“I’m convinced more than ever that Israeli security will never be fully assured without the birth of a second state, a Palestinian state”

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Let me give my perspective on this. I am a Palestinian, born in the Galilee in “Israel,” forced with my family to leave the farm we had owned for five centuries (since we came to Palestine as refugees from the loss of Al-Andaus to Castilian Spain), and declared absentees who had no right to live there (this happened in 1965, when I was eight).

I totally support Obama for president, even though I also believe he means what he says and will be as blindly pro-Zionist as he sounds. That is because it is an iron law of American politics that to be elected, your position on Palestine has to be awful. There is no one that can be taken seriously in American politics who is not awful on Palestine. Even the post-presidential, well-meaning Jimmy Carter, who does not need to worry about elections anymore, is only tolerable.

I want an American president who does well on all the other topics he or she must deal with– and I pray only that he or she will shut up and get out of the way and let the rest of the world work out Palestine, since it is political suicide for an American politician to do the right thing. We don’t need “honest broker” America. That is not possible. Ideally, the American government would develop amnesia about the Middle East and just do nothing at all there– for or against anyone. Just shut up and get out of the way.

Presumably Obama will not be as overtly bellicose (and incompetent) as Bush. That would be a first step in the right direction.

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It’s the same old same old. Lefti on the News has direct quotes from Obama interspersed with humorous, biting commentary.

“There are those who would lay all of the problems of the Middle East at the doorstep of Israel and its supporters, as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root of all trouble in the region.”

Yeah, what a wacky idea.

There can not be peace in the Middle East until Palestinians have a place to call home. Seems simple enough to me. Until then they will be used as pawns by multiple governments (including Arab) for multiple ends and fanatics on all sides will continue to slaughter each other. Really, folks, what’s going on there now clearly isn’t working. If you want peace, all the players have to be at the table. Period.

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From Josh Marshall of TPM

In case you missed it, I want to commend to your attention Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the Sunday Times: “Israel’s ‘American Problem“. The premise will be a familiar one to anyone who’s thought seriously and sanely about Israel’s future and America’s relationship with Israel. The breadth of acceptable opinion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is vastly greater in Israel than it is in the United States. Indeed, as Goldberg suggests, if Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Barak were running for president in the US, they might not be deemed sufficiently pro-Israel to be acceptable in the American mainstream.

Much of this is due to the neocon / extreme Zionist alliance as practiced by Bush et al. One quibble: the American mainstream doesn’t really understand the situation there, and gets little if any, actual information about  the settlements, the plight of Palestinians, or how they were forced from their land. This is due to the until now quite successful lobbying by extremist Zionists in the US to muddy the waters.

Josh Marshall, who named his son partly after the commander of an elite commando unit of the Haganah and who thus knows the territory well, concludes.

By conflating being pro-Israel with supporting the continued colonization of the West Bank, many of Israel’s ‘friends’ in the US are placing Israel in great danger and doing no favor to the United States either.

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Carter said on Monday that Hamas leaders told him they would accept a negotiated peace agreement, if voted for by the Palestinian people.

“The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with someone who must be involved.”

There can be no peace there until Palestinians have a place to call home. The real problem is that extremists on multiple sides of the issue don’t want peace else why would they keep shooting at each other?

All sides must be involved in peace talk if there is to be genuine peace.

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Israel planning ethnic cleansing in the north of Gaza

The televised report cited high-level security sources as saying Barak intends to plan for the removal of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip

Terror stalks the Yeshiva

Events like this leave one speechless. What can one say? It is simply an act of bestiality.

All sides here have committed atrocities. All sides, by the standard definition, are terrorist, because they deliberately target civilians. The Yeshiva attack was a calculated attempt to make Israel go insane with rage and massively retaliate - which is precisely what Israeli hardliners want a pretext for doing any way. No doubt, the attack was a response to an Israeli atrocity where Palestinian civilians were killed and maimed. Where will it end? Because there are millions on both sides who just want it over so they can walk the streets without fear of incoming missiles or suicide bombers.

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Reader Tony Greenstein comments on our previous post about the current anti-Semitic and Holocaust denier stance of IndyMedia UK.

(This is an abbreviated version. His entire comment is here, and includes relevant links)

Yes, after months of battling to get the Indymedia collective to bar holocaust deniers and anti-Semites from posting articles, we have a situation now, after their meeting at the weekend, whereby anti-Semites are welcome and their opponents are banned!

The fools and fellow-travelers with racism and anti-Semitism on UK IM are unable to tell the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Some of them think they are doing Palestinians a favour by publishing this sort of garbage.

There is nothing the Zionists love better than to demonstrate that supporters of the Palestinians are anti-Semitic. Indymedia UK has now done all it could to prove them right.

Sigh.

Tony also has a long post about this on Socialist Unity.

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“Anyone who violates Egypt’s borders will get his leg broken,” said Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit.

He blamed Israel for the humanitarian crisis and hardship that Gaza is experiencing, and for “responding to the Palestinian (Hamas) missiles with collective punishment.”

He also criticized Hamas for launching those missile attacks, describing the confrontation as a “laughable caricature” resulting in self-inflicted wounds.

