Israelis Fear Obama. That's The Point.
Barack Obama can do virtually nothing to halt the mounting fear among Israelis that he is hostile to them: no visits, no speeches, no jets. If you need proof, and don't know Hebrew, just look at the body language of Ben Caspit, the populist-journalist host of the very widely watched "Journal" program on Channel One, Friday nights.
Caspit fancies himself the voice of the common people, or at least its conscience, sort of like Chris Matthews. He may, God help us, be right, at least for the moment. This past Friday, he was (let's call it) interviewing two relatively moderate members of Knesset, one from Likud, and one from Kadima, both of whom support the settlement freeze, both of whom insist that this is not just a sham, for all of its qualifications. Kadima's Gideon Ezra, the former deputy director of the Shavak (the state security services), even insisted the freeze was very late in coming, for all the obvious strategic reasons; he implied that Kadima might well be prepared to join the coalition if Netanyahu required their support to pursue a deal with the Palestinians.
Both of these responses might have raised the antennae of an interviewer. Caspit was having none of it. Instead, he wanted to talk about the public statement Friday by Likud's Limor Livnat, a formidable minister in Netanyahu's coaliton, that the freeze only proves Obama is anti-Israel, that "we have fallen into the hands of a terrible administration."
The MKs tried to finesse her statement. Caspit decided to answer his own question. (You can watch him by clicking here and sliding the time bar to about 13:40.) "But in essence," Caspit said, "she [Livnat] said courageously what most of us think. The Americans--this administration--and I don't fear them because I am not, lucky for all of us, a minister--is really an administration that burdens us, that is awful and terrible for Israel." Nobody contradicted him. Later (at around 17:10) Caspit said: "What, and soon we'll have to freeze in Jerusalem? This is unprecedented." Gideon Ezra protested that, for example, starting a new settlement in Nof Zion--"which is really Jabel Mukaber"--is an absurd provocation; that the key is to strengthen moderate forces among the Palestinians. Caspit's answer in the form of a question (21.30): "So we will have given up 10 months of settlement for nothing, just so the goyim will say we are okay."
I won't dwell on the pathos of Caspit's rhetoric. Let's just say that when Theodore Herzl wrote his play "The New Ghetto" he was not anticipating the journalists of "The Jewish State." (For an antidote, read Gideon Levy's exasperated column from today's Haaretz.) Yet if Caspit was right to claim that he speaks for a majority of Israelis just now, what should Obama do about it? How to respond to the ways Caspi's talk embodies virtually everything Israelis fear in an American administration?
HERE"S THE THING. Instead of trying to allay this fear, Obama should use it. For what Caspit's outbursts really imply is the slow transformation of Israeli politics, where the fear of messing up relations with Washington slowly burns in; and Israelis, like Palestinians, are growing hungry for a "political horizon." Nobody really believes anymore in the "lets-give-them-land-and-maybe-they'll-leave-us-alone" school of peacemaking. But nobody but the hard right believes either in the plausibility of indefinite occupation. Caspit is afraid of change, and for all of his bravado, afraid of isolation. He may not realize this, but he's actually softening Israelis up for something creative from Washington.
The fear is there, and growing, you see. To pressure less will not earn Obama less animus. The point is to fill the vacuum the fear creates; refocus the conversation not only on what Israelis should stop doing, but on positive steps that make concrete what positive steps the world community--goyim--expect Israelis and Palestinians to take.
Here, for example, are three things the Obama administration can do to help reshape the conversation here:
First, it can state--now, in response to the "freeze"--that American policy is to pursue a deal based on the Taba Agreements of 2001. The "Clinton parameters" were at the heart of those negotiations. Senator Mitchell and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton might well enlist the former president to lay out those principles in a joint press conference. Mahmoud Abbas has virtually said he will immediately resume negotiations if Netanyahu will agree "to restart talks where they were left off." Abbas was referring to his months of meetings with Ehud Olmert, but those talks were themselves based on variations of the Taba plan.
