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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23558.htm
The most profound and ironic statement in Uri Avnery’s article, “The Waldorf-Astoria Summit":
For Netanyahu, the threat of peace has passed. At least for the time being.
Obama demanded a freeze of all settlement activity, including East Jerusalem, from Netanyahu. Netanyahu will not oblige. Obama in response? He’s got nothing. Nada. As the ripples of disappointment go quietly and steadily international.
Obama gave such an inspiring speech out of Cairo to the Muslim World and the Israeli peace movement. He revitalized their hope for resolution of the Palestinanian/Israeli nightmare.
For so long now I have been labeling Obama as a “gamesman” rather than a “statesman”. I think I have been wrong. Still not a statesman, but maybe less than a gamesman. Unless his deliberate strategy has been consistent political “dive-taking”, but I am not cynical enough to declare that yet.
He “punted”, as Taibbi called it, on single payer health care reform, disdaining to use the tremendous leverage that would have given him in negotiating with a Congress enmeshed with the medical industrial complex. Now he has rhetorically flexed with Israel, asking for a settlement freeze, been refused, and seems to be frozen, himself.
This could be a time for phenomenal growth in the history of America and the world, a paradigm shift from the corrupt, patriarchal status quo. But Obama has squandered the opportunity for profound health care reform. He may be able to offer up respectable concessions as victories, but surely they will be compensated for dearly. Maybe the waiving of pre-existing conditions? Again, not insignificant, but given the context of corruption, that is not the only obstruction to humane and affordable health care.
Now, Obama has an opportunity to promote peace in the Middle East specifically with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, prime catalyst for the current radicalization of so many in the Muslim world.
Obama firmly asserts in the name of the President of the United States what Avnery describes as a very reasonable demand, but he has no leverage prepared. Nothing. It is reminiscent of when Hillary Clinton minimized the horrifying, literal steamrolling by Israelis of Palestinian homes by merely labeling it as “unhelpful.”
Uri Avnery believes Obama’s sudden lapse in “steadfastness” over the settlement freeze issue has demoralized the Israeli Left. He even goes so far as to call Obama a “paper tiger.”
Avnery goes on:
Machiavelli taught that one should not challenge a lion unless one is able to kill him. And Netanyahu is not even a lion, just a fox.
[snip]
Logic would say that Obama, before entering the fray, should have decided which instruments of pressure to employ. The arsenal is inexhaustible – from a threat by the US not to shield the Israeli government with its veto in the Security Council, to delaying the next shipment of arms. In 1992 James Baker, George Bush Sr’s Secretary of State, threatened to withhold American guarantees for Israel’s loans abroad. That was enough to drag even Yitzhak Shamir to the Madrid conference.
It seems that Obama was either unable or unwilling to exert such pressures, even secretly, even behind the scenes. This week he allowed the American navy to conduct major joint war-games with the Israeli Air Force.
Some people hoped that Obama would use the Goldstone report to exert pressure on Netanyahu. Just one hint that the US might not use its veto in the Security Council would have sown panic in Jerusalem. Instead, Washington published a statement on the report, dutifully toeing the Israeli propaganda line.
Netanyahu on Charlie Rose this week easily dismissed the respective “wills” of the extreme fringes of his citizenry. Obama dismisses those “fringes” in his own citizenry. But the Left "fringe" in both countries is calling out for peace.
Peace. It is a vision and mandate that deserves better from these leaders.
15 Comments
Aluf Benn in Haaretz will give you much the same thing.
Thanks for this 4jkb! Why would he make such a hollow demand without ANYTHING for a consequence if it leads to disrespect by Israel to IGNORE IT. Wow. Not to mention he has leverage. It would show there is some rational separation between US needs and wants and Israel’s. Break the cronyism that the US has played and frustrated the UN and rest of world about for so long.
We give Israel $3 billion a year. Stop that. DO SOMETHING CONCRETE in response to this disrespect. Net. may say something nice about Obama on Charlie Rose but Obama lost face and credibility with the world, even if Americans, most, didn’t get it this week.
He has leverage once again he is not using. Doesn’t want to appear so codependent with Israel but this clearly does show how scarily codependent we are. Avnery asks if he had no rational counsel from Emanuel who must recognize Obama looks so weak now, he knows the Mid East and political culture so well, and George Mitchell has been around the block for heaven’s sake. Just kabuki word-play about resolving the conflict? But no vision, no heart, no will to “inconvenience” seriously the entire WISH list of Israel which skews its present reality playing on sympathy for their yes tragic history. And where is Hillary. She is supposed to be part of the team, too.
