Obama’s ISIS czar says we can’t defeat extremism without resolving Palestinian issue

President Obama’s new ISIS czar said yesterday that resolving the Israel Palestine conflict is necessary to defeating Islamist extremists.

Rob Malley, senior advisor to Obama “for the Counter-ISIL Campaign in Iraq and Syria” and White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, said at a New York conference that the conflict enables ISIS in two ways. Extremists “refer constantly” to the situation of Palestinians. So they would lose a recruiting tool if the matter were resolved. And the failure to resolve the conflict makes it “very difficult” to get “the kind of open cooperation that we really need to get changes on the ground”– because Saudi Arabia and other states can’t work openly with Israel as matters stand.

Malley said that resolving the conflict was not a “magic wand” to ending problems in the Middle East, but asked if ISIS’s next stop was going to be Gaza or the West Bank, he went on:

I don’t know where the next stop will be but I think there’s a more basic point, which is that the absence of a resolution is fueling extremism. If you want to go to Gaza that’s self-evident. Whether ISIS is going to have a foothold there.. that’s a separate question. But I think it stands to reason that resolving this conflict would at least help, it wouldn’t resolve– but it would be a major contribution to stemming the rise of extremism, and to allow the kind of cooperation that is needed [to take on] what should be a common challenge, which is the challenge of ISIS, and of other extremist organizations.

The conference was hosted by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the New Israel Fund. The two faces of the Obama administration were evident at the event. At another panel, Haaretz’s reporter Chemi Shalev said that the word is that Obama wants nothing to do with the peace process and it’s a dead letter.

Shalev said that on December 9, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin came out of a meeting with Obama at the White House and said that Obama was washing his hands of the peace process and Rivlin, a rightwing political figure, was put in the position of urging him to engage.

It was a very surreal situation where he was telling Israeli journalists that President Obama kept on telling him how hopeless the situation is and how nothing is going to happen. And he Rivlin of all people was trying to encourage him and to tell him, Well you have to think of new solutions and maybe interim steps…

Shalev then suggested, “the peace process is dead…”

Halfway through the video above, you can see White House liaison to the Jewish community Matt Nosanchuk fighting back against this interpretation, saying that maybe nothing was happening right now, but that a two-state solution remains a central foreign policy goal of the administration. “Who gave [Rivlin] that impression?” Shalev persisted. But Nosanchuk said that Rob Malley, a senior aide to the president on Middle East issues and countering ISIL, would address the question later.

Obama himself addressed the conference with a short video’d speech and UN ambassador Samantha Power also gave a speech about Israel that was very disappointing. It was mildly critical of Israeli settlements and conveyed no real concern for Palestinian freedom.

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Remember when that super rich Saudi Prince (currently in the news for dissing Trump’s Muslim plan) told US leadership at the time that 9/11 type activity wouldn’t end until the US addressed the I-P issue? Rudi Guliania (sic) & others replied the Prince was condoning terrorism? Nothin’g changed in that respect.

IMHO the Haaretz Conference is a worthy initiative by worthy organisations and it is always good to have relatively high profile conferences on the subject in the US. The problem is as ever that the conference will be deemed by the Zionist lobby in America to be anti – Israel, Anti – Semitic and encouraging terrorism and the bought and bent MSM will either stay stum or simply parrot the Zionist view.

Over arching it all however is that the “peaceful” two state solution has been for years dead and buried with the definitive lurch to the right in Israel and the head in the sand mentality of the majority of the Jewish population there all dutifully supported by and paid for by US taxpayer. The reference to Obama giving up on the “process” and his senior advisor pointing to the link between non resolution and the ISIS phenomenon will simply be ignored by Israel and the US Zionist lobbies. There is after all the much more biddable Hillary waiting in the wings to sooth whatever limited niggling anxieties they have – after the departure of the “Anti – Semitic Islamophile” Obama.

The reality shock which is needed , not to save Israel, a country which has forfeited whatever soul it had , but the brutalized Palestinian people – this will come not from the US , not from conferences and well meaning talk shops like these , but from a European driven true isolation of the Land of Creation.