Second, the Dubai economic crisis could be a huge boost for Palestine, in the ironic way the Gulf war of 1991 was huge boost for Amman. Then, as now, the press was full of dire warnings about Palestinians losing their jobs in the Gulf and, hence, remittances back to families drying up. But, actually, the return of thousands of Palestinians (100,000 work in Dubai as engineers, instructors and in technology-related professions) to the West Bank would be a great boost to Palestinian intellectual capital. The Obama administration should publicly call for the return of qualified people, and task the American consul in Jerusalem with reviewing applications and monitoring Israeli responses to them. As I've argued in the past, Palestinians do not lack financial capital to develop their private sector. What they lack is access to their own talent and the capacity to execute their business plans under the burdens of the occupation. If Israel is serious about a peace partner, this is an extraordinary chance to help develop one.
Third, assuming Marwan Barghouti will indeed be released, Senator Mitchell should meet with him. The symbolic impact would be resounding.
These are all doable. Again, Obama will get no credit from Israelis by refraining from doing them.
Israel's right-wing is probably not afraid of President Obama or of US policy decisions to come. The reason being that they have usually been indoctrinated by their experience in conscripted military service to believe absolutely in the validity of their cause. And that is hard to modify by reason, logic or even morality.
They obviously believe that the killing of hundreds of civilians in both Lebanon and Gaza was entirely justified and that they would repeat the action if requested. The army says it was right, the state says it was right and their rabbis endorse their actions.
The substantiated facts by numerous independent bodies, including Goldstone, that those killings were gratuitous and were not carried out in self-defense, are ignored in their totality, because they are supported by every Israeli authority.
Except, of course, by those hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are dismayed and horrified at the slaughter of civilians and even more aghast at the convoluted official efforts to justify the unjustifiable.
That there are two peoples, two nations, who both have valid claims to the land between the Sea and the River - is not in dispute. Certainly not by the majority of Israel's previous prime ministers. However, today's politicians are less forthright in making that critical admission. Critical to any peace. That's the point. And that is why we have reason to be afraid. All of us.
November 29, 2009 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
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January 11, 2011 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
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March 22, 2011 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Until Israeli renounces its real estate pact with God, as Tony Judt has called it, Obama is right to treat them with benign neglect.
A nation where Bush Jr. is wildly popular and Obama is in single digits approval is one in a very sad, deluded state of mind.
November 29, 2009 10:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "A nation where Bush Jr. is wildly popular and Obama is in single digits approval is one in a very sad, deluded state of mind." - rhallnj
SEE: Israel’s “Pathology” – by Ira Chernus, 11/14/09, truthout | Op-Ed
(excerpt)...The Jewish Israeli body politic is diseased, that one man writes, because it has not adjusted to the Jews’ reentry into history with a state of their own. Too many Jews are still stuck in the ancient feeling of powerlessness and victimhood.
Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told Israelis that their country is militarily powerful, and neither friendless nor at risk. They should therefore stop thinking and acting like victims. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, says that the whole world is against Israel and that Israelis are at risk of another Holocaust. That message of Jewish weakness and victimhood appeals to enough voters to keep him in power.
Gripped by such unrealistic fears, Israelis refuse Obama’s call to stop expanding settlements and start compromising for peace. Israel’s resistance to Obama’s serious peace effort has been called “nothing less than pathological.”...
...But who would write such a fierce attack, calling Israelis sick with “victimhood”? Some anti-Semitic apologist for Israel’s enemies? Nope. It’s Henry Siegman, who spent sixteen years as executive director of the American Jewish Congress...
...Just look at the front page of any Israeli newspaper on any given day, where a surprising percentage of the stories answer the same central question: Who is threatening / hating / vilifying Israel and the Jews today? Iran, with its supposedly terrifying nuclear threat, continues to make the front page nearly every day. And Israel remains obsessed with its fear of the Goldstone Report – written by an eminent Zionist jurist who has now been magically transformed into an “enemy of Israel” – when the rest of the world has long since forgotten it...
