Stephen Walt on The New Media and the Palestine Question

(YouTube)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70mh6O1FcG0

Jews, Israelis, and Israeli Jews do not speak with one voice on matters of Israeli policy

Chas Freeman nails it on Zakaria's show. Zakaria did his best to discredit Freeman, but I believe Freeman got the best of the interview:

FREEMAN: Well, the "Israel lobby" is a term that's in general use. I think it isn't a terribly accurate name. It probably should be called the Likud lobby, or the Yisrael Beiteinu lobby. It's the far right wing of the Jewish community here in alliance with the far right wing in Israel.

And I don't think that I've been in any respect excessively or unreasonably critical of Israel. I think I have been critical of Israeli policy. And the atmosphere is such in this country now, that whereas Israelis in Israel routinely criticize policies they think may prove to be suicidal for their country, those who criticize the same policies here for the same reasons are subject to political reprisal.
...
ZAKARIA: Do you feel that the lobbies, the groups that reflect American Jews' concerns about Israel, that may reflect Israeli policy, have too much influence in public policy in the United States today?

FREEMAN: Well, I think the right-wing elements that I referred to, which are loosely called the Israel lobby -- as I said, I'd prefer the term Likud lobby -- in fact have a hammerlock on both public discussion and policy.

And the objective of their campaign against me was to reinforce that hammerlock, to enforce the taboo against any critical discussion of Israeli policies and what they might mean for Israel's future or the future of the United States as affected by Israel's future; to ensure that this group -- which is a very well-organized group, as can be readily discerned from their messages crowing about how they organized this campaign -- to reinforce their veto power over appointments to the government; to ensure that analysis was not value- free, but pro-Israel in orientation and, to some extent, anti-Arab; and finally, to ensure that the policy process remains supportive of whatever it is that whoever is in power in Israel demands.

In searching for these transcripts I was reminded of this little blast from the past. On June 8, Zakaria asked Henry Kissinger: "Is Barack Obama sufficiently pro-Israel for Jewish voters?"
Very revealing.

"Obama Admin Will Follow Bush Stance on Hamas Boycott"

Democracy Now! on business as usual at the State Department:

At the State Department Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated the Obama administration commitment to follow the Bush administration policy of boycotting Hamas.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “I would only add that our conditions respecting Hamas are very clear. We will not, in any way, negotiate with or recognize Hamas until they renounce violence, recognize Israel and agree to abide by, as the Foreign Minister said, the prior agreements entered into by the PLO and the Palestinian Authority."

The US position has been criticized in part because it refuses to impose the same conditions on Israel. Israel refuses to renounce violence, recognize a Palestinian state and abide by agreements, including a pledge to freeze settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.

The Mitchell Mission

Is the Mitchell Mission Doomed from Inception? Obama has his hands full with domestic woes. It is unlikely that he will expend any political capital on seeking justice in Palestine, nor will he be willing to offend any key constituencies by straying from the traditional American playbook on the issue (Rabbani and Toensing's first paragraph says it all) .

Until the US is willing to negotiate with the elected representatives of the Palestinian people it is wasting time. The PA is politically and morally bankrupt - it has no capacity to deliver a peace deal, it has no credibility among Palestinians.

Mouin Rabbani and Chris Toensing (Middle East Report) on "The Continuity of Obama's Change"

