Nahum Barnea in Yedioth Ahronoth. Can’t find it online yet:
Grand Park is the most luxurious hotel in Ramallah. On Sunday afternoon, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad held a press conference there. About 20 local reporters, security people, Fayyad, US Senator Joe Lieberman and others from a US congressional delegation, crowded into a small room at the end of a corridor. …
The right to the first question was given to Ha’aretz reporter Amira Hass…. She asked Lieberman how he, as a Jew, could accept Israel’s discriminatory attitude toward minorities.
Both felt awkward. Lieberman is not used to having his origins thrown at him. “What could I say,” he told me afterwards with a sad smile. “I said I supported the establishment of two states.”
That doesn’t answer the question, Joe. In a sense, it is the only question. In 1964 the United States Democratic Party presidential nomination procedures excluded black delegates from Mississippi. It was a landmark outrage. It fed the civil rights movement. It led to your nomination to be vice president and Barack Obama’s to be president.
Today Israel’s process for creating a new government excludes Arab parties on a racial basis. Where’s the outrage?
Will Connecticut re-elect this man? I don’t understand how he intends to become reelected. It’s possible this shit-stirrer is planning for Aliyah.
Are they “Arab parties?”
There are Arabs in Israeli parties.
Hass: ” How can you, as a US Senator, Mister Lieberman, and as a Jew, accept Israel’s discriminatory attitude toward minorities?”
Lieberman: “I support the two-state solution.”
Weiss: “In 1964 the United States Democratic Party presidential nomination procedures excluded black delegates from Mississippi. It was a landmark outrage; and it led to Mister Lieberman being elected a VP candidate (by the goys). Now, in Israel, Honorable Senator Lieberman, Arabs, 20 % of Israel’s the population (in contrast to
the 13% black USA minority, and when the USA has a black POTUS elected inter alia by 93% of all US blacks), that is, Arab coalitions are prevented from any effective
participation in Israel’s political party system. How do you justify your stance?”
Witty: “There are Arabs in Israeli (political) parties.”
You should have left Witty’s comment as he wrote it – otherwise well said. (also square brackets is the accepted way to handle additions to quotes).
Hass: ” How can you, as a US Senator, Mister Lieberman, and as a Jew, accept Israel’s discriminatory attitude toward minorities?”
Lieberman: “I support the two-state solution.”
Weiss: “In 1964 the United States Democratic Party presidential nomination procedures excluded black delegates from Mississippi. It was a landmark outrage; and it led to Mister Lieberman being elected a VP candidate (by the goys). Now, in Israel, Honorable Senator Lieberman, Arabs, 20 % of Israel’s the population (in contrast to
the 13% black USA minority, and when the USA has a black POTUS elected inter alia by 93% of all US blacks), that is, Arab coalitions are prevented from any effective
participation in Israel’s political party system. How do you justify your stance?
Witty: “There are Arabs in Israeli (political) parties.”
Meanwhile, Israel is inching forward in the old Blackboard Jungle as to new juvenile delinquents:
link to counterpunch.org
I can see it now, on Israel prime time TV, in another decade or so, a show starring
those individualistic Israeli girls followed around by their mentors in a van to teach
them what’s only good for them–Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Where’s the young Sydney Poieter (sic) of the Palestinians, same place as the Palestinian Gandhi, in jail for indeterminate years?
The ones who are routinely shut out of Knesset sessions when it suits the ruling party and who show up on blacklist attempts every time there’s an election in Israel, Witty? Those are the ones you are talking about, right?
You’re perfectly right, Phil. Palestinian civilians who are citizens of Israel are treated not all that differently from African Americans in the South 50 years ago. No American Jew could even contemplate tolerating such a situation for any minority in this country.
But recognition of this simple fact leads inexorably to the dissolution of the Jewish State. If the two state solution were implemented tomorrow, the problem of racial discrimination within Israel — official, state-sanctioned discrimination, not the private kind that cannot be stamped out anywhere — would continue to exist. Israel could try to reduce or minimize the problem (if it employe herculean efforts that it has not even inched toward until now) but it could never eliminate it. Non-Jews can never be full and equal citizens. And that’s true even if Israel ended the Occupation today, with full withdrawal to the 67 borders. It is far more likely that they will continue the present situation for another 42 years.
And what makes this intolerable situation even more outrageous is that it involves about 1.5 million Palestinians who are much better off than the 4 million in the territories. It is long-past due for the world to pressure Israel to relinquish domination and military rule and accept equality. They’re not going to do it on their own.