ENTIRE OP-ED – http://www.truthout.org/1114097
P.S. Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Read more of his writing on Israel, Palestine and American Jews on his blog. - http://chernus.wordpress.com/
November 29, 2009 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "A nation where Bush Jr. is wildly popular and Obama is in single digits approval is one in a very sad, deluded state of mind." - rhallnj
SEE ALSO - "Shulamit Aloni: We are a nefarious people", By Naama Lanir, 11/29/09, YNET News
Former Meretz leader tells Ynet on 81st birthday that 'what we do in West Bank is worse than all pogroms'
(excerpts) Former Meretz leader Shulamit Aloni told Ynet on her 81st birthday Sunday that she was dissatisfied with the condition of the State of Israel. "It's hard for me to say a kind word about the state today," she said. "We are in great distress morally and socially, as well as in the realms of politics and law."...
...She also condemned those opposed to a prisoner swap deal for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. "No one should be speaking this nonsense about 'blood on the hands'. Since 2000, with the launching of the second intifada, we have murdered thousands. We too have blood on our hands," she remarked...
...Aloni also lashed out at settlers who torch Palestinian olive groves in the West Bank. "It is against all morals, and even the halacha," she said. "The halacha says: Thou shalt not destroy fruit-bearing trees."
The former prominent politician added, "We are a nefarious people. What we are doing in the West Bank is worse than all the pogroms done to the Jews." But she qualified her statement by saying she was "not referring to the Nazis, but the Cossacks".
Aloni also condemned Israel for its attitude towards the Obama administration...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3812366,00.html
November 30, 2009 3:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "A nation where Bush Jr. is wildly popular and Obama is in single digits approval is one in a very sad, deluded state of mind." - rhallnj
AND SEE: "Israelis and Obama", By HENRY SIEGMAN, OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR, 11/01/09, nytimes.com
(excerpts)...Presidential aides worry that the hostility toward President Obama among Israelis can be damaging to his peace efforts. This is undoubtedly true.
But a White House campaign to ingratiate the president with Israel’s public could be far more damaging, because the reason for this unprecedented Israeli hostility toward an American president is a fear that President Obama is serious about ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Israelis do not oppose President Obama’s peace efforts because they dislike him; they dislike him because of his peace efforts. He will regain their affection only when he abandons these efforts.
That is how Israel’s government and people respond to any outside pressure for a peace agreement that demands Israel’s conformity to international law and to U.N. resolutions that call for a return to the 1967 pre-conflict borders and reject unilateral changes in that border...
...Rather, the conflict continues because U.S. presidents — and to a far greater extent, members of the U.S. Congress, who depend every two years on electoral contributions — have accommodated a pathology that can only be cured by its defiance.
Only a U.S. president with the political courage to risk Israeli displeasure — and criticism from that part of the pro-Israel lobby in America which reflexively supports the policies of the Israeli government of the day, no matter how deeply they offend reason or morality — can cure this pathology...
» Henry Siegman, a former national director of the American Jewish Congress, is director of the U.S./Middle East Project.
ENTIRE OP-ED - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/opinion/02iht-edsiegman.html?_r=1
November 30, 2009 4:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
The irrational fears undergirding the stupid lies about Obama being "anti-Israel" are indicative of a positive potential here.
According to this paranoia-based view of the world, anything short of 100% blind obeisance to whatever Israel ever does is "anti-Israel" and requires all sorts of maniac cowards to push all sorts of panic buttons.
Imagine then what could happen if America were to truly take not an anti-Israel stance, nor even a neutral stance, but simply a new position that it would henceforth no longer be pro-settler-expansionist. This could scare enough people in the Israeli government out of their twisted barbarism and into serious negotiations. This is liable to happen once the "pro-peace" segment of the Jewish electorate in America stops denying that its number one obstacle is the anti-peace segment of that same electorate.
Convincing the US Congress that a majority of Jewish voters want an intelligent pro-Israel and pro-US policy to replace the asinine-pro-settler and anti-US policy dictated by AIPAC will by no means guarantee successful negotiations towards a lasting Israel-Palestine deal. Failing to liberate Congress from AIPAC, on the other hand, will almost surely doom ANY and ALL other efforts at seizing the current opportunity represented by the sidelining of credible hardliners in Israel and Palestine coupled with a lingering readiness of the civilized world to follow the lead of the US.
November 29, 2009 10:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
We need to liberate not only Congress but our great country from AIPAC Jews.
November 29, 2009 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Failing to liberate Congress from AIPAC" is almost a certainty, unfortunately.
November 29, 2009 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's vey hard to get rid of Jews.