US media outlets were quick to pronounce Obama’s “big phone calls to the Middle East” “another marker of change” that the new president is, rather unfairly, expected to bring to every domain of American life. Yet the American political system is not one given to sudden and significant shifts in foreign policy, least of all on account of directives emanating from the Oval Office. Rather, foreign policy, and perhaps nowhere more so than toward the Middle East, is characterized by evolution, typically at a slow pace. Produced by a variety of competing interests encompassing the bureaucracy, business elites, the military, Congress and various lobbies, policy tends to change only when consensus is achieved on a new direction, with the role of the president generally limited to formalizing rather than catalyzing the process. Bush’s notorious aphorism, “I’m the decider,” represented ambition, not reality.
...
Even at the rhetorical level, a bromide like, “we are confronted by extraordinary, complex and interconnected global challenges: the war on terror, sectarian division and the spread of deadly technology. We did not ask for the burden that history has asked us to bear, but Americans will bear it,” could just as easily have emanated from Obama’s predecessor. The same is true of the president’s statement: “Just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians.” The source of Israeli fears is named, but the perpetuator of Palestinian despair is not.
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The Mitchell report shared the structural flaw of all US interventions on the Israeli-Palestinian front subsequent to the collapse of talks at Camp David in July 2000. Whether through a stoppage of Palestinian resistance, constitutional and security reform, or institution building, it placed the onus for progress toward peace and Palestinian statehood upon the occupied people, and deferred the duties of the occupying power until later. And it spoke not at all of the foremost of those obligations, the duty to end the occupation.
...
How Mitchell intends to produce a durable ceasefire, with the limited toolbox in his possession, remains something of a mystery. Insisting he will neither visit Gaza nor engage with Hamas -- at a time when Israel is all but ignoring Abbas and focusing on Egyptian-mediated talks with the Islamists -- he has once again produced a situation where US diplomacy is hamstrung by being more pro-Israel than Israel itself.
...
On the available evidence, it is almost certainly too late to implement a viable two-state settlement. Israeli settlement expansion appears to have proceeded too far, for far too long, to be able to be reversed by an Israeli government that can remain legitimate, even if genuine US pressure is bought to bear. The real test for Washington will therefore be not how often Mitchell shuttles to and around the region, but how rapidly it acts to freeze Israeli settlement expansion in all its forms and reverse Israeli impunity in the Occupied Territories.
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The problem is that the death notice will not be accompanied by a birth announcement for a binational state. With the vast majority of Israelis committed to retaining a Jewish state, and the vast majority of Palestinians in response demanding that their ethnicity be privileged in their own entity, a South African-type transformation on the Mediterranean is at best many years away. The more likely scenario, for the coming years, is a descent into increasingly existential, and regionalized, conflict.

Here are couple different views of Mitchell:

AFP on Mitchell

Zunes on Mitchell

The Continuing Failure of the Corporate Media

Our media outlets are part of massive project of ideological and psychological conditioning:

Despite two wars involving more than 200,000 U.S. troops and a global economic crisis, foreign-related news coverage by the three major U.S. television networks fell to a record low during 2008, according to the latest annual review of network news coverage by the authoritative Tyndall Report.

This psyop has deadly consequences. As Chris Hedges points out with regard to the (non)reporting of Israel's massacre in Gaza:

It was Israel, not Hamas, which violated the truce established last June. This was never made clear in any of the press reports.
...
But by giving credibility to the lies and false narratives Israel uses to justify wholesale slaughter we empower not only Israel’s willful self-destruction but our own. The press, as happened during the buildup to the Iraq war, was again feckless and gutless. It bent to the will of the powerful. It abandoned its sacred contract with its readers, listeners and viewers to always tell the truth. It chattered about nothing. It obscured the facts. It did this while hundreds of women and children were torn to shreds by iron fragmentation bombs in a flagrant violation of international law. And as it failed it lauded itself for doing “a fair, balanced and complete job.

However, public opinion regarding that lawless frontier outpost on the Eastern Med is changing very fast, much faster than the media and its corporate sponsors are able to adjust to. This is evident in the skyrocketing viewership of Al-Jazeera English during the most recent Israeli atrocity.

Interestingly CBS "60 Minutes" is the first network to respond to the shift in attitudes by filing this incredibly hard hitting report from the Occupied West Bank. Given the realities that Robert Anderson reports in this video, it is obvious that the two-state solution is officially dead, victim of a disingenuous Oslo "peace process" that was all an elaborate cover and stalling tactic so that Israel could consolidate its control over the West Bank.

The Continuity of Empire: Obama's Pentagon

Ray McGoverns pleads with the president to not send more American soldiers to Afghanistan.
But as he does, The Guardian reports:

Islamabad - The US military is investigating claims that more than two dozen Afghan civilians were killed during an attack on militants [on Monday]. The issue has badly undermined support for the international coalition and President Hamid Karzai.

And The Washington Post reports:

Two remote U.S. missile strikes that killed at least 20 people at suspected terrorist hideouts in northwestern Pakistan yesterday offered the first tangible sign of President Obama's commitment to sustained military pressure on the terrorist groups there, even though Pakistanis broadly oppose such unilateral U.S. actions.

