Tag Archives: Israel Palestine

Political Rants

Rorschach president.

Perhaps you know this about me, but I’ve never been one to associate support for official Israeli government policy with support for Israelis. There is plenty of dissent in Israel around the conflict with the Palestinians, so I don’t know why anyone on this side of the ocean should feel reluctant to criticize actions that merit criticism. There is such demagoguery on this issue in the U.S., though, that very few people speak their minds, particularly those in the political class. However, to the extent that words and actions matter, I would have to say that Barack Obama has been at least as big a booster of the right-wing Israeli government as his predecessor, and in concrete terms – military aid, security coordination, etc. – arguable and even bigger one.

That’s why the hue and cry over Obama’s Israel policy, initially aimed at procuring a Republican victory in Anthony Weiner’s old Brooklyn district, seems so unmoored from reality. Where did they get this idea that Obama is somehow “soft” on support for Israel? I think I can guess – from somebody’s racist best friend. This appears to be an effort to crack Obama’s support amongst Jewish voters via yet another attempt to dog-whistle his “otherness” – in essence, his black identity – in a part of the country with a history of tension between black and Jewish residents. Republican candidates see an opportunity here – that’s why they’re more expulsionist than Avigdor Lieberman. That’s why we were treated to the spectacle of Rick Perry dancing with Rabbis.

Just to be clear, I do not support Obama’s policy toward Israel/Palestine. But to suggest that he is somehow anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian is just … well, that’s your crack talking. With respect to his actions and rhetoric as president, nothing could be further from the truth. And yet the Republican field senses a vulnerability on this issue, so they’re more than happy to exploit it. I can never quite work out whether these people are amazingly clever or astoundingly ignorant. Either the Republicans don’t know that he’s essentially operating from their right on this issue, or they’re race-baiting him in a not-too subtle way. Either way, it is doing neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis any good. It’s just helping to generate more bad policy.

More bad policy is just what we don’t need. But all you Likud-hawks out there, never fear: Obama is squarely in your corner.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Strange medicine.

Obama’s Middle East address was full of familiar themes. There’s been a lot of dust kicked up about the suggestion that any lasting peace in Israel/Palestine should be based on the pre-June 1967 borders with mutually agreeable land swaps. That was a bit like Gingrich saying he didn’t believe in gutting Medicare and turning it into a lame, unworkable voucher program. Nothing draws criticism like brief moments of relative sanity. But I digress.

What wasn’t surprising about the speech? The hard swipes at our perennial punching bags, Syria and Iran. The heavily caveated criticism of Bahrain and Yemen. The non-existence of Saudi Arabia. These are all too attractive not to make it into the final draft. But in my mind, there were probably three items worth referencing:

“Drawing from what we’ve learned around the world, we think it’s important to focus on trade, not just aid; and investment, not just assistance. ” 

This was the magic of the marketplace passage that’s been previewed over the past few days. Obama promised to get the IMF and World Bank working to “modernize and stabilize the economies of Tunisia and Egypt.” What he didn’t say was that the mass protests in Egypt he referenced earlier were fueled, in part, by neoliberal reforms of the type he’s describing. All I can say is that the revolutionaries in Egypt and Tunisia had better be on their guard, because plugging their economies into the Washington consensus only means striving to be another Honduras.

“For decades, the conflict between Israelis and Arabs has cast a shadow over the region. For Israelis, it has meant living with the fear that their children could get blown up on a bus or by rockets fired at their homes, as well as the pain of knowing that other children in the region are taught to hate them. For Palestinians, it has meant suffering the humiliation of occupation, and never living in a nation of their own.”

This is, in a sense, boilerplate framing of the issue. Only Israelis are killed, blown up, etc., in this conflict. Palestinians are merely “humiliated”. From this statement, you’d never know that the vast, vast majority of deaths in this conflict have been among the Palestinians. Also, you never hear this or any president talk about Palestinian security. The only time they use the term security in reference to Palestinians is when they’re talking about Palestinian responsibility to ensure Israeli security. That thing Obama said about every nation having the right to defend itself? Within a few lines he was talking about a “demilitarized” Palestinian state. So much for self defense.

Still, the 1967 borders argument is a rare glimpse at sanity, and I credit him for it. Will it last the weekend? We shall see.

The Strauss-Kahn Consensus.  Not sure why Dominique Strauss-Kahn is under arrest. He only did to that poor woman what the IMF has been doing to poor countries for decades, to choruses of praise from the U.S.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Stuff and nonsense.

Just a few short takes this week. I’ve got a splitter of a headache – one of those neck and shoulder jobs. So my concentration is a bit compromised, but here goes.

Again-and-againistan. That Rolling Stone reporter who wrote the recent article on Gen. McChrystal has drawn a lot of criticism from various mainstream corporate press mavens. No surprise there. They are so obsessed with covering the ball-game stories – the ins and outs of policy making, careers, and personalities – that they neglect to examine these stupid wars that have been dragging on year after year. How closely have any of them scrutinized the rationale behind this policy?

Why the hell are we in Afghanistan? Our leaders say it’s to disrupt and destroy Al Qaeda so that they cannot plan new attacks on us. But to the extent that people like Osama Bin Laden are involved in operational planning for global terror attacks, all he and his pals need is a room (or a cave, but I suspect a room) big enough for a white board. Can anyone claim that we have denied him that in nearly nine years of war? Did our drones stop the Times Square bomber? (Fact is, they helped push him over the edge.) Where’s the story on that, kids?

No settlement. Despite Netanyahu’s fence-mending visit to the White House, there is no light at the end of the Israel/Palestine tunnel. His government is still strangling Gaza, still encroaching on more and more of the West Bank (in spite of the so-called settlement “freeze”, which is so conditional as to be meaningless). Old Bibi, like so many Israeli leaders, is beholden to the Frankenstein-like settlement movement that is a political lynchpin of his ruling coalition. Even if he wanted to close the settlements, he couldn’t (and trust me, he doesn’t want to). So the suffering goes on, and we keep underwriting it.

Gusher that keeps on giving. It’s been more than 70 days since BP blew a hole in the Earth, and the hemorrhaging continues. Do you sense a pattern here? Crises that never seem to end. This is a bad one. And yet, we shouldn’t pretend as though all of this oil, gas, and dispersant is spewing into a pristine Gulf ecosystem. According to the Coast Guard, millions of gallons of oil routinely spill into the Gulf every year – something like an Exxon Valdez size spill every three or four years for the past decade. Big as this blowout is, our problem is bigger than that. Let’s make the solution bigger, too. 

That’s all I’ve got. Bed time.

luv u,

jp