We all watched this couple walk into Obama’s first White House State Dinner last week without any invitation.

Michaele and Tareq Salahi greet President Obama

We all asked, “How did they do this?  Where was the Secret Service?  Who are these people?”  Well, answers to some of these questions are beginning to come forward.

Maybe, this was not the couple’s first time meeting the President?  Take a look at the next photo and posting on Gateway Pundit

From the Polo Contacts Website–
“America’s Cup Polo Pre-Event with President-Elect Barack Obama”

Obama and the Salahis at a Polo Event

From Left to Right is: Randy Jackson, better known as a Judge on American Idol – his previous life he was a bass player for the Rock band JOURNEY, which also performed at the America’s Polo Cup. Others pictured are Black Eyed Peas Rock Band, Tareq Salahi the President of the America’s Polo Cup, President Elect Obama, Fergie from Black Eyed Peas and Michaele Salahi a former Miss USASuperModel. and

American Power discovered this on the White House party crashers- They belong to a radical anti-Israeli group:

Tareq Salahi, the polo-playing intruder, is a Palestinian nationalist with ties to the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) , a pro-Palestine lobby demanding the “right of return” for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants. The “right of return” has long been considered the backdoor to Israel’s destruction. But not only that: ATFP President Ziad Asali is an America-basher who blamed 9/11 on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Asali was a lead U.S. official to PLO terrorist Yassir Arafat’s funeral in 2004. And in a position paper in 2007, the ATFP called for a power-sharing agreement at the Palestinian Authority, which would have included the State Department’s designated-terrorist group, Hamas.

And, there’s more…
Canada Free Press reported that the American Task Force for Palestine (ATFP) has airbrushed references to Salahi from its website:

We do know for a fact that among the slew of memberships on charitable boards, Tareq Salahi is a former member of The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP). The only way to know for a fact is because even though ATFP scrubbed all references to Salahi as a board member, he can still be found on Google cache. (Canada Free Press)

Sad that White House Secret Service are looking like Keystone Kops in the aftermath of Obama’s very first state house dinner in the tent.

While the media is fixated on the hitch in Michaele Salahi’s git-along, there can be no doubt that these recently minted “party crashers” really get around.

American Power has more on the Salahi’s leadership role with the the American Task Force on Palestinian, the “moderate” rights groups pushing a thinly-veiled program of Palestinian nationalism and the “right of return” (the backdoor destruction of Israel).

According to Discover the Networks, ATFP’s former vice president is Rashid Khalidi, the Columbia University Middle East Studies professor and militant Palestinian rights activist. Khalidi cites the late Edward Said as his major influence, and according to the entry cited, “As with Said before him, Khalidi’s involvement with the Palestinian cause goes beyond mere support.” And, “Khalidi so strongly identified with the aims of the PLO, which was designated as a terrorist group by the State Department during Khalidi’s affiliation with it in the 1980s, that he repeatedly referred to himself as ‘we’ when expounding on the PLO’s agenda.” Also, according to Campus Watch, ATFP remains in full support Kahlidi, for example, during charges of academic misconduct in 2005, at the time of Senator Barack Obama’s meeting with Tareq Salahi. See, “ATFP EXPRESSES FULL SUPPORT FOR COLUMBIA PROFESSOR RASHID KHALIDI.

Note too that Obama’s ties to the Palestinian community became something of an issue during the 2008 campaign. See, the Los Angeles Times, “Allies of Palestinians See a Friend in Obama.” Plus, from Andrew C. McCarthy and Claudia Rosett, “In Obama’s Hyde Park, It’s All in the Family: Passing Anti-American Radicalism From Generation to Generation.

As you may recall. The LA Times hid the tape of Barack Obama attending a 2003 Jew-bash where he praised and toasted the former PLO operative Rashid Khalidi.

With Barack Obama, it’s always about the radicalism. Always.

It looks like the Salahi security breach is much more than just an “embarassment” for the Secret Service.

UPDATE: Bennet send this–

I noticed you posted about the Salahi’s crashing the party, but did not mention that–as Canada Free Press mentioned–Obama met them back in 2005. I assume you did that because CFP did not give proof for their claim that their picture together (along with the Black Eyed Peas) was from 2005 and not last year as the Polo Contacts website claims.

I searched for proof the picture was from 2005 without any luck–until I realized the proof is from the Polo site itself.
Right click on the image and save it: the current name of that file is: ROCKTHEVOTEJune82005014.jpg

Seems that reading The Da Vinci Code finally paid off.

This doesn’t prove Obama was as friendly with the Salahis as with the Khaladis, Saids, and the Ayers’–but it is still interesting to note.

America, this is not funny at all.  God just keeps on giving us clue after clue.  Obama and the ‘LAME STREAM MEDIA’ did an excellent job during the 2008 presidential campaign of hiding all his radical associations and activity but you know what?  You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool God any of the time.

Looks like the White House Party Crashers have just opened up that old can of radical worms all over again….. OBAMA!

The Electronic Intifada, November 10, 2009

Israeli Jews and the one-state solution

Anyone who rejects the two-state solution, won’t bring a one-state solution. They will instead bring one war, not one state. A bloody war with no end. — Israeli President Shimon Peres, 7 November 2009.

One of the most commonly voiced objections to a one-state solution for Palestine/Israel stems from the accurate observation that the vast majority of Israeli Jews reject it, and fear being “swamped” by a Palestinian majority. Across the political spectrum, Israeli Jews insist on maintaining a separate Jewish-majority state.

But with the total collapse of the Obama Administration’s peace efforts, and relentless Israeli colonization of the occupied West Bank, the reality is dawning rapidly that the two-state solution is no more than a slogan that has no chance of being implemented or altering the reality of a de facto binational state in Palestine/Israel.

This places an obligation on all who care about the future of Palestine/Israel to seriously consider the democratic alternatives. I have long argued that the systems in post-apartheid South Africa (a unitary democratic state), and Northern Ireland (consociational democracy) — offer hopeful, real-life models.

But does solid Israeli Jewish opposition to a one-state solution mean that a peaceful one-state outcome is so unlikely that Palestinians should not pursue it, and should instead focus only on “pragmatic” solutions that would be less fiercely resisted by Israeli Jews?

The experience in South Africa suggests otherwise. In 1994, white-minority rule — apartheid — came to a peaceful, negotiated end, and was replaced (after a transitional period of power-sharing) with a unitary democratic state with a one person, one vote system. Before this happened, how likely did this outcome look? Was there any significant constituency of whites prepared to contemplate it, and what if the African National Congress (ANC) had only advanced political solutions that whites told pollsters they would accept?

Until close to the end of apartheid, the vast majority of whites, including many of the system’s liberal critics, completely rejected a one person, one vote system, predicting that any attempt to impose it would lead to a bloodbath. As late as 1989, F.W. de Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid president, described a one person, one vote system as the “death knell” for South Africa.

A 1988 study by political scientist Pierre Hugo documented the widespread fears among South African whites that a transition to majority rule would entail not only a loss of political power and socioeconomic status, but engendered “physical dread” and fear of “violence, total collapse, expulsion and flight.” Successive surveys showed that four out of five whites thought that majority rule would threaten their “physical safety.” Such fears were frequently heightened by common racist tropes of inherently savage and violent Africans, but the departure of more than a million white colons from Algeria and the airlifting of 300,000 whites from Angola during decolonization set terrifying precedents (“Towards darkness and death: racial demonology in South Africa,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 26(4), 1988).

Throughout the 1980s, polls showed that even as whites increasingly understood that apartheid could not last, only a small minority ever supported majority rule and a one person, one vote system. In a March 1986 survey, for example, 47 percent of whites said they would favor some form of “mixed-race” government, but 83 percent said they would opt for continued white domination of the government if they had the choice (Peter Goodspeed, “Afrikaners cling to their all-white dream,” The Toronto Star, 5 October 1986).

A 1990 nationwide survey of Afrikaner whites (native speakers of Afrikaans, as opposed to English, and who traditionally formed the backbone of the apartheid state), found just 2.2 percent were willing to accept a “universal franchise with majority rule” (Kate Manzo and Pat McGowan, “Afrikaner fears and the politics of despair: Understanding change in South Africa,” International Studies Quarterly, 36, 1992).

Perhaps an enlightened white elite was able to lead the white masses to higher ground? This was not the case either. A 1988 academic survey of more than 400 white politicians, business and media leaders, top civil servants, academics and clergy found that just 4.8 percent were prepared to accept a unitary state with a universal voting franchise and two-thirds considered such an outcome “unacceptable.” According to Manzo and McGowan, white elites reflected the sentiments and biases of the rest of the society and overwhelmingly considered whites inherently more civilized and culturally superior to black Africans. Just more than half of prominent whites were prepared to accept “a federal state in which power is shared between white and non-white groups and areas so that no one group dominates.”

During the 1980s, the white electorate in South Africa moved to the right, as Israel’s Jewish electorate is doing today. Support seeped from the National Party, which had established formal apartheid in 1948, to the even more extreme Conservative Party. Yet, “on the issue of majority rule,” Hugo observed, “supporters of the National Party and the Conservative Party, as well as most white voters to the ‘left’ of these organizations, ha[d] little quarrel with each other.”

The vast majority of whites, wracked with existential fears, were simply unable to contemplate relinquishing effective control, or at least a veto, over political decision-making in South Africa.

Yet, the African National Congress insisted firmly on a one person, one vote system with no white veto. As the township protests and strikes and international pressure mounted, The Economist observed in an extensive 1986 survey of South Africa published on 1 February of that year, that many “enlightened” whites “still fondly argue that a dramatic improvement in the quality of black life may take the revolutionary sting out of the black townships — and persuade ‘responsible’ blacks, led by the emergent black middle class, to accept some power-sharing formula.”

Schemes to stabilize the apartheid system abounded, and bear a strong resemblance to the current Israeli government’s vision of “economic peace” in which a collaborationist Palestinian Authority leadership would manage a still-subjugated Palestinian population anesthetized by consumer goods and shopping malls.

Because of the staunch opposition of whites to a unitary democratic state, the ANC heard no shortage of advice from western liberals that it should seek a “realistic” political accommodation with the apartheid regime, and that no amount of pressure could force whites to succumb to the ANC’s political demands. The ANC was warned that insistence on majority rule would force Afrikaners into the “laager” — they would retreat into a militarized garrison state and siege economy, preferring death before surrender.

Even the late Helen Suzman, one of apartheid’s fiercest liberal critics, predicted in 1987, as quoted by Hugo, “The Zimbabwe conflict took 15 years … and cost 20,000 lives and I can assure you that the South African transfer of power will take a good deal more than that, both in time and I am afraid lives.”

But as The Economist observed, the view that whites would prefer “collective suicide” was something of a caricature. The vast majority of Afrikaners were “no longer bible-thumping boers.” They were “part of a spoilt, affluent suburban society, whose economic pain threshold may prove to be rather low.”

The Economist concluded that if whites would only come so far voluntarily, then it was perfectly reasonable for the anti-apartheid movement to bring them the rest of the way through “coercion” in the form of sanctions and other forms of pressure. “The quicker the white tribe submits,” the magazine wrote, “the better its chance of a bearable future in a black-ruled South Africa.”

Ultimately, as we now know, the combination of internal resistance and international isolation did force whites to abandon political apartheid and accept majority rule. However, it is important to note that the combined strength of the anti-apartheid movement never seriously threatened the physical integrity of the white regime.

Even after the massive township uprisings of 1985-86, the South African regime was secure. “So far there is no real physical threat to white power,” The Economist noted, “so far there is little threat to white lives. … The white state is mighty, and well-equipped. It has the capacity to repress the township revolts far more bloodily. The blacks have virtually no urban or rural guerrilla capacity, practically no guns, few safe havens within South Africa or without.”

This balance never changed, and a similar equation could be written today about the relative power of a massively-armed — and much more ruthless — Israeli state, and lightly armed Palestinian resistance factions.

What did change for South Africa, and what all the weapons in the world were not able to prevent, was the complete loss of legitimacy of the apartheid regime and its practices. Once this legitimacy was gone, whites lost the will to maintain a system that relied on repression and violence and rendered them international pariahs; they negotiated a way out and lived to tell the tale. It all happened much more quickly and with considerably less violence than even the most optimistic predictions of the time. But this outcome could not have been predicted based on what whites said they were willing to accept, and it would not have occurred had the ANC been guided by opinion polls rather than the democratic principles of the Freedom Charter.