November 29, 2009 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, you're demagogically excluding Peace Now and much of the Jewish electorate in U.S.A. from the debate, so give yourself some credit in that direction.
November 29, 2009 7:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Israelis do not believe in land for peace. Israeli do not believe in a Palestinian state. And, despite this
Israelis don't believe in indefinite occupation either.
They believe that with settlements they can eventually dominate and annex the West Bank. That's why they won't yield on settlements. It's a long term policy. Decades, perhaps, to finally succeed. But only a few more years before the facts on the ground render a two state solution impossible.
Obama can't do anything about it. He doesn't have the votes and never will have them. You Lefties played your hand with the settlement freeze and lost. He'll never listen to you again.
Other events will move to center stage, are moving to center stage.
November 29, 2009 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
If by the lazy term "lefties" you mean Israeli terrorist settlers living on the left bank of the Jordan river, their counterparts lost their miserable cinderblocks in Gaza and they themselves are quite unlikely to ever get all of Samaria and Judea. The main question here is how long and how far will America accompany these loonies on the descent they are making into their own private hell?
November 29, 2009 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
November 29, 2009 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
November 29, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are overt signs worldwide that sentiment is slowly but surely turning away from AIPAC-style agendas to influence foreign policy in favor of Israel. American Jewish opinion is finally waking up to the fact that it is now on the wrong side of the argument and that it might be prudent to be seen to support democracy rather than powerful, political, self-interest groups.
Meanwhile, the Conservative Friends of Israel lobby in Britain - AIPAC's UK counterpart - is casting round for a credible excuse as to why it supports settlement expansion when it is very clearly British government policy that such settlements are illegal.
There is little doubt that many Jewish communities outside Israel are extremely uneasy at Israel's success in twisting the arm of the US government to discredit an independent report by an eminent South African jurist, on alleged war crimes in Gaza during Israel's attack in January.
Trying, and succeeding, to discredit Goldstone will probably be seen, in hindsight, as a fatal error by AIPAC supporters and by the accused.
November 29, 2009 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
American Jews and American people in general overwhelmingly support a resolution of the Israel Arab conflict that will guarantee the right of Jewish majority state of Israel to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.
You don't. You are the wrong side of the argument and that it might be prudent for people like you to be seen to support democracy rather than powerful, political, self-interest groups like Hamas which are trying to destroy Israel.
November 29, 2009 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is no 'Jewish majority state of Israel'.
The majority of Jews, well over seven million, live outside of the Israeli state, like myself. We value freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Just as did my parents and grandparents from the Pale of Settlement.
And so did Theodor Herzl. There is little doubt, given his philosophy and ideals, that he would have preferred, perhaps not Vienna or Paris, but certainly London in preference to modern day Jerusalem.
November 29, 2009 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I understand that you are uncomfortable with an idea of a state where Jews are in majority and want this state to be destroyed or the demographics of this state to be changes one way or another that Jews become minority. However, American Jews and American people in general overwhelmingly disagree with your desires.
November 29, 2009 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is little doubt that if you want do something innovative, you would rather live in Israel than in UK.
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Start-up-Nation-Story-Israels-Dan-Senor-Saul-Singer/9780771079672-item.html?pticket=5latl0adbb21pi45m3d2us2hn%2fxVmgLT1Z5k%2b3sDQkoingJtNpM%3dNovember 29, 2009 5:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're wasting your time on Colindale. The man teaches history but doesn't know that Herzl hoped that economic and social policies would eventually drive Arabs out of Palestine (it's in his diaries).
He's equally knowledgeable about the rest of history.
November 29, 2009 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where does he teach?
November 29, 2009 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good thinking! Maybe you can go mau-mau him at his place of work!
November 29, 2009 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mind your own business, liberating world from the AIPAC Jews.
November 29, 2009 7:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
The land called Israel was stolen pure and simple by a bunch zealots. Not a whole lot different than those that sole this country from the Native Americans who live here.
How does one say Trail of Tears in Yiddish ?
C
November 29, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amazing - and sad - isn't it? From Hillel, Freud, Mendelssohn, and Chagall, we now see devolution to Netanyahu, Livni, both Liebermans, and "AnnaA".