Israeli cronyism is strong in America, nationalism is strong for many Israeli Americans. But there are pro-peace Israelis. And this country is a melting pot of all countries from the middle east and Obama needs to represent that reality, too. And the “lobby” now even stronger thanks to Obama’s lack of backup for his assertion. And there is the matter of Israeli war crimes, but as Avnery also says, the spectre of the Hague on American war crimes may not be far behind the one on Israel’s.
And the irrationality of fear and war mongering from ANY country must be discouraged and responded to with sanity and firmness.
Israel’s war crimes with Gazan war, etc. Obama and Net. focus on the Hamas rockets and pretend the Gazan massacre was honorable “self defense” or just don’t mention it (and the corporate press and much of internet progressive press even) … meanwhile the world and the far left here “gets it” as does the Israeli left. And the US throws its lot entirely with the Right in Israel on this, besides tough words from O. with no backup which makes him and the US lose face and shows Israeli adm. they can say “jump” and US will ask, “how high”? And makes the RIGHT in Israel all the more locked in and stronger because of cowing the US president. Sets them back a lot, sadly, those brave people asserting truth to power! Fighting for peace and humanism.
As well as discouraging the Middle East Muslims whose world we have horrifyingly altered and they deserve amends, not our intensifying their problems and setting up conditions for further anti-western radicalization.
Our lack of “tough love” with our disrespectful and willful ally, Israel, will radicalize the Middle East now even more.
Militarization and corporatization and add that to fundamnetalism that Net. accuses the Muslim world of when his own country, the right there, has melded church and state to a scary national righteous exceptionalism!!!!!
Thanks. Pretty clear Obama can’t be counted on for anything except taking sides with the wrong people.
Ironic, Evelyn. Because his hollow words of protest lose him the appreciation of the Right in Israel, even though he has aided their power, but they don’t see him as an ally, though in reality he is sadly. The same way the right in this country can’t bond with him though he is supporting a conservative agenda in terms of militarism and corporatism, and he is throwing the left with its pupulist and humanist anti-war values under the bus. Is he anorexic about bonding with one constituency? Does his political faith in pragmatism discourage moral clarity?
“Does his political faith in pragmatism discourage moral clarity?” ;yes, just follow the money and remember his choice of Rahm.
At this point Obama should instruct the UN ambassador to not veto any sanctions against Israel.
That would be unprecedented, methinks.
wouldn’t it be refreshing, though.
http://www.israelforum.com/blo…..id=2367619
“off the table” …. “time to move on” … obama is using his betraying single payer/minimize torture speak now on the I/P situation. And what the subtext of all of this is, “Israel said NO WAY, WE WANT WHAT WE WANT”. And Obama must have said, “Fine.” Yeah, going on in there with NO LEVERAGE. Talk the talk with Israel and Palestine … but everybody has to walk Israel’s walk. Oy vey.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1116644.html
“without preconditions” means that from the get-go Israel is saying no.
A good friend’s astute observations:
Isn’t anyone in the Obama administration doing some serious homework on what is REALLY going on over there? Are we the authoritarian follower in this case?
Has America become a “colony”, again, now to Israel?
By whatever label, the US has been blackmailed since the attack on the USS Liberty. Johnson was a traitor to the US. Israel got a warning that the majority of people in the US would not have understood. He reminded the Israeli’s that the US controls Iraqi airspace.
*******
“Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said on Sunday that U.S. forces should forcibly prevent the Israel Air Force from reaching Iran to strike its nuclear facilities.
In an interview with news Web site the Daily Beast, Brzezinski said that the U.S. forces were “not exactly impotent little babies,” saying that Israel forces have “to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?”
When asked what should the United States do in case Israeli jets fly over Iraq anyway, the former national security advisor said the United States would “have to be serious about denying them that right.”
“That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them,” Brzezinski said, adding that Israeli fighters would then “have the choice of turning back or not”
Brzezinski added that “No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse,” referring to the IDF attack on the U.S.S. Liberty during the Six Day War, which Israel claims was a case of mistaken identity.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1115891.html
I am glad Brz. is fighting to move up the slippery slope of demonization to and normalization of a visualization of an attack on Iran!!!! Good GOD!!!!
No, but perhaps Palestine could be a state rather than a penal colony.
Clearly Israelis need better relations with their neighbors and many of those neighbors do not want Israel to exist. This makes progress difficult to conceive, much less achieve. They have rushed to talks many times and what has it achieved? Only the Egypt-Israel agreements, if I remember correctly, have really paid off. It helps to have concrete goals or some vision of a future relationship which is acceptable to all parties. That is hard to do when we begin to consider the entire region.
