Associated Press:
President Obama was "incensed" by Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s decision this weekend to demolish more Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, according to a high administration official, and plans to reverse longstanding policy and go to Congress to seek a cutoff of military aid to the Israelis.
The official, who spoke on background, said that the president was angered that he has repeatedly stated that he will support Israel’s security needs but that these assurances have been "repaid in insults to American requirements in the region." The U.S. gives $3 billion a year in foreign aid to Israel.
Netanyahu authorized the destruction of more Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem months after the Obama administration said last spring that it opposes the practice. Privately, the president is said to have referred to the ongoing removal of Palestinians to make way for Jews as "ethnic cleansing by another name."
"We’re just waiting for the World Series to end," the official said, before the president will give a major speech to the country, laying out the American interest in resolving a conflict that the Obama administration believes is damaging national security as well as fomenting unrest in a volatile region.
"The president will explain that there are no such thing as settlements," the official continued. "’Settlements’ means people are going to a place where they belong. These are colonies. They are illegal under international law and undermine our country’s longtime commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state."
Obama will name all the other countries that have been created since the United Nations promised the creation of an Arab state in Palestine in 1947 and state that the world’s failure to grant 5 million Palestinians the right of self-determination is a "gross injustice" and a "blot on American ideals of equality."
The official predicted that the speech "will be a game-changer–high noon for the Israel lobby."
Israel’s supporters in the U.S. are widely thought to play a large role in determining American policy. "The Israel lobby" is not a formal group, but as described by a recent book by that name, authored by prominent professors at Harvard and the University of Chicago, is a "loose coalition" of organizations and individuals–many of whom are Jewish and have a religious belief in the Jewish right to a homeland in the Middle East– who promote Israel’s interests in the media, political races, the Congress and even the executive branch.
From that article you get a wonderful dream of big changes in the US-Israel relationship? That article indicates to you that Obama is gonna break this thing wide open as soon as the Series is over?
Nah, I must be missing something (checks post for links, looks at related articles)
Oh well, I’ll leave it up to the mavens here to figure out, but I don’t see how we get from “I-have-a-dream” to that article. Perhaps patience will bring enlightenment.
Perhaps patience will bring enlightenment..
link to youtube.com
I can actually kind of see what they mean about the whole “I have a dream,” Mooser, but honestly… Obama’s writing us all checks that are likely going to bounce when we cash them. That’s been the track record so far on his promises to put a permanent end to torture and “extra-legal” imprisonment practices, end at least one of the wars, do something about discrimination against homosexuals and take leadership on meaningful health care reform.
Perhaps patience will bring enlightenment.
link to youtube.com
The remarkable wide-eyed ingenuousness of the last paragraph of the W-Post article is stunning. In so many ways.
Okay, Obama, let’s have that high-noon game-changer!
Sorry, Phil, ain’t gonna happen.
How American of Obama to wait till AFTER the world series is over to say it like it is.
Yeah right I’ll believe it when I hear it with my own eyes :-)
I’ll be interesting too to see what Obama will do about the 80 million American Christian Zionists who are anxiously awaiting the 2nd coming that apparently needs two prerequisites events:
1- The removal of the Palestinians from the holy lands.
2- The birth of a rare ‘red heifer’ in the holy lands.
Yeah a red heifer – no kidding!
Now, is Obama so gifted that he can ‘reason’ with our lowest denomination citizens and actually bring them into the the safer folds of, em, reality?
We shall see.
But it will take more than a ‘speech’ this time round Mr. President – you’ve already used your ‘give-him-the-benefit-of-the-doubt’ check and there ain’t another one on my table for you.
“Ethnic cleansing by another name”. Yes – and what’re you gonna DO about it Mr. President?
80 million Christian Zionists? I seriously doubt that over 1/4 of U.S. Christians are Christian Zionists, let alone 1/4 of the total population. America is incpable of solving its own ethnic, racial and religious problems, so I see no reason that our leaders can solve problems elsewhere.
I like the civil rights overtone with the title of the thread. Does it ever stop?
I believe it’s true that Reconstruction helped put a damper on relations between blacks and whites in the South for generations. I wonder if civil rights pushed by an ethnocentric minority angling at power could discredit the movement in the long-term?
Taken from a 2004 article: link to muslimvillage.com
“… underscore the blossoming ties between Israel and some of the estimated 70 million evangelicals in America and 600 million worldwide. ”
Also from the other side: link to cc-vw.org
” While Jerry Falwell may be one of the most influential Christian Zionists, he is also a figurehead, along with Pat Robertson, for a much wider alliance of influential fundamentalist Christian leaders including Zola Levitt, Oral Roberts, Mike Evans, Tim LaHaye, Kenneth Copeland, Paul Crouch, Ed McAteer, Jim Bakker, Chuck Missler and Jimmy Swaggart who have all taken a pro-Zionist stance in their writings or broadcasts.[100] These Christian leaders and their organisations have regular access to over 100 million American Christians, more than 100,000 pastors and combined budgets of well in excess of $300 million per annum. They form a broad and immensely powerful coalition which is both shaping and driving US foreign policy on the Middle East as well as Christian support for Israel.”
