Zahi Khouri is a big businessman in the West Bank who owns a business in southern Florida. He has a pro-two-state piece in the Orlando Sentinel, and says what everyone else does, Obama would have to overcome the force of the lobby in order to apply pressure to Netanyahu to end the occupation and allow the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Khouri's piece is filled with optimism. He dreams of Palestinian children again getting to bathe in the Mediterranean, he dreams of a truth and reconciliation commission to address the refugees of '48.... Below you'll see an excerpt of Khouri's piece, then see the first comment at the Sentinel site, from last night (and yes, it seems like a Jewish author): wipe out the Arabs.
Khouri:
I am an optimist because the Palestinian cause is like many successfully waged freedom struggles once deemed hopeless. I have seen Jim Crow segregation defeated in the American South, the Berlin Wall come down and apartheid dismantled in South Africa. I expect to see Israel's occupation and discriminatory dual system of law vanquished in my lifetime.
President Obama's leadership can help the U.S. establish a more secure region, though Israeli-Palestinian peace will not fix all the region's problems. Twenty-one years ago, I thought peace would do far more. Unfortunately, the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the enormous danger of an Israeli-instigated confrontation with Iran mean that Israeli-Palestinian peace will go less far than two decades ago.
With peace, trade opportunities for Israel and Palestine would boom throughout the region. The fulfillment of international law in a peace deal would end the burgeoning South Africa-like campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions currently faced by Israel. And tourism would surely grow dramatically following a peace deal.
Now here is commenter MarkSolomon at 11:29 PM September 01, 2010
This smack-down of Israel is so divorced from reality as to relegate it to high comedy, if not for the identity of the libeler. The Israeli government, against the better judgment of its religious citizens as well as the majority of the diaspora, has bent over backwards, time and time again, to comply with Palestinian requests in the (unrealisitic) hopes of achieving peace with its neighbors. Despite the daily bombardment by Palestinians of civilian homes, Israel held back its fist at the request of PLO leaders who said that the problem of the "renegades" should be left with them to deal with. Of course, nothing was done. Israel withdrew from large swaths of militarily significant land areas upon the (empty) promises of peace, only to have to recapture the territory because peace was not forthcoming. Millions of dollars (bribe money?!) has been paid to the PLO from the United States and the European Union only to disappear into the Swiss bank accounts of PLO heirarchy/thieves. The only way to achieve peace with "peaceful" Muslims is to completely destroy them in battle.
Tonight on Hardball, Chris Matthews lamented Obama's passivity and, speaking of his foreign policy, said that his speech on Iraq the other night was the speech of a neoconservative, not a "dove." Over the course of the hour, the hobbyhorsical host several times slammed the Republican Party as a party of "neocons" that will give us "war on demand," which started a war against a country that hadn't attacked us, which wants to attack Iran now.
The problem with these partisan rants is that Matthews knows just what MJ Rosenberg and Sheera Frenkel report in the posts below this one: that the Israel lobby reigns in the Congress, terrifies the Democratic candidates, and forbids us to talk to Hamas even though we talked to parties of violent resistance in Iraq and Northern Ireland. As for Obama's neoconservativism, anti-Vietnam-war Democrats like Schumer, Berman, and Lieberman voted for the Iraq war, surely in part because of Israel's security. Just as many Democrats are now pushing for an attack on Iran. The Iran saber-rattling is not a partisan issue; both parties are corrupted (as both existing parties were by the slave power); and the cause of the rot is the Israel lobby. Until the media start talking about it, politicians can't run against it, and voters won't be able to vote against it.
Echoing the point made by Sheera Frenkel below, here is an interesting column by MJ Rosenberg at Mediamatters, appealing for the two-state solution, and saying that Netanyahu can deliver it, not Obama, because, well, Obama is bought and paid for. Rosenberg is blunt about the fact that Netanyahu is more powerful politically than Obama here, because he has such a base in the American Congress and the donor base of the Democratic party. No wonder Chas Freeman talks about political "pathologies."
[Obama] cannot achieve an agreement without putting pressure on both sides, and particularly on Netanyahu who, after all, holds all the cards (plus all the territory).
But Netanyahu knows that if Obama applies pressure on him, the President will outrage even his Democratic allies in Congress. Lobby-led Representatives and Senators (Democrats as much as Republicans) will oppose asking Netanyahu to do anything he does not want to do. (Count on the donors, the lobby and the Israeli embassy to organize the opposition.)
