The Bernie Sanders campaign has gone out with a whimper not a bang on Israel/Palestine. The “revolutionary” candidate who was pushed left by his base to say some sharply critical statements about Israel says the Democratic platform is the most progressive in the party’s history, but in fact its language on Israel is more rightwing than it’s ever been, and aside from Cornel West and Maya Berry getting to jaw about that at the last platform committee meeting, Sanders appears to have spent zero political capital on the question before joining the Clinton team.
– “We reject the false notion that Israel is an occupier.”
— “Support for Israel is an expression of Americanism, and it is the responsibility of our government to advance policies that reflect Americans’ strong desire for a relationship with no daylight between America and Israel.”— “The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (‘BDS’) is anti-Semitic in nature and seeks to destroy Israel.”
Despite the Democratic platform committee’s stuffing of the Palestinian Question, the draft Democratic platform says nothing comparable to the Republican language. That silence may not go far enough to placate Hillary’s neocon crossovers. So, Ms. Clinton may come under pressure to strengthen her already strong pro-Israel stance in an effort to outbid the Republicans in the war to win the anti-Trump Republican voters.
But in so doing, Clinton may drive Sanders’ supporters into throwing up their hands in disgust and staying home in November or voting for the Green or Libertarian candidates.
How this supposed “lesser of two evils” triangulates her way out of this cul de sac will be a fascinating spectacle in the Roman circus passing for a presidential election.
Millions of dollars short and running out of time, organizers of the Republican National Convention have written an urgent request for $6 million to Las Vegas billionaire couple Sheldon and Miriam Adelson to cover the bills for next week’s festivities.
Adelson called on the US to nuke Iran, not long ago; and Saban and Adelson have worked in concert. So Hillary Clinton has a high bar to meet. Maybe this is why word is out that James Stavridis, a retired admiral now the dean of Tufts’ school of international relations, is being vetted as a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton; the Jewish Telegraphic Agency tells us that he is a neoconservative darling who was a hawk on Iran.
In 2015, writing in Foreign Policy, he called for a defense treaty with Israel, citing what he said were the weaknesses in the Iran plan.
“We have to think through the execution of the agreement and what steps we can take to mitigate the ill effects of the plan,” he wrote. “At the top of the list should be seriously considering a formal alliance with Israel.”
Israel has resisted past U.S. overtures for a defense treaty, preferring independence when it comes to making security decisions.
Last summer, at the height of the battle led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to kill the Iran deal in Congress, Stavridis was the keynote speaker at an AIPAC fundraiser in Boston.
Meantime the Republican convention will feature orthodox Jewish NY figures: Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of that Kehilath Jeshurun will give an invocation. And former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who is also associated with KJ, will be speaking.
I wonder if any 3rd party candidates have other ideas? Not that it matters: the MSM wouldn’t tell us.
Maybe if Trump wins, the Democrats will suddenly start caring about issues such as war and Palestinian rights and the sheer hell that the West, Israel, and the Sunni states have made of Syria. The current obsession with identity politics keeps the Democratic base from caring about the fact that their leaders are warmongers and enablers of occupation and destabilization in the ME.
And maybe it is good that the RNC is being so crystal clear about its subservience to Israel. If there is no occupation, then how can Israel justify not making the residents of the West Bank full citizens? It is way past time for the leaders of the Free Palestine movement to use language in new ways to recapture the moral high ground, and to make it clear to Americans that support for Israel is not in our interest.
Till that happens, nothing will change. I really hope to see Palestinians gain their full rights before I die, but as each year goes by, I see no progress, and am tired of hearing folks pretend that this movement is succeeding. Maybe the night truly is darkest before the dawn. Maybe Trump and Hillary’s cold calculation to serve the Zionist state will wake people up and stimulate a change in tactics.
Yes, BDS has potential. But far more needs to be done to get people to use it to effect change. Not sure that enough people will ever care enough to fulfill BDS’s potential.
Thus, I say appeal to Americans’ self interest. Focus like a laser beam on Israel’s crimes against the US and how it is the biggest welfare queen on the planet.
Lookstein cancelled.
“this supposed “lesser of two evils”
Who supposes that Hillary is the lesser of the two evils?
I’m voting for Hillary. The pro-Israel, Evangelicals, and Baptists etc., are a raving anti-semitic group… under the mask of Christian Zionism.