Informant38

""I just returned from a trip to Israel...my trip focused on shared security challenges that Israel and United States face...The United States and Israel share deep and lasting bonds...They are bonds forged in a common struggle for human rights, democracy, and freedom...There is no doubt that these strong bonds and values will remain as the lodestar of our relationship with our fellow democracy and ally. And Israel is not only our ally; it is a beacon of what democracy can and should mean...If the people of the Middle East are not sure what democracy means, let them look to Israel.
[...]
The first priority of any government is to protect and ensure the safety of its citizens. And that is why I have been a strong supporter of Israel's right to build a security barrier to try to keep those who would do harm to Israel out of Israel. I've taken the International Court of Justice to task for questioning Israel's right to build the security barrier. On this trip, I wanted to see it with my own eyes. I went to Gilo, a Jerusalem neighborhood, and was briefed by Colonel Danny Tirza, who has overseen construction of the fence. He explained how before the construction commenced, residents of Gilo would come under fire. He left a very vivid image in my mind as he talked about how in the kitchens...
[...]
Israelis have long had to make sacrifices in order to protect themselves. And we have to understand the significance of those sacrifices. Too many young soldiers have been lost protecting the lives and livelihood of Israel's citizens, protecting the only democracy in the region."

Hillary Clinton, speech at Yeshiva University
Kristen Lombardi/Village Voice 11.12.05
-
Hillary Clinton went to Israel, and David Duke went to Syria.
For Clinton to say what she said about Israel and democracy is wonderfully bizarre. Israel may be many things in the eyes of the world, but one thing it's provably and dramatically not is a beacon of democracy. Unless by democracy we now mean the manipulation of resources for the sole benefit of a ruling elite. But a case could be made that with the removal over time of the non-voting disenfranchised non-elite, eventually the elite itself would become a whole society, with a bottom and a middle and a top, and could then be said accurately enough to comprise a democracy.
Palestine is a democracy, something Clinton knows. So that when she says Israel is "the only democracy in the region", she's either lying or lapsed mentally.
Bethlehem is now a prison in everything but its famous name.
It becomes harder and harder to withstand the drive of hatred, the pressure to do and say what will only ease it, to vent in anger, to see the world as infested with the hateful everywhere.
Sometimes I think that the creature, or the spirit, or whatever it is, that was or will be responsible for the conflagration of the Apocalypse is desperately trying to get someone else to become its cause. That the hatred and the nihilist frustration are what it wants to see.