I’m still doing penance for making mean comments about Aaron David Miller's book, The Much Too Promised Land, after reading just 30 pages or so. I'll be doing penance for a long time. Now I'm 300 pages in, and it's just fabulous. What Miller has done here is provide the flesh to the Israel Lobby book, by Walt and Mearsheimer. They are academic outsiders, he is a total insider. He has been a presidential/State Department adviser on Israel/Palestine forever and he shows how much domestic political considerations (White House euphemism for the Israel lobby) again and again distorted the process. Here's the latest example in my reading. In 2001, George Mitchell, who of course has made peace everywhere, came back with a report that Bill Clinton had assigned him to do. He said, "Ban the settlements" and stop Palestinian terror, as prerequisites. Mitchell complains angrily to Miller in this book that Bush ignored the advice, did nothing to enforce the recommendations. Certainly with respect to settlements.
The greatness of Miller's book is that he shows how this policy nullification has gone on for nearly 40 years. Nixon and Ford were against the settlements. They got nowhere. Carter threw himself into the process and got further than anyone, at the price of his reputation. So did Bush senior; he disliked Shamir and held up those loan guarantees in '91 over the settlements. Look what happened to him.
Which brings me to my topic this morning. George Bush the First apparently
believes that his and Jim Baker's opposition to settlements played a major role
in the '92 election. Miller writes that Bill Clinton ran in '92 with a
pro-settlements message, to gain support in the Jewish community. Of course, George H.W. Bush
lost that election. And Miller suggests that Carter's stance re Israel hurt him
politically in '80 (not that he could have withstood the landslide even with the Jewish community completely behind him).
It's a commonplace for liberal critics of Bush the Second to say that he has
Oedipal issues and that's why he invaded Iraq. Wanted to do what his father
couldn't do. Or, wanted to avenge Saddam's threats against his dad. Whatever.
But what about a more straightforward teaching? Isn't it actually more likely
that Bush's father instructed him that if he ran against Israel he would lose a
key constituency to any president, not just a Democratic one--and that
constituency was—yes-- elderly Jewish voters in Florida, but also the editorial
writers, and a lot of Republican Jewish Coalition money? It was Mel Sembler, after
all, of the RJC, and now of the prowar group Freedom's Watch, who took then
Governor Bush up in the helicopter with Ariel Sharon in '98, two years before
the presidential run, that famous trip on which Bush said, we got driveways
longer than this in Texas... (All this too is in Miller's book.) Occam’s razor
says the simplest explanation is usually the truest. Wasn't this the real
lesson of his father's defeat? Don't take on Israel, don't take on American
Jewish leadership. Jim Baker had talked tough to AIPAC in '89, saying Give up your dream of a greater Israel, Miller says; and the Jewish leadership promptly turned on him.
I'd add that the greatest politician of our time had already demonstrated the
wisdom of this teaching. Bill Clinton ran the most philosemitic White House in
history and did so not so much out of a natural love for Jews—no Bill Clinton
will love anyone who loves him—as a sense of political importance. Miller shows
that Clinton’s
Israel/Palestine team was wholly imbalanced, almost all Jewish, and more than
that, invested in the Israeli narrative. I'll be blogging about this in days to come, but Miller's portrait of Clinton is scathing. Has anyone read this book? It's amazing. Clinton comes off as weak, a peoplepleaser, and Ehud Barak's pantaloon. Well of course George W. Bush wasn't going to do anything like Bill Clinton. Thought Clinton was "Satan's finger on earth." Per a Bush adviser. Wow, another stellar piece of reporting by the assiduous Miller. But that was morals. In politics, Bush emulated Clinton. He found his own real estate in the Jewish leadership, the neocons. And married them. And never told AIPAC to give up its dream of a greater Israel.
miller like ross like indyk like pick any jewish advisor has been an advisor for israel not on israel/palestine.
I'll pick up the book and them write something on it.
Very curious about the AIPAC convention.
Will Barak Obama be there, like last year?
I don't see Bush as being good at math, in the mix of motives for his buy-in for the proposal to bomb Iraq, I expect that the emotional was high on the list.
I think its revisionism (relative to reality) to claim that any one motive was it. I'm not sure why you are attempting that alchemy.
You are lucky that you get to see the politicians F2F. I don't have much exposure. Seeing my House representative work on a solar construction project one weekend, really firmed my respect for him as a human being, as a man of convictions, as politically sincere.
It is certainly true that Clinton had the
most philosemitic presidency until Dubya
proved to be plus juif que les juifs; the
brilliant Israeli dissident Shahak even
translated an article form Maariv entitled
"The Jews Who Run Clinton's Court".
Solving the Conflict over Palestine is probably at least as intractable as the Conflict over Slavery was in the 19th century.
In link to eaazi.blogspot.com
, I argue the following.
The issue of Palestine is simply an ethical nobrainer
1. Zionism is racist because it presupposes that the ethnic, national or historical rights of Jews to Palestine are superior to the human rights of the native population. That is racism plain and simple.
2. Racist Eastern European colonists stole the country from the native population.
3. Their crime spans 3 centuries.
Zionists have not changed their song and dance since the 1890s when Herzl was arguing that the Jewish settlement could serve as a colonial surrogate population for the British Empire. Israeli spokesmen, American Zionists and Neocons argue that the State of Israel should serve the same role in an American Imperium today.
I am not going to banter with trivialities. Palestinians are the native population of Palestine.
Racist Eastern Europeans colonized Palestine and stole it.