This is an unusually blunt warning, not at all couched in the phrases of diplomatic niceties. But then, the breach of Egypt’s borders - a serious matter for any nation - were caused by conflicts that are not of Egypt’s doing and theoretically at least, not their problem.

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Subtopia has a detailed report ands lots of photos.

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An anti-Zionist speaker who is also clearly anti-Semitic has been forced to cancel a speech in Britain after pressure from Left groups.

From Another Green World

Criticism of Israel is one thing, anti-semitism is quite another.

So I am glad to see that Gilad Atzmon who seems to have anti-semitic views is not going to be airing them in Brighton.

Socialist Unity has more, including a, ah, lively comments section and links to this excellent piece from local newspaper, the Brighton Argus.

Those who campaign for the rights of Palestinians are rightly incensed by the frequency with which they are falsely accused of “anti-semitism”. They point out that criticism of the actions of the Israeli government and the Zionists who sustain and support it is not anti-semitic.

However, the fact that false allegations of anti-Semitism are often made against those who criticise the Israeli state does not mean that anti-Zionists are not also sometimes anti-semitic. Or that those who oppose Zionism can cease to be vigilant about the allies they choose to stand alongside.

Well put indeed.

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From Steve Clemonts of The Washington Note. This is especially notable in that he is a moderate DC policy wonk, and not at all radical.

I spent Monday in Los Angeles and met an insightful next generation Arab-American thinker, Sama Adnan, who told me he believed that there was something like a mathematical equation in the Middle East that few Americans — Democrat or Republican — understand. He said that democracies or more self-determining populations in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East were impossible as long as the Palestinian-Israeli standoff over Palestine’s state status remained unresolved.

He said that if true democracies governed in any of these states, then those democratic movements would focus on their outrage that Israel was continuing to illegally occupy Palestinian territory. The more totalitarian governments in the region are bulwarks against a popular will that is focused on grievances involving Israel. The only way to create a more liberal and stable order in the Middle East, according to this young observer, is to deliver on Palestine.

There can be no peace in the Middle East until Palestinians have a place to call home. The implication here is that Arab states do not really want a Palestinian state because it would upset the balance of power and quite possibly their grip on power too.

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Two mayors, one in a Palestinian town, the other in an Israeli town, have agreed to a joint venture to clean up the polluted river that runs between them.

Israel holds all the power in the water wars there, and can pump water from the aquifers at any time while Palestinians must beg for permission. Both have been known to sabotage the system so that cascades of sewage pour onto to others land.

Perhaps this joint venture can lead to other agreements on other issues.

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The new edition [of Israeli textbooks]  adds the Arab perspective, noting for the first time that many Palestinians were forced from their homes and became refugees after the winners of the war confiscated their land and barred their return.

“Forced” is a polite way of putting it. “Terrorized and at gunpoint” would more accurate. But this is a welcome start.

“When the war ended, the Jews prevailed and Israel and its neighbors signed a truce,” a key passage reads. “The Arabs call the war the ‘Nakba,’ meaning the war of catastrophe and destruction. The Jews call it the War of Independence.”

Not surprisingly, right-wing Israeli Zionists attacked the textbook, even though the facts are not in dispute -  except in America maybe, where ignorance of what happened to the Palestinians is pervasive.

al Nakba.org

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Tony Blair, no longer PM of Great Britian, is now a special Middle East envoy backed by the US, EU, UN, and Russia charged with a mission to “stabilize” Palestine. I’m guessing his idea of stabilization means Palestinians will be allowed to lie on the ground in a prone, quite stable position as Israelis point guns at their heads.

BlairWatch and Lenin’s Tomb have more.

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An Israeli jet attacked the home of a Hamas politician because five Hamas militants were nearby. That the attack killed seven members of the politician’s family didn’t even rate an explanation or apology from Israel.

Israel also said all Hamas leaders should be killed , an outrageous statement which was received with thunderous silence by US media. Were Hamas to say Israeli leaders should die, you can be sure our media would be screaming for blood.

Killing civilians, either deliberately or through studied neglect, is a war crime and morally loathsome. Period. Regardless of who is doing it or why. Whether by jet or car bomb.

And in practical terms, it’s a self-defeating tactic because it’ll inflame the other side, cause you to lose some of your own supporters, and create a continuing spiral of violence.

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500 troops, trained with US money crossed the border from Egypt with permission from Israel, to fight with Fatah against Hamas.

Ludicrously, the US and Israel “have been trying to avoid the perception of taking sides in a conflict that this week in Gaza has resembled a nascent civil war.” I’m guessing one excellent way to do that would to not openly and militarily back one side against another.

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Subtopia has an essay on the deliberately Orwellian and repressive checkpoints on the West Bank, plus photos by Khaled Jarrar of “the hardships such checkpoints create for the Palestinians” that were hung on fences outside the checkpoints.

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This initiative, Stop the clash of civilizations, comes with a snazzy video and is from Res Publica and MoveOn.org. It’s well-meaning perhaps but more than a bit naive as well as being clueless about what’s actually happening in the Middle East.

