Promised Land asks How could Israel keep millions of Palestinians without rights for 42 years? And points to this piece in Haaretz by Yoel Marcus. Marcus:
It was the [Israeli] left’s leaders who started the settlements. A settlement policy was never on the right-wing Revisionists’ list of things to do. Slowly, war after war, and in the 60th year of its establishment, Israel remains the only country in the world without permanent borders.
The politicians have been lucky over the generations that the United States supports Israel. During one of my visits to South Africa, a tough Afrikaner said to me that if they had had 5 million Afrikaners in America, they would never have given up South Africa. Maybe this is so and maybe not. But there is no doubt that the American Jews’ strength has caused even those presidents who have not especially loved Jews to support Israel, or will win their support for Israel in the future.
But there is no doubt that the American Jews’ strength has caused even those presidents who have not especially loved Jews to support Israel, or will win their support for Israel in the future.
(In jest) “Ya think?!”
Just look at how one Senator who has nothing to do with Judaism or Israel is carrying Israel’s water:
link to aish.com
Then of course, you’ve got the Schumers and the Wexlers out there:
link to youtube.com
That is the very reason, if either Israel or the US go down, they will be dragging the other down with them.
The problem is that it seems Israel is the one doing the dragging, especially concerning Iraq, Iran and the Palestinian issue.
Israel, in its current configuration, is costing the US financially, economically, and strategically. But, very few care because AIPAC helps them get re-elected if they pledge allegiance to the flag. No not that flag, the other one with the two blue stripes.
Menendez is quite the Zionist hack, but at least I haven’t seen him endorse ethnically cleansing the West Bank like “my” senator does.
That Brownback is a real piece of work.
RE: “Just look at how one Senator who has nothing to do with Judaism or Israel is carrying Israel’s water”
SEE: “US senators attack Goldstone Report”, By TALI MINSBERG, 10/30/09
(excerpts) In the wake of the Goldstone Report and amid the nuclear threat from Iran, 10 state senators, through the American-Israel Friendship League and the National Conference of State Legislatures, are on a study tour of Israel…
…According to Georgia [thats Jawga, y'all - J.L.D] State Sen. Don Balfour, president of the NCSL, the Goldstone document is misunderstood in the United States.
“Yesterday we had a meeting about the Goldstone Report. The average American says, ‘Hey, war crimes? [with a shocked look on his face],’ but then you read it and you see almost everything we [US] do is a war crime.
“Sometimes there are civilian casualties, which is horrible. But is that a war crime? If so, that changes the way we define war,” he said…
…Balfour said he agreed with the US government’s disapproval of the Goldstone Report, saying, “I wouldn’t even say that the report is one-sided. It is perverted and it changes the game of war.”…
…Meetings with Israeli officials have enhanced the senators’ understanding not only of the Goldstone Report, but of how it directly impacts the Israeli people and government, he said. The delegation is focusing on education and cooperation, and meetings have been informational, without political pressure of any sort.
The state senators will not only go home with a greater knowledge of Israel, but a greater knowledge of America, he said. “The goal of the trip is to become familiar with Israel – the issues and the country,” Balfour said. “Israel gives us perspective on how to solve our problems. We will go back wondering and thinking how we can work similarly.”
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to jpost.com
Insidious
“Israel gives us perspective on how to solve our problems. We will go back wondering and thinking how we can work similarly.”
Increasing settlements endangers Israel’s security more than it enhances it.
“Increasing settlements endangers Israel’s security more than it enhances it. ”
But, it enhances Israel’s strategix interests, which have always come before Israel’s security, as Tzipi Livni admitted.
Why would Israel have to care about their own security? They can always come running to Big Daddy in the US and tap the American taxpayer dollar ATM machine.
Witty? Do you not care that incresing settlements IS A CRIME against the PALESTINIAN people too? Are you really such a racist and a cultural solipsist that all you care about is how anything impacts Israel and Israel alone?
I’m still trying to create a good set of perceptions on the lobby, partly because I’m wary about overestimating them. Let me use Chomsky+Herman as a straw man(or men? Man’s better).
- With Chomsky Israel is an extension of US power rather than the other way round.
I may recall things a bit wrong here because Chomsky prefers to put the focus on the US, which leads to an relatively inflated responsibility, but I’m certain the balance is not that onesided.
- the propaganda model describes how media adapt to avoid going against the interests of their environment:
the owners, the advertisers, the people they get their news from, the pressure groups, and anything that allows people to conflate them with the bad guys of the moment(whether it’s the communists or the terrorists).
The newspeople themselves get a minor role in this.
It describes a reasonable adaptive behaviour. There are reasons we should be unhappy about it because we prefer a more principled behaviour, and because meanstream media are in denial about how compromized they are.
The propaganda model still looks a satisfactory explanation for me, the jewish lobby fits into the model if you consider them as big players as sources, advertisers, owners, pressure groups.
I have a problem with Phil’s title here, that the media are already pretty much compliant with US foreign policy without a jewish lobby. In this respect “it’s because of the jewish lobby” creates a false reference level, as if all would be fine without it. So this is a variation on ‘overestimating the power of the lobby’
Adding 2 more factors to my map for ‘sizing up the jewish lobby’
- single focus, similar to the Chomsky example: if you focus on acts of the jewish lobby only, there’s a risk of overestimating them relative to the other lobbies. I don’t see this at work here, I just foresee the risk
- focus for the lobby itself: does their main area of concern bring them into conflict with other big lobbies or not? It’s easier to get your way if no big lobby cares, it doesn’t mean you’re big then. In Iraq for example, if the Israeli lobby would have had its way oil would have been privatized. But it wasn’t because there were other interests that prevailed. Greg Palast wrote an article about that.
It’s not a Jewish lobby. It’s an Israeli and Zionist lobby. It is at least as important to note the difference than it is to note the overlap. M&W hit it right with ‘The Israeli Lobby’.
There is a big flaw in the opening statement, that the left Zionist parties started the settlement exercise.
The early labor parties in the late 60′s and early 70′s accepted incidental settlements by self-funded very small groups. It wasn’t until Begin/Shamir and with Sharon as interior minister that the design for intentional settlement construction and government subsidy occurred, and with full steam.
Accuracy is important.
What exactly is an ‘incidental’ colony? If left Zionist parties allowed privately funded colonies, then they did start the colonization campaign in the OPT.
A government that allowed a robbery against a specific ethnic group to take place unpunished, then another, and then a few more, has established a precedent that robbery is ok if one is robbing that ethnic group. It certainly meets my definition of ‘start’.
“Begin/Shamir … with Sharon as interior minister” organized, funded, and expanded an already ongoing process. However, the objection is meaningless, and merely a distraction from what is important. The relevant question is not who started it, but how to end it.
Its the difference between allowing a couple hundred individuals to put up tents, and mapping out the annexation strategy of a region.
I’m surprised that you don’t distinguish.
I agree that the important question is from the present forward, and particularly how to stop the settlement expansion, so that actual reconciliation is possible.
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