Why is it that Israeli journalists must tell us about our electoral politics on matters of war and peace? Aluf Benn in Haaretz:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are threatening to attack Iran, and the world does not seem concerned. Israel warns that its face is turned in the direction of a war that will bump up the price of oil and cause many deaths and much damage, and the world does nothing to prevent the tragedy…
There is logic behind this apparent American weakness: Obama needs the support of America’s Jews in the upcoming presidential elections, hence his reluctance to enter into a diplomatic confrontation with the Israeli Prime Minister. According to this explanation, Obama must catch up with Republican rival Mitt Romney, who came to be photographed next to Netanyahu in Jerusalem. Obama despises Netanyahu, but he has put aside his feelings at least until the elections are over in November. This is one of the reasons that Netanyahu and Barak want to attack in the coming weeks, when Obama will be forced to support Israel, because of his political needs at home.
All signs point to a continuation of America’s total cave-in to Israeli pressure. However, if Obama’s sources of hard-line Zionist money dry up to early and too completely, or if the Republicans get so much hard-line Zionist money that it doesn’t matter, then perhaps Obama would at last have a free hand. Similarly, if the Israeli push to war is ill-timed, the USA might elect not to join Israel without electoral damage.
September anyone?
obama will have to support Israel’s doomsday iran war, because of his political needs at home, or so speaks aluf benn in haaretz?
Which means that the continued existence of life on earth now depends upon there being a candidate for president who, among other things, supports justice for palestine.
which can only happen if there is a supporting movement of a size, strength and tenacity such as has never before been seen in America.
Fortunately the Occupy movement (leaderless yet with everyone a leader) is still around, albeit in a semi-quiescent state, and should lend itself nicely to meeting the above “specs”.
Interjecting itself into the election campaign, not behind any specific candidate but, instead, a vision of the world in which each of us not only becomes the master of our own destiny, but is recognized as being equally important in the day to day as in the total scheme of things.
with a plan as to how this vision can be attained
such that the movement will prove to be irresistable
forcing president obama to either climb aboard or be dropped along the way and replaced by a yet to be named last minute write-in candidate who pledges to support the bold new vision of a better world.
but without billions of dollars for advertisements, what chance such a movement?
no problem, providing that the spirit of those magical seventeen days in tahrir square prevails, as it did during the early days of occupy wall street, and it undoubtedly will, once the occupy movement’s vision is agreed upon and disseminated on the internet and by word of mouth.
has to do with a people united being undefeatable.
If Obama has a grain of moral courage left in him, he could use this situation to retest the assumption that criticizing Israel is always a vote loser. Let him invite a few of the extremely prominent Israeli opponents of an attack on Iran (former heads of the security services, for instance) for consultations at the White House and then announce US opposition to such insanity at a joint press conference. The outcome for him in terms of domestic politics might not be so terrible after all.
This is Obama’s Truman moment of Thanksgiving UN vote on Palestinian partition.
Pretty reassuring the fact that the would-be-President of the US is willing to undersell the world to please his domestic position. The question is: US citizens will be willing, as well, to face the hell for the reckless interest of their politicians?
I don’t think so.
As a matter of fact, in EU, we are intimately certain that nothing should really happen, inasmuch Iran is not a bunch of unarmed and besieged Palestinians.
Reasonably, I mean.
But days ago I happened to think that maybe we’ve underestimated the fact that Israel is facing her last chances to survive in the long period as a Jewish state in the region (see, on the matter, J. Mearsheimer). So that, waging war to Iran and set on fire the Middle East, could turn the situation upside down in the foolish mind of the Zionist hawks, thus leading to a providential, though unpredictable redistribution of the cards on the table of the Middle East scenario.