Zionism — as many Israelis openly worry — is suffering a similar, terminal loss of legitimacy as Israel is ever more isolated as a result of its actions. Israel’s self-image as a liberal “Jewish and democratic state” is proving impossible to maintain against the reality of a militarized, ultra-nationalist Jewish sectarian settler-colony that must carry out frequent and escalating massacres of “enemy” civilians (Lebanon and Gaza 2006, Gaza 2009) in a losing effort to check the resistance of the region’s indigenous people. Zionism cannot bomb, kidnap, assassinate, expel, demolish, settle and lie its way to legitimacy and acceptance.

Already difficult to disguise, the loss of legitimacy becomes impossible to conceal once Palestinians are a demographic majority ruled by a Jewish minority. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinians recognize Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish state” is in effect an acknowledgement of failure: without Palestinian consent, something which is unlikely ever to be granted, the Zionist project of a Jewish ethnocracy in Palestine has grim long-term prospects.

Similarly, South African whites typically attempted to justify their opposition to democracy, not in terms of a desire to preserve their privilege and power, but using liberal arguments about protecting distinctive cultural differences. Hendrik Verwoerd Jr., the son of assassinated Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, apartheid’s founder, expressed the problem in these terms in 1986, as reported by The Toronto Star, stating that, “These two people, the Afrikaner and the black, are not capable of becoming one nation. Our differences are unique, cultural and deep. The only way a man can be happy, can live in peace, is really when he is among his own people, when he shares cultural values.”

The younger Verwoerd was on the far-right of South African politics, leading a quixotic effort to carve out a whites-only homeland in the heart of South Africa. But his reasoning sounds remarkably similar to liberal Zionist defenses of the “two-state solution” today. The Economist clarified the use of such language at the time, stating that “One of the weirder products of apartheid is the crippling of language in a maw of hypocrisy, euphemism and sociologese. You talk about the Afrikaner ‘right to self-determination’ — meaning power over everybody else.”

Zionism’s claim for “Jewish self-determination” amidst an intermixed population, is in effect a demand to preserve and legitimize a status quo in which Israeli Jews exercise power in perpetuity. But there’s little reason to expect that Israeli Jews would abandon this quest voluntarily any more than South African whites did. As in South Africa, coercion is necessary — and the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is one of the most powerful, nonviolent, legitimate and proven tools of coercion that Palestinians possess. Israel’s vulnerabilities may be different from those of apartheid South Africa, but Israel is not invulnerable to pressure.

Coercion is not enough, however; as I have long argued, and sought to do, Palestinians must also put forward a positive vision. Neither can Palestinians advocating a one-state solution simply disregard the views of Israeli Jews. We must recognize that the opposition of Israeli Jews to any solution that threatens their power and privilege stems from at least two sources. One is irrational, racist fears of black and brown hordes (in this case, Arab Muslims) stoked by decades of colonial, racist demonization. The other source — certainly heightened by the former — are normal human concerns about personal and family dislocation, loss of socioeconomic status and community security: change is scary.

But change will come. Without indulging Israeli racism or preserving undue privilege, the legitimate concerns of ordinary Israeli Jews can be addressed directly in any negotiated transition to ensure that the shift to democracy is orderly, and essential redistributive policies are carried out fairly. Inevitably, decolonization will cause some pain as Israeli Jews lose power and privilege, but there are few reasons to believe it cannot be a well-managed process, or that the vast majority of Israeli Jews, like white South Africans, would not be prepared to make the adjustment for the sake of a normality and legitimacy they cannot have any other way.

This is where the wealth of research and real-life experience about the successes, failures, difficulties and opportunities of managing such transitions at the level of national and local politics, neighborhoods, schools and universities, workplaces, state institutions and policing, emerging from South Africa and Northern Ireland, will be of enormous value.

Every situation has unique features, and although there are patterns in history, it never repeats itself exactly. But what we can conclude from studying the pasts and presents of others is that Palestinians and Israelis are no less capable of writing themselves a post-colonial future that gives everyone a chance at a life worth living in a single, democratic state.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Jewish Voice for Peace comments:

Ali Abunimah is a prominent defender of a single democratic state in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. In this article he makes the now quite common – though also controversial – comparison with Apartheid South Africa. Usually the question this comparison raises is whether Israeli treatment of Palestinians is really analogous to or as bad as the Apartheid regime’s treatment of its black majority, and the comparison is often used to support the use of tactics of resistance like BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) modeled on the anti-Apartheid campaigns of the 1980s.  But Abunimah instead hones narrowly in on the hostility of the white minority in South Africa to a multi-racial democratic state, a hostility that persisted until surprisingly shortly before change was initiated. It is this that he compares, in a wealth of detail, with Jewish Israeli fears of a single state solution. If change could occur in South Africa in spite of such widespread rejection in the white community, why, Abuminah argues, should change not occur in Israel despite the fears of the Jewish community? It won’t happen, he recognizes without outside pressure (and he supports BDS); but current Jewish Israeli rejection need not make it impossible.

This is surely true, but ‘not necessarily impossible’ is very far from showing that a one-state solution ought to be the aspiration of activist movements, Palestinian, Jewish or otherwise. As his banner quotation from Shimon Peres – a barely veiled threat – makes clear, it remains quite possible that a one-state ‘solution’ will involve no diminution of violence towards or oppression of Palestinians. One state is, after all, what there is now. What might make it important to explore a one state possibility is the fact, clearly motivating Abunimah, that two viable states are now impossible. Certainly he is correct to say that there is presently no political will in the Israeli or US administrations to move in the direction of a viable Palestinian state and reasonable opinions can differ on whether the current ‘facts on the ground’ make it impossible to eke out such a state. But it is also surely true that activist pressure can be brought to bear both on that political
will and even on the facts on the ground and this pressure has a natural point of application in the official commitment of Israel, the US, the PA (and even Hamas) to two states. If change is possible, as Abunimah argues, on the one state solution, then it is certainly possible for two states. But if two states can be achieved, then this removes a big chunk of the motivation for directing one’s energies to one state. Indeed, aiming for two viable states in the medium term is not inconsistent with seeking to build consensus, along the lines Abunimah suggests, for single state in the long term.

The question is by no means an obvious one to resolve, but it is important to consider where activist energies are most likely to have an effect, and avoid directions that absorb energy with little hope of result. Indeed some commentators have suggested that the one state solution has become increasingly acceptable in the mainstream US  media precisely because it is so unlikely to come about that it represents – from the point of view of the status quo – a harmless safety valve through which to discharge otherwise potentially dangerous activist pressure.

Alistair Welchman

Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, delivered the keynote address Saturday at the National BDS Conference at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.

For the next video in the six-part speech, check out Palestine Video. **I’ll be posting more thoughts/ideas/reports from the conference in the next few days, hopefully.

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada

At the height of the global anti-apartheid movement, in 1989, a bus in London displays a message calling for boycott of South Africa. (Rahul D'Lucca)

Anyone who rejects the two-state solution, won’t bring a one-state solution. They will instead bring one war, not one state. A bloody war with no end. — Israeli President Shimon Peres, 7 November 2009.

One of the most commonly voiced objections to a one-state solution for Palestine/Israel stems from the accurate observation that the vast majority of Israeli Jews reject it, and fear being “swamped” by a Palestinian majority. Across the political spectrum, Israeli Jews insist on maintaining a separate Jewish-majority state.

But with the total collapse of the Obama Administration’s peace efforts, and relentless Israeli colonization of the occupied West Bank, the reality is dawning rapidly that the two-state solution is no more than a slogan that has no chance of being implemented or altering the reality of a de facto binational state in Palestine/Israel.

This places an obligation on all who care about the future of Palestine/Israel to seriously consider the democratic alternatives. I have long argued that the systems in post-apartheid South Africa (a unitary democratic state), and Northern Ireland (consociational democracy) — offer hopeful, real-life models.

But does solid Israeli Jewish opposition to a one-state solution mean that a peaceful one-state outcome is so unlikely that Palestinians should not pursue it, and should instead focus only on “pragmatic” solutions that would be less fiercely resisted by Israeli Jews?

The experience in South Africa suggests otherwise. In 1994, white-minority rule — apartheid — came to a peaceful, negotiated end, and was replaced (after a transitional period of power-sharing) with a unitary democratic state with a one person, one vote system. Before this happened, how likely did this outcome look? Was there any significant constituency of whites prepared to contemplate it, and what if the African National Congress (ANC) had only advanced political solutions that whites told pollsters they would accept?

Until close to the end of apartheid, the vast majority of whites, including many of the system’s liberal critics, completely rejected a one person, one vote system, predicting that any attempt to impose it would lead to a bloodbath. As late as 1989, F.W. de Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid president, described a one person, one vote system as the “death knell” for South Africa.

A 1988 study by political scientist Pierre Hugo documented the widespread fears among South African whites that a transition to majority rule would entail not only a loss of political power and socioeconomic status, but engendered “physical dread” and fear of “violence, total collapse, expulsion and flight.” Successive surveys showed that four out of five whites thought that majority rule would threaten their “physical safety.” Such fears were frequently heightened by common racist tropes of inherently savage and violent Africans, but the departure of more than a million white colons from Algeria and the airlifting of 300,000 whites from Angola during decolonization set terrifying precedents (“Towards darkness and death: racial demonology in South Africa,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 26(4), 1988).

Throughout the 1980s, polls showed that even as whites increasingly understood that apartheid could not last, only a small minority ever supported majority rule and a one person, one vote system. In a March 1986 survey, for example, 47 percent of whites said they would favor some form of “mixed-race” government, but 83 percent said they would opt for continued white domination of the government if they had the choice (Peter Goodspeed, “Afrikaners cling to their all-white dream,” The Toronto Star, 5 October 1986).

A 1990 nationwide survey of Afrikaner whites (native speakers of Afrikaans, as opposed to English, and who traditionally formed the backbone of the apartheid state), found just 2.2 percent were willing to accept a “universal franchise with majority rule” (Kate Manzo and Pat McGowan, “Afrikaner fears and the politics of despair: Understanding change in South Africa,” International Studies Quarterly, 36, 1992).

Perhaps an enlightened white elite was able to lead the white masses to higher ground? This was not the case either. A 1988 academic survey of more than 400 white politicians, business and media leaders, top civil servants, academics and clergy found that just 4.8 percent were prepared to accept a unitary state with a universal voting franchise and two-thirds considered such an outcome “unacceptable.” According to Manzo and McGowan, white elites reflected the sentiments and biases of the rest of the society and overwhelmingly considered whites inherently more civilized and culturally superior to black Africans. Just more than half of prominent whites were prepared to accept “a federal state in which power is shared between white and non-white groups and areas so that no one group dominates.”

During the 1980s, the white electorate in South Africa moved to the right, as Israel’s Jewish electorate is doing today. Support seeped from the National Party, which had established formal apartheid in 1948, to the even more extreme Conservative Party. Yet, “on the issue of majority rule,” Hugo observed, “supporters of the National Party and the Conservative Party, as well as most white voters to the ‘left’ of these organizations, ha[d] little quarrel with each other.”

The vast majority of whites, wracked with existential fears, were simply unable to contemplate relinquishing effective control, or at least a veto, over political decision-making in South Africa.

Yet, the African National Congress insisted firmly on a one person, one vote system with no white veto. As the township protests and strikes and international pressure mounted, The Economist observed in an extensive 1986 survey of South Africa published on 1 February of that year, that many “enlightened” whites “still fondly argue that a dramatic improvement in the quality of black life may take the revolutionary sting out of the black townships — and persuade ‘responsible’ blacks, led by the emergent black middle class, to accept some power-sharing formula.”

Schemes to stabilize the apartheid system abounded, and bear a strong resemblance to the current Israeli government’s vision of “economic peace” in which a collaborationist Palestinian Authority leadership would manage a still-subjugated Palestinian population anesthetized by consumer goods and shopping malls.

Because of the staunch opposition of whites to a unitary democratic state, the ANC heard no shortage of advice from western liberals that it should seek a “realistic” political accommodation with the apartheid regime, and that no amount of pressure could force whites to succumb to the ANC’s political demands. The ANC was warned that insistence on majority rule would force Afrikaners into the “laager” — they would retreat into a militarized garrison state and siege economy, preferring death before surrender.

