Wag the Dog

'I'm just wagging the dog/If you don't know how to do it/ I'll show you how to wag the dog' (Words by Ehud Olmert. Music by The Rolling Stones)

"The findings of the 2 professors (Mearsheimer & Walt*) are right to the last detail. Every senator and congressman knows that criticising the Israeli government is political suicide... If the Israeli Government wanted a law tomorrow annulling the 10 Commandments, 95 Senators (at least) would sign the bill forthwith. President Bush, for example, has withdrawn from all the established American positions regarding our conflict. He accepts automatically the positions of our government... Almost all the American media are closed to Palestinians and Israeli peace activists. As to professors - almost all know which side of the bread is peanut-buttered. If, in spite of that, somebody dares to open their mouth against the Israeli policy - as happens once every few years - they are smothered under a volley of denunciations: anti-Semite, holocaust denier, neo-Nazi." (Who's the Dog? Who's the Tail? Uri Avnery 22/4/06)

[*The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, 2007]

"Earlier this afternoon, the United States House of Representatives voted 390-5 in favor of H. RES. 34, voicing their support for the Israeli military effort in the Gaza Strip. The bill... demanded that Hamas end its rocket fire against Israel and renounce violence, while expressing 'vigorous support and unwavering committment' to Israel and declaring that its 2 weeks of attacks on the Gaza Strip were rightful acts of self-defense. The bill also demanded that all nations condemn Hamas for breaking the 'calm'... and that all nations recognize that the thousands of civilian casualties caused by the Israeli attacks were entirely the fault of Hamas. The bill also called upon Egypt to tighten its borders to prevent 'smuggling' into the Gaza Strip and promised US support to that end." (House overwhelmingly passes bill cheering Israeli war on Gaza, antiwar.com, 9/1/09)

"US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday. 'She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour', Olmert said in a speech in... Ashkelon. The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the 3-week old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza... Fourteen of the Council's 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas. The US, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to vote in line with the other 14 but Rice... became the sole abstention. 'In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour', Olmert said. 'I said get me President Bush on the phone. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. I need to talk to him now. He got off the podium and spoke to me. I told him the US could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour'." (Rice shame-faced by Bush over UN Gaza vote: Olmert, antiwar.com, 13/1/09)

"Israeli PM Ehud Olmert's Monday comments... have sparked a war of words between the prime minister's office and the US State Department [which] immediately contradicted Olmert's claims, insisting that Israel might want to 'clarify or correct the record' with respect to the comments. Rice has dismissed Olmert's claim as 'fiction'... Yet spokesmen for Olmert say that the prime minister stands behind his version of events." (Olmert stands behind Rice-shaming claim, antiwar.com, 14/1/09)

Maybe "... public gloating by an Israeli PM that he can order a US president off a podium and instruct him to reverse and humiliate his secretary of state may cause even Ehud's poodle to rise up on its hind legs one day and bite its master." (Is Ehud's poodle acting up? Patrick Buchanan, antiwar.com, 17/1/09) But don't hold your breath.

And by the way, it's not that Olmert hasn't done this sort of thing before: "Candid TV footage of the Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and his Italian counterpart, Romano Prodi, showed Olmert coaching Prodi on what to say at their joint press conference in Rome." (Candid TV footage shows Olmert coaching Prodi, The Independent, 14/12/06)

Wagging the dog? Wagging the dogs.