Todd, I hate to say it but there really is at least 70 million powerful morons living amongst us.
Phil,
My dream is that Israel actually shears off the continent by an earthquake and they are left with the 1948 borders as a shoreline, America cuts off their aid and allows the Palestinians to control their water supply for 61 years.
Israel is a bit tectonically active, Chu. Pray to Poseidon to cut loose.
Let’s not get Pentecostal here. My personal “hope” (it’s hard to call it that but it’s what I consider the most desirable of the practical solutions) is that the impending collapse of the US as a super power coupled with the BDS movement forces Israel to implode into in-fighting amongst Zionist factions as Israel finds itself completely isolated economically, politically and militarily from any meaningful power base. Sensible, Americanized Israelis and many purely self-interested Israelis leave in droves.
The situation gets so bad that what’s left of the Israeli government begs the UN to step in to, among other things, secure Israel’s nuclear arsenal — the US war machine at this point is exhausted, out of gas and has completely abandoned it’s illegitimate Zionist child. No longer bargaining from a position of military supremacy and its investment in influence over the US government essentially bankrupt, Israel has little choice but to accede to a one-state solution and conform to international laws that require it to permit Palestinian refugees to return home and provide restitution. The rest of the self-interested Israelis and most of the xenophobic, racist Israelis move out faster than you can say “white flight.”
That only leaves Palestinians, Israeli liberals and refuseniks, and Zionist fundamentalist fanatics (the latter being vastly outnumbered now). Israel/Palestine begins to establish a new, genuine democracy that is briefly plagued by Zionist terrorists, who also branch out into Arab and European countries (and possibly the US as well). Without American neoconservatives to lead them astray, the rest of the world deals with the terrorists with tried, tested and just methods. The terrorist threat is quickly dissipated and Zionism is relegated to the history books as yet another corrupt, failed political theory.
Um, are some of you guys reacting to an imaginary article as though it were real? It sorta sounds like it.
I’m imagining my reaction to Phil’s dream… play along Donald.
The article isn’t real, but I do think Phil is describing his dream.
@Taxi:
I’m no fan of Christian Zionism, an 10 is too high of a number as far as I’m concerned. But I just can’t see 80 million out of a population of 300 million. I’m not even sure that Christian Zionists make up a majority of evangelicals.
I agree and I think it’s media hype. The Christian Zionist leaders are Corrupt. They are offered an opportunity of the media spotlight if they tow the line (i.e. pat robertson). It’s such a simple tactic the Zionist use to control these mental dwarves, it’s plain dumb.
Their followers, the church members, while great in number, are not going to go fight a Holy War for Israel. So they are in a sense, worthless numbers that sound impressive and are made to intimidate to masses. They’ll never fight on the front line for Israel.
I agree too. We should distinguish between Christians who happen to support Israel because they’re subject to the same media hasbara as every American, and Zionism as a necessary matter of Christian theology. I think the technical term for the latter is dispensationalism.
My dream: A phalanx of armored bulldozers lined up along the west bank of the Jordan River/Lake. They move west, demolishing every Israeli structure and installation in their way, pushing the debris in front of them until they cross the Green Line, where they dump it. All settlers and IDF personnel who don’t run fast enough to make it across the border in time are interned as hostages, to later be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails after Israel is disarmed.
Your dream certainly has more symmetry than the one I posted farther up, I must admit.
I wonder if Caterpillar would donate some of their bulldozers for a good cause like this.
All I need is omnipotence. And the bulldozers.
I’m not a big fan of false attribution. From reading the first few lines, I thought it was real. It took a while to sink in that it was parody.
I guess Phillip Roth can right parody that sounds real.
MLK’s “I have a dream” was far more profound. You have it in you. Sorry you wasted the at bat.
Witty, seriously. You are a living parody of what it means to be Jewish. You’re like a walking caricature — passive-aggressive, constantly cutting down your self-declared “friends” as much as your enemies, double-talking, pseudo-intellectual and on top of it all you have (had?) a career in finance! You really should be more careful about calling attention to yourself this way.
“You have it in you” means it.
RE: “My ‘I-have-a-dream’ post”
MY COMMENT: You and your dreams! I would suggest 25 mg of Seroquel® taken at bedtime.
…I’d like to make myself believe,
That Planet Earth turns slowly.
It’s hard to say that I’d rather stay awake when I’m asleep,
‘Cause everything is never as it seems.
Leave my door open just a crack (please take me away from here),
‘Cause I feel like such an insomniac (please take me away from here).
Why do I tire of counting sheep? (please take me away from here)
When I’m far too tired to fall asleep…
…It’s hard to say that I’d rather stay awake when I’m asleep,
‘Cause everything is never as it seems (when I fall asleep)
I’d like to make myself believe,
That Planet Earth turns slowly.
It’s hard to say that I’d rather stay awake when I’m asleep,
Because my dreams are bursting at the seams….
>>> “Fireflies” lyrics (excerpted) – performed by OWL CITY <<<
MUSIC VIDEO – link to youtube.com
P.S. – Seroquel® is thought to be a dopamine antagonist.