Tragic, I'd say.
November 30, 2009 1:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
November 29, 2009 8:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Trying, and succeeding, to discredit Goldstone will probably be seen, in hindsight, as a fatal error by AIPAC supporters and by the accused." - COLINDALE
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November 29, 2009 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
But nobody but the hard right believes either in the plausibility of indefinite occupation.
This can’t be right, Bernard. No doubt, Israelis don’t want to occupy West Bank territory forever. But most of them seem to be willing to occupy it for as long as it takes to accomplish their ultimate ends in Palestine. The more important political realty is that there are quite clearly a very large number of Israelis who want to complete the colonization of “Judea and Samaria”, and then annex those territories. They also want to establish full Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. How large a number are we talking about? It must be a majority. Otherwise, the observed mass public reaction of fear and hostility toward the Obama administration that you are describing would be altogether inexplicable.
Obama only took the position that the Israelis must stop building additional settlements. He didn’t demand that even one single settlement be dismantled or abandoned. And yet, the country of Israel went completely bonkers over this development, as you describe, and an overwhelming majority now regard Obama as their enemy because he made so bold as to insist on this opening gesture of good faith. What more proof do people need that the West Bank expansion and colonization project reflects an ambition that is deeply seated psychologically among a substantial majority of Israelis?
For years we were told that the settlements were mainly the product of an extreme right movement, and that most would be abandoned for the sake of progress toward a final settlement. How can any dispassionate observer believe this legend any longer? Not only are Israelis unwilling to abandon existing West Bank colonies, even the request that they make an opening gesture of halting expansion into further colonies has generated mass hostility.
So it appears to me that outside the 20% or so in the left-wing peace movement, there are only two kinds of Israelis left: There are the ones who, like Spider above, frankly admit and embrace the expansionist agenda; and then there are the ones who support that agenda in their hearts, but who dissemble and rationalize and prevaricate and tirelessly create thick, distracting smokescreens to shield those who are actually carrying the agenda out on the ground. It has also become clear that far fewer Israelis than previously advertised are the secular “moderns” whose pose they strike, but that most practice some degree of theocratic, scripture-based politics.
I have been following this issue for years, and where the West Bank colonies are concerned I have heard every rationalizing narrative in the book from the Israeli right, the center-right, the center and the center-left. These narratives have all now been exposed as fables in the Netanyahu-Lieberman era of unmasking, and are up in smoke and gone with the wind. Why shouldn’t reasonable people conclude that a substantial majority of Israelis are liars, bigots and thieves, and that the only thing they have engaged in more successfully than the aggressive ethnic cleansing and colonization of Palestinian territory is the manufacture of lies, buncombe and balderdash about what they are doing?
Israelis appear perfectly willing, once the coveted West Bank territories have been annexed, to sit out another several decades of opprobrium and opposition as the world fusses and fumes, but then gradually accommodates itself to a blatant seizure of territory by force. Israelis are thoroughly comfortable with paranoia, self-separation and self-pity, and are proud of their success in fighting for everything they have against a world of opponents. And they know that despite the occasional expressions of frustration, and symbolic gestures of disapproval from the world’s major powers, nothing really devastating ever comes from the external disapproval. So there is no reason to think that they look on the prospect of carrying on for many years against widespread disdain and disapproval as a particularly fearsome, or even negative, prospect.
What about the rest of the West Bank? It’s true; the Israelis don’t want to occupy that forever either. Currently, they appear determined to turn those territories into a quasi-autonomous Arab Quarter or principality under an overarching Israeli dominion. Israel’s many wealthy supporters worldwide are more than eager to flood the new Palestinian non-state entity with cash-for-submission dollars to purchase the necessary cooperation from their defeated opponents. And there are already plenty of enterprising Palestinians, exhausted by persistent impoverishment and failure in a losing battle they will never win against Israel and its powerful global backers, lining up to cash in on the new order.
The Palestinian cause is probably lost. So what is next? At some point, the world needs to wake up to the fact that it has a dangerous, nuclear-armed theocracy on its hands in Israel, and that this theocracy will be emboldened by its impending success in its long 100-year war for the conquest of Palestine.
November 29, 2009 8:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have learned much from your many insightful posts on TPM, Dan, but there are some serious shortcomings in this one.
