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Apartheid alert on MSNBC! Notice the speaker Gavin Polone is introduced as a center right commentator. Looks like calling for ending US aid to Israel and identifying Israeli apartheid policies isn’t just for lefties anymore. Gavin Polone is a Hollywood producer who has a reputation for being outspoken. Wonder what he thought of the protests against the Toronto International Film Festival?
Also, check out this great interview with Diana Buttu on MSNBC as well.
MSNBC no less. Does that mean Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and Chris Matthews are going to develop some cajones over the topic?
Dylan Ratigan has an interesting show. He discusses the financial mess with Eliot Spitzer, who is one smart MoFo and should be pushed back into politics, preferably handling something financially-based. If it takes 72 Virgins to make him change his mind and run, give them to him.
No but they always have Pat Buchanan.
Buchanan? Surely you mean this ironically. I have not completely figured out what his major malfunction is, but he is certainly up to no good. Nuckin’ Futs is what he is.
“Eliot Spitzer, who is one smart MoFo “
Oh yeah, real smart. Doesn’t do you much good if you can’t meet the minimal standards of decency. If he did not want to adhere to his marriage contract, he shouldn’t have gotten married. A guy who will cheat on his marriage contract, on the person he sleeps with every night, will cheat on anything, and expect everyone to stand for it. Never known it to fail. Eliot Spitzer is dumb as dirt and has the character of a spoiled little boy.
What’s with Americans and their Puritan morality. I lived in Paris around the corner from Giscard d’Estaing’s girlfriend or maybe it was Georges Pompidou. Nobody batted an eye. Maybe Spitzer had a bad marriage (like Rudy) or he was guilty of a pecadillo, but a crime. Only in America.
You can say that about a helluva lot of members of Congress.
One thing Spitzer is not is “dumb as dirt.” He was the only one who was actively going after the Wall Street crooks when the MSM and Congress should have been seeing the looming disaster, and, in my opinion now, he was taken down for his pecadillos as a result. Read the WaPo Op-Ed on the day of his demise: Feb 14, 2008.
There’s nothing “light” about the Israeli form of apartheid.
True, but Polone spoke truth otherwise; more truth than I’ve ever heard before on TV news
regarding the I-P situation. Beitler’s the lightweight. What did the other two interviewees have to say?
Yes. We’ll take it!
A sign in the middle of the clip says, “Pro-Israel U.S. Lobbying Spending (2008) $2.5 Million. Source AIPAC.”
Who do they think they’re kidding. $2.5 million? Chicken-feed. And incorrect.
Interesting and encouraging. Beitler’s position however, shows how far we still have to go. How can someone be called “expert on the Middle East” when they confute violations of international law that sabotage negotiations and prejudice their outcome (settlements) with respective positions on substantive issues (right of return)? If she were in any other field, her colleagues would laugh her out of town.
On the other hand, the administration seems to think that Arab countries must give Israel incentives to freeze settlements, so I guess Beitler’s in sync with the CW.
No, the administration now thinks it’s OK if Israel doesn’t freeze settlements. Obama caved. (no surprise there)
link to haaretz.com
The leaders of World Zionist movement always wanted the new state to be ruled by scialist and communist idealogies. Israel first president Dr. Chaim was a former president of Russian Socialist Party. American Jew, Jack Bernstein, confirmed this in his 1985 book “The Life of an American Jew in Racist Marxist Israel”.
Rehmat – Hadash is NOT a Zionist party. It is the only joint Palestinian-Jewish party in Israel, and is a leading advocate of Israel’s becoming a “state of all its citizens”. The relationship betwen Zionism and socialism is a fascinating topic, but it has little to do with Hadash, or it’s predecessor Maki (Israeli Communist Party). If you read Arabic, you can check out the party’s website at: link to aljabha.org
Sorry, got my threads crossed (I’ve got the flu, must be the fever). Not quite sure what brought up your comment on communism and socialism on this thread, Rehmat.
Hope you get better soon, Shmuel. Your comments are always astute in my opinion.
Thanks Citizen. Rest and hot tea should do the trick.
Wow! It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen anyone being allowed on mainstream TV to advocate U.S. financial and diplomatic pressure on Israel. Maybe things are indeed changing for the better after all.
