The crocodile tears of Samantha Power

Samantha Power is a fan of Richard Holbrooke, who helped cover up one of the twentieth century’s worst genocides.
Eric Bridiers United States Mission Geneva

Finding an ancestral link to Ireland seems to be mandatory for ambitious American politicians. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama all successfully dug for genealogical gold.

Newt Gingrich — who famously branded Palestinians an “invented people” — has been less lucky in inventing a Hibernian past. There is a hilarious passage in Lawrence Donegan’s book No News At Throat Lake about Gingrich visiting County Donegal in search of his antecedents, only to be told there was no record of them in local archives.

Samantha Power is unmistakably Irish: she was born in Dublin. If she is ever tempted to explore the full reach of her family tree, I hope to God that she doesn’t claim me as a relative. Power is my mother’s maiden name.

Profitable

Like most Irish-Americans who have climbed the political ladder, Samantha Power is an opportunist and a hypocrite. She has built a profitable career out of posing as a human rights activist, while being happy to court human rights abusers whenever it was expedient to do so.

Back in 2002, Power apparently upset those sensitive souls in the Zionist lobby when she dared to suggest that the US should impose a “solution” in Palestine. It was an offensive remark as it inferred that America wanted peace, when it had provided Israel with many of the arms being used to butcher Palestinians. But that wasn’t why the lobby got offended: it felt that she had committed the mortal sin of criticizing Israel.

Writing in The Huffington Post, Shmuley Boteach — apparently the “most famous rabbi in America” — recently bragged of how he convinced the Zionist lobby to trust Power. Boteach arranged for Power to meet 40 top lobbyists. During the encounter, “tears streamed down her cheeks,” he wrote, as Power insisted that her comments had been misconstrued.

Nauseating

As if that wasn’t nauseating enough, I’ve also read an article in the Israeli daily Haaretz about Power’s recent job in the White House. In 2009, she played a “central role,” the paper says, in coordinating contacts between the US and Israel on managing the political fall-out of Israel’s attack on Gaza at the beginning of that year. Power helped Israel to minimize the damage caused by the Goldstone report, the findings of a UN mission that Israel had perpetrated war crimes.

This, let us remember, was the same Samantha Power who advocates “atrocity prevention” and the “responsibility to protect.” Palestinians attacked by Israeli and American weapons, however, are not deemed worthy of protection.

Arguably more disgusting again is the fact that Power has edited a hagiography of Richard Holbrooke.

According to Suzanne Nossel — an understudy to Hillary Clinton who went on to head Amnesty International’s office in the US — Power and Holbrooke are kindred spirits. Nossel is probably right, albeit not for the reasons she cited in her contribution to the journal Foreign Affairs.

Just as Power has shielded Israel from criticism, Holbrooke (as an assistant secretary of state in the 1970s) helped cover up atrocities carried out by Indonesia in East Timor. Holbrooke has been fêted as a campaigner against genocide, when he actually facilitated one of the twentieth century’s worst acts of genocide: about one-third of East Timor’s population was wiped out.

Samantha Power is no friend of those who sincerely champion human rights: they have an obligation to call her out as a fraud. She is adept at crying tears over atrocities undertaken by America’s enemies. How many tears has she shed for the victims of US drone strikes or Israel’s siege on Gaza? Precisely none.

Comments

transcript

Permalink Artemis replied on Tue, 06/18/2013 - 17:34

"Boteach arranged for Power to meet 40 top lobbyists." - 40! How traumatic. A transcript of that meeting would be fascinating to read and learn exactly what buttons they pressed to get the tears flowing.

Opportunism and hypocrisy

Permalink ajamu chaminuka replied on Wed, 06/19/2013 - 01:19

Opportunism and hypocrisy seems to be a thread common to so many in the governing structure of the usa. Progressive forces should be doing everything to deny legitimacy to the power structure. They only have legitimacy if we give it to them!

Chutzpah?.....

Permalink Gary Williams replied on Thu, 06/20/2013 - 05:13

I'll say one thing about Gingrich and other propagandists claiming Palestinians are an invented people when maps of the Middle East published prior to 1948 clearly label the area "Palestine" (or some variation thereof) - not "Israel".......it takes a lot of /something/ to try and claim the new M.E nationality - "Israeli" - is really the old one while the name on most maps going back centuries -- "Palestine" -- is newly invented!!

The old tactics

Permalink Artemis replied on Thu, 06/20/2013 - 08:51

The tactic has ALWAYS been to lie and spread false information with an audacity that is breathtaking. And it obviously works, because from the first Zionist plot to take over the land of Palestine until today, it has never changed.
What is also astonishing, is the fact that whenever Zionists and the British Government discussed the land, it was ALWAYS referred to as Palestine and the people as Palestinian Arabs or Palestinians. This was also true for all official documents. So they recognized that it was indeed Palestine until they had turned things around to suit their projected takeover.
The fact that a vast number of citizens in most countries have been indoctrinated to believe that the land was never Palestine, demonstrates how powerful the Israeli lobby is, the misuse of Holocaust history, and the lack of logical thought. However, there are more and more people who will never think of Israel without remembering that the land was Palestine and that the land which is occupied is Palestine.
Ms. Power should receive 40 delegates from Palestine to educate her on the history and present day situation in Palestine.