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Restraint? + An Arab Revolution knocking at the door

"It was a Sunday, bloody Sunday - with no uplifting U2 anthem to "celebrate" it. In Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, tens of thousands of Palestinians marched to the borders with Israel to mark the anniversary of the 1948 Nakba - the displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel.

The Israeli response, with "maximum restraint": killing 10 people in Lebanon, eight in Syria, two in Gaza and one in the West Bank, and injuring over 200. The Anglo-French-American consortium waging war on Libya because Colonel Muammar Gaddafi allegedly kills his own people was thunderously mute."

So begins a feisty and blunt piece "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" by Pepe Escobar in the OnLine Asia Times.

"Forget about the UN Security Council - so eager to send the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on an attacking rampage on the side of a dodgy bunch of Libyan "rebels", effectively taking sides on a civil war - even considering dealing with Israel as it treats Iran, slapping it with economic sanctions until it starts complying with international law.

Forget about the Obama administration supporting the UN Security Council into giving Palestine a formal seat as a nation-state at the UN; over 100 nations, including, recently, Brazil, Argentina and Norway, already recognize the legitimacy of Palestine. If that would ever happen, the Palestinian nation could sue the hell of Israel in international courts of law over the systematic theft of Palestinian territory.

Would Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama lose anything with this move? No. The powerful Israel Lobby in Washington - led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) - is already campaigning against him in 2012. Anyway, he won't do it - and on top of it will address the upcoming AIPAC annual meeting in Washington. If there is a Washington consensus, it's its complicity in the Israeli regime."

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