Is the 'special relationship' over?
By Justin Raimondo
".......The Gaza offensive has caught the US off-guard, and brought simmering US-Israeli tensions to a boil. What Gaza signals is a new turn for the Israelis, a clean break, if you will, with their status as an American puppet in the Middle East. They are clearly going off on their own, intent on waging a war of unmitigated aggression against all their neighbors. Their expansionist tendencies have lately taken on pretty grandiose dimensions, as Seymour Hersh reported in his exposé of their activities in Kurdistan. That this little adventure was leaked to Hersh by sources in and around the US intelligence community and government circles was doubtless another contributing factor to the growing US-Israeli split.
Events are rapidly reaching a dramatic climax, and Gaza is just the start. Even as Israel makes the case that it represents the West, and deserves our support, it becomes less Western, and more like a typical Middle Eastern despotism garbed in the somewhat soiled raiment of "democracy." The banning of the Arab parties, and the rise of Avigdor Lieberman, a racist and a theocrat, as a leading Israeli politician, augur ill for the future of Israel as a liberal democracy. As the Israelis hurl themselves into a furious campaign to push outward and establish the old dream of a "Greater Israel," the claim that they are the region's only democracy becomes an ever more hollow boast. "
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