BOYCOTT UGLY APARTHEID ISRAEL

Contrary to the beliefs of Islamophobes who support Trump’s call for blanket exclusion, Muslims, like other groups, immigrate to the West primarily for education, economic opportunity, the chance for a better life for their children. What stimulates jihadi instincts throughout the Muslim world are brutal invasions by Western powers of traditionally Islamic countries, where the people, places, culture, and icons of Islam are killed, occupied, defaced, and smashed, without sensitivity, accountability, without acknowledgement that the West has no business, in light of international law and its own core value of self-determination, seeking to occupy Islamic countries, depose their rulers and replace them with those to our liking.

Islam has been adopted by many different racial and ethnic tribes, from Asia to Africa, whose current geo-political configurations are a mishmash of natural, historical, former colonial, and other delineations. The only thing capable of stimulating a unified desire for or action to support a Caliphate across that multi-cultural, multi-racial world, is a unified threat to Islam.

Unfortunately, it has been the deliberate policy of US Neocons, and their Israeli Likudnik partners, for two decades, in order to generate that clash of civilizations as a cover for ongoing expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to perpetually foment as many such insults to Islam as possible, while continuously blaming the Muslims, and condemning any effort to ascribe the obvious motive to them as both non-serious (or harsher adjectives) and Anti-Semitic.

Stop doing stupid stuff, Obama advised, but his non-confrontational, always nuanced manner (which comes across as weak) is always at risk of being overrun by the hate-mongers and fear-mongers, especially as each violent incident on either side challenges everyone’s sense of security, and drives everyone toward a state of primal fear, where kill or be killed instincts reach for the controls, and nuance disappears from view.

So I’m glad to see Malley telling it like it is, but, until the larger context of Israel’s (Likud’s) purpose in avoiding peace is brought forward and the advocates for that cynical course are condemned, he will continue to be a voice crying in the wilderness.

So, Obama “speaks” with two voices at Haaretz conference, saying “I/P peace is a dead letter” (meaning he’s got no more energy for it) and via Malley “I/P peace is necessary to mount an effective effort against ISIS.”

As to Malley, you gotta love it: Israel is part of the western imperialism (at least as seen by Arabs) and Arabs will not cooperate with Israel until there is a fair peace (I invented that “fair” and anyway what peace COULD be “fair”) and Israeli oppression of Palestinians will make the Arab street enemies of Israel and prevent anti-ISIS cooperation with Israel.

I hope this line of thinking keeps up and amplifies. I really don’t see why Israel should be (or want to be) part of anti-ISIS, but Malley seems to say it won’t happen unless there is peace.

OK, time to say all this loud and clear and CALL once again for a just and lasting peace (UNSC 242) along the green-line with initial REMOVAL of all settlers (the demolition of the wall to follow, the end of the siege on Gaza to follow) and it Israel refuses, then it’s on its own (and somehow ALL presidential candidates must be got to agree to this, especially HRC.

And if none of this happens, time to start talking about pulling the rug out from under Israel — money, UNSC, special relationship, weapons transfer and cooperation — out from under the one country in the region that will not cooperate with the other children in the only possible way, but prefers endless war.

Netanyahu won’t like it, Trump-Cruz-Rubio-Clinton won’t like it, but they also don’t like terrorism much, and ISIS is KING of terror.

I’m extremely heartened to have the President’s senior adviser on ISIS, speaking at a conference hosted by two Jewish organizations, say specifically that Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is a central factor in the Middle East chaos. In the subtle dance of diplomacy this small step seems to me a sign of shifting tides.

While this conflict has already been discussed by the U.S. military as a major strategic threat generator, that point has been utterly avoided by the cowed mainstream media. This may give a brave reporter or two the courage and space to mention the matter in passing, or even discuss it for 30 seconds on TV or a paragraph in print, and potentially get a discussion rolling…

In parallel, John Kerry recently expressed exasperation with Israel’s continuing land theft. “State Department aides said that sources of Kerry’s exasperation with Netanyahu range from the injustice of settlement building in the West Bank to the way he employs Yitzhak Molcho, his lawyer and confidant, to stifle even the most inconsequential negotiation.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/negotiating-the-whirlwind

History has pattern of ultra-wealthy tyrants being brought down despite all their money. A long suppression suddenly breaks and they’re gone. That’s why the oligarchs fear and hate Obama.