Even the late Helen Suzman, one of apartheid’s fiercest liberal critics, predicted in 1987, as quoted by Hugo, “The Zimbabwe conflict took 15 years … and cost 20,000 lives and I can assure you that the South African transfer of power will take a good deal more than that, both in time and I am afraid lives.”

But as The Economist observed, the view that whites would prefer “collective suicide” was something of a caricature. The vast majority of Afrikaners were “no longer bible-thumping boers.” They were “part of a spoilt, affluent suburban society, whose economic pain threshold may prove to be rather low.”

The Economist concluded that if whites would only come so far voluntarily, then it was perfectly reasonable for the anti-apartheid movement to bring them the rest of the way through “coercion” in the form of sanctions and other forms of pressure. “The quicker the white tribe submits,” the magazine wrote, “the better its chance of a bearable future in a black-ruled South Africa.”

Ultimately, as we now know, the combination of internal resistance and international isolation did force whites to abandon political apartheid and accept majority rule. However, it is important to note that the combined strength of the anti-apartheid movement never seriously threatened the physical integrity of the white regime.

Even after the massive township uprisings of 1985-86, the South African regime was secure. “So far there is no real physical threat to white power,” The Economist noted, “so far there is little threat to white lives. … The white state is mighty, and well-equipped. It has the capacity to repress the township revolts far more bloodily. The blacks have virtually no urban or rural guerrilla capacity, practically no guns, few safe havens within South Africa or without.”

This balance never changed, and a similar equation could be written today about the relative power of a massively-armed — and much more ruthless — Israeli state, and lightly armed Palestinian resistance factions.

What did change for South Africa, and what all the weapons in the world were not able to prevent, was the complete loss of legitimacy of the apartheid regime and its practices. Once this legitimacy was gone, whites lost the will to maintain a system that relied on repression and violence and rendered them international pariahs; they negotiated a way out and lived to tell the tale. It all happened much more quickly and with considerably less violence than even the most optimistic predictions of the time. But this outcome could not have been predicted based on what whites said they were willing to accept, and it would not have occurred had the ANC been guided by opinion polls rather than the democratic principles of the Freedom Charter.

Zionism — as many Israelis openly worry — is suffering a similar, terminal loss of legitimacy as Israel is ever more isolated as a result of its actions. Israel’s self-image as a liberal “Jewish and democratic state” is proving impossible to maintain against the reality of a militarized, ultra-nationalist Jewish sectarian settler-colony that must carry out frequent and escalating massacres of “enemy” civilians (Lebanon and Gaza 2006, Gaza 2009) in a losing effort to check the resistance of the region’s indigenous people. Zionism cannot bomb, kidnap, assassinate, expel, demolish, settle and lie its way to legitimacy and acceptance.

Already difficult to disguise, the loss of legitimacy becomes impossible to conceal once Palestinians are a demographic majority ruled by a Jewish minority. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinians recognize Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish state” is in effect an acknowledgement of failure: without Palestinian consent, something which is unlikely ever to be granted, the Zionist project of a Jewish ethnocracy in Palestine has grim long-term prospects.

Similarly, South African whites typically attempted to justify their opposition to democracy, not in terms of a desire to preserve their privilege and power, but using liberal arguments about protecting distinctive cultural differences. Hendrik Verwoerd Jr., the son of assassinated Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, apartheid’s founder, expressed the problem in these terms in 1986, as reported by The Toronto Star, stating that, “These two people, the Afrikaner and the black, are not capable of becoming one nation. Our differences are unique, cultural and deep. The only way a man can be happy, can live in peace, is really when he is among his own people, when he shares cultural values.”

The younger Verwoerd was on the far-right of South African politics, leading a quixotic effort to carve out a whites-only homeland in the heart of South Africa. But his reasoning sounds remarkably similar to liberal Zionist defenses of the “two-state solution” today. The Economist clarified the use of such language at the time, stating that “One of the weirder products of apartheid is the crippling of language in a maw of hypocrisy, euphemism and sociologese. You talk about the Afrikaner ‘right to self-determination’ — meaning power over everybody else.”

Zionism’s claim for “Jewish self-determination” amidst an intermixed population, is in effect a demand to preserve and legitimize a status quo in which Israeli Jews exercise power in perpetuity. But there’s little reason to expect that Israeli Jews would abandon this quest voluntarily any more than South African whites did. As in South Africa, coercion is necessary — and the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is one of the most powerful, nonviolent, legitimate and proven tools of coercion that Palestinians possess. Israel’s vulnerabilities may be different from those of apartheid South Africa, but Israel is not invulnerable to pressure.

Coercion is not enough, however; as I have long argued, and sought to do, Palestinians must also put forward a positive vision. Neither can Palestinians advocating a one-state solution simply disregard the views of Israeli Jews. We must recognize that the opposition of Israeli Jews to any solution that threatens their power and privilege stems from at least two sources. One is irrational, racist fears of black and brown hordes (in this case, Arab Muslims) stoked by decades of colonial, racist demonization. The other source — certainly heightened by the former — are normal human concerns about personal and family dislocation, loss of socioeconomic status and community security: change is scary.

But change will come. Without indulging Israeli racism or preserving undue privilege, the legitimate concerns of ordinary Israeli Jews can be addressed directly in any negotiated transition to ensure that the shift to democracy is orderly, and essential redistributive policies are carried out fairly. Inevitably, decolonization will cause some pain as Israeli Jews lose power and privilege, but there are few reasons to believe it cannot be a well-managed process, or that the vast majority of Israeli Jews, like white South Africans, would not be prepared to make the adjustment for the sake of a normality and legitimacy they cannot have any other way.

This is where the wealth of research and real-life experience about the successes, failures, difficulties and opportunities of managing such transitions at the level of national and local politics, neighborhoods, schools and universities, workplaces, state institutions and policing, emerging from South Africa and Northern Ireland, will be of enormous value.

Every situation has unique features, and although there are patterns in history, it never repeats itself exactly. But what we can conclude from studying the pasts and presents of others is that Palestinians and Israelis are no less capable of writing themselves a post-colonial future that gives everyone a chance at a life worth living in a single, democratic state.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Steve Bell

The hope invested by many in Barack Obama has dissolved. Dare I sing ‘I told you so’? I do. The audacious hope of Obamamania was always faith-based, founded on the believer’s premise that the handsome candidate didn’t mean what he actually said, that we should read his words esoterically, as code for profound radicalism. Now reality bites, and we discover that his promises to AIPAC and the military were solid and literal.

It’s certainly something that a black man has become president of a country built by African slaves, although we must place this in the context of the fierce racist backlash since his election (would those guardians of the constitution raving about the tree of liberty being watered by the blood of tyrants be quite so eager to wear their guns on their sleeves if the president were white and not a jumped-up negro? I doubt it). But that’s the achievement of Obama’s skin colour, not his policy; in fact it’s the achievement of the people who voted for him. Another achievement is that – in the company of war criminals such as Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Henry Kissinger – Obama has already won the Nobel peace prize. Hooray!

But let’s get back to reality, the reality of blood and tears as suffered in the arc of American-led or funded conflict. As promised, Obama has escalated the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and put no pressure at all on apartheid Israel as it gobbles up the few remaining slivers of Palestine. His address to the Muslims in Cairo was sweeter in tone than what we had become accustomed to, but remained an offensive imperialist lecture. He pontificated about hijabs (he called them hajibs) and the education of women, and repeated the Bernard Lewis-Dick Cheney orientalist line about “a self-defeating focus on the past”, instead of addressing American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and backing for assaults on Lebanon and Somalia in the present. He mocked Palestinian resistance and misrepresented the history of black resistance in America while he was about it. He failed entirely to mention the enormous violence meted out to the Palestinians by Zionism. But he won applause for this: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace.”

The applause was undeserved. The key words here are “continued” and “construction.” It quickly became clear that the policy was to call for a freeze on settlement building, but not to dismantle any of the ‘facts on the ground’ illegally established since 1967. In return for the freeze, Palestinians were to give up their right of return to the 78% of their country from which they were ethnically cleansed in 1948. Obama quickly assured Israelis that no pressure would be brought to bear if they refused to freeze settlement construction; and indeed, when Netanyahu said that he might think about freezing a little, but didn’t actually freeze anything, Hillary Clinton praised Israeli flexibility. Dollars and weapons continue to flow to the apartheid state, while mini-kristallnachts continue in Jerusalem. Of course, if the aim were really a two-state solution, Obama would call not for a freeze on new building but for settlers to either be removed from the West Bank and Jerusalem or to agree to live under Palestinian rule. But there won’t be a two-state solution, just the constant theatre of a process towards one.

As this becomes more glaringly evident, Mahmoud Abbas’s collaboration with the occupation becomes ever more impossible to justify. Therefore Abbas has made the dramatic gesture of announcing that he won’t stand for election again. If this is truly the end of him, it’s great news. Saree Makdisi summarises why here. But sadly, it’s probably just more theatrics. Those Israeli and Western leaders who enjoy the ‘peace process’ – which has dispossessed and caged the Palestinians as effectively as any war – make public and private calls for Abbas to reconsider. In a tragic echo of the Arab police states, Fatah-organised demonstrations in Ramallah limply repeat the slogans they’ve been told to repeat, to the tune ‘Come back Abbas.’ But Abbas never went away. His term of office ran out in January while he was suppressing genuine demonstrations in support of Gaza, yet he’s still in his seat. There may never be real elections in Palestine again, and Abbas may heroically refuse to stand in these phantom elections, but he will still consider himself president.

Hemmed in and exhausted, suffering for lack of intelligent leadership, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza seem to have few options. It is certain, however, that any illusions they may have invested in the Oslo process (or the Road Map, or whatever the latest irrelevant formula is) have long ago dissolved. The best that can be hoped for at this stage is an honest admission that this is the case, and the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority whose only purpose is to manage the occupation. More than half of the Palestinian people live as refugees in neighbouring countries. These people need to be brought back into the debate, as do the Palestinian Israelis. Then a new leadership may emerge to demand a one state solution.

The one state already exists. The problem is that it’s an apartheid state, in which half the people are citizens without nationality (the Palestinian Israelis), or residents whose residency can be revoked at any time (east Jerusalem), or subjects of military occupation (the West Bank and Gaza). The Palestinian question is a question of human and civil rights, of equality. Two-state dream talk takes the focus away from this.

But the vast majority of Israeli Jews oppose equal rights for the natives of Palestine, preferring the status quo or some other permutation of the bantustan model. As a result, many liberal ‘realists’ in the West tell the Palestinians they must forget equality in one state. In a typically excellent article, Ali Abunimah points out that until the final years of apartheid in South Africa, the vast majority of South African whites, including many opponents of apartheid, refused to countenance one man – one vote. But minds were changed by the positive vision of an inclusive future offered by the ANC and by an international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

A reconstituted PLO to represent all the Palestinians wherever they are and a final abandonment of the two-state illusion would allow for the formulation of an inclusive vision. As for us in the West, the best way to work for justice and peace is BDS. Israel like white South Africa considers itself to be part of the West, and is dependent on the West for trade and political support. It is therefore very vulnerable indeed to the BDS weapon. It is to be hoped that a popular boycott will lead to corporate disenchantment with apartheid, and finally to governmental sanctions.

One of the beauties of BDS is that you can take a small step towards justice each time you go shopping. My mother and I worked gently and steadily on our local grocer until he stopped stocking Israeli produce. Supermarket chains are bigger fish. Any time you’re in you can ask to see the manager. Then very politely, very reasonably, explain why you won’t be buying Israeli goods and why their presence on the shelves is so disturbing. Ask for your comments to be registered and passed upwards. The Co-op is to be congratulated for not stocking produce from West Bank settlements but must be encouraged to extend this ban to all Israeli goods. Morrisons (customer service: 0845 611 6111 / head office: 0845 611 5000) and Waitrose (customer service: 0800 188 884) stock anything Israeli they can, including from settlements. So I phoned Morrisons yesterday and registered my complaint with a flustered lady who said “we’re being subjected to a campaign today.” I said my piece, but worried afterwards about ‘today’. We should be calling them tomorrow, next week and next month too. More ideas and contact information is available here).

