against foreign occupation, repression and poverty.

(Concluded)