Fresh on the heels of the Gaza visits by Congressmen John Kerry, Brian Baird, and Keith Ellison, another sign that President Obama is telling officials to change our policy visavis Israel/Palestine. Obama plans to name an Arabist, Chas Freeman, former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, to head the National Intelligence Council, according to these reports. Steve Rosen, the former AIPAC official who allegedly gave you-know-what to you-know-who, is alarmed and disturbed. Hallelujah. Rosen quotes Freeman:
Israeli governments to undo the Oslo accords and to pacify the
Palestinians rather than make peace with them. … The so-called
"two-state solution" – is widely seen in the region as too late and too
little. Too late, because so much land has been colonized by Israel
that there is not enough left for a viable Palestinian state alongside
Israel; too little, because what is on offer looks to Palestinians more
like an Indian reservation than a country."
My message to American Jews: We can jump on the third rail too! In fact, when we jump on it that does even more to neutralize it. When will Rep. Bob Filner of San Diego, who nobly voted against the Iraq war despite the neoconservative push in the Jewish community, join Ellison and Baird in calling for a change in policy. Bob–get ahead of this one now!
I'd also note that Steve Rosen calls Freeman "a textbook case of the old-line Arabism that afflicted American diplomacy at the time the state of Israel was born." True, historically. These guys said if we recognized a Jewish state that had gobbled 4/5ths of Palestine we'd been in for generations of bloodshed. Prescient. The Arabists have been dealt out of policy for 61 years. It's time to get them included.