1. Your analysis of the Israeli political landscape is incomplete. You omit mention of the large number who would basically agree with something like the 2003 Geneva formula, but who are unwilling to stick their necks out for it and sit instead in silent pessimism, or resign themselves, but with reluctance, to a tokenly gentler variant of pro-settler barbarism. Opposition to Obama's call for settlement freeze has been condemned by the settler propagandists and their highly active and influential synchopants in the US news media. There is no "mass hostility" to Obama, however. Israelis are mistrustful because he seems to have been pushing them harder than he has pushed the Arabs, but realists recognize that under Cheney-Bush the US was a braindead Likud door mat, and fully expected that idiocy to cease once sanity and competence returned to the White House.
2. The biggest allies of the Israeli settler-terrorists are the Palestinian absolutist terrorists. The international failure to fully appreciate this gives that double-sided lunatic fringe great power to sabotage any incipient peace negotiations. The day the US commits fully firmly to working for a two-state solution regardless of what ANY terrorist might EVER do, is the day these lunatics are doomed. The day America's Jews rise up and free themselves from AIPAC is the day when a US president (if so inclined, and I think Obama is) will be ready and able to make such an ironclad commitment.
3. Demographics alone suffice to keep a Palestinian state from being a "lost cause" for at least several generations to come.
4. There is nothing "next" for Israeli expansionism. There is no known brand of loony-bin Judaism calling on its deranged followers to settle in the Saudi or Emirate oil fields as their new promised land.
November 30, 2009 7:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
"There is no "mass hostility" to Obama, however.
My understanding is that Obama's positive numbers in Israel are well down in the single digits. That plus the phenomena Bernard describes sure sound like mass hostility to me.
You say the silent majority really support the Geneva but are afraid to voice their support in public. To me, it looks like they really support the settlers, but are afraid to voice that support in public. Their actions speak loudly here.
November 30, 2009 8:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
God's promise of land to Jews has deep pull on secular Israelis
November 30, 2009 8:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
We are talking here, Dan, about non-exclusive silent majorities or large minorities of unknown -& probably unknowable- size and strength. I am not sure that the single digits for Obama in Israeli polls mean much more than the similar levels of support for permanent occupation and formal annexation of the entire West Bank, or indeed whether they mean much at all.
One thing is clear, however, and that is that a vigorous, active and rock-solid US position in favor of fast-track Palestinian statehood, with strong embedded security measures for Israel, would invigorate the former majorities of Rabin and Barak (1999) more than those of Sharon (2001). With even greater probability it would light a fire under the pro-peace and pro-democracy elements of the Arab world and isolate Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.
I discern little prospect for such rock-solidness however, unless Jewish Americans are finally willing to stand up en masse and denounce AIPAC, and its twisted neo-con-hypocrite and faux-Christian-idiot fellow travelers, and fight off the shame they have brought upon them. Otherwise the defacto pro-settler US Congress will continue to act mainly as a massive and ever-ending rockslide on the Mideast roadmap. There have been some good signs in the direction of the necessary declaration of a war of liberation from AIPAC, here on TPM, but I see far too little appreciation of how rare and short the current window of opportunity is, and too much readiness to leap at any odd distraction that comes along.
November 30, 2009 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Expel the Israeli Ambassador and close the embassy. Expel all members past and present of the Israeli army. Recall our ambassador from Israel and close the embassy. Freeze all US aid and arms to Israel. List all entities (including the Israeli government) that donate any funds or provide any security to any settlement in occupied territories as terrorist organizations and do the same with the settlements themselves, freeze their funds and prosecute their officers.
This might get their attention.
November 29, 2009 11:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
This could become a reasonable action plan, once AIPAC has been neutralized. The failure to mention that necessary prerequisite, however, casts doubt upon this suggestion.
November 30, 2009 7:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, and rewrite/repass the neutrality act making it a felony for any US citizen (even a so called dual citizen) to join an army of a foreign power.
November 30, 2009 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am with you on that idea. Draw a clearer distinction between the chickenhawks and the traitorhawks.
November 30, 2009 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Israelis do not believe in land for peace. Israeli do not believe in a Palestinian state.
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