Hope is a good thing. More important than Obama is the popular energy unleashed by his electoral campaign. I hope that instead of despairing those whose hopes have been shattered will learn a lesson. The lesson is this: nothing positive can ever come of the empire changing its top face. Power is very clever at theatrics. We mustn’t allow ourselves to be taken in. If we want to make the world a little better we have hard work ahead, not to encourage our neighbours to vote for the bright new guy, but to expose lobbies (like the Zionist lobby) and cultural discourses (like the racism, orientalism, and Christian Zionism which perpetuate Zionist successes), and to encourage our neighbours, markets and business partners to do the right thing.

Your decade in 7 minutes from Newsweek

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Evolution of blogging: Interview with Charles Johnson

Black unemployment at 40%, where’s the jobs stimulus? by Jesse Jackson

Israeli Jews and the one-state solution by Ali Abunimah

Pharma deal with White House to net industry billions by Sam Stein

Lack of health care killed 2,266 US vets last year

By Ali Abunimah,

The Electronic Intifada,

10 November 2009

t the height of the global anti-apartheid movement, in 1989, a bus in London displays a message calling for boycott of South Africa. (Rahul D'Lucca)

Anyone who rejects the two-state solution, won’t bring a one-state solution. They will instead bring one war, not one state. A bloody war with no end. -- Israeli President Shimon Peres, 7 November 2009.

One of the most commonly voiced objections to a one-state solution for Palestine/Israel stems from the accurate observation that the vast majority of Israeli Jews reject it, and fear being “swamped” by a Palestinian majority. Across the political spectrum, Israeli Jews insist on maintaining a separate Jewish-majority state.

But with the total collapse of the Obama Administration’s peace efforts, and relentless Israeli colonization of the occupied West Bank, the reality is dawning rapidly that the two-state solution is no more than a slogan that has no chance of being implemented or altering the reality of a de facto binational state in Palestine/Israel.

This places an obligation on all who care about the future of Palestine/Israel to seriously consider the democratic alternatives. I have long argued that the systems in post-apartheid South Africa (a unitary democratic state), and Northern Ireland (consociational democracy) — offer hopeful, real-life models.

But does solid Israeli Jewish opposition to a one-state solution mean that a peaceful one-state outcome is so unlikely that Palestinians should not pursue it, and should instead focus only on “pragmatic” solutions that would be less fiercely resisted by Israeli Jews?

The experience in South Africa suggests otherwise. In 1994, white-minority rule — apartheid — came to a peaceful, negotiated end, and was replaced (after a transitional period of power-sharing) with a unitary democratic state with a one person, one vote system. Before this happened, how likely did this outcome look? Was there any significant constituency of whites prepared to contemplate it, and what if the African National Congress (ANC) had only advanced political solutions that whites told pollsters they would accept?

Until close to the end of apartheid, the vast majority of whites, including many of the system’s liberal critics, completely rejected a one person, one vote system, predicting that any attempt to impose it would lead to a bloodbath. As late as 1989, F.W. de Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid president, described a one person, one vote system as the “death knell” for South Africa.

A 1988 study by political scientist Pierre Hugo documented the widespread fears among South African whites that a transition to majority rule would entail not only a loss of political power and socioeconomic status, but engendered “physical dread” and fear of “violence, total collapse, expulsion and flight.” Successive surveys showed that four out of five whites thought that majority rule would threaten their “physical safety.” Such fears were frequently heightened by common racist tropes of inherently savage and violent Africans, but the departure of more than a million white colons from Algeria and the airlifting of 300,000 whites from Angola during decolonization set terrifying precedents (“Towards darkness and death: racial demonology in South Africa,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 26(4), 1988).

Throughout the 1980s, polls showed that even as whites increasingly understood that apartheid could not last, only a small minority ever supported majority rule and a one person, one vote system. In a March 1986 survey, for example, 47 percent of whites said they would favor some form of “mixed-race” government, but 83 percent said they would opt for continued white domination of the government if they had the choice (Peter Goodspeed, “Afrikaners cling to their all-white dream,” The Toronto Star, 5 October 1986).

A 1990 nationwide survey of Afrikaner whites (native speakers of Afrikaans, as opposed to English, and who traditionally formed the backbone of the apartheid state), found just 2.2 percent were willing to accept a “universal franchise with majority rule” (Kate Manzo and Pat McGowan, “Afrikaner fears and the politics of despair: Understanding change in South Africa,” International Studies Quarterly, 36, 1992).

Perhaps an enlightened white elite was able to lead the white masses to higher ground? This was not the case either. A 1988 academic survey of more than 400 white politicians, business and media leaders, top civil servants, academics and clergy found that just 4.8 percent were prepared to accept a unitary state with a universal voting franchise and two-thirds considered such an outcome “unacceptable.” According to Manzo and McGowan, white elites reflected the sentiments and biases of the rest of the society and overwhelmingly considered whites inherently more civilized and culturally superior to black Africans. Just more than half of prominent whites were prepared to accept “a federal state in which power is shared between white and non-white groups and areas so that no one group dominates.”

During the 1980s, the white electorate in South Africa moved to the right, as Israel’s Jewish electorate is doing today. Support seeped from the National Party, which had established formal apartheid in 1948, to the even more extreme Conservative Party. Yet, “on the issue of majority rule,” Hugo observed, “supporters of the National Party and the Conservative Party, as well as most white voters to the ‘left’ of these organizations, ha[d] little quarrel with each other.”

The vast majority of whites, wracked with existential fears, were simply unable to contemplate relinquishing effective control, or at least a veto, over political decision-making in South Africa.

Yet, the African National Congress insisted firmly on a one person, one vote system with no white veto. As the township protests and strikes and international pressure mounted, The Economist observed in an extensive 1986 survey of South Africa published on 1 February of that year, that many “enlightened” whites “still fondly argue that a dramatic improvement in the quality of black life may take the revolutionary sting out of the black townships — and persuade ‘responsible’ blacks, led by the emergent black middle class, to accept some power-sharing formula.”

Schemes to stabilize the apartheid system abounded, and bear a strong resemblance to the current Israeli government’s vision of “economic peace” in which a collaborationist Palestinian Authority leadership would manage a still-subjugated Palestinian population anesthetized by consumer goods and shopping malls.

Because of the staunch opposition of whites to a unitary democratic state, the ANC heard no shortage of advice from western liberals that it should seek a “realistic” political accommodation with the apartheid regime, and that no amount of pressure could force whites to succumb to the ANC’s political demands. The ANC was warned that insistence on majority rule would force Afrikaners into the “laager” — they would retreat into a militarized garrison state and siege economy, preferring death before surrender.

Even the late Helen Suzman, one of apartheid’s fiercest liberal critics, predicted in 1987, as quoted by Hugo, “The Zimbabwe conflict took 15 years … and cost 20,000 lives and I can assure you that the South African transfer of power will take a good deal more than that, both in time and I am afraid lives.”

But as The Economist observed, the view that whites would prefer “collective suicide” was something of a caricature. The vast majority of Afrikaners were “no longer bible-thumping boers.” They were “part of a spoilt, affluent suburban society, whose economic pain threshold may prove to be rather low.”

The Economist concluded that if whites would only come so far voluntarily, then it was perfectly reasonable for the anti-apartheid movement to bring them the rest of the way through “coercion” in the form of sanctions and other forms of pressure. “The quicker the white tribe submits,” the magazine wrote, “the better its chance of a bearable future in a black-ruled South Africa.”

Ultimately, as we now know, the combination of internal resistance and international isolation did force whites to abandon political apartheid and accept majority rule. However, it is important to note that the combined strength of the anti-apartheid movement never seriously threatened the physical integrity of the white regime.

Even after the massive township uprisings of 1985-86, the South African regime was secure. “So far there is no real physical threat to white power,” The Economist noted, “so far there is little threat to white lives. … The white state is mighty, and well-equipped. It has the capacity to repress the township revolts far more bloodily. The blacks have virtually no urban or rural guerrilla capacity, practically no guns, few safe havens within South Africa or without.”

This balance never changed, and a similar equation could be written today about the relative power of a massively-armed — and much more ruthless — Israeli state, and lightly armed Palestinian resistance factions.

What did change for South Africa, and what all the weapons in the world were not able to prevent, was the complete loss of legitimacy of the apartheid regime and its practices. Once this legitimacy was gone, whites lost the will to maintain a system that relied on repression and violence and rendered them international pariahs; they negotiated a way out and lived to tell the tale. It all happened much more quickly and with considerably less violence than even the most optimistic predictions of the time. But this outcome could not have been predicted based on what whites said they were willing to accept, and it would not have occurred had the ANC been guided by opinion polls rather than the democratic principles of the Freedom Charter.

Zionism — as many Israelis openly worry — is suffering a similar, terminal loss of legitimacy as Israel is ever more isolated as a result of its actions. Israel’s self-image as a liberal “Jewish and democratic state” is proving impossible to maintain against the reality of a militarized, ultra-nationalist Jewish sectarian settler-colony that must carry out frequent and escalating massacres of “enemy” civilians (Lebanon and Gaza 2006, Gaza 2009) in a losing effort to check the resistance of the region’s indigenous people. Zionism cannot bomb, kidnap, assassinate, expel, demolish, settle and lie its way to legitimacy and acceptance.

Already difficult to disguise, the loss of legitimacy becomes impossible to conceal once Palestinians are a demographic majority ruled by a Jewish minority. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinians recognize Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish state” is in effect an acknowledgement of failure: without Palestinian consent, something which is unlikely ever to be granted, the Zionist project of a Jewish ethnocracy in Palestine has grim long-term prospects.

Similarly, South African whites typically attempted to justify their opposition to democracy, not in terms of a desire to preserve their privilege and power, but using liberal arguments about protecting distinctive cultural differences. Hendrik Verwoerd Jr., the son of assassinated Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, apartheid’s founder, expressed the problem in these terms in 1986, as reported by The Toronto Star, stating that, “These two people, the Afrikaner and the black, are not capable of becoming one nation. Our differences are unique, cultural and deep. The only way a man can be happy, can live in peace, is really when he is among his own people, when he shares cultural values.”

The younger Verwoerd was on the far-right of South African politics, leading a quixotic effort to carve out a whites-only homeland in the heart of South Africa. But his reasoning sounds remarkably similar to liberal Zionist defenses of the “two-state solution” today. The Economist clarified the use of such language at the time, stating that “One of the weirder products of apartheid is the crippling of language in a maw of hypocrisy, euphemism and sociologese. You talk about the Afrikaner ‘right to self-determination’ — meaning power over everybody else.”

Zionism’s claim for “Jewish self-determination” amidst an intermixed population, is in effect a demand to preserve and legitimize a status quo in which Israeli Jews exercise power in perpetuity. But there’s little reason to expect that Israeli Jews would abandon this quest voluntarily any more than South African whites did. As in South Africa, coercion is necessary — and the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is one of the most powerful, nonviolent, legitimate and proven tools of coercion that Palestinians possess. Israel’s vulnerabilities may be different from those of apartheid South Africa, but Israel is not invulnerable to pressure.

Coercion is not enough, however; as I have long argued, and sought to do, Palestinians must also put forward a positive vision. Neither can Palestinians advocating a one-state solution simply disregard the views of Israeli Jews. We must recognize that the opposition of Israeli Jews to any solution that threatens their power and privilege stems from at least two sources. One is irrational, racist fears of black and brown hordes (in this case, Arab Muslims) stoked by decades of colonial, racist demonization. The other source — certainly heightened by the former — are normal human concerns about personal and family dislocation, loss of socioeconomic status and community security: change is scary.

But change will come. Without indulging Israeli racism or preserving undue privilege, the legitimate concerns of ordinary Israeli Jews can be addressed directly in any negotiated transition to ensure that the shift to democracy is orderly, and essential redistributive policies are carried out fairly. Inevitably, decolonization will cause some pain as Israeli Jews lose power and privilege, but there are few reasons to believe it cannot be a well-managed process, or that the vast majority of Israeli Jews, like white South Africans, would not be prepared to make the adjustment for the sake of a normality and legitimacy they cannot have any other way.

This is where the wealth of research and real-life experience about the successes, failures, difficulties and opportunities of managing such transitions at the level of national and local politics, neighborhoods, schools and universities, workplaces, state institutions and policing, emerging from South Africa and Northern Ireland, will be of enormous value.

Every situation has unique features, and although there are patterns in history, it never repeats itself exactly. But what we can conclude from studying the pasts and presents of others is that Palestinians and Israelis are no less capable of writing themselves a post-colonial future that gives everyone a chance at a life worth living in a single, democratic state.

