President Obama in Cairo, June 2009:
Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That's not how moral authority is claimed; that's how it is surrendered.
Protest in Birmingham, Alabama, May 3, 1963, photo by Bill Hudson
Protest in Kufer Qaddoum, Palestine, March 16, 2012, photo from Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
(Ask yourself: Why would anyone want to assume the risks these two brave men assumed? What do they want? And who in these images, quoting President Obama, has "moral authority"?)
I thought it was significant when Obama in Cairo compared the struggle of Palestinians with the struggle of blacks in the US. But he did not get his own message. Whether the oppressed resist with violence or without it, they are forced to resist at all because they are oppressed. It is the oppressors who are in the wrong. If the oppressors gave up their insistence on privilege over others, there would be no need for resistance or struggle of any kind. But ever since Cairo, Obama has been on the side of oppression. Not a big surprise, but disappointing nevertheless.
where are the leashes on the second photo.
Good observation!
Practical Zionism has never believed in leashes.
I believe they are electronic leashes.
One of the assault team probably has the handheld remote.
“Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed.”
King George III probably said: Americans must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed.
The American Revolution must have been unsuccessful !
King George would agree with Obama that: Peaceful protest is always best.
Peaceful protests often also mean law-abiding (or at the most, stretching the law). The thing is you can break laws peacefully to. That message gets lost in translation when third parties encourage protesting peacefully. Nobody ever got anything by playing by the rules. Easier to convince everybody to break them then play by them and make a difference. Not that their are any rules under occupation. Nevermind…
I think the Palestinians have been remarkably passive compared to anybody else who would have found themselves in their shoes. “There is always tomorrow” is a phrase they believe in.
“Mr. President, Palestine has heard you”
Good for Palestine, but I don’t think Obama cares.
“Good for Palestine, but I don’t think Obama cares.”
No, he doesn’t. He likes to pretend he cares, but at the end of the day, he is just like the vast majority of American Zionists, both Jews and non-Jews, in being willing to excuse the most horrific crimes if it is committed by Jews in Palestine and being unwilling to demand even minimum human rights for the Palestinians in Palestine. (And, of course, as a politician, he has to make sure that the flow of Jewish and Zionist cash continues. Whether that is causing his immorality when it comes to the rights of the Palestinians is, of course, another story.)
Such people are despicable.
“Palestinians must abandon violence.”
Notice ol’ Hopey Changey does call on the Jews to abandon violence. Pathetic.
Nobody has the right to preach to Palestinians about liberation — nobody.
I agree. When Obama said that peace cannot be imposed is true for most nations. Not Israel. Israel was created by the West and the UN especially. The British made it, the UN have birth to it, the American fundies spear-headed it, and the US government has unconditionally supported it ever since. The US has been behind this whole two state thing for 30+ years. The West blames the Palestinians irrationally when the whole thing is the fault of the West. The Palestinians are stripped of their humanity and wrongly demonized. Nobody should ask the Palestinians anything. It’s asking for a lot considering little has changed in 64 years.
The US of all people cannot say peace can’t be imposed. There is no other way. They created a monster. They have to impose it. The Israelis are nuts. Most of them anyways. Conditioned into violent sociopaths from childhood brainwashing. Israel will never, NEVER, end this all by their lonesome. Those perceptions are not going to change. Not in decades. And we allowed these nutters to obtain nukes! And people always preface this with “although never officially acknowledged”
What difference does that make? It’s like saying “now I haven’t been out of the house today, but the sun is probably up because it is daytime”
Agreed…
It is becoming increasingly clear that, in the grand scheme of history, the state of Israel will be nothing more than a footnote.
It is an exclusivist, supremacist project that is simply unsustainable. The U.S. cannot support it forever.
The BDS movement is one way to expedite all of this. It just needs more coherency in my opinion.
JFK would not have allowed Israel to obtain nuke weapons; when he was murdered he had been hell bent on Israel not getting such weapons. Johnson did not pursue where JFK left off due to be killed, same as he did not pursue Bobby K’s quest to make AIPAC’s predecessor register as agent for a foreign government. Yes, the same Johnson who buried the murder of the USS Liberty crew by Israel in an ultimately vain attempt to save his highest office by default for himself when his Vietnam war was running against him. Johnson screwed America big time in foreign policy matters, purely for his own selfish reasons–sort of same as why Obama revved up War in Afghanistan when he should have got out.
This would be the Bobby K that was murdered by a Palestinian supporter for his support of Israel, right?
… whom we were told was murdered by a Palestinian.
who really knows…
Well, according to Wikipedia, Sirhan Sirhan was Jordanian born. I don’t know whether he considered himself a Palestinian. He was wrestled to the ground and the gun pulled out of his hand right there immediately upon shooting Kennedy. This wasn’t someone they just suspected after the fact, he was caught red handed, then confessed and said he did it because of Kennedy’s support for Israel.