Ron Jacobs, wonders why Gate's is still there:

The American people did not elect the Pentagon. They elected Barack Obama based a good deal on his promise to get US troops out of Iraq sooner rather than later. Since he was elected, Mr. Obama has hedged on this promise. Since he was inaugurated, the Pentagon and its civilian boss Robert Gates have hedged even more. Now, they insist, US troops should remain until the Iraqis hold a national election that is as of today not even scheduled. Then, even after that election is held, the departure of some US troops should depend on the outcome of the election. In other words, the Pentagon and Defense Department are telling Mr. Obama that no US troops should leave Iraq unless the election results meet the expectations of Washington.

This is exactly why Robert Gates should be removed from his position.

But rather than getting rid of Gates, it looks as though Gates is actually calling the shots. As the LA Times reports:

William Lynn III, the top lobbyist for Raytheon Co., was chosen by Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the position of deputy secretary of Defense.

The new ethics rules banned lobbyists from serving in the administration. But the executive order allowed waivers to let some former lobbyists take government jobs if doing so was in the public interest.
...
Gates pushed hard for Lynn's appointment and favored him over other officials suggested by the Obama transition team. At a news conference Thursday, Gates said he was impressed with Lynn and argued he should get the job despite the lobbying ban.

"I asked that an exception be made because I felt that he could play the role of the deputy in a better manner than anybody else that I saw," Gates said.

And this from Obama's Admiral:

"He [Blair] said that the Obama administration would carry out a review of interrogation policy, and that both military and intelligence interrogators would follow a uniform standard. Under questioning, however, he said he believed that some interrogation procedures and methods ought to remain secret so potential adversaries cannot train to resist them."

No Negotiations with Hamas?

Many of the most insightful Middle East observers are skeptical of the Obama administration's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For Robert Fisk, Obama's speech failed to break with the War on Terror frame to the issue:

But however much distance the new President put between himself and the vicious regime he was replacing, 9/11 still hung like a cloud over New York. We had to remember "the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke". Indeed, for Arabs, the "our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred" was pure Bush; the one reference to "terror", the old Bush and Israeli fear word, was a worrying sign that the new White House still hasn't got the message. Hence we had Obama, apparently talking about Islamist groups such as the Taliban who were "slaughtering innocents" but who "cannot outlast us". As for those in the speech who are corrupt and who "silence dissent", presumably intended to be the Iranian government, most Arabs would associate this habit with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt (who also, of course, received a phone call from Obama yesterday), King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and a host of other autocrats and head-choppers who are supposed to be America's friends in the Middle East.

Tony Karon at TomDispatch warns:

any peace process that seeks to marginalize, not integrate, Hamas is doomed to fail - and with catastrophic consequences. That's why the position outlined by Obama's Secretary of State-designate is dysfunctional at birth, because it repeats the mistake of trying to marginalize Hamas. For its part, Hamas officials have sent a number of signals in recent years indicating the organization's willingness to move in a pragmatic direction. Its leaders wouldn't bother to regularly explain their views in the op-ed pages of American newspapers if they did not believe a different relationship with the U.S. - and so Israel - was possible.
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Had Barack Obama taken office in a moment of relative tranquility in the fraught Israeli-Palestinian relationship, he might have had the luxury of putting it on the backburner. Indeed, any move to change the Bush approach might have been challenged as unnecessarily risky and disruptive.

In Gaza in the last few weeks, however, the Bush approach imploded, leaving Obama no choice but to initiate a new policy of his own. Hopefully, it will be one rooted in the pragmatism for which the new President is renowned.

And indeed, this collection of pro-Israel statements by prominent Democrats gives cause for skepticism.

Reuters draws on As'ad Abu Khalil to analyze Middle East reactions to Obama's approach to the region:

CAIRO - President Barack Obama has taken the Middle East by surprise with the speed of his diplomacy but his first statement on the conflict between Arabs and Israelis was strikingly similar to old U.S. policies...

The conservative Arab governments saw the calls as an affirmation of their privileged status -- another sign that Obama is sticking to traditional approaches.

"It took two long days before Obama dispelled any notions of a change in U.S. Middle East policy," said As'ad Abu Khalil, Lebanese-born and pro-Palestinian professor of political science at California State University.

"Obama's speech was quite something. It was like sprinkling sulphuric acid on the wounds of the children in Gaza," he added.

The Elders of Zion Strike Again?

On Sunday night I had the opportunity to attend a dinner with Stephen Zunes at which he spoke on what we can expect in terms of US-ME policy in the Age of Obama. The occasion gave me an opportunity to revisit the controversy that surrounded the John Mearsheimer and Stephan Walt argument that the pro-Israel lobby weilds a "heavy - and malign influence upon the formulation of US Middle East policy."