Talk is rising of a ‘clash of civilizations’. But the problem isn’t culture, it’s politics – from 9/11 to Guantanamo, Iraq to Iran. This clash is not inevitable, and we don’t want it.

Well duh, of course the problem is politics,. But that’s not something that can be whisked away by a feel-good video implying the differences are just misperceptions and all we need is a big group hug, a patronizing view, especially when coming from those outside the situation.

So where to start? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the key symbol of the rift between Islam & the West. It’s time to step up and take the initiative.

Add your voice below and when leaders meet in late March, our message will be delivered in a way they can’t ignore.

Petition to Israeli, Palestinian & international leaders: The Palestinian-Israeli conflict lies at the heart of a global clash threatening to divide us all. People from every corner of the world want a just and lasting peace in the Middle East - and the international community can and must help bring all sides to the table. Start Real Middle East Talks Now, and stay at the negotiating table until we have peace.

They’re right about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being at the heart of discord in the Middle East. But again, saying everyone should just stop being knuckleheads is simplistic and offensive to those involved. Like there haven’t already been years of attempted peace talks. Nor does this initiative mention any of the real political differences, something that needs to happen for substantive discussions to occur. Nor does it mention the core issue, that Palestinians were driven off their land by violence, have never received compensation for that which was stolen from them, and want to return.

This typical I-feel-your-pain liberal blather oozes concern but presents no actual solutions. The video is well-produced and fun to watch, so check it out if you want, but don’t expect any real action to happen because of it, except maybe getting fund-raising emails from them.

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The US government for twenty years has tried to deport eight Palestinian activists in Los Angeles who were doing nothing illegal. They twice got laws changed so as to prosecute them again, slimed them with guilt by association, and get this, never actually filed any criminal charges against them.

Yesterday a judge dismissed the case, slamming the government for “gross failure” to produce exculpatory information, saying it violated the defendant’s constitutional rights, and was “an embarrassment to the rule of law.”

Given the government has spent millions of dollars on this case and lost every round, a rational person would think they will not appeal, especially given the judge’s scathing comments. But we are not dealing with a rational prosecution here.

However, this is a huge victory. Let’s hope it ends here and the L.A. Eight can get on with their lives.

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Sen. Barbara Boxer, you know her, she’s supposed to be ‘liberal’, rescinded an award to a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations because right wingers told her CAIR loves the terrorists, when in reality CAIR has long been known as a moderate group.

From Lefti on the News.

[The CAIR homepage] features such things as “National and Worldwide Muslim Condemnation of Terrorism,” “CAIR backs Fatwa against Terror,” a public service announcement and a petition entitled “Not in the Name of Islam,” and similar things. A testimonial page features dozens of tributes to their work from a variety of Senators, Congresspeople, and other politicians, not to mention several key FBI people.

Gee, does Boxer think FBI people love terrorists too? Golly, what’s going on here?

Here’s a clue.

That criticism of Israel, council officials say, is what’s really fueling the campaign against their group. Nothing short of endorsing Israeli policy, they say, will spare them from allegations of extremism.

“The minute we criticize Israel, then we become a nonmoderate group,” Ayloush said. “You become public enemy No. 1.”

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Since you’re trying to spam our post on Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid with comments telling us what a horrid man Carter is for having the effrontery to criticize poor little Israel, you might try to make your comments not appear like they came from a cookie-cutter Zionist rapid response factory - which of course is precisely what happened. You lack imagination, among other things.

Here’s another tip, try responding to what Carter says instead of just sliming him.

But since you won’t, none of your comments will appear. Hey, that wall pictured on the front of Carter’s book? It is an apartheid wall, no question about it, which is something the rest of the planet increasingly understands.

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From the Amazon review

The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known, the president writes. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy, and the international “road map” for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians.

From Pg. 216 (via ZNet)

The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens–and honors its own previous commitments–by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel’s right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.

Hardliners on both sides are attacking the book. However Carter is the first president I know of to flat state that the rights of Palestinians and Palestine are equal to those of Israel, and this is definitely a step in the right direction.

CounterPunch sums it up

Carter falls short of a full critique of Israel’s treatment of non-Jews under its rule, but his book challenges Americans to see the conflict with eyes wide open. He places the blame on “Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land” as “the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land” and he places equal blame on the United States for “the condoning of illegal Israeli actions from a submissive White House and U.S. Congress in recent years.”

Carter also says nothing about the U.S. financial and military support that props up Israel. Without such support of course, Israel would barely exist, much less be able to build apartheid walls to imprison Palestinians.

The biggest contribution this book makes is that it ‘officially’ calls Israel an apartheid state, something which although infuriating both the Democratic and Republican Party, is unquestionably true.

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Imagine the outcry if a Hamas official had said that about Israeli leaders…

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Israel announced they would bomb a building to kill the leader inside. Palestinians formed a human wall around the building and Israel called off the strike saying they don’t kill civilians, a blatant lie as they’ve killed thousands of civilians, but this time the power of the people backed them off.

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‘Nobody is allowed to leave. We are all starving now’

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