Re: We weren't, imo, blackmailed by Israel (we think too much about Israel, and our president, with his fundamentalist thinking tends to think in terms of Revelations, which involves Israel and the ME...
And I maintain that the US was --and still is-- blackmailed by Israel... the same way fanatical Pieds-Noirs blackmailed and terrorized France from 1958 to 1962. The advantage for France and then President Charles de Gaulle was that General Raoul Salan (the Pied-Noir prequel of Ariel Sharon) didn't have nukes. Also, there was no French "Bible Belt", no religious fanaticism among French opinion, and no French televangelists to whip up French hatred against Muslim Algerians... Hence the Pied-Noir diehards and their terrorist outfit OAS lacked the powerful lever of public opinion. Renegades generals Salan, Zeller, Jouhaud and Challe did contemplate a coup d'etat but they understood that the French people would never follow them --not to mention that key military divisions might stick by De Gaulle and oppose them (General Massu, e.g.). |