In terms of the Mearsheimer-Walt argument, it was of course refreshing to hear the obvious stated by the Deans of the Realist school of International Relations. But many of those who have spent decades studying the effects of US policy in the Middle East objected strongly to the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis, in that it overstated the influence of the Lobby and overlooked other factors such as American long-standing hegemonic designs in the region. What many of these critiques (from the Left) take special exception to, is the notion the US invaded Iraq because top level policymakers are beholden to the Lobby, and were therefore led to wage a war of aggression to "make Israel more secure" (in the words of Mearsheimer and Walt). For these critics, the Iraq invasion and other such policies must be explained in terms of US Grand Strategy- control of oil resources and access to military bases. In the words of Joseph Massad: "it is in fact the very centrality of Israel to US strategy in the Middle East that accounts, in part, for the strength of the pro-Israel lobby and not the other way around."

But I wonder, if the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis is overstated, then how do we explain Obama's June 4 address to AIPAC? I don't believe that that speech can be accounted for in terms of US Grand Strategy - I think there is something more insidious at work - it has to do with the position of Palestine within the dominant American political culture and the structure of the American state. I think we need to step back from the structural realism (though I am, for the most part, a structural realist...) of Hans Morgenthau, and look closely at American class structure and the nature of bureaucratic politics in the US.

I believe that there is a danger, in the analysis of Massad, Zunes, Plitnick and Toesing, et al., of overstating the rationality and coherence of the American State and its Grand Strategic Designs. There is a danger of reifying the State and its interests, and assuming that said interests (economic, security, or otherwise) are natural, self-evident, or can somehow be logically deduced from the structure of the international system, rather than seeing said interests as socially constructed in a process that is as much discursive as it is material.

To my way of thinking, it is not Israel as such (a strategic object on a Grand Chess Board), but rather "Israel" as a symbol of American nationalism -- the cultural resonance of the New Jerusalem and the City on the Hill run deep among America's dominant social groups -- Israel as a symbol of strength and continued expansion in the post-Vietnam era when apparitions of American hegemonic decline haunt all policymakers. Unconditional ("non-negotiable") support for Israeli expansion has become code for continuity with the the 500 year American tradition of frontier expansion. By supporting Israeli colonization efforts, US policymakers signal their own commitment to "strength" in the face of "barbarism." It seems to me that a radical redefinition of the terms of American nationalism is in order if we're to see a truly transformative change in American politics and society. Until we (the Left) confront the pernicious cultural hegemony of Manifest Destiny and its Evil Twin Zionism, we'll remain ineffective in the face of the organized Money Power of The Lobby- and Palestinians will continue to pay a price in blood for our cowardice.

The Iron Wall Strategy

John Mearsheimer in The American Conservative on Israel's true purposes in Gaza:

The actual purpose is connected to Israel’s long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a “Greater Israel.” Specifically, Israel’s leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement between them, the air above and the water below them.

The key to achieving this is to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future. This strategy, which was first articulated by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s and has heavily influenced Israeli policy since 1948, is commonly referred to as the “Iron Wall.”

...

Arnon Soffer, a prominent Israeli demographer who also advised Sharon, elaborated on what that pressure would look like. “When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.”

...

There is also little chance that people around the world who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. The destruction is just too obvious to miss, and too many people—especially in the Arab and Islamic world—care about the Palestinians’ fate. Moreover, discourse about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the Palestinians are the victims. What is happening in Gaza will accelerate that changing picture of the conflict and long be seen as a dark stain on Israel’s reputation.

The bottom line is that no matter what happens on the battlefield, Israel cannot win its war in Gaza. In fact, it is pursuing a strategy—with lots of help from its so-called friends in the Diaspora—that is placing its long-term future at risk.

Ralph Bunche and the Dream

Vijay Prashad writes on Ralph Bunche:

On June 14, 1947, Ralph Bunche arrived in Palestine. Born into an African American family of great talents, Bunche went to UCLA and Harvard, did innovative research on French colonialism and African anti-colonialism. A job at Howard did not detain him, as he was quickly taken into the United Nations, where the Secretary General hastened to send him to help the Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) figure out what to do with the British (who governed the mandate), the Jews (whose numbers had begun to increase through migration from Europe and elsewhere) and the Palestinians (who had begun to be displaced from their ancestral homelands)... Two weeks into the work, Bunche wrote in his diary, “One thing seems sure, this problem can’t be solved on the basis of abstract justice, historical or otherwise. Reality is that both Arabs and Jews are here and intend to stay. Therefore, in any ‘solution’ some group, or at least its claim, is bound to get hurt. Danger in any arrangement is that a caste system will develop with backward Arabs as the lower caste.”

