The Forked-Tongue Eunuchs and Israel

By Rami G. Khouri

If rhetoric is the first step toward action, then one of the rhetorical trends of our time indicating a giant step backward toward inaction is the American and European tendency to describe Israel's aggressive and illegal actions in the occupied Palestinian territories in increasingly soft and imprecise terms.

For years, US administrations called Israeli settlements "illegal" and an "obstacle to peace," but in recent years those terms have been replaced by a mere "unhelpful."

On her first official trip to the region earlier this month, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton referred to the Israeli demolition of Palestinian Arab homes in East Jerusalem as "unhelpful."...

Colonialism is either legal or illegal, acceptable or criminal. Laws matter or they don't matter. There is no such thing as "unhelpful" colonialism, any more than there is merely naughty rape, awkward murder, or unfortunate incest.

Why is it that those in the West who celebrate and seek to export their commitment to the rule of law find it so hard to adopt both the rhetoric and policies that acknowledge the criminal illegality and political catastrophe that is the modern and continuing Israeli colonial rampage?

What is it that makes giants in the West become eunuchs in the face of Israeli deeds?

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