And has Phil himself followed the logical consequences of his own excellent point? He certainly allows the one-state viewpoint to be well presented on this website, but does he subscribe?
I love Amira Haass! I wish we had some of her in the US media.
I’m pretty sure that there are reports of Haass’s calibre within the US. They have been marginalized in the name of profits and ideology. I think that Haass is not possible in mainstream US media. I suspect that this is a long standing tradition. I understand that even Watergate was not an exercise in journalistic bravery so much as journalistic cowardice. It’s a pretty big research project and I’m not going to do it, but I suspect that there are a whole lot of similarities between the coverage of Israel and the coverage of the Vietnam war.
Interesting. I deeply admire Amira.
But let’s look at some more asymmetries here. When will we see a reporter from a Palestinian newspaper getting to ask the first question at a news conference given in Israel by a high-ranking Palestinian-American Senator?
Arab-American and Muslim-American politicians tend to lay low on I/P issues. I rarely see them take the lead on defending Palestine and attacking Israeli crimes.
Considering Arab Americans get thrown in prison for so much as donating to Palestinian orphans, can you blame the politicians for being gun shy?
Arab-American Congressmen may have many things to worry about, but donating to orphans isn’t high on the list.
Well, they are Arab American Congressmen. And American values for politicians being what they are…
Anyway. Anyone else notice we can now nest comments farther in?
alec did it
.
oh yeah, the orphans….. i am sorry Chaos, but you are a drama queen w/ no real concept of the whats going on.
I think you hit reply too early, yonira. You forgot to tack on some lies and propaganda to go with that vicious personal attack. Zionism isn’t just about kicking people, you know.
I have wondered about Joe Lieberman attending the conservative Jewish group doings at the Capitol (topic was Iran) while the Goldstone Report was being debated over in the House and then hear that he is over in Ramallah……meanwhile on the domestic front he seems to hold the trump card on the Democratic success or failure on Obama’s high priority domestic issue of health care. Today, an msm commentator stated that Harry Reid would make any deal to get the votes. I wondered what pound of flesh Joe Lieberman would extract and I wondered if he needed to voice it to the leadership (seems like both Republicans and Democratic leaderships might be vying for his allegiance) or if they would just know…what he wants in return for his vote.
The nauseating thing is that Lieberman’s career should have been over last November and Obama gave him a lifeline and a pardon for his betrayal. But being the true Zionist that he is, Libernman hads turned around like a viper and bitten the hand that feeds him.
Following Obama’s capitulation to Netenyahu, Liberman senses Obama is on the skids, and believing that he is back inthe driver’s seat as a power broke, he is sticking the knife in. The man it truly vile.
Cheryl -If you are trying to establish a nonracialist society, you should try to avoid racialist phrases like “pound of flesh”.
It’s actually a Shakespeare reference, and in many ways Merchant of Venice can actually be viewed as a social commentary into the discriminatory nature of European society against Jews and how dehumanizing treatment can elicit vengeful responses from human beings — like say, the way Israelis now treat Palestinians (I dare say if the play had been written contemporarily, Shylock would have to be cast as a Palestinian this time around).
But of course, WJ, like most Zionists you don’t care if about the actual substance. It’s just a crude weapon for a personal attack to deflect attention from the heart of the debate. Hell, I had a conversation with a Zionist once (back when we were still friends) where she described how, in an Israeli college class, she was taught to perceive the Smurfs as anti-Semitic propaganda. Seriously! The Smurfs?
Shylock is an antisemitic character, n’est pas?
Like I said. Your posts have no substance.
Is he? Or is he a sympathetic character meant to expose the evil of antisemitism.
The character has been played both ways. It is by no means a straightforward matter of interpretation.
The point that I was making was: if someone wishes to establish a nonracialist society to replace the current situation, then that someone should avoid racialist phrases like “pound of flesh”. If one wishes to use racialist phrases like “pound of flesh”, then the commentators should call her on it, unless they really don’t care about racialism and are only concerned with solidarity with their fellow antiZionists.
Then expect to be pounced upon as a racialist the next time you use the phrase “the Arabs,” WJ.
It’s a pretty simple rule operating: support Israel right or wrong, or see your health insurance for all Americans go down to defeat. The priority is clear. Why not? What’s the health care of Americans compared to the support of Greater Israel? Israel already has national health care. Who’s giving the USA’s impoverished foreign aid?