ARSE-O-theWeek: The Minister of Grotesque Tourism

We apologize to our faithful readers for the delay in posting this week's AOW. It was unavoidable.

We 'd love to blame the ubiquitous "technical difficulties," but unless you call 37.5 hours of rancorous name-calling between Fat Arse and me a "technical" problem, we cannot. Sadly, we failed to reach "consensus." Sad too, is the state of liquor* cabinet.

In the end, we retreated to our two respective corners: Fat Arse to his football and beer, me to my D&D and Pink Ladies.

So, I have decided to go it alone this week.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I/we have refrained from commenting on the events in Gaza, but this week's PR offensive by Israel's Foreign Minister was, well, offensive. Of course, this is nothing new for Tzipi Livni. Turning the Israeli Foreign Office into the "ministry of grotesque tourism" is her principal achievement as Foreign Minister.

Following the 2006 war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which was less than sanguine from a PR standpoint, Livni and the Israeli regime have been wary of repeating those mistakes. Since then, Livni has been keen to attack the the world's press corps with "a constant, imaginative, heart-rending display of Israeli misery," as this blog dedicated to parodying the farcical actions of a farcical state correctly points out. One can easily imagine Livni saying:

This simple tactic has worked admirably for the Palestinians and there is no reason to think that it won't work even better for us. After all, the Jewish people invented suffering and guilt so the least we can do is to make them work for us, instead of against us.

This week the Israelis once again gathered the media, who of course cannot enter Gaza, in the border town of Serdot to touch the still-hot metal of a stray rocket and deliver key messages to captive journalists such as: "What would America do if Mexico was launching rockets at Texas every day?"

Indeed.

The question is in fact illustrative of the degree to which Israel is out of touch with the rest of the world and with history. For you would think that knowing that Texas was once part of Mexico but lost it in war to the hands of the expanding American empire might lead one to reach for more contemporary, more salient comparisons. Not these jokers.

This kind of thing is problematic for Israel, of course, because where is a decrepit, morally bankrupt, colonial-settler state to turn for meaningful shared histories? You guessed it. Doesn't work so well.

I guess I take solace in knowing that they really only "want to influence Palestinian thinking," as government spokesman Mark Regev put it.

But what better way to influence thinking than by driving home the message with clear and unambiguous action? Actions like the ones that led to this.

Now that's what I call grotesque.

(Fat Arse is gonna be pissed when he recovers from his two-day bender and sees this).

*Kudos to Yellow Snow for keeping this old saw alive.