Source: Electronic Intifada
Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, November 11, 2009

“Anyone who rejects the two-state solution, won’t bring a one-state solution. They will instead bring one war, not one state. A bloody war with no end.” – Israeli President Shimon Peres, 7 November 2009.

One of the most commonly voiced objections to a one-state solution for Palestine/Israel stems from the accurate observation that the vast majority of Israeli Jews reject it, and fear being “swamped” by a Palestinian majority. Across the political spectrum, Israeli Jews insist on maintaining a separate Jewish-majority state.

Continues >>

So, I’m staying home today, being a little sick (and really tired lacking sleep, thank you neighbours!)..

That doesn’t mean that I should give my brain a rest, does it? Or, to say it more clearly, maybe that should be an opportunity to shake it a little from it’s rest;o)..

Anyway.. After a little talk about the Zionist fathers of Israel with a dearly beloved, I thought a little about this concept, Zionism.. What is it, how is it portrayed, who is a Zionist and how does such a person behave?

To be honest, I consider myself Zionist.. I also do tell myself that I do know a little about the concept, but there’s probably those out there, who knows a lot more than me:o).. No doubt.. That’s good and well, but it disturbs me a little when I read how some people portrays Zionism and Zionists.. To be honest, sometimes when I read what some people write about Zionists, then I wonder whether I’m an okay guy who basically just want to live and let live, or whether I’m an evil suppressor, who just want to kill (KILL) innocent people while trying to take over the world.. Okay, I do have my days where I really just want to, well, not kill, but at least tell people what I think about them.. But who doesn’t? Anyway, when I read those certain people’s, of whom I’m talking about, thoughts on Zionists and Zionism, then I have to say that either they don’t really know about either, or I don’t know about either.. So what is it?

A little history.. Zionism is a concept, whose name is made of the word ציון – Tzion, or Zion, which normally is another word for Jerusalem.. Basically it consist of the Jewish dream to return to Zion, which means to get back home to Israel.. How that portrays itself, how the dream comes to expression, is very individual I think.. A secular person probably have another understanding of the dream than a religious person.. But no matter the person, the dream is about a home for Jews, where we can be Jews among Jews in a Jewish state..
Most persons know about Herzl, who actually was a totally secular person without any connection to Judaism.. He really didn’t consider Judaism an option or reason to exist, and to him the pure notion “Jewish people” was stupid.. People needed to be enlightened and assimilate into the environment in which they lived.. It changed though.. When he was in Paris to view the case against Richard Dreyfuss, a Jewish officer in the French army, he experienced anti-Semitism (or anti-Jewishness for our semantics out there).. That was like a revelation to him.. He admitted to himself that no matter how much a Jew tries to be like the rest of the society and how little he connected to his Jewishness, then the society would still view him as a Jew and that not being a positive thing.. This happened in 1894 and let to his book “Der Judenstaat” (The Jewish State), where he among many other things, writes about his reflection on the Jewish presence among Gentiles:

“The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. Wherever it does not exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturally drawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution. This is the case, and will inevitably be so, everywhere, even in highly civilised countries—see, for instance, France—so long as the Jewish question is not solved on the political level. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.”

Interestingly enough, he argues that it’s the presence of Jews that creates anti-Semitism.. I’m not sure that I agree in this, ’cause the seeds of hatred has to exist before the hate can blossom.. If people hate you for being a Jew (or something else for that matter), it doesn’t matter whether you’re there or not, it’s his perception of you that he hates.. I’ve talked with people who’ve never met a Jew, but still hates Jews..

Anyway.. This was the spark for the Zionist movement.. But it wasn’t the first of these kinds of thoughts though.. While many people know about Herzl, not so many know about Pinsker.. Pinsker was a Russian Jew, who like Herzl believed in assimilation.. At first.. After the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1870-1884, Pinsker advocated Jewish independence.. He acknowledged for himself that:

“… to the living the Jew is a corpse, to the native a foreigner, to the homesteader a vagrant, to the proprietary a beggar, to the poor an exploiter and a millionaire, to the patriot a man without a country, for all a hated rival.”

That no matter what a Jew does, he will never be viewed as one of the people in the country he lives in..

In 1882, Pinsker wrote his pamphlet “Auto-Emancipation”.. If you have any interest, it can be read here:

Auto-Emancipation

Pinsker died in 1891..

And! Even before Pinsker there was Moses Hess, one of the Socialist fathers, who in 1861 wrote “Rome and Jerusalem”.. I don’t want to write too much more about the important figures of this century here, just note that Zionism has much deeper roots than many people normally conceive..

“Rome and Jerusalem” can be read here:

Rome and Jerusalem

(sometimes I do love Wiki:o)

But to make it clear: Zionism is much older than this!! When we talk about Zionism, it’s normally conceived as meaning “The political modern movement that started in the 1880’s” and not the millennium old Jewish dream of returning to our country.. Our Home! This is what Jews have dreamed about and prayed for for thousands of years, since Bar Kochba lost against the Romans in 135 CE.. The difference is that the modern Zionism is a pure political (and in the beginning a purely secular) movement.. In the beginning of this movement the religious Jews were strongly opposed to it, and it really didn’t change much before father and son Rabbi and Rabbi Cook emerged on the scene..

But all that is well and good.. What about the murderous Zionists and all that? That Jews just want to expel Arabs from their land (not to talk about taking over the world)??

I know that there are quite many “quotes” from Herzl, Ben Gurion and so on and so on, on how much they hate Arabs and how little they think the Arabs should be allowed to exists.. They are false though..

Ben Gurion was always opposed to such extremists as Begin (yes, Begin was quite extremist in his young days – later he became a hardliner, but stopped being an extremist).. Ben Gurion didn’t want Arabs out of Israel, he even sent Golda Meir to Hayfa during the war of Independence in ‘48, to plead for the Arabs residents to stay.. He was also among that large and dominant group of Socialist Zionist who wanted to make a struggle together with the Arab workers..

I also want to point to another noteworthy, but not very mentioned (at least in this matter), Zionist; Martin Buber, who argued for a bi national state (something that some Palestinian intellectuals today argue for, among those is Ali Abunimah, one of the creators of Electronic Intifada)..

Zionism never argued for the expelling of Arabs, it only argued for the return of Jews to Palestine..

So, what about today? That was then and now is now..

Well, after the war in 1967, something changed.. Suddenly Israel became something else than before.. Israel conquered Yehuda v’Shom’ron (the Westbank) and Gaza (and together with that reunited Jerusalem).. Suddenly Israel became controllers of areas with no Jews but on the contrary with a huge groups of non-Israeli Arabs.. To be honest, this wasn’t good for anybody.. First of, Israel as a Zionist state had never thought about a situation like this, it has only thought about being a Jewish state with non-Jewish resident (as well as Jewish of course).. The problem, besides the security of the State, was how to deal with Zionist values with people that hated anything related to Zionism? It was, and still is, impossible.. But Israel couldn’t give up the territories of several reasons.. One is the security.. In 1956 Israel was forced to leave Sinai, even though she was threatened by Arab terror.. UN promised to guard the borders and secure Israel.. It wasn’t the great success though.. When Nasser demanded the UN-troops to leave, he didn’t even get to blink his eyes, before UN had said “oki-doki” and removed the troops.. Israel didn’t want to accept such a situation again..
Another thing was the symbolic issue of the territories.. Yehuda is the heartland of Eretz Yisrael (not to differ with Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel), and the most holy area after Jerusalem herself in Judaism.. It’s here we find the cave of Avraham Avinu (our father Abraham), Hevron and Yerico.. And many other places.. Conquering this also meant the rise of the modern Religious Zionism and the Neo-Zionism..
It also meant that the world slowly started to look different at Israel (especially with the help of the Soviet Union), from before a small state fighting for survival to suddenly becoming a state that conquered land (we’re not only talking about Gaza and the West Bank, but all of Sinai and Golan too).. And conquering people..

But does that mean that Israel is only thinking about conquering as much land as possible? Well, not really.. First of, the war in 1967 was a defence war.. Yes, Israel started the actually battle, but the war was started sooner by Egypt.. King Hussein explains in his book “My ‘War’ With Israel”, that it was decided by the Arab league already in 1964 to create a joint army, which purpose was to defeat the Israeli army.. And Nasser of Egypt clearly showed this intention by his action up to the war’s beginning, by among other things to close the straits of Tiran, the closing of Israeli ships in Suez, the expelling of the UN-troops and so on.. There was also an incident, where Jordan and Syria attempted to block water to the Jordan river, which was ruined by the IDF..

And, and this is a pretty important thing to consider, Israel did give back all of Sinai to the Egyptians in 1979, when a peace treaty was signed by the two countries.. So while Israel might stay on land out of concern of security, this doesn’t mean that she intend to do so forever.. Okay, now there’s those who will claim that the building of settlements prove that Israel will NOT leave the West Bank.. But I beg to differ.. Israel build settlements in Sinai, and they were removed.. Israel build settlements in Gaza, and they were removed..

So, this wasn’t supposed to be a defense of Israel, but a reflection on Zionism, so back on track again:o).. It is important though to show some historic incidents to show that Zionism isn’t about conquest.. Clearly not, when we look at what I’ve just been through!

But then, what is Zionism? Well, it’s what I started explaining, the longing home to Zion.. That’s what it is.. Then there’s several streams within Zionism, certainly! There’s always been.. There was the communist Zionist, the Marxist Zionist, the Socialist Zionist (the largest group by far, who counts among others Ben Gurion and Golda Meir) and so on and so on.. And today we have the neo-Zionism, the religious-Zionist movement, the post-Zionism (well, that’s not really Zionism, but) and so on..

Personally I try to reinvent or evolve Zionism.. The Zionist movement was a success as I view it.. Yes, there’s still a conflict going on, but all in all Israel is a fact and that isn’t going to change.. There will always be challenges, no matter what..
Today i see a new way of thinking Zionism.. Let me quote Marcus Garvey, as to introduce my aproach:

“other races were engaged in seeing their cause through—the Jews through their Zionist movement and the Irish through their Irish movement—and I decided that, cost what it might, I would make this a favorable time to see the Negro’s interest through.”

And then, let me reflect on some various group of people around the world and their situation:

The Kurds.. A people that has a distinct history, language and culture.. A people that has been and still is oppressed.. They have finally received autonomy in the Nothern Iraq.. Why not let them have their own nation, a Kurdish nation for Kurds, where Kurds can be home.. A homeland.. I’m not talking about creating a Kurdistan with borders within Turkey and Iran, but about improving an established fact, that Kurdistan is a reality, we just have to accept it and allow them to pursue their dream, just as we have pursued our dream..

The Tibetans.. Isn’t they allowed to have their own country? They have never done harm against anybody when the Chinese conquered their land.. Now they’re a people without a country, just as we were..

The Copts.. They experience oppression in the country that once belonged to themselves.. Today they’re a minority in their own land, facing forced conversions, kidnappings of their children, rapes on their women, attacks by religious fanatics in their churches.. Aren’t they allowed to dream too?

The Gypsies.. I’m embarrassed to live in a world, where we still keep a people like this in a situation like theirs.. Last year two gypsies drowned in Italy.. And people just sat and ate next to their bodies, why not? It’s “just” Gypsies.. Ask around, and everybody “knows” that Gypsies “steal and cheat”.. They “don’t wash themselves” and really don’t have any place that they “belong”.. No, they haven’t.. Just like the Jews didn’t have any place, so the Gypsies haven’t.. Let them have a place that they can call theirs..

And I could go on..

What I’m trying to say is, that as I view Zionism today, it should become universal.. We have shown and proved that a people can claim their right for their own homeland.. And why should any distinct group of people accept to live oppressed?

So, thank for your time:o).. I’m looking forward to all your reactions:o)..

All the best!

S”A

Oprindeligt postet på TV2-blog 12/9-08

Navnet tilhører en palæstinensisk araber der bor i USA.. Han journalist og medopretter af “Electronic Intifada”, som har som formål at modarbejde “anti-israelsk spin”.. Han er uddannet på Princeton University og University of Chicago og skriver til tider for Chicago Tribune og LA Times..

Han er også forfatter for bogen “One Country: A bold proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse”..

Jeg læste forleden en andmeldelse af bogen, af Michael Irving, som vækkede min interesse for Abunimah.. Jeg kendte ikke meget til ham i forvejen, men han er muligvis en person der er værd at interessere sig lidt for.. Jeg har endnu ikke læst bogen, men den er bestilt, så jeg ser frem til at læse den..