In 1949 Bunch won the Nobel Peace prize for his work with UNSCOP. He was the first person of African descent to be so honored. In his acceptance speech

Bunche offered a vision for the United Nations, “In the final analysis, the acid test of a genuine will to peace is the willingness of disputing parties to expose their differences to the peaceful processes of the United Nations and to the bar of international public opinion which the United Nations reflects. It is only in this way that truth, reason, and justice may come to prevail over the shrill and blatant voice of propaganda; that a wholesome international morality can be cultivated."

The Elders of Zion Strike Again?

Author's note: This post has been taken down for reconstruction- it will be reposted above

Merchants of Death

Frida Berrigan in FPIF:

During the Bush administration, Israel received over $21 billion in U.S. security assistance, including $19 billion in direct military aid under the Pentagon's Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program. Through the FMF program, Israel remains the single largest recipient of U.S. military aid each year, which they use to purchase U.S. weapons.

Hardware continues to flow in, despite the fact the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) requires nations receiving U.S. arms to certify the weapons are used for internal security and legitimate self-defense, and that their use doesn't lead to an escalation of conflict. During 2008 alone, the United States made over $22 billion in new arms sales offers to Israel, including a proposed deal for as many as 75 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, worth up to $15.2 billion; nine heavy transport aircraft, worth up to $1.9 billion; four Littoral Combat Ships and related equipment, worth as much as $1.9 billion; and up to $1.3 billion in gasoline and jet aviation fuel.

One lone congressman - Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) - raised concerns about Israel's possible violations of the AECA. He hasn't had a response from the State Department. What use are our laws if they are not followed?

The last time the United States cut off military aid and weapons transfers to Israel was in 1981. During Israel's incursion into Lebanon, the Reagan administration cut off U.S. military aid and arms deliveries for 10 weeks while it investigated whether Israel was using weapons for "defensive purposes," as required under U.S. law.

The Guardian reports:

The Pentagon has suspended the delivery of a shipload of munitions to Israel after international concern that it could be used by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the contract for the munitions had been arranged last summer and approved in October. He said the munitions were due to be delivered to a US pre-positioning depot in Israel for US forces. But he added: "If the government of Israel requests munitions they can do so direct to the US government under the Foreign Military Sales programme." ...

Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa programme director, Malcolm Smart, said: "The last thing that is needed now is more weapons and munitions in the region, which is awash with arms that are being used in a manner which contravenes international law and is having a devastating effect on the civilian population in Gaza."

AIPAC and the CBC

Glen Ford is editor of Black Agenda Report, on the power of the Israel lobby in the Congressional Black Caucus:

It appears the old John Conyers has left the scene without those of us who used to know him having had a chance to say goodbye. The Israeli lobby has that kind of effect on erstwhile progressives and anti-war folks. The Zionist ideology, and especially the chilling effect of Zionist power, is probably the second-greatest impediment to creation of a sustained American peace movement - the first obstacle being the ideology of American Manifest Destiny, which is in practice quite compatible with Zionism.
However, African Americans are least susceptible to the Manifest Destiny/Zionist Mythology combo. Both ideologies wreak of racism, and most Black people know it. The Congressional Black Caucus knows it, too, but they are terrified of offending Israel's innumerable political hit men.

Silencing the Now: Shhh, the Israelis are Shooting

Obama on 12/30/08: "Shhh, the Israelis are shooting"

As Gaza burns, Obama plays golf. Boy, the New Boss, feels quite bit like the Old Boss.

The Gaurdian cautions that as al-Jazeera broadcast images of Obama taking in the "back 9" juxtaposed with images of murder and mayhem in the streets of Gaza, Obama is "losing a battle of perceptions among Muslims that he may not realize has even begun... The danger is that when he finally peers over the parapet on January 21, the battle of perceptions may already be half-lost."

How should we interpret silence? Historians of Palestine are well-trained in this art given that the history of Palestine has been largely silenced by Zioinist claims to "A Land without a People for a People without a Land." And as historians such as Gabi Pitterburg point out, the discursive erasure of Palestinians is an essential prerequisite to their their psychical removal (or "Transfer" as its known) and dispossession.