That’s why I fully understand the hard-line Israeli view of a military defense first and foremost. It’s hard for Americans to put themselves into that mental state, but it’s real.
For America it’s important too. How long should we have to put up with jihadist Muslims who view us as the enemy? How long should we have to worry about our energy supply being somehow tied to this religious and political feud? We have a stake in pushing forward, but not the same stake in the political future (especially if we develop other energy sources and reduce involvement with Middle Eastern countries). So, the locals should be pushed, but it’s their future and it must be their vision which creates it. We can help.
The history is confusing and complicated and long. Pfffft. It’s easier to look at the status quo and go from there. What does each ’side’ want? What are the agreement and what are the difficult issues?
Everyone wants economic development. Even my state wants that. Everyone wants military defense. Everyone wants a home. I know that feeling intimately. Where they tend to have difficulty is with Jerusalem. Call it spiritual or religious, but it is a piece of land with great significance to everyone in the world.
I can suggest it should be a country open to the world. But, as I said, it’s not my land to offer. What do the people of the region and the diaspora think? If it were open to the world then who should govern it?
These are where I think the Israelis become difficult. They currently have the city and anyone in that position would naturally be reluctant to give it up. What might the other side offer to make a deal? Is a deal even possible?
Discuss…
MarkH, interesting to hear Mr. Net. talk about the danger of Muslim Fundamentalism, and the “threats” from without when one considers the Zionist perspective described that follows. Exceptionalism. I have no idea what percentage holds this perspective in Israel today, but the Right certainly has strong power right now in Israel. (And yes the US certainly routed the Indians out of their legitimate lands, too, and committed moral atrocities with blind exceptionalism denial; and the slavery issue is a profound crime against humanity, too. But we should all be learning by the horrors of history, not replicating them) We need a humanist paradigm shift from power and control mode to partnership and cooperation:
http://www.thedailystar.net/fo…..enness.htm
~~~EDITED HERE FOR LENGTH~~~
~~~ModNote: Please remember that FDL is bound by Fair Use guidelines. Limit your quoted material to 200 words and include a link. Thank you.~~~
Mod, so sorry for that. Mea culpa.
http://www.thedailystar.net/fo…..enness.htm
To paraphrase the balance of this article, apparently in 1948 the Zionists expelled some 800,000 Palestinians, leveled towns and villages and set up the Jewish state of Israel. According to this author, M. Shahid Alam, Professor of Economics at Northeastern University, “The Lord’s promise was not restricted to Canaan; in a few more generous verses, He had expanded the Jewish inheritance to include all the lands between the Nile and Euphrates (Genesis: 15.18).” The author lists Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and finishes with “perhaps more.”
In 1956 Ben-Gurion told the Knesset, he goes on: “The real reason for it [the Suez War] is the restoration of the kingdom of David and Solomon to its Biblical borders.”
So some Zionists see usurpation of Middle Eastern territory as their divine right and human rights atrocities as immune from secular moral and legal censure since they are waging a divinely ordained campaign.
Yes, we all can be wary of religious zealotry in our own and other countries. But Israel has many WMDs and a seemingly symbiotic alliance with another militarily mighty country, the US, that has violently and illegally (and with the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption) invaded another country, Iraq, in that same “road map” area of “divinely ordained yearned for land for some Israelis” and a now Right-led, more religiously-nationalized government.
So Israel’s distrust of other countries is justified, of course, with the history of violence and fundamentalism becoming more extreme in some places, but so is justified other countries’ distrust of Israel.
And Israel has a right to be outraged by rockets that traumatize its citizenry, but to defiantly deny its own tremendous human rights violations, so vicious and disproportionate and onto civilians primarily, and for it to show a profound lack of empathy of how other countries regard it as well as the occupied Palestinians within it, and with a super power ally, the US, that seems blindly codependent with it, unwilling to discourage Israel’s leaders’ dangerous aggressive impulses and agendas (and with maybe a mutually beneficial agenda in occupying energy rich Middle East lands for profit and aggrandizement), why would Israel and the western world NOT be able to fathom WHY other countries would consider Israel ALSO a most dangerous not innocent and put upon neighbor and occupier?
So for Net. to present Israel as “victim” and demand a blind loyalty to it from the U.S., with a US kool-aid drinking media black out against truth-telling in regards to its violence and aggression, is most disturbing.
The demonization of citizens and races radicalizes groups in those groups and the potential and/or acting out of violence is cultivated and launched and tragically sustained down through generations.