All the textual, historical, archeological, and linguistic data indicates that Ashkenazim are an indigenous Eastern European population with practically no ancestral connection to Palestine (just like other Eastern Europeans) while Palestinians are the descendants of the Greco-Roman Judean population of Palestine. Zionists merely justify their crimes in the way that German Racists and Nazis justified their crimes by mythological primordialist nonsense. But suppose Ashkenazim were descended from Greco-Roman Judeans of some sort (at least 3/4s of Greco-Roman Judeans lived outside Palestine). So what? Vienna was founded 2000 years ago by Celts. Do the modern Irish have a legitimate claim to the modern city?
Zionism in the 21st century is the ethical equivalent of Slavery in the 19th century.
Racist Eastern Europeans stole Palestine by means of force, terrorism, aggression, murder and violence. Slavers stole Africans out of the homes by means of force, terrorism, aggression, murder and violence.
Racist Zionist colonizers hold onto the country that they stole by means of force, terrorism, aggression, murder and violence. Slavery was maintained by means of force, terrorism, aggression, murder and violence.
Categorical opposition to Zionism is the defining issue of peace and justice in the 21st century. 300 million Arabs, 1.2 billion Muslims, most of Europe, the Far East and Latin American cannot take any American seriously when he asserts a commitment to peace and justice unless he demands the eradication of Zionism in the ME just as Abolitionists demanded the categorical and unequivocal eradication of slavery.
Anyone that supports or is willing to tolerate Zionism is a racist. Racist American Zionists, Neocons, and Apocalyptic Evangelical Fundamentalists have formed an alliance against peace and justice on the basis of commitment to the maintenance of a racist Zionist colony in Palestine. When I watch how this alliance is driving the USA to betray fundamental American principles, I consider this alliance and Zionist/Neocon subversion a menace to me as an American.
The house is divided between two irreconcilable ideologies. One ideology is committed to American ideals, peace, justice, democracy and human rights; the other supports racist, genocidal, undemocratic, colonialism in ME and will destroy the fundamental principles of the USA to maintain the Zionist colony. A house so divided cannot stand.
Within 30 years we Americans will fight a civil war on this issue.
By American standards terrorism against Israelis is completely justified, for Israelis are the ethical equivalent of antebellum Southerners and Slavers. Just think Nat Turner or John Brown. Any Zionist colonizer that does not actively fight against Zionism is complicit and shares guilt by American standards.
I have yet to read the book, but from descriptions it seems to support my thesis that the Zionist Virtual Colonial Motherland (or Judonia) lends staffers to the US government the way the British government used to lend staffers to the Jordanian government or to princely states to help the leaders make the best possible choices as Judonia now or the British government then would see it.
What a book review. I'm ordering it now from Amazon.
"Within 30 years we Americans will fight a civil war on this issue."
What is the percentage of Americans willing to fight a civil war in order to maintain Israel's status as a Jim Crow state? Fanatical Jewish and Christian Zionists makeup perhaps 5% of the country; a few more than that staunchly support Zionism, but not enough to risk personal life and limb for.
The only forces really keeping America shackled to Iraq and Israel are Jewish Zionist money, impulsive but less committed Christian Zionist numbers, and the money of war profiteering industry.
Money, primarily, and ignorance has skewed the entire issue in favor of the Zionists. If Zionists weren't so wealthy and influential (and shamelessly willing to exploit WWII and the Holocaust to advance their agenda) the Clintons (and the rest of the corrupt Washington establishment) would have hardly given them the time of day.
In many ways, Marx was right about material need, desire and extravagance as the gears that drive the world; he was just naive to assume that the most tenacious money-grubbers wouldn't get their paws on the levers of State, and use it to extract as many material resources from the masses for themselves and their issues as they possibly could.
Americans need a trust-buster, lobby-buster, and government minimalist who knows how to deal with rodent-like armies of money-worshippers clamoring all over Washington to put Big Brother to work on lining their pocket books and on enabling their pet agendas. They will almost certainly get one before reaching the stage of civil war. If not, they will get one after.
Haaretz promotes website advocating genocide and terrorism
Report, The Electronic Intifada, 2 June 2008
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9579.shtml
Haaretz.com, the website of the Israeli newspaper often
cited as an example of Israel's liberal, critical media
carries paid advertisements from a website openly
advocating the total destruction of the Palestinian
people, the murder of large numbers of Muslim civilians,
the assassination of the family members of Arab rulers,
and the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons
against dozens of countries.
The website, Samson Blinded, claims that Google banned its
advertisements from its adwords program. If that is true,
it would be consistent with Google's policy that prohibits
advertising promoting violence or advocating against any
group based on race, ethnic or national origin or
religion. Yet the Samson Blinded advertisements appear
prominently on the main page and article pages of
Haaretz's website. For example the ad appeared on the
front page of Haaretz.com on 1 June, and also prominently
on an article page headlined "Who didn't attend New York's
pro-Israel march? Israelis" on the same date.
(visit this article on EI to see the images:
haaretz has a couple of "light" zionists posting. therefore it is considered "enlightened"
maybe this will post.
haaretz is liberal same way clinton's are liberal
Just saw Miller on Charlie Rose. He seems right on about Israel and the Palestinians, but not so good on the Iraq issue. Like many others, he's hung up on the issue of allowing Iran to be a major player in the Middle East. This is the same kind of American idiocy that informs the US non-relationship with Cuba. Iran is already a major player, and other MEast states are prepared to work with that (except Israel, of course). According to Tony Judt, Americans don't have much in the way of historical memory. However, when it comes to holding a grudge, their memory works just fine. Neither Cuba nor Iran will ever be forgiven for wanting some control over their own destiny.