This applies to any territorial concession Netanyahu might be asked to make. It even applies to an Israeli attack on Iran which, should it come, would have the enthusiastic support of some of the most liberal, anti-war Democrats (let alone Republicans). That is certainly true just prior to an election, but it is also true when an election is two years away. The lobby owns this issue, not the President.
And that is why, in the end, we have to hope that Netanyahu has finally come to understand that the occupation poses an existential threat to Israel as a Jewish state.
If Netanyahu has actually come around to that understanding (as Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert seemed to), it is possible — even probable — that progress will be made.
After all, Netanyahu can deliver the lobby and, with it, Congress.
Sheera Frenkel of McClatchy reports that even as Netanyahu arrived for the talks
members of his political party were in Washington to push a different agenda.
Danny Dayan, a settler leader and member of the Yesha Council, the lobby for the settler movement in Israel, was meeting Jewish and congressional leaders in Washington to try to convince them of the importance of expanding Israel's settlements.
Do they own us? Why isn't this a scandal? Who in Congress did Dayan meet with? Where is Obama?
Blame the Palestinian rejectionists.
Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies was on Russian television today speaking of her disappointment in Obama and Mitchell. The talks are a "photo-op," she said, because the Palestinian refugees and the Palestinians in Gaza are not represented. And the terms have been set by Israel. "The U.S. has not brought real pressure to bear" on a simple legal matter, ending the settlements. "Until you stop, we are cutting off aid. That sentence was never spoken."
I always wonder why voices like this are not more prominent in our media. Bennis tells me that she sent a letter to the New York Times the other day in response to Gadi Taub's op-ed on the importance of saving the Zionist state by getting the settlers out of the West Bank. The Times apparently chose not to run it, so Bennis said we could. (This version is slightly longer than her original).
Gadi Taub is right that Israel’s settlements in the occupied territory are a huge problem. But he is wrong when he says that somehow "settlements and continued occupation” will undermine the vision of Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism. In fact occupation was central to Herzl's plans. Taub claims that Herzl’s Zionism was part of the “tradition of democratic national liberation movements.” But the truth is quite the opposite. Herzl’s Zionism was old-fashioned turn-of-the-century colonialism.
His diary includes the text of a letter Herzl wrote to Cecil Rhodes, shortly after the infamous Briton had colonized the land of the Shona people in Africa – whose land he claimed and renamed Rhodesia. “You are being invited to help make history,” Herzl wrote to Rhodes. “[I]t doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews... How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial... [Y]ou, Mr. Rhodes, are a visionary politician or a practical visionary... I want you to.. put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan and to make the following declaration to a few people who swear by you: I, Rhodes have examined this plan and found it correct and practicable. It is a plan full of culture, excellent for the group of people for whom it is directly designed, and quite good for England, for Greater Britain...."
Many people reacted strongly with disapprobation to my "Hamas attack was wrong" post yesterday. Nearly everyone agrees that murdering civilians is wrong, but some question whether the settlers are civilians in the first place. The settlers are racial supremacists whose race pride, irrational hatred and extermination fantasies combine to make Palestinian lives unlivable. They carry guns and are simultaneously the driving force behind and justification for the occupation.
Others, my father among them, asked how I could assert that the time for armed struggle is over.
We correctly insist that Israel contravenes international law by transferring civilians onto occupied land. Nothing has changed. Israel continues to contravene international law in that way. But reasonable people can still disagree about whether the settlers are civilians. I still insist that they are. And murdering civilians is wrong.
The more controversial claim is that the time for armed struggle is over. How can I possibly say that when the settlements continue to grow, Zionists are racially purging Palestinians from Jerusalem and pauperizing and suffocating them in Gaza? How much of this are Palestinians supposed to tolerate?
It’s a very easy question to answer, but only because I believe in some basic assumptions:
1 There will never be a Palestinian state
2 The settlements will not, under any circumstances, cease to grow or be established
3 The Israelis will continue to racially purge Jerusalem
4 Palestinian guns cannot prevent any of this from happening
And finally,
5 Our superior morality – which is accessible to everyone, including erstwhile Zionists – is the key to undoing the Zionist state and creating a country where Palestinians and Jewish people can live equally.
