Obama adviser Samantha Power met with Israeli officials recently on Gaza and the Goldstone report. Haaretz:
Power did not hide her criticism of Israel’s handling of the Goldstone report; she asked whether Israel’s thinking on the issue was "strategic or tactical."
"Is the correct strategy fighting Goldstone on all fronts?" she asked.
A main message of the U.S. officials was that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was directly linked to the ability of Israel’s critics to push the Goldstone report forward and the ability to block the report’s consequences.
Note that Power co-edited a book on human rights with Graham Allison featuring an article by Richard Goldstone; and in her meeting she did not denounce or offer a ritualistic denial of the Goldstone report– which implies acceptance of the premise and conclusions. She instead asked whether Israel was going to respond strategically.
Remember that in days gone by, Power expressed empathy for the Palestinians and offered explict criticism of Israeli practices and of the fact that the US is joined at the hip to Israel. You can read some of her good stuff in this neocon denunciation of Power for her human rights advocacy.
Also: Goldstone is no stranger to Harvard and in 2008 gave a prestigious lecture on the 60th declaration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And he’s taught at Harvard Law School.
There are three types of politician:
a- Politicians who lie before the election.
b- Politicians who lie after the election.
c- Politicians who lie both before and after the election.
I tick ‘b’ for Ms. Powers.
Is there a stealth force for change, or just the same old, same old? Something changed
apparently for good in 1967, with the cover up of the USS Liberty incident. The USA government, ever since that incident, has been a tool of a foreign power–how many of you even know about this sort of censorship?
link to theuglytruth.wordpress.com
Maybe average American lives never meant much to any US regime, but the USS Liberty
incident and its cover-up really has shown clearly that average Americans mean nothing in US politics and subsequent policy.
i recently got into an online argument about the USS liberty. i was called a conspiracy theorist and david duke affiliate! the harsh pushback was swift, intimidating and immediate as if it is supposedly normal to assume that hrs long attack was merely a case of mistaken identity. i’ve never personally met or spoken with anyone who knows of the incident and doesn’t believe it was intentional. how could anyone fall for those lies?
Hi Annie, I once had a conversation with my local state rep’s staff person on the subject–a rare thing indeed since usually my congress people simply ignore me–she said, boiled down, that the Israelis saw no USA Flag. I gave her the Chicago Tribune’s update, but she stuck to that story. Since then, nobody form my congress person’s staff has responded to anything I sent them. I’m afraid our congress is totally into hasbara. It was ironic in a way, because the staffer I talked to was of Albanian heritage.
Some US officials may criticize Israel’s treatment of the Goldstone Report, but the US government will still dance to Israel’s tune when it comes to rejecting it.
It’s like a subordinate who will confront the boss about a mistaken decision but who will still carry out that decision when ordered. No doubt who is the boss.
Nicole Brown and OJ Simpson’s marriage remind me of us and our husband Mr. Natanyahu.
I just found out that I was 4th cousins to old Bibi!
If Samantha P is bold enough to say that there should be ‘a strategic response’ (whatever that is) she really means to say, through her code, that she and Obama are perfectly well aware of the truth. Is this a solemn statement that they must and will eventually act on what they know? Or is it just a preliminary to Power’s resignation from a government one of whose principal members she regards as a monster, partly I suppose because of her attitude to Middle East matters.
More likely, she will continue to go along with the hypcrisy, like they all do.
A few well-placed resignations might actually have some effect.
Too optimistic Phil.
It’s the optimism that keeps me wanting to revisit this site.
It has been a long time coming, but there is change. Most of the posters on this site have only been following for a couple of years at most. I have been following, commenting on, and losing friends for at least 25 years. It is like an ocean liner. It takes a long time to perceive the difference. I am optimistic, but I am concerned if it can be soon enough. There is a mountain of damage done and the longer it goes on the harder to reconcile.
Oh they know the truth alright, every single one of them.
But it’s like this, this is what they have to keep in check:
Their job V a Palestinian State.
To give credit though where credit is due, Ms. Powers did give one initial hope by exhibiting some backbone earlier on, BEFORE she set up office at the UN.
