Ariel Sharon, former Israeli general and prime minister, was buried today, eulogized by American vice president Joe Biden and the New York Times as a “man of peace.” As Amy Goodman and her guests Rashid Khalidi, Avi Shlaim, and Noam Chomsky revealed on “Democracy Now” this morning, Sharon was anything but. He believed strongly in the use of force, and was responsible for the massacre of thousands of Palestinian refugees outside Beirut, Lebanon in 1982 (the Sabra and Shatila massacre), among other war crimes.

The whitewashing of Sharon — from war criminal to hero — is just one piece in the deception Israel and its almost sycophantic ally, the United States, have been trying to put forward for many years. This false propaganda portrays Israel as seeking peace with the Palestinians when what’s actually happening is the freezing of the so-called “peace process” while Israel pursues its goal of a Biblical “Greater Israel” and persecutes and dispossesses Palestinians. No one outside the United States and Israel is fooled, but as long as the American superpower supports it diplomatically and financially — to the tune of $3.1 billion in 2012, Israel can do whatever it wants.

It’s up to us as Americans to stop this injustice by boycotting Israeli economically, as was done successfully with apartheid South Africa. Go to http://www.bdsmovement.net for details.

But first, if you care about justice and the truth, go to http://www.democracynow.org to download today’s podcast and/or its transcript. Amy Goodman, the host of the show, talks with Rashid Khalidi, Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East; Avi Shlaim, Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, is the author of Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations; and Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author, is Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught for more than 50 years. He is the author of many books on U.S. foreign policy and other subjects.