Jeg ved dog at han er tilhænger af en binational stat, istedet for to-statsløsningen, som er det nuværende udgangspunkt for Israel-Palæstina.. Det forslag har jeg hørt om før, uden at være synderlig begejstret, for det handler mest om at den ene part skal overtrumfe den anden (ikke ulig den nuværende tilstand) i den ene eller anden sammenhæng, helst uden at give nogen former for indrømmelser..

Hvad der fangede mig ved Abunimah var, at han anderkender israelske jøders tætte forhold til jøder uden for Israel, samt at jøder i en eventuel enstats-løsning, stadig skal have retten til at bosætte sig i staten! Hvad? Abunimah er pro-palæstinensisk, absolut ikke særlig positiv over for Israel, grundlægger af Electronic Intifada, men anderkender at jøder skal have ret til at bosætte sig i en mulig Israelsk-Palæstinensisk stat? Jeg synes det er en modig og fantastisk indrømmelse, specielt med Abunimahs udgangspunkt taget i betragtning..

Det betyder dog ikke at jeg pludseligt bliver fortaler for enstats-løsningen:o).. Der er en masse forhold som jeg har svært ved at kunne se hvordan skulle kunne gå op:

- Binationale løsninger har tidligere vist sig ikke at holde, f.eks. Jugoslavien og Libanon har tydeligt vist at det kan ende rigtig galt.. Peel-komissionen drog dog også konklusionen med en tostats-løsning, netop pga. uroligheder og voldelige sammenstød mellem arabere og jøder, hvilket viser at det langt fra er sikkert, at etstats-løsningen ville være løsningen der kunne skabe fred..

- Der er en overvejende modstand mod etstats-løsningen, både blandt jøder og arabere, hvilket ville skabe en umulig situation for implementeringen af en eventuel binational stat..

- Det kan umiddelbart lyde af små ting, men hvad angår navngivningen af staten, samt et eventuelt flag, så ville det være MEGET svært at komme frem til et resultat, som begge parter ville acceptere.. Arabere ville ikke acceptere Israel som navn, jøder ville ikke acceptere Palæstina som navn..

Der er mange flere betænkeligheder, bl.a. implementeringen af arabere i militær og politi, manglende gensidig tillid og så videre, men ovenstående er i sig selv nok til at kunne give en panderynkninger:o)..

Jeg har som sagt ikke læst Abunimahs bog, så jeg ved – endnu – ikke hvad hans svar på ovenstående problemstillinger er, men jeg ser frem til at finde ud af det:o)..

Mvh

By: Ali Abunimah

Protesters demonstrated in the rain outside of the University of Chicago lecture hall where activists inside disrupted Olmert's speech, 15 October 2009. (Maureen Clare Murphy)

If former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had merely been a diplomat or an academic offering a controversial viewpoint, then interrupting his 15 October speech at University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall would certainly have been an attempt to stifle debate (Noah Moskowitz, Meredyth Richards and Lee Solomon, “The importance of open dialogue,” Chicago Maroon, 19 October 2009). Indeed, I experienced exactly such attempts when my own appearance at Mandel Hall last January, with Professor John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein, was constantly interrupted by hecklers.

But confronting a political leader suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity cannot be viewed the same way.

The report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict last winter, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, found that Israel engaged in willful, widespread and wanton destruction of civilian property and infrastructure, causing deliberate suffering to the civilian population. It found “that the incidents and patterns of events considered in the report are the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions” and that many may amount to “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” If that proves true, then the individual with primary responsibility is Ehud Olmert, who, as prime minister and the top civilian commander of Israel’s armed forces, was involved in virtually every aspect of planning and execution.

The killings of more than 3,000 Palestinians and Lebanese during Olmert’s three years in office are not mere differences of opinion to be challenged with a polite question written on a pre-screened note card. They are crimes for which Olmert is accountable before international law and public opinion.

Israel, unlike Hamas (also accused of war crimes by Goldstone), completely refused to cooperate with the Goldstone Mission. Instead of accountability, Olmert is, obscenely, traveling around the United States offering justifications for these appalling crimes, collecting large speaking fees, and being feted as a “courageous” statesman.

In their 20 October email to the University of Chicago community, President Robert Zimmer and Provost Thomas Rosenbaum condemned the “disruptions” during Olmert’s speech. “Any stifling of debate,” they wrote, “runs counter to the primary values of the University of Chicago and to our long-standing position as an exemplar of academic freedom.”

Was it in order to promote debate that the University insisted on pre-screening questions and imposed a recording ban for students and media? In the name of promoting debate, will the University now invite Hamas leader Khaled Meshal — perhaps by video link — to lecture on leadership to its students, and offer him a large honorarium? Can we soon expect Sudan’s President Omar Bashir to make an appearance at Mandel Hall?

When I and others verbally confronted Olmert, we stood for academic freedom, human rights, and justice, especially for hundreds of thousands of students deprived of those same rights by Olmert’s actions.

During Israel’s attack on Gaza last winter, schools and universities were among the primary targets. According to the Goldstone report, Israeli military attacks destroyed or damaged at least 280 schools and kindergartens. In total, 164 pupils and 12 teachers were killed, and 454 pupils and five teachers injured.

After the bombing, Olmert and Israel continued their attack on academic freedom, blocking educational supplies from reaching Gaza. Textbooks, notebooks, stationery and computers are among the forbidden items. In September, Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, publicly appealed to Israel to lift its ban on books and other supplies from reaching Gaza’s traumatized students.

Israel destroyed buildings at the Islamic University and other universities. According to the Goldstone report, these “were civilian, educational buildings and the Mission did not find any information about their use as a military facility or their contribution to a military effort that might have made them a legitimate target in the eyes of the Israeli armed forces.”

Gaza’s university students — 60 percent of them women — study all the things that students do at the University of Chicago. Their motivations, aspirations, and abilities are just as high, but their lives are suffocated by unimaginable violence, trauma, and Israel’s blockade, itself a war crime. Olmert is the person who ordered these acts and must be held accountable.

Crimes against humanity are defined as “crimes that shock the conscience.” When the institutions with the moral and legal responsibility to punish and prevent the crimes choose complicit silence — or, worse, harbor a suspected war criminal, already on trial for corruption in Israel, and present him to students as a paragon of “leadership” — then disobedience, if that is what it takes to break the silence, is an ethical duty. Instead of condemning them, the University should be proud that its students were among those who had the courage to stand up.

For the first time in recorded history, an Israeli prime minister was publicly confronted with the names of his victims. It was a symbolic crack in the wall of impunity and a foretaste of the public justice victims have a right to receive when Olmert is tried in a court of law.

Ali Abunimah

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. This article was originally published in the University of Chicago’s Chicago Maroon newspaper and is republished with permission.
Source: Electronic Intifada
Related Links

• “Olmert visit sparks Palestine movement at US university,” Emily Ratner (20 October 2009)
• “EI exclusive video: Protesters shout down Ehud Olmert in Chicago,” Video by The Electronic Intifada and text by Maureen Clare Murphy (16 October 2009)

The Electronic Intifada (ei): “Bay Area residents attempted a citizen’s arrest of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, while he gave a speech to the World Affairs Council in San Francisco on 22 October 2009. Twenty-two people were arrested for challenging Olmert directly and demanding he be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.” (8:59):

Text of the arrest warrant here. From the press release supplied by Northern California Palestine justice groups (via ei):

Olmert ordered Israel’s brutal attacks on Gaza beginning in late December 2008, code-named Operation Cast Lead. Last week, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution endorsing the Goldstone report, an independent investigation into the Gaza operation, which found that Israel violated international law and possibly committed crimes against humanity.

“Israel is an apartheid state guilty of war crimes and its leaders should not be welcome in San Francisco,” said Lisa Nessan, a Jewish resident of Oakland, who has traveled several times to Israel and Palestine, most recently in May. “For the past 60 years, under leadership like Olmert’s, Israel has denied Palestinians their basic human rights, built settlements on their lands, and killed civilians—all to force them from their homeland.”

A lively protest also gathered across from the hotel in Union Square, where about 150 persons carried signs bearing the names and pictures of children killed during Operation Cast Lead. Olmert is making several appearances in the U.S. this month, and has been met with strong protests at locations including the University of Chicago and Tulane University in New Orleans. “We join with people around the world who believe that Israel and its leaders must be held accountable for their actions. Israel killed 1,400 people during its attacks on Gaza last winter alone, and many more have died or suffered from the effects of siege, occupation, and apartheid on their daily lives,” said Monadel Herzallah, a Palestinian activist who lives in Fairfield and whose 21-year-old cousin was killed in Gaza in January.

Organizers also expressed outrage that U.S. President Barack Obama has ignored the findings of the Goldstone report. The U.S. has pledged more than $3 billion each year in unrestricted aid to Israel. “Israel’s use of US aid and military equipment violates our own laws,” said Rae Abileah, an organizer with CODEPINK whose father is Israeli. “Why are we giving aid to a country that is destroying people’s homes and attacking civilians, while our own nation is struggling with unemployment and underfunded social services?”

Ali Abunimah, co-founder of ei, wrote at The Chicago Maroon—student newspaper at the University of Chicago—days after protesting the former prime minister’s speech at the university:

The killings of more than 3,000 Palestinians and Lebanese during Olmert’s three years in office are not mere differences of opinion to be challenged with a polite question written on a pre-screened note card. They are crimes for which Olmert is accountable before international law and public opinion….

When I and others verbally confronted Olmert, we stood for academic freedom, human rights, and justice, especially for hundreds of thousands of students deprived of those same rights by Olmert’s actions.

During Israel’s attack on Gaza last winter, schools and universities were among the primary targets. According to the Goldstone report, Israeli military attacks destroyed or damaged at least 280 schools and kindergartens. In total, 164 pupils and 12 teachers were killed, and 454 pupils and five teachers injured.

After the bombing, Olmert and Israel continued their attack on academic freedom, blocking educational supplies from reaching Gaza. Textbooks, notebooks, stationery, and computers are among the forbidden items. In September, Chris Gunness, spokesman for [U.N. Relief and Works Agency], the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees, publicly appealed to Israel to lift its ban on books and other supplies from reaching Gaza’s traumatized students.

Israel destroyed buildings at the Islamic University and other universities. According to the Goldstone report, these “were civilian, educational buildings and the Mission did not find any information about their use as a military facility or their contribution to a military effort that might have made them a legitimate target in the eyes of the Israeli armed forces.”…

Crimes against humanity are defined as “crimes that shock the conscience.” When the institutions with the moral and legal responsibility to punish and prevent the crimes choose complicit silence—-or, worse, harbor a suspected war criminal, already on trial for corruption in Israel, and present him to students as a paragon of “leadership”—then disobedience, if that is what it takes to break the silence, is an ethical duty. Instead of condemning them, the University should be proud that its students were among those who had the courage to stand up.

The editors of Little Alex in Wonderland, Alex and Sayyid, were in Hyde Park to protest at U. Chicago in solidarity against the Israel government’s crimes against humanity and its collaborators, the Obama Administration.

Recording and photography were banned at the prime minister’s request by U. Chicago. ei got footage anyway (7:32):

RELATED:

• Norman Finkelstein on the U.N. Report Finding Israel ‘Terrorized’ Palestinians and Committed War Crimes in Gaza Massacre (Video)
• U.S. to ‘Continue Standing By Israel’ War Crimes ‘as Loyal Friend’
• Gaza: A Prison by the Sea (Video)
• Amnesty Int’l Report: U.S.-Israel Gaza Massacre—22 Days of Death and Destruction
• Israel’s Credibility in Rejecting War Crimes Allegations Following Gaza Massacre (VIDEO)

By: Ali Abunimah

Illustration- Rasiil Azargoon - Iran

Just when it seemed that the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader Mahmoud Abbas could not sink any lower in their complicity with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the murderous blockade of Gaza, Ramallah has dealt a further stunning blow to the Palestinian people.

The Abbas delegation to the United Nations in Geneva (officially representing the moribund Palestine Liberation Organization) abandoned a resolution requesting the Human Rights Council to forward Judge Richard Goldstone’s report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council for further action. Although the PA acted under US pressure, there are strong indications that the commercial interests of Palestinian and Gulf businessmen closely linked to Abbas also played a part.