Is there any doubt that Obama will reach out and grasp that Faustian hand with full enthusiasm? Will Obama avoid rocking the proverbial boat on Palestine, the Middle East, and "National Security" issues writ large in the interest of getting his "domestic agenda" passed? Perhaps he should step back from all the FDR/ Great Depression analogies for a moment and remind himself of the fate of LBJ's Great Society. The point being that all the best laid plans for "domestic reform" can come to naught if one lacks the courage to stand up to monsters at home. LBJ thought that if he would give the Southern Dems in Congress, and the JFK foreign policy Establishment (Rostow, the Bundy Brothers, and Rusk) the War they wanted, he would get his Great Society at home- Guns and Butter for all. The problem with Faustian bargains is that they rarely turn out as expected. Trading on the backs of Palestinians may by be a time-honored Beltway tactic - but it produces consistently disastrous results for all concerned- but mostly for Palestinians. It is the Palestinians who pay the price for our cowardice at home. We lack the capacity to confront our own monsters- our own violent pathologies that lead us offer up endless human sacrifice to our Gods of the Military Industrial Complex (Boeing, Raytheon, etc), and so we project that violence outward. And then if that were not enough our Pundits have the audacity to suggest that it is Arab and Muslim political culture that is prone to spates of irrational violence. There is no single more prolific purveyor of violence than the United States. Until we muster the the courage to mount a real social revolution capable overturning the corrupt and defunct system of cruelty we will remain captives of that system. We may avert our eyes form the destruction caused by our own cowardice and we may indulge in yet more narcissistic orgies of self-congratulation for electing Barack Obama (if I see one more advertisement for a human interest special on Obamas or the "historic nature" of elec-sham '08, I think I am going to throw up), but while we dither, and avoid a confrontation with our own ruling class, the world burns. What will be left for our children to inherent? The rubble in Gaza offers one suggestion.

The Power of "No Comment"

When Obama visited Middle East in July these were his sentiments:

"He said then that when bombs are raining down on your citizens, there is an urge to respond and act to try to put an end to that. That's what he said then. I think that's what he believes." [Axelrod quoted on Face the Nation].

Which side of the line do you suppose he was standing on? Does one suppose that Obama might have venture into Occupied Gaza to witness first hand the human suffering caused by Israeli cruelty and American supplied war planes? No, he was not referring to a Palestinian "urge to respond" to Israeli bombs, though one would assume that Palestinians, as humans, would have such an "urge."

Radical journalist Joshua Frank reprints Axelrod's comments:

On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Obama’s Senior Adviser David Axelrod explained to guest cost Chip Reid how an Obama administration would handle the situation, even if it turns for the worst.

“Well, certainly, the president-elect recognizes the special relationship between United States and Israel. It’s an important bond, an important relationship. He’s going to honor it ... And obviously, this situation has become even more complicated in the last couple of days and weeks. As Hamas began its shelling, Israel responded. But it’s something that he’s committed to."

Such feckless adherence to orthodox thinking, and such cold indifference to a human tragedy of this magnitude gives lie to the notion that once Obama's actually in power, he'll be able to put some distance between himself and his AIPAC puppetmasters- even Obama suggested something of the sort when he told 'Ali Abunimah in 200o:

"Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front."

Is Obama victim of his own naivete? Or did he simply pay lip service to Arab-Americans when it was in his political interest to do so (I of course think it is the latter). Did he actually think that once he got closer to the levers of power he'd have more freedom of action? Perhaps he should dust off Ferguson's The Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems. A little more attention to how power in America actually works would have disabused the young state senator of such naive assumptions. Had he read that book he might have a better understanding of just how long it would take to repay all those who put him in power- I don't like predictions, but if i had to venture, i predict that he'll be prostrating himself before his AIPAC puppetmasters for as long as the corrupt and defunct political system for which he serves as chief executive remains in tact.

The problem is strucutual, it's systemic. Obama is now part of the death machine - and has to be opposed as such. The wicked system over which he presides is doomed. Too bad Obama didn't the memo.

The Wages of Naivete

In Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) Michel-Rolph Trouillot observes: "Naivete is often an excuse for those who exercise power. For those upon whom that power is exercised, naivete is always a mistake." (xix)

I wonder which is the NYT: pretending not to know to avoid culpability (a kind of limited liability journalism) or victim of its own want for knowledge.