I wonder what’s up at MSNBC. Does it mean that they sense a change in mood in the country at large, and especially among their viewers on the left?
Yeah Polone was great! Beitner responded by saying if you cut the blank check or even threaten too it will harm military strategy; let’s see, who does she work for?
Ike would know.
Notes from Fox News interview yesterday:
1. Israel won’t negotiate peace with Hamas.
2. Gaza cannot be part of peace deal with Hamas in control of it.
“I categorically say you can’t make peace with somebody who wants to destroy you, and Hamas wants to destroy us,” he said. “What would we negotiate with them about? The method of our destruction?”
3.) “I’m glad he called for this meeting,” Netanyahu said. “For five months, we’ve said, ‘Look, let’s just get on with it. Let’s meet without preconditions.’”
4.) Israel is ready to make gestures on a temporary freeze on West Bank settlements outside of Jerusalem.
5.) “… we have to allow for the possibility of normal life for the people who are living in those communities, in those settlements. There’s a quarter of a million people there,” he added. “They need kindergartens and schools. They need health clinics and I think what we’re trying to balance necessities of normal life with our intention and our desire to re-launch the peace process.”
6.) The issue of settlements must come only at the end of negotiations.
7.) Iran is the most important issue; the USA & Europe need to really put the pressure
on Iran so that a military strike on Iran is a last resort–Obama says all options remain
on the table. Whether the USA will allow IDF bombers & fighter planes over Iraq
to bomb Iran is a hypothetical question not worthy of further response.
Correx: Notes from Fox News interview with Netanyahu yesterday:
Correx: Notes from Fox News interview with Netanyahu yesterday:
It seems to me it’s the PA negotiator who took all the risk. Obama directly implied to the world in
Cairo that a total settlement freeze is key to commencing peace negotiations in good faith. Simply by attending the meeting Abas put himself at high risk as caving in already.
Further it seems Obama is backtracking on his bold statement–all he really contributed
for public consumption is that the negotiations need to proceed ASAP. Netanyahu came out ahead–he conceded nothing and made it look good by saying Israel has been ready
to proceed for the last five months with negotiations unconditionally, that is, so long as nothing is decided
at the start of the negotiations (and Israel thinks settlement issue should remain
as a windup issue, not a starter issue).
Adam,
Thank you for this post. Mondoweiss, mondoweiss, thank you all for keeping us up to date on issues pertinent to the I/P situation.
Polone was fantastic. Perhaps it’s becoming acceptable to broadcast these kinds of opinions on the MSM because of the great depth of support for the arguments among the American people.
FPM
Lots of you guys remind me of the little girl in Reagan’s story who comes down on Christmas day to find a pile of manure under the tree and who starts beaming and saying “well there’s got to be pony under here somewhere.”
I understand it, I even share it a bit. I liked Polone’s statements too, but look at what just happened folks: Contrary to their repeated unequivocal statements that they wouldn’t do so and after getting all their allies *and the U.S.* to demand same too, Abbas just met and shook hands with Netanyahu without getting *any* freeze of *anything*, thereby showing that he’s about as representative of the Palestinians as Richard Pearle is. Nothing he agrees to—*nothing*—can be expected to be honored by the Palestinian people, who will now even more seem ungovernable and degraded and two-faced and unreliable and not “a partner for peace” and hopeless to try to help and on and on and on.
For how many decades now have we been told—with much validity—that the central obstacle over there is the U.S. siding with Israel? Well okay, so here the Palestinian version of heaven just appeared: A U.S. President who wasn’t. A President who said so openly in front of the world that Israel had to stop settlement expansion. And what has Abbas now done for the Palestinians? Thrown that away. Utterly thrown it away.
Because what did Obama do? Walked 180-degrees back from his demand that Israel stop settlement expansion to now saying—and I quote—Israel should only “restrain” itself on settlement construction. I.e., not an iota’s difference between what every other U.S. Prez. has said, and indeed *less* than George Bush Sr. said.
And what does Netanyahu say? Essentially “aha, I’ve won. I’ve rolled this American lightweight of a President totally, I can now continue to huckster the world by saying that it’s not us who doesn’t want peace or talks now (because even the Americans now say the Palestinians should talk with us regardless of our settlement expansions),” and etc. and so forth.