The 575-page Goldstone report documents evidence of shocking Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity during last winter’s assault on the Gaza Strip which killed 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority noncombatants and hundreds of them children. The report also accuses the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of war crimes for firing rockets into Israel that killed three civilians.

Goldstone’s report was hailed by Palestinians and supporters of the rule of law worldwide as a watershed; it called for suspects to be held accountable before international courts if Israel failed to prosecute them. Israel has no history, ever, of holding its political and military leaders judicially accountable for war crimes against the Palestinians.

Israel was rightly terrified of the report, mobilizing all its diplomatic and political resources to discredit it. In recent days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that if the report were acted on, it would “strike a severe blow to the war against terrorism,” and “strike a fatal blow to the peace process, because Israel will no longer be able to take additional steps and take risks for peace if its right to self-defense is denied.”

Unsurprisingly, an early ally in the Israeli campaign for impunity was the Obama Administration, whose UN ambassador, Susan Rice, expressed “very serious concerns” about the report and trashed Goldstone’s mandate as “unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable.” (Rice was acting true to her word; in April she told the newspaper Politico that one of the main reasons the Obama Administration decided to join the UN Human Rights Council was to fight what she called “the anti-Israel crap.”)

Goldstone, whose daughter has publicly described her father as a Zionist who loves Israel, is a former judge of the South African Supreme Court, and a highly respected international jurist. He was the chief prosecutor at UN war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

That the Goldstone report was a severe blow to Israel’s ability to commit future war crimes with impunity is not in doubt; this week bolstered by the report, lawyers in the UK asked a court to issue an arrest warrant for visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. That action did not succeed, but Israel’s government has taken extraordinary measures in recent months to try to shield its officials from prosecution, fearing that successful arrests are just a matter of time. Along with the growing international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, the fear of ending up in The Hague seems to be the only thing that causes the Israeli government and society to reconsider their destructive path.

One would think, then, that the self-described representatives of the Palestinian people would not casually throw away this weapon. And yet, according to Abbas ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi, the Ramallah PA shelved its effort at the request of the Americans because “We don’t want to create an obstacle for them.”

Khraishi’s excuse that the resolution is merely being deferred until the spring does not pass muster. Unless action is taken now, the Goldstone report will be buried by then and evidence of Israel’s crimes — necessary for prosecutions — may be harder to collect.

This latest surrender comes less than two weeks after Abbas appeared at a summit in New York with US President Barack Obama and Netanyahu despite Obama abandoning his demand that Israel halt construction of Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Also under US pressure, the PA abandoned its pledge not to resume negotiations unless settlement-building stopped, and agreed to take part in US-mediated “peace talks” with Israel in Washington this week. Israel, meanwhile, announced plans for the largest ever West Bank settlement since 1967.

What makes this even more galling, is the real possibility that the PA is helping Israel wash its hands of the blood it spilled in Gaza for something as base as the financial gain of businessmen closely linked to Abbas.

The Independent (UK) reported on 1 October:

“Shalom Kital, an aide to defense minister Ehud Barak, said today that Israel will not release a share of the radio spectrum that has long been sought by the Palestinian Authority to enable the launch of a second mobile telecommunications company unless the PA drops its efforts to put Israeli soldiers and officers in the dock over the Israeli operation.” (“Palestinians cry ‘blackmail’ over Israel phone service threat,” The Independent, 1 October).

Kital added that it was a “condition” that the PA specifically drop its efforts to advance the Goldstone report. The phone company, Wataniya, was described last April by Reuters as an “Abbas-backed company” which is a joint venture between Qatari and Kuwaiti investors and the Palestinian Investment Fund with which one of Abbas’ sons is closely involved. Moreover, Reuters revealed that the start-up company apparently had no shortage of capital due to the Gulf investors receiving millions of dollars of “US aid in the form of loan guarantees meant for Palestinian farmers and other small to mid-sized businesses” (See “US aid goes to Abbas-backed Palestinian phone venture,” Reuters, 24 April 2009).

Just a day before the Abbas delegation pulled its resolution in Geneva, Nabil Shaath, the PA “foreign minister” denounced the Israeli threat over Wataniya as “blackmail” and vowed that the Palestinians would never back down.

The PA’s betrayal of the Palestinian people over the Goldstone report, as well as its continued “security coordination” with Israel to suppress resistance and political activity in the West Bank, should banish all doubt that it is an active arm of the Israeli occupation doing tangible and escalating harm to the Palestinian people and their just cause.

“The PA is an active arm of the Israeli occupation doing tangible and escalating harm to the Palestinian people and their just cause.”

Source: The Electronic Intifada

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 24 September 2009

US President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in a kitschy reprise of the famous 1993 White House lawn handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. (MaanImages)

There is the old joke about a man who is endlessly searching on the ground beneath a street light. Finally, a neighbor who has been watching him asks the man what he is looking for. The man replies that he lost his keys. The neighbor asks him if he lost them under the streetlight. “No,” the man replies, pointing into the darkness, “I lost them over there, but I am looking over here because here there is light!”

The intense focus on the “peace process” is a similarly futile search. Just because politicians and the media shine a constant light on it, does not mean that is where the answers are to be found.

The meeting hosted by US President Barack Obama with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas at New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel on 22 September signaled the complete and terminal failure of Obama’s much vaunted push to bring about a two-state solution to the Palestine/Israel conflict.

To be sure, all the traditional activities associated with the “peace process” — shuttle diplomacy, meetings, ritual invocations of “two states living side by side,” and even “negotiations” — will continue, perhaps for the rest of Obama’s time in office. But this sterile charade will not determine the future of Palestine/Israel. That is already being decided by other means.

Continues >>

By ALI ABUNIMAH

Khalid Meshaal (photo Reuters)

In a major policy speech on June 25, 2009, Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, tried to do what may be impossible: present the Islamist Palestinian resistance organization as a willing partner in a US-led peace process, while holding on to his movement’s political principles and base.*

This is the dilemma that every Palestinian leadership, and perhaps almost every liberation movement, has eventually had to confront. It is a choice between recognition and legitimacy, as political scientist Tamim Barghouti has pointed out (in a paper given at the Annual Symposium of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University on the theme: “Palestine and the Palestinians Today,” April 2-3, 2009, Washington, DC.)

According to Barghouti, the old-guard Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, when confronted with the same dilemma, chose recognition and forfeited its legitimacy, opening the way for Hamas to emerge. Now it is the turn of Hamas: the price demanded by the US and its allies for Hamas to be taken as an interlocutor is the abandonment of the very principles on which the movement built its mass support.

Meshal’s nearly hour-long “address to the Palestinian people and the world” was billed as a response to the speeches of US President Barack Obama in Cairo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in June.
In his Cairo speech, Obama called for Americans and Muslims to engage in a “sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground.” If he is serious about that, he — and others — should pay close attention to what Hamas is saying to domestic, regional and international audiences. Meshal’s goals — very much in tension — were to show that his movement is ready to do business with the US, set out political red lines, reassure the movement’s supporters and Palestinians generally and deal with internal Palestinian divisions.

To begin with, the speech sought to present Hamas as a nationalist movement whose Islamism fits within a mainstream Palestinian consensus. Meshal used an explicitly ecumenical message to counter Netanyahu’s exclusivist Jewish claims to the land of Palestine. According to Meshal, Palestinians’ roots stretched back thousands of years “in this blessed land of prophets and messages, of [Muhammad's] night ascension, of Muslim and Christian holy sites — al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, the Nativity Church and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.”

More generally, he sought to portray Muslims as representing the very values Westerners claim to cherish most and dissociate Hamas from lurid and false comparisons to such groups as the Taliban. “We [Muslims] are the ones who introduced the world and humanity to science, civilization, culture and lofty humanitarian values,” Meshal declared, “values such as justice, freedom, equality, compassion and tolerance, and the values of interaction between civilizations and not a confrontation between them.”

Meshal welcomed a “change of tone” from President Obama but emphasized repeatedly that only a change of policy would matter. He nevertheless claimed the new tone as the fruit of the “stubborn steadfastness of the people of the region, while resisting in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.” Such resistance, according to Meshal, frustrated the former US President George W. Bush administration’s plans for regional domination, prompting American voters to seek a different path to extricate their country from mounting crises and quagmires.

He chided regional leaders who had “marketed and promoted” Bush’s policies. “Had the people of the region listened to them,” Meshal said, “the policy of Bush and the neoconservatives might have succeeded and the region’s situation would be worse than imaginable.” Meshal voiced the widespread skepticism and perhaps hopes that Obama’s promises amounted to more than the similar words about Palestine heard from the Bush Administration. Responding to Obama’s recital of history, Meshal did not seek to deny the Nazi Holocaust but to appropriate it. He took Obama to task for dwelling in detail on the “suffering of the Jews and their holocaust in Europe, while ignoring our present suffering and Israel’s holocaust against our Palestinian people that has been continuing for decades.”

Meshal emphasized that even though Palestinians have heard only words, they were prepared to judge the US by its actions, which would have to “begin with reconstruction of Gaza and the lifting of the blockade, lifting the oppression and security pressure in the West Bank, and allowing Palestinian reconciliation to take its course without external pressures or interference.”

The “only thing” that can convince Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, Meshal stated, “is genuine American and international will and efforts to end the occupation and lift the oppression from our people, to allow them to exercise their right to self-determination and the fulfillment of their national rights.” When the Obama administration makes such an initiative, Meshal said, “then we and all our people’s forces will be ready to cooperate with it and with any international effort in that direction.”

Obama’s “new language toward Hamas,” Meshal underlined, “is the first step in the right direction towards direct dialogue without conditions.” And that is the crux of the matter. Dealing with Hamas, Meshal said, must be based on the recognition of its democratic mandate and not via the imposition of arbitrary conditions such as those of the Quartet which call on the movement to recognize Israel, abandon violence and commit by previously signed agreements.

Meshal reasserted Hamas’ political red lines while maintaining a sense of flexibility. In particular, Meshal:

*Rejected the Palestinian state envisaged by the Israeli leader as a “deformed entity, a large prison for detention and suffering, and not the national home a great people deserves.”

* Rejected Israel’s demand to be recognized as a “Jewish state” — and warned against any Arab or Palestinian acquiescence — “because it means canceling the right to return to their homes of six million refugees, and the forced expulsion of our people in the 1948 areas [Palestinian citizens of Israel] from their cities and villages.” Israel’s demand, according to Meshal, is no different than racist demands made by fascist Italy and the Nazis.

* Reaffirmed Hamas’ previous acceptance of “the program that represents the minimum demands of our people,” for “the establishment of a Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem with complete sovereignty on the borders of 4 June 1967, after the withdrawal of the occupation forces, and the dismantling of all the settlements, and the realization of the Right of Return.”

* Reaffirmed that “the refugees’ Right of Return to the homes from which they were expelled in 1948 is a national right and an individual right held personally” by the refugees “and no leader or negotiator can waive it or compromise on it.”

Meshal also offered a nuanced response to Obama’s call on Palestinians to abandon “dead end” violence in favor of nonviolent resistance. “We reaffirm our adherence to resistance as a strategic choice to liberate the homeland and restore our rights,” Meshal said, citing armed European resistance to Nazi Germany, American resistance to British rule and the Vietnamese and South African anti-colonial struggles as precedents for Palestinians.

“Nonviolent resistance is appropriate in a struggle for civil rights,” Meshal argued, “But when it comes to a military occupation using conventional and nonconventional weapons, such an occupation can only be confronted with armed resistance.” Palestinians were forced to take up arms, Meshal said. He could also have been implying that if Palestinians changed the definition of their struggle as being one for civil rights then the appropriate means of resistance would also change.

“Resistance is a means and not an end,” Meshal said, “and it is not blind. Indeed it perceives the changes underway.” Yet, while staunchly defending the right to armed resistance — and even threatening new operations to take Israeli soldiers prisoner if it was the only way to free Palestinians prisoners — Meshal also recognized other forms of struggle. He called for increased Palestinian, Arab and international solidarity efforts, including ongoing efforts to break the siege on Gaza, to resist the apartheid wall and settlements and to prevent home demolitions and “Judaization” in Jerusalem.

For Hamas leaders, the dangers of submitting to western preconditions can be seen merely by looking at the trajectory of the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership which recognized Israel in 1993, renounced armed struggle and signed the Oslo accords. Since that time, Meshal argued, the occupation and its oppression deepened as the number of Israeli settlements and Palestinian prisoners grew.

