Only in Haaretz: ‘Let’s Hope Obama Won’t be a Friend to Israel’

by on November 9, 2008 17

Gideon Levy in Haaretz can talk baldly about the great religious issue of this campaign, whether Obama is for Israel or not. Here we can only talk about the Christian right. Levy urges Obama to talk to Iran and Hamas and Hezbullah and keep on talking…

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Iran, Israel/Palestine, Neocons, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics

{ 17 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. anon says:
    November 9, 2008 at 10:00 am

    Nobody can put Baby in the corner!

    (I hope.)

  2. Scott McConnell says:
    November 9, 2008 at 10:31 am

    The Gideon Levy is a tremendous piece of polemical writing. Of course, it's all been said before, but the timing and some of the language is really good. The idea that a "friend of Israel" has come to mean "friend of the occupation"– very simple, very true, the potential to be a very big talking point over the next few years. We can hope.

  3. peters says:
    November 9, 2008 at 10:38 am

    Collective Self-Deception
    The Most Common Mistakes of Israelis

    By GILAD ATZMON

    The most common mistakes made by Israelis are as follows:

    1. To fail to realize that there is no essential difference between Tel Aviv and a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

    2. To believe that the creation of the state of Israel was an outcome of the Holocaust.

    3. To regard themselves as innocent people and thus as victims of the Israeli­Palestinian conflict.

    4. To believe that they live in a democracy and therefore that their atrocities are legitimate.

    5. To be convinced that they live in an open society which enjoys political and ideological diversity.

    6. To believe that the ghetto is behind them.

    7. To be convinced that the 'Jewish state' is a legitimate concept.

    8. To think that Israel is a shelter for the entire Jewish people and the best answer to anti-Semitism.

    9. To regard themselves as humanists.

    10. To be sure that Israel is immortal.

  4. Richard Witty says:
    November 9, 2008 at 11:20 am

    "Let us now hope that Obama will not be like them. That he will reveal himself to be a true friend of Israel. That he will put his whole weight behind a deep American involvement in the Middle East, that he will try to solve the Iranian issue through negotiation – the only effective means. That he will help end the siege on Gaza and the boycott of Hamas, that he will push Israel and Syria to make peace, that he will spur Israel and the Palestinians to reach a settlement.

    We should hope Obama will help Israel help itself, because that is how friendship is measured. That he will criticize its policy when he must, because that, too, is a test of true friendship. "

    Gideon Levy does want the US to be a friend, a friend that cares, enough to help and to guide, BOTH.

    Bush was an enabler.

    Israel needs friends, that will stand by with confident defense when defense is needed, and with confident honesty and diplomacy when diplomacy is needed, and even with "tough love" at the instants that that is needed.

    That prescription is DIFFERENT than the punitive.

  5. Doppler says:
    November 9, 2008 at 11:33 am

    Before Obama can be a true friend of Israel, non-Jews need to have permission to speak critically of Israel. That requires not only JJ Goldberg to accept debate from all corners, but Alan Dershowitz and Abraham Foxman, too. Or else a fundamental shift in America's attitude toward them, a general rejection of their equating Anti-Semitism with Anti-Neoconism. It's Postville writ large. The relevant American value is: "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." The relevant Jewish values are: "is it good for the Jews?" And "If I am not for my myself, who will be?"

  6. anon says:
    November 9, 2008 at 11:59 am

    Doppler is very wise.

  7. anon says:
    November 9, 2008 at 12:14 pm

    Witty, you need don"t a nose job, even though SOG thinks his a is why he exists.

    How about a little understanding, as in Cabaret,–the political power reality reversed.

  8. anon says:
    November 9, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    Witty does not need a nose job. SOG needs to find a reason to exist other than his stance in an Opera. Average American need to distinguish the two. Phil helps here.

  9. Doppler says:
    November 9, 2008 at 12:53 pm

    Phil, Here's an idea to build room for America to bring tough love to Israel: there must be polling organizations in Israel that slice and dice Israeli opinion on all manner of issues. Let's bring those same polls to the US. Let's get some data on where the US public stands on all the key issues. Let's measure it and announce it, and then remeasure it periodically to see how it changes. How to phrase those questions? Who to entrust with phrasing those questions?

  10. Richard Witty says:
    November 9, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    Anon,
    Please, stop your racist invocations, even in response to others'.

    "Nose-job". You're neither Don Rickles nor a Goebbels.

  11. Richard Witty says:
    November 9, 2008 at 3:50 pm

    Non-Jews have permission to speak critically of Israel. And, Jews have permission to respond.

    As Europeans have permission to speak critically of Americans.

  12. Ezra says:
    November 9, 2008 at 5:10 pm

    Richard Witty said: "Non-Jews have permission to speak critically of Israel."

    Name one. One that's kept their job, I mean.

  13. Richard Witty says:
    November 9, 2008 at 5:40 pm

    A silly response.

    You do.

  14. anon says:
    November 9, 2008 at 6:03 pm

    A "silly" response? Shows just how insulated Witty is, here in the land where earnest goys protect his every instance of pretended rationality and morality–Witty, let's see you attack your heart-throb SOG for his tons of bigoty. Every time SOG posts his usual, we expect to see your follow-up in the interests of reason and humanity–you've failed about 99% of the time in the last year.

  15. John Dickerson says:
    November 9, 2008 at 7:11 pm

    HAARETZ COMMENTER-

    Title: Good Irgun stock?

    Name: Bronxite10

    City: NY State: NY

    Rahn Emanuel may be a fine choice. Hopefully, he is more astute than William Daroff, the director of the Washington office of the United Jewish Communities who said Emanuel came from "fine Irgun stock". No one in the Jewish mainstream is ready to rehabilite the Irgun.

    You have to excuse Daroff. In order to survive, the ill-paid denizens of Jewish institutional America have to placate the machers who fund them. I wonder who Daroff was trying to stroke with that particular off the wall comment.

    SOURCE- link to haaretz.com

  16. anon says:
    November 9, 2008 at 7:41 pm

    I suggest all read the Haaretz article Phil refers to–it's by an Israeli, printed in an Israeli paper and on an Israeli url. If it were posted on
    Phil's blog, it would be called anti-semitic and subjected to Witty's
    exquisite torture chamber of abstract nonsense.

  17. samuel burke says:
    November 9, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    http://sabbah.biz/mt/

    Without further introduction, for what do you send me your death squads, you criminal morons? Exactly for what did you send me your fumbling, wannabe “agents” to follow me for hours like thieves, trying to provoke me, calling my friends? What do you want from a Journalist you have already kicked out of her country, you criminal terrorists? Are all the journalists you murdered in Palestine not enough, so that you now expand your terrorism into Europe? It would be easier if you kept these criminals at home instead of sending them to this quiet country, where decency exists and the law is respected.

    Your fumblers call my colleagues in Palestine and my friends in Austria in the deep of the night, like bats, giving false names or none at all, hiding their phone numbers, asking stupid questions and telling inane lies to get answers. In Palestine your thugs pressure my colleagues with typical mafia methods: by denying work permits, ransacking their property or arresting and murdering them or their family members when they don’t “cooperate”. Here in Austria, you send people who think that they can get any kind of results by using the same criminal methods.

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