In effect things have been ratcheted right back to where they always were, *except* that the settlements are bigger, the settlements are getting bigger, the unbelievable precedent has been set that the U.S. will not insist on even *any* of them stopping their growth (much less at least stopping those outside East Jerusalem), and so as each day goes by you can even measure, acre by acre, that there’s less and less to talk about.
I was going to say that at this pace by the time a peace deal is done there is going to be no more West Bank to talk about, but indeed since there is no pace at all Israel might as well consider colonizing the entire solar system for all it has to worry about.
Sin, you are absolutely right. This is a big win for Netanyahu, AIPAC and the Zionist-controlled Congress, and a big loss for everyone else. Obama can now take his credibility out to the trash because no one will ever respect him again, and he’s dragged the US down with him, demonstrating that its promises are worthless and it is powerless to keep them. Netanyahu might as well move into the Oval Office, and Obama can hang around to shine his shoes.
Frankly, it kind of pisses me off the way people here keep talking about the triviality of the Toronto film festival, when there are serious events taking place.
Afraid you are right, Sin. Here’s a few more details supporting what you said–note how kowtowing the PA chief is & that Obama discussed the recent report of facts on the Gaza turkey shoot with Netanyahu: link to jpost.com
Mitchell said a few days ago that negotiating is
a very slow and tedious process & don’t expect miracles, but tiny chipping away–so far it looks like Netanyahu has the only chisel.
Netanyahu’s chisel is the traitorous US Congress, in thrall to the agents of a foreign government and undermining its own head of state.
Let me add to the chorus and agree that you’re right. People who read blogs like this one might be fooled by the echo chamber effect–Phil in particular goes around looking for cracks in AIPAC’s facade and that’s fine, but the fact remains that where it counts, Israel seems to win. The Goldstone report vanished after the Obama Administration chose to go along with Israel’s viewpoint and now it appears that Obama has caved on settlements and as you say, Abbas folded with him.
Just saw the triumphant NYT headline. Are people here disappointed? Did anyone actually put his faith in a Crook County politician?
What’s to get excited about in this clip? A light form of apartheid? It seems that the debate on what Israel is is just as rigged as any discussions about peace, settlements, U.S. support, return of refugees, land status, etc.
You could say that Palestine still hasn’t been conquered, and that any comparisons to apartheid aren’t apt. But I just don’t see any reason to constantly compare modern Israel (or any other place, nation or people) to any other place or time, since there will always be some way to distort the truth when making the comparison. Until there is some effort to examine Israel by Israel’s actions, I see nothing to get excited about.
Wow, strong words. AIPAC is gonna need a hitman squad to go after these defectors.
Pollone did a great job, and the host (is he new?) deserves credit for supporting him. The one thing I wish they got into about Iran is that the Israel issue is not just connected to the Iran issue, but Israel is the cause of the Iran issue.
AF – it would be very wrong to believe that Israel is the sole “cause of the Iran issue.” While it is true that Israel is now beating the war drums against Iran, the US beef with the Islamic Republic is longstanding and rooted in Cold War era imperialism.
Not all the problems of the world begin with Israel.
The Cold War is over. The only ones beating the drums for war with Iran are Israel’s amen corner. The oil companies would be perfectly happy to do business with Islamic Iran, just as they do business with Islamic Saudi Arabia. That they can’t do so is due to the policy of dual containment, courtesy of Martin Indyk of WINEP, part of the Israel Lobby.
Animosities linger on a long time after active conflicts cease. Don’t let your prejudices blind you to the historical realities. One reason that Israel’s warmongering against Iran is falling on such receptive ears in Washington is that old lingering animosity from the revolution and the hostage crisis.
Which is abject irony, because the hostage crisis arose out of lingering animosity from when we overthrew Iran’s democratic government in 1953.
I still think the CIA is eventually going to kill the United States, inadvertently if not out of the “security” at the expense of liberty that good old Mr. Franklin warned us about.
With some effort I can see the resemblance between light cigarettes and the Israeli ‘apartheid light’. Indeed, not a bad comparison.