As a US carrier steams toward Iran, Trump risks another disastrous neoconservative war in the Middle East. The pundits and pols who supported the Iraq war, from Joe Biden to Jeffrey Goldberg to Roger Cohen, still have not accounted for that tragic error; and they could clear their account nobly today by coming out against any war with Iran based on sad experience.
As Netanyahu goes up for reelection tomorrow in Israel, the warning that liberal Zionists have long issued– the Jewish state will no longer be a democratic state but will be inherently racist — has become impossible for even the warners to ignore. J Street called on US politicians and Jews to condemn Netanyahu’s promise to annex West Bank settlements; and Beto O’Rourke did so.
“Israel has a right to exist” is a rationalization of ethnically cleansing Palestinians. “Israel has a right to defend itself” is a rationalization of slaughtering Palestinians. The mainstream is filled with dehumanizing anti-Palestinian tropes, and it has never occurred to any of the mainstream liberal critics of Ilhan Omar to write about them. They need to get out of their bubble and see how America looks from the Middle East.
‘One state or two states who cares? What matters is equality’ — NYT columnist Roger Cohen quotes Palestinians on the oppression they experience in Israel and all but states the two-state solution is over.
In a disingenuous ‘NYT’ column Roger Cohen presents a fawning interview of Tzipi Livni and blames the Palestinian Authority for the Spring 2014 collapse of peace negotiations. The article is a recitation of standard Israeli talking points and fails to include Palestinian or American viewpoints which squarely put the failure of negotiations on continued Israeli settlement construction.