Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Don't you love it when Hollywood gets into foreign policy topics? Here, Steven Spielberg is doing a movie about the Mossad and Black September, having done a movie in the past about the foreign policies of Sharks, as you may remember. What got me angry is this sentence (among others): "More than 20 Black September terrorists were assassinated over a period of at least two decades." But I wish SF Chronicle's Matthew Kalman did some research before writing this piece. He would have learned that among those "terrorists" killed were innocent Palestinians among others. There was once a Moroccan waiter who was killed by Israeli Mossad at a European Cafe because he looked, LOOKED, like a Black September "Palestinian terrorist." I wish they also would tell the readers about the Israeli methods of assassination used. I was there, I will tell you. In late 1970s, Israeli agents "assassinated" Abu `Ali Salamah in Beirut by detonating a car bomb in a very crowded street, killing Salamah, for sure, along with tens of innocent people. But then again: Israeli propaganda has its needs. And who can better respect those needs than US journalists? And do you notice that Israeli killing of Palestinians is not only not condemned in US popular and media culture, but is praised and considered "daring" if not darling.