The other night in Brooklyn, in a speech condemning apartheid in the West Bank, the head of the South African Council of Churches, Rev. Eddie Makue, said that things look very grim right now for Palestinians, but that "we could not comprehend during the height of the conflict in South Africa in the '80s that suddenly on the second of February 1990 we would have one of the apartheid rulers, F.W. De Klerk, unban the political organization [the African National Congress]… call for the unbanishment of the political leaders… We never thought we would live to see the day when a great leader and father to our nation, Nelson Mandela, would walk the street of Soweto, not to mention the streets of South Africa…"
Makue said De Klerk's reversal came about because of international pressure on South Africa, isolating it; and the parallel I am putting forward here is that Washington is Pretoria with respect to apartheid in the West Bank. Jerusalem has no foreign policy, just a reliance on the U.S.; and the U.S. has been inflexible on Palestinian freedom. The strongest supporters of the injustice in Palestine are not even Israelis but Americans, the Congress, the media, the thinktanks, the president. And history is piling up against this policy. The bell has tolled, from Jimmy Carter to Ehud Olmert to Avraham Burg.
F.W. De Klerk was a great man. He was born to a political family, he served the National Party all his life. Then in a stroke he began to demolish apartheid. He saw the writing on the wall, and won the Nobel Prize.
I was walking in the woods today, thinking about Rahm Emanuel, and the fact that his father was in a terrorist organization but he has made halfway-aware statements himself re Israel/Palestine. I wonder whether he does not understand this historic opportunity, and if Obama doesn't understand this to be his great challenge re the Middle East. Not to push things on his own, but to find the F.W. De Klerk for Israel: an American Jew who will signal the great change, as De Klerk did. Just a thought.
Phil, unless you are prepared to state explicitly on every occasion that there is no Isro-Pal equivalent to the gold mines of SA which were handed over in perpetuity to the Oppenheimers (who are just Rothschild proxies), as a condition of SA 'independence', then don't use the analogy.
You are wrong about Israel's political independance.
The Chomskyian "Israel is a colony of the US" thesis is not accurate.
Israel is affected by the Obama presidency in the same way that Great Britain or France are. They are hopeful for a presidency that will adopt reason and mutual benefit as its means to function, rather than ideology, magic and force.
Phil: "Jerusalem has no foreign policy, just a reliance on the U.S."
Witty: "You are wrong about Israel's political independance."
The truth is, as the World knows, Phil is way more right than wrong.
Phil's point is the hope with the new Obama cabinet, more international pressure and economic pressures will be put on Israel,
as it was on Apartheid S. Africa.
The US might even for once support some UN resolution involving Israel.
The US might even start at least attaching a few strings to Israel's
comparatively huge annual welfare check. Somebody in congress
might even actually question it.
The MSM might actually cover such an historic event.
Or, more importantly the US might support efforts that result in MUTUAL peace and security.
WITLESS WITTY!!!!!
Main Entry: wit·less
Pronunciation: \ˈwit-ləs\
Function: adjective
Date: before 12th century
1 : destitute of wit or understanding : foolish
2 : mentally deranged : crazy
— wit·less·ly adverb
— wit·less·ness noun
"Jerusalem has no foreign policy, just a reliance on the U.S."
By coincidence, we just had a good example of this last weekend. The United Nations voted once again on a resolution calling on Israel to stop the settlements and to apply the Geneva Conventions in the occupied territories. And once again virtually every nation on the planet — Europe, Asia, Africa, South America — joined together in agreement. Once again supporting Israel were only the U.S., Nauru, Palau and Micronesia.
(Who knew "antisemitism" was such a global problem?)
Too bad average Americans have no clue to this consensus, nor what it is based on. The American Press is insane, and not deserving of
the First Amendment.