I would love to learn the back-story of the Cairo speech. Did Obama know it was all a bunch of BS as he was giving it? Which advisers were behind it? What became of them? Speaking of dog leashes, we can assume AIPAC and their fellow goon squads made a few judicious and well-timed ‘corrections’. Was this when Dennis Ross was reinstalled to make sure that the ‘special relationship’ remained ever so ‘special’?
This, for me, was probably the most significant of Obama’s long, sordid list of disappointments and betrayals.
tear-stained uzi, I tend to agree with you. Sure would be interesting to read data on that Cairo Speech-in-the-making.
AH, check this out, discussing the guy who apparently had a big hand in Obama’s Cairo Speech: link to laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com
Don’t have time right now to pursue this–can anybody help?
It will be a revolution if Mr. President calls for Israel to give up violence as a means of achieving territorial expansion or ethnic cleansing. Or for that matter for the U.S. to give up violence as a means of achieving control over world resources.
It will never happen. He knows who his bosses are; who pulls his strings.
Pathetic isn’t it? It is sad indeed that the first African-American president of the United States defends in Israel exactly the kind of institutionalized bigotry, apartheid oppression, and racism in Israel the civil rights movement defeated in this country, a victory that made his election possible.
My president stood utterly alone on the world stage as the sole head of state refusing to recognize the existence of a Palestinian state just so he can appease an ally, Israel, that over the last few years has repeatedly gone of out its way to embarrass his administration and stifle his attempts at achieving a two-state solution. By all means he should write another book entitled “The Audacity of Nope”.
Good news? There will be when the US recognizes a two-state solution, a separation between their country and this one, the United States.
Pathetic indeed. But it’s important to recognize that Obama’s powers are limited, his understanding of them not all that profound. Palestine was an item on his agenda, and his speeches at Cairo and elsewhere were I believe sincere. He was simply outmaneuvered by Netanyahu, who demonstrated that on this issue, the Israel Lobby can trump the president. That probably wasn’t clear to the White Hose before the contest. (Obama famously said he refused to read The Israel Lobby during the campaign, though he said he knew its arguments were wrong.) Any way, the battle might even have been close, had Obama’s poll ratings been higher, was he less needful of congressional votes for Obamacare, etc. Beinart’s forthcoming book has the best account I’ve seen of the political battle. One could say Wait till next year, but of course with each passing year the possibility of a 2SS recedes, and may now be gone.
I find it hard to believe Rahm I & Axlerod & Penny Pritzker did not know full well the power of AIPAC, so….methinks, Obama’s ambition always supersedes any moral/ethical principles he otherwise has. But that does not explain why he actually made the Cairo Speech, does it?
“But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding.”
I was there…in the 60′s…and there was plenty of violence. If you read the history of Gandhi’s time, there was plenty of violence.
Ireland had both political and military wings.
I think we have a tendency to idealize/romanticize history….each group for their own motivations. The government side…to discourage real resistance/sow divisions…and the peace side…to keep their own extreme people somewhat reined.
As someone who was in a lot those “herds of domesticated cattle” style of anti-Iraq protests, I don’t think we accomplished much.
Nice post.
Phil, you deserve to get beat up (verbally) for making such an insipid comment. Does Obama preach pacifism to the Israeli government…or even restraint? The Palestinians can figure out tactics and strategy for themselves, and learn from experience as well. There is a history of nonviolent struggle for their rights by the Palestinian people (as well as armed resistance). They don’t need Obama to clue them in. What has happened is that nearly all of the peaceful protests that have been carried out in occupied Palestine have been ignored or characterized as terrorism by Israel, the US and the media.
In South Africa the armed struggle was ongoing and an organic part of the overall struggle. Nelson Mandela never disavowed the military wing (which was commanded by Joe Slovo, a South African Jewish communist), rather he embraced it as part of a mix of tactics that ended up working.
The demands of ML King became all the more compelling when the powerful in this country saw that ghetto rebellions (in its first foray into the riot-torn black ghetto in Detroit, the national guard was driven back by sustained rifle fire) were the fruit of just demands being unmet.
Obama is the president of the United States, by definition he is a bullshitter who looks out first and foremost for the interests of the rich and powerful.
“In South Africa the armed struggle was ongoing and an organic part of the overall struggle. Nelson Mandela never disavowed the military wing (which was commanded by Joe Slovo, a South African Jewish communist), rather he embraced it as part of a mix of tactics that ended up working.”
Thanks.
That paragraph needed to be repeated.
As the poet said: All history is bulsh1t. Meaning, I suppose…we forget what really happened.
Phil, still thinking about your post.
This last bit about Saul Alinsky:
In 1971, Saul Alinsky wrote an entertaining classic on grassroots organizing titled Rules for Radicals. Those who prefer cooperative tactics describe the book as out-of-date. Nevertheless, it provides some of the best advice on confrontational tactics. Alinsky begins this way:
The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.