[read the full article…]Yesterday on this site, responding to the murders of the four settlers in the West Bank Tuesday, Seham, a Palestinian-American, offered a list of settler attacks on Palestinians. David Samel, who has taken a strong stance against violent resistance, responded in a comment:
Seham, I have no doubt that many settlers, especially the ones who are in the WB for ideological rather than economic reasons, are unapologetic racists who ruthlessly exercise their power to make life miserable for the Palestinians. They even resort to murder. However, this was not a spontaneous attack by a Palestinian driven by a last-straw incident to attack one of these cruel racists. This was a pre-planned murder of random settlers executed by an armed group (there may be some question as to whether it was Hamas after all.) The people who undertook this operation coolly decided that it was the proper course of action for reasons I cannot fathom. Assuming all of your stories are true (and I don’t have the slightest reason to doubt any), it could not have been a rational decision designed to alleviate the sadistic and cruel conditions imposed by the settlers upon the Palestinians.
Seham responded to Samel later. Her comment described an incident that she has not spoken about before here, which is why we post it:
David, let’s assume that they were Hamas members or sympathizers. How insulated do you think Hamas is from daily Israeli/PA aggression, violence and detention in the West Bank? Everyone knows about the siege in Gaza and how it affects everyone there, but, that doesn't mean that Hamas members or sympathizers in the West Bank have it much better. Surely you know what life is like for the average Palestinian, so do you think that Hamas members are somehow detached and unaffected by the occupation? They, their families and their property are constantly being targeted by either the Israelis or their Palestinian appendage in the West Bank. Besides, things are not getting any better for Palestinians in either the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem and there isn't any chance for freedom in the future, not with the expansion of the settlements going full steam ahead. And as the settlements grow, so does the repression of all the Palestinians living around them. Expect then, for more "cool headed" people to snap, expect that they might be Hamas or, that they might be Fatah members who resent the shift in the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank that occurred post Oslo.
Every single Palestinian in the territories has a relative that was either killed, arrested, held up at a checkpoint, or had something they owned stolen by Israelis.
My own Palestinian story is as follows: my father had a heart attack years ago in the West Bank. Doctors said if he would have gotten to the hospital in time, he would have survived. The taxi that was taking him to the hospital was held up at a checkpoint. We never got to see him before he died. I live in the U.S., I have not experienced a scintilla of what Palestinians living in the territories have. And do you know how hard I have to work to control the rage I feel inside of me? How Palestinians living over there do it, every single day, I can’t understand.
Check this out. Israel 21c is a pro-Israel p.r. organization. "A Focus Beyond," its motto, says it all.
ISRAEL21c – a New Paradigm for Pro-Israel Communications
ISRAEL21c’s mission is to focus media and public attention on the 21st century Israel that exists beyond the conflict.
Its board is headed by a former president of AIPAC, Amy Friedkin, and includes Cheryl Fishbein, of the UJA Federation, the big Jewish community/pro-Israel organization. From the looks of it, it's a transnational organization too. Now look at Israel 21c's youtube channel. You see a piece on how Israelis are happier than other people.
Well guess who's working with Israeli 21c? CNN. It runs newsish Israel 21c reports, like this one about environmentalists at the Dead Sea. (Maybe that's why I saw Aaron Cohen, an Israeli SWAT team guy, on CNN all afternoon the other day during the hostage crisis?) Israel 21c brags:
It was only last year that CNN accepted ISRAEL21c as an affiliate of its World Report program. Since then, we are proud to report an impressive 15 news features produced by ISRAEL21c that have appeared on CNN, reaching millions of viewers worldwide...
[O]ther features that have appeared earlier in the year include a piece on Hebrew University's new approach to learning, by treating passengers travelling on the Israel Rail Service to a series of lectures by the institution's top scientists.
Other encouraging stories chosen by CNN this year describe a mixed Jewish-Arab choir that practices its message of coexistence out loud, and a group of Palestinian and Israeli midwives working together to ensure that pregnant mothers in Israel and the Palestinian territories have safe and natural births.
Rather than portraying Israel as a place of conflict and strife, these stories have highlighted Israeli accomplishments in science and technology, arts and culture, and philanthropy.
They depict what ISRAEL21c works to reveal - the true, myriad faces of Israel, beyond the conflict.
Heck, any news organization gets tips from propaganda orgs. We do. But to publish them directly without indicating as much? Your media... your Israel lobby... working hand in glove.