Which ever the case, NYT op-ed columnist Roger Cohen thinks that Madame Secretary should take Ehud Olmert's advice and show a little "tough-love" for Israel when it undermines any prospect of a peace-process. Why a US SecSt should take advice from a corrupt, and discredited former Likudnik (besides tradition) is beside the point. The fact is that when Olmert pleads:

We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the territories. Some percentage of these territories would remain in our hands, but we must give the Palestinians the same percentage elsewhere — without this, there will be no peace.

he only demonstrates his own irrelevance- and the NYT commits criminal naivete by suggesting that Hillary would entertain such drivel for even one moment. The NYT should know by now that Hillary demonstrated her "National Security" and "Foreign Policy" credentials when she entered the race for NY Senate the same way virtually all politicians have since Vietnam: by inserting Israel as a counter-metaphor to American weakness and decline (See McAllister, Epic Encounters, "the good fight"). (This is AKA prostrating oneself before AIPAC.) And so Hillary will again seek to demonstrate her - and America's - "credibility" (you know that wonderful thing that brought us Vietnam...) by standing with Netanyahu and "our great Israeli ally" in the Global War on Terrorism.

American Empire is doomed. How many scarce resources will the new adminstration exhaust trying to put humpty-dumpty back together again? Early indications are: way too many.

Naivete is a luxury that we can't afford/ crime we can't excuse at this point.

Dumb and Dumber: President Barbie and The Great Sage of the Senate

Alexander Cockburn sizes up the VP debate and declares: "A Start is Born!"

"On present trends, the McCain-Palin ticket is doomed, just as the Republican presidential campaign of another Arizonan senator, Barry Goldwater, was crushed by Lyndon Johnson, in 1964. Yet that defeat was the making of Ronald Reagan, who stole every right-wing Republican heart with his speech for Goldwater in the party convention that year. Two years later, Reagan was governor of California. Twelve years later in 1976, he was challenging an incumbent Republican president, Gerald Ford. In 1980 he won the presidency

More than once, last night, I thought Palin must have been watching re-runs of Reagan’s speeches, though decades of deference to Hollywood tycoons made Reagan far more respectful of Wall Street than the Alaskan governor. Her first national political foray may have only a month to run, but on Thursday night she won herself a long-term political future. Populism comes in many different garments. The bailout, voted through this last week by Obama and Biden and the Democrats, showed the party has lost the capability even of deception, even of the pretence that it is the friend of the working people. (And yes, Palin is the only person on the campaign trail from whose lips I have heard the increasingly unfamiliar term “working class”.) Palin has a lot to learn, but in the years ahead, amid the bankruptcy of the liberal left, her strain of populism will have an eager audience."

As for the "Great Sage," Robert Fisk wonders why Biden would assert: "we kicked Hizballah out of Lebanon."

Stephen Zunes is similarly unimpressed with this one from the Great Sage:
"BIDEN: With regard to Iraq, I gave the president the power [in the October 2002 Iraq War Resolution]. I voted for the power because he said he needed it not to go to war but to keep the United States, the UN in line, to keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted."

Boy, it it wern't for Sen. Biden, who "would keep the UN in line"?

Another pearl wisdom from the String of Biden:
"Here's what the president [Bush] said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won."

Atta boy, Scranton Joe!! somebodody's got to keep the West Bank free of Democracy!

Obama tours Gaza; Calls for an end to the Siege

Just seeing if your payin' attention... 

Palestinians not excited about Obama (NYT)

The Fate of Empire

In the summer of 2006, Israel waged savage if ultimately unsuccessful war on Lebanon to get its two captured soldiers back (while Obama led the cheer leading section, its worth adding). It failed. It was forced to recognize, yet again, that there are clear and absolute limits to the kind of power that "flows from the barrel of a gun." Israel, once seen as nearly omnipotent in the face of its Arab neighbors, faced military defeat at the hands of Hizballah for the second time in less than seven years. 

Well Israel got the bodies of its soldiers back, but not under the conditions of its own  choosing. This is what it looks like when Empires fall. 

Here are the coffins of Arab bodies that Israel was forced to hand over to Nasrallah:

The Fate of Empire

A word to would be Empires:

This is what defeat looks like. You may want to get used to it.  

Angry Arab warns: "Make no mistake about it: the Supply of Arabs willing to fight Israeli occupation  will never deplete. Never."