Gee, didn’t Obama also give one initial hope by exhibiting some backbone early on, at the Cairo speech? And can’t we see from his subsequent performance that he learned the ways of the world? I mean, gee, has anyone on this blog ever been such a green kid? He might be brown, but he’s green. And he’s fast turning Israel blue and white. Palin turned blue and white right away. She actually might be a contender. That would be the most
obvious reason. Remember the little Israel flag that appeared on her window sill?
Samantha Power is too close to the powerful to be consistently honest. Her genocide book was widely praised mainly because she generally stuck to American sins of omission rather than sins of commission (with a few slight exceptions). That is, she writes mainly about mass murder perpetrated by people who were not America’s allies, so there’s a great deal about Serbia, Pol Pot, Rwanda, etc…. East Timor gets about one paragraph, because there was bipartisan support from all American Presidents from 1975-1999 for Indonesia’s actions there. (Her pal Richard Holbrooke was heavily involved there–he only appears in her book as a hero, but he was a villain with respect to East Timor). She says nothing about US support for the genocidal military in Guatemala (which was also receiving help from Israel, btw).
American elites, for the most part, like books of the sort Power writes, because it’s basically a form of flattery dressed up as criticism. She claims Americans are unable to imagine pure evil and that’s why we don’t intervene fast enough or at all. So she’s both praising their essential goodness and also demanding that they intervene in more and more places and avoiding talk about how the American elite itself might have innocent blood on its hands, not because we didn’t help the victims, but because we actively supported the killers.
I think she knows better, but the charitable assumption is that she thinks she can do more good with this approach. If so I think she might be kidding herself on that point.
Don’t forget Efrain Rios Montt….or did she mention him? I doubt it.
I don’t think she did–that’s why I brought up Guatemala. I mean, if you’re going to write about US foreign policy and genocide, any genuinely honest scholar would have a chapter on East Timor and another chapter on our history in Guatemala. Also the mid-60′s massacre in Indonesia when Suharto took over, which some would say was an example of genocide.
And indeed the first significant appearance of political Islam, its violence forgiven or praised because it was then on our side. So that we once had high hopes of Hamas.
And in addition to Guatemala then there is the less atrocious but fundamentally as dangerous recent action in Guatemala, which seemed to me to be a monstrous event organised by Hillary Clinton.
Whoops, totally missed that in your original post.
Yea, I wrote a big post awhile back about Israel in Central America, specifically Guatemala because I had recently bought some books about the counterinsurgency wars in the 1980s.
I recommend, ‘It’s No Secret: Israel’s Military Involvement in Central America’. Great book, uses mainstream sources purposefully to reach a wider audience.
My post on Israel/Guatemala.
link to mondoweiss.net
I was basically quoting that section of the book…there’s a lot more too. Decided not to finish the rest of the post, but I was thinking about linking some scans from another book that dealt specifically w/ Rios Montt’s reign.
On the subject of Israel and who it armed back in the Cold War days, here’s a good book by an Israeli–
link
Looking at the link I just provided, it appears that Google has part, but not all of the book online.
When I said ‘Guatemala’ I meant Honduras and the recent coup. I’m off to Panama later this week, where I have family and where there are plenty of great powers seeking influence and providing cash.
Makes you wonder what our country would be like if people knew about the stuff we contributed to, directly and indirectly, in Central America.
It’s just so ridiculous that Zionists were bugging out over the Haiti PR extravaganza.
Juxtaposing the military support Israel gave to brutal dictatorships, like those in Central America – ‘brand Israel’ in Haiti, becomes wholly transparent.
Then again, if Americans (‘patriots’) can conveniently forget history or remain willfully ignorant of it, then surely Jewish supremacists can.
Samantha Powers is married to Cass Sunstein.
Glenn Greenwald wipes the floor with that phony Sunstein here;
link to salon.com
She’s no better.
O mi god, is she? Since I read Sunstein on the planned team of cognitive infliltrators I’ve been wondering if some of them, giving themselves away by lack of cognition, are appearing on this site.
Creepy stuff.
And who guards the dog eh?