The latest Gaza war has had the effect of mocking the US role in the region– showing our country to be firmly on the aggressor’s side in the conflict and making us peripheral to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership in effecting a truce.
Here are two perspectives on the American condition:
John Cook, who is married to a Jew, writes at Slate: “How To Pick a Fight With Your Relatives This Thanksgiving”:
3) What Should We Fight About? Israel. You should fight about Israel. Particularly if you are Jewish or are married to a Jew or are the child of an Evangelical Christian. If you can find a way to work your way backward to the Clinton impeachment, that’s always a gold mine of long-repressed rage and conflict. Otherwise you are stuck with the election—amateur hour.
More seriously, at the New Republic, John Judis writes that the ceasefire will not hold because the United States, out of obeisance to Israel and its friends, has foolishly refused to deal with Hamas, or indeed to take its own power in the conflict:
If the U.S. wanted to talk to the participants in the conflict, and get them to stop, it had to talk to Israel and Hamas. But it has refused to talk to Hamas until it recognizes Israel, even though the United States talks to plenty of countries—take Saudi Arabia, to begin with—that have never done so. And Congress, with AIPAC looking on, has also ruled against any American efforts to talk with Hamas.
…in this case, the United States has consistently subordinated its foreign policy to that of the Israeli government—and I use the term “government” not “people,” because I would argue that energetic American diplomacy, absent any artificial constraints, could benefit the Israeli as well as American and Palestinian people.
Washington has reserves of power in the region that it has left untapped; and it can also now call on Egypt, which has considerable influence with Hamas. The United States has leverage on the Palestinian Authority and can influence Hamas directly, if it begins to communicate directly with the group, pressuring it to stop its rocket attacks on Israel and to join Fatah in a unity government. The United States has always had leverage on Israel. The Obama administration has to begin using that leverage—pressuring Netanyahu to stop the growth of settlements and to begin negotiations with a willingness to exchange land for peace—even if that means bucking AIPAC and Congress. Without pressure of this kind, there will not be, as Hillary Clinton put it this week, a “durable peace,” or any peace at all for that matter.
I still feel there is something very strange and different re Isr-US -Gaza-I/P , the reactions to it and “end arrangement” to it this time. Something more than AIPAC even. Can’t figure it out, but there is something else there.
I would be real careful about rooting on Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas are nationalists – these other cats aren’t. The Gulf Monarchies support this new arrangement, they also want to break Hamas (read: Iran) ,and you can tell the US press loves reporting on the growing influence of Egypt and the Gulf states. It’s because these forces represent pan-arab-fifedomism(just made that up), and the Israeli’s and the Americans know if they can turn Palestinians back into just Arabs (who we all know you can do anything to) the Palestinian project is over. Vijay Prishad was on the real news talking about this the other day. He said the Qatari emir would love Gaza to be a vacation spot on the Med for the ultra rich of the region.
The really tough part about the Palestine question is that so many of the forces trying to “free” it would, upon freeing it, turn it into state built on a neoliberal model or worse.
I will be dining at my step sister’s McMansion in a gated community. Her and her mother are California Reaganites who have attended prestigious private universities and read books by the Rev. John Hagee to inform themselves about the justification for Palestinian oppression. There are no arguments that can penetrate the righteous myths that mold their inhumanity.
In Washington, I-502 passed. We got nothing to fight about at Thanksgiving. Why, I think it’s going to be one of the most enjoyable holidays in years! Just wait till you try our “secret recipe” stuffing.
“Thanksgiving fodder: ‘You should fight about Israel’”
Once again, as a public service, I remind all readers that an inheritance is a gift, not an obligation. So, you know, don’t fight too hard, you might end up with one of those Pyrrhic victories one reads so much about.
And really, fighting at the Thangsgiving dinner table does nobody’s digestion any good.