Important sign. Respectable Roger Cohen–"fiercely" attached to the security of the Jewish state–has a good piece in the IHT echoing Olmert's warning about Israel's fate. Cohen is pushing the Olmert speech that the NY Review of Books republished in an effort to stir the American discourse. Cohen makes a couple good points, which I summarize here:
The thrust of the piece is Olmert's thrust and, I sense, Obama/Emanuel's consensus: Two states now, goddamnit, and No right of return! Readers of this blog know that I largely share this consensus, with the proviso that no one can order the Palestinians to give up the right of return. It is a just principle, and it is up to the Palestinians to extinguish it and accept a fragment of the state the U.N. assigned them 61 years ago. And certainly acknowledgement of the Nakba, apologies, reparations for confiscated property–everything we Jews obtained from Germany in a timely manner (yes after genocide) ought to precede everything else.
The political question here is: Since when is Olmert a moral leader for Jews in the U.S.? As Antony Loewenstein notes, this guy has been an occupier his whole life. And: Why did Olmert play FW DeKlerk after the fact, a role De Klerk played while in office? Because he knows his society is more wed to the occupation than South Africa's was to apartheid? Because he thinks there will be civil war? I don't know. But I wonder.
Thanks to Loewenstein, who is visiting the States, for the tip. I'll have more to say about the energetic Ant in the minutes and years to come.