As Meshal put it, “These conditions do not end; as soon as the Palestinian negotiator commits to one, more conditions are imposed. For example, first the condition was to recognize Israel, now it is to recognize the Jewishness of Israel. Then, that Jerusalem is its eternal capital, giving up the Right of Return, accepting that settlement blocks will remain. Then [Palestinians] must not only abandon resistance, but themselves work to oppress, pursue and disarm the resistance.”

The latter point was a reference to the arrest campaign in the West Bank and what Meshal called other “oppressive measures undertaken by the [Palestinian] Authority and the government of Salam Fayyad and its security forces under the supervision of the American General [Keith] Dayton.” Meshal presented this ongoing cooperation between the Ramallah security forces, Israel and the US as the biggest obstacle to Palestinian reconciliation talks in Cairo aimed at restoring a unified national leadership.

After Hamas won the 2006 legislative election, the Bush administration began a program overseen by Dayton to arm and train anti-Hamas militias nominally loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The campaign has been accompanied by what Hamas and some human rights groups have described as a systematic crackdown on politicians, professors, charities and journalists suspected of sympathy or links with Hamas. Hamas has often retaliated by arresting Fatah-linked individuals in the Gaza Strip.

In recent weeks, the Dayton-supervised militias have killed several members of Hamas in the West Bank ostensibly while trying to arrest them. Meshal cleverly drew attention to the external role in fueling Palestinian divisions — and how little has actually changed from the Bush Administration — by “calling on Obama to withdraw Dayton from the West Bank and return him to the United States, in keeping with the new spirit of change.”

Throughout the speech, Meshal sought to reassure Palestinians that Hamas would not abandon its core principles in pursuit of recognition and power. “The land is more important than authority, and liberation before a state,” he said at one point, and “no Palestinian leadership has the right to waive Palestinian national rights and interests as the price for recognition.”

Some Palestinians worry that despite such assurances, Hamas has already set off down the very path Meshal warned about and risks squandering the sacrifices Palestinians made, especially in Gaza. Haidar Eid, an independent analyst in Gaza, wrote before Meshal’s speech that some of the early enthusiastic Hamas responses to Obama’s Cairo speech, as well as acceptance of the two-state solution, indicated “the beginning of a process of deterioration — even Osloization — not only in rhetoric, but also in action.” This writer has heard similar fears voiced by Palestinians from the West Bank and recently in Amman. Given that many Palestinians consider that a previous generation of resistance leaders turned their backs on their people’s most fundamental interests and rights — all the while claiming to uphold them — such fears are far from irrational or uncommon.

Another analysis of Hamas’ shift currently circulating argues that Hamas has accepted the Palestinian “consensus” position of a two-state solution on every inch of the 1967 occupied territories with removal of all settlements and with the Right of Return. But it knows that no potential peace deal coming from the Obama initiative will ever reach even these minimal conditions, and that if Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could not reach even the outlines of an agreement after two years of negotiations, the chances of any deal with a Netanyahu-Lieberman government are even tinier. In this scenario, Hamas need not stand in the way of a two-state solution because it will fail anyway. But by saying it would accept that minimalist outcome, it would avoid blame for the failure and its adherence to resistance would be vindicated.

What we do know is that Hamas’ leaders, and the Palestinians generally, have been placed under intense pressure, occupation, blockades, starvation sieges and recurrent Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the vast majority so far has not submitted to Israeli conditions. But while emphasizing the role of resistance and struggle to achieve liberation, Hamas has not offered a clear vision of what liberation looks like other than the unconvincing and increasingly unrealistic two-state vision (leaving aside its long, outdated, though much-cited charter that offers no guide to the movement’s current thinking).

Meshal’s speech confirms Hamas’ long-term shift away from Islamist rhetoric toward mainstream Palestinian nationalist discourse. It indicates that Hamas is highly sensitive to international and Palestinian public opinion and is aware that Palestinians need to build real international solidarity as part of a strategy to level the glaring power imbalance with Israel. But it is not prepared to seek recognition at any price. All this has implications for the movement’s message and methods.

This leaves the field open for an urgent debate among Palestinians about what that future vision should be and what role resistance in all its legitimate forms should play. No group of leaders, whether from Hamas or any other organization, could or should carry the burden of restoring Palestinian rights by itself. Hamas, like other Palestinian organizations, can only be a guardian of fundamental rights to the extent that it is embedded in a broader movement mobilized in Palestine and globally to defend those rights.

And if Hamas’ potential interlocutors are sincerely seeking ways to recognize the democratic mandate of the movement without trying to force it to forfeit its legitimacy, there are precedents. South Africa’s African National Congress and the Irish Republican Army were both able to take part in successful political negotiations that got their respective countries out of disastrous political and military stalemates without being required to submit to unacceptable preconditions. That took a measure of leadership, foresight and political courage by others that has been notably absent in international dealings with Hamas.

*The speech is in Arabic. All excerpts quoted in this article are the author’s translation. A transcript and recording of the speech were made available by the Palestinian Information Center, a Hamas-affiliated website. See: http://bit.ly/mK7kS.

Ali Abunimah is a writer and commentator on Middle East and Arab-American affairs. He is a full-time researcher in social policy at the University of Chicago and directs The Electronic Intifada site, where this article originally appeared.

Source:www.Electronicintifada.net

carlos latuff

yesterday ali abunimah and hasan abu nimah co-authored a brilliant analysis of benjamin netanyahu’s speech in electronic intifada. here is their article in full:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a peace plan so ingenious it is a wonder that for six decades of bloodshed no one thought of it. Some people might have missed the true brilliance of his ideas presented in a speech at Bar Ilan University on 14 June, so we are pleased to offer this analysis.

First, Netanyahu wants Palestinians to become committed Zionists. They can prove this by declaring, “We recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in this land.” As he pointed out, it is only the failure of Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular to commit themselves to the Zionist dream that has caused conflict, but once “they say those words to our people and to their people, then a path will be opened to resolving all the problems between our peoples.” It is of course perfectly natural that Netanyahu would be “yearning for that moment.”

Mere heartfelt commitment to Zionism will not be enough, however. For the Palestinians’ conversion to have “practical meaning,” Netanyahu explained, “there must also be a clear understanding that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel’s borders.” In other words, Palestinians must agree to help Israel complete the ethnic cleansing it began in 1947-48, by abandoning the right of return. This is indeed logical because as Zionists, Palestinians would share the Zionist ambition that Palestine be emptied of Palestinians to the greatest extent possible.

Netanyahu is smart enough to recognize that even the self-ethnic-cleansing of refugees may not be sufficient to secure “peace”: there will still remain millions of Palestinians living inconveniently in their native land, or in the heart of what Netanyahu insisted was the “historic homeland” of the Jews.

For these Palestinians, the peace plan involves what Netanyahu calls “demilitarization,” but what should be properly understood as unconditional surrender followed by disarmament. Disarmament, though necessary, cannot be immediate, however. Some recalcitrant Palestinians may not wish to become Zionists. Therefore, the newly pledged Zionist Palestinians would have to launch a civil war to defeat those who foolishly insist on resisting Zionism. Or as Netanyahu put it, the “Palestinian Authority will have to establish the rule of law in Gaza and overcome Hamas.” (In fact, this civil war has already been underway for several years as the American and Israeli-backed Palestinian “security forces,” led by US Lt. General Keith Dayton, have escalated their attacks on Hamas).

Once anti-Zionist Palestinians are crushed, the remaining Palestinians — whose number equals that of Jews in historic Palestine — will be able to get on with life as good Zionists, according to Netanyahu’s vision. They will not mind being squeezed into ever smaller ghettos and enclaves in order to allow for the continued expansion of Jewish colonies, whose inhabitants Netanyahu described as “an integral part of our people, a principled, pioneering and Zionist public.” And, in line with their heartfelt Zionism, Palestinians will naturally agree that “Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel.”

These are only the Palestinian-Israeli aspects of the Netanyahu plan. The regional elements include full, Arab endorsement of Palestinian Zionism and normalization of ties with Israel and even Arab Gulf money to pay for it all. Why not? If everyone becomes a Zionist then all conflict disappears.

It would be nice if we could really dismiss Netanyahu’s speech as a joke. But it is an important indicator of a hard reality. Contrary to some naive and optimistic hopes, Netanyahu does not represent only an extremist fringe in Israel. Today, the Israeli Jewish public presents (with a handful of exceptions) a united front in favor of a racist, violent ultra-nationalism fueled by religious fanaticism. Palestinians are viewed at best as inferiors to be tolerated until circumstances arise in which they can be expelled, or caged and starved like the 1.5 million inmates of the Gaza prison.

Israel is a society where virulent anti-Arab racism and Nakba denial are the norm although none of the European and American leaders who constantly lecture about Holocaust denial will dare to admonish Netanyahu for his bald lies and omissions about Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s “vision” offered absolutely no advance on the 1976 Allon Plan for annexation of most of the occupied West Bank, or Menachem Begin’s Camp David “autonomy” proposals. The goal remains the same: to control maximum land with minimum Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s speech should put to rest newly revived illusions — fed in particular by US President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech — that such an Israel can be brought voluntarily to any sort of just settlement. Some in this region who have placed all their hopes in Obama — as they did previously in Bush — believe that US pressure can bring Israel to heel. They point to Obama’s strong statements calling for a complete halt to Israeli settlement construction — a demand Netanyahu defied in his speech. It now remains to be seen whether Obama will follow his tough words with actions.

Yet, even if Obama is ready to put unprecedented pressure on Israel, he would likely have to exhaust much of his political capital just to get Israel to agree to a settlement freeze, let alone to move on any of dozens of other much more substantial issues.

And despite the common perception of an escalating clash between the Obama administration and the Israeli government (which may come over minor tactical issues), when it comes to substantive questions they agree on much more than they disagree. Obama has already stated that “any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state,” and he affirmed that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.” As for Palestinian refugees, he has said, “The right of return [to Israel] is something that is not an option in a literal sense.”

For all the fuss about settlements, Obama has addressed only their expansion, not their continued existence. Until the Obama administration publicly dissociates itself from the positions of the Clinton and Bush administrations, we must assume it agrees with them and with Israel that the large settlement blocks encircling Jerusalem and dividing the West Bank into ghettos would remain permanently in any two-state solution. Neither Obama nor Netanyahu have mentioned Israel’s illegal West Bank wall suggesting that there is no controversy over either its route or existence. And now, both agree that whatever shreds are left can be called a “Palestinian state.” No wonder the Obama administration welcomed Netanyahu’s speech as “a big step forward.”

What is particularly dismaying about the position stated by Obama in Cairo — and since repeated constantly by his Middle East envoy George Mitchell — is that the United States is committed to the “legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.” This formula is designed to sound meaningful, but these vague, campaign-style buzzwords are devoid of any reference to inalienable Palestinian rights. They were chosen by American speechwriters and public relations experts, not by Palestinians. The Obama formula implies that any other Palestinian aspirations are inherently illegitimate.

Where in international law, or UN resolutions can Palestinians find definitions of “dignity” and “opportunity?” Such infinitely malleable terms incorrectly reduce all of Palestinian history to a demand for vague sentiments and a “state” instead of a struggle for liberation, justice, equality, return and the restoration of usurped rights. It is, after all, easy enough to conceive of a state that keeps Palestinians forever dispossessed, dispersed, defenseless and under threat of more expulsion and massacres by a racist, expansionist Israel.

Through history it was never leaders who defined rights, but the people who struggled for them. It is no small achievement that for a century Palestinians have resisted and survived Zionist efforts to destroy their communities physically and wipe them from the pages of history. As long as Palestinians continue to resist in every arena and by all legitimate means, building on true international solidarity, their rights can never be extinguished. It is from such a basis of independent and indigenous strength, not from the elusive promises of a great power or the favors of a usurping occupier, that justice and peace can be achieved.

the anti-arab racism they describe above is rampant, though not always caught on camera or reported by the media. here is yet another instance of the common sorts of racist remarks made by zionist terrorist colonists made this week:

Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, who meant to praise an undercover police agent in Tel Aviv, referred to him as an “Arabush” (Hebrew equivalent of “sand nigger”) Tuesday.

this is the same kind of racism that stems from the jewish supremacist attitude that they can colonize palestine because they are the “chosen people” who “inherited” this land from god. and this racism is not reserved just for palestinians in the west bank and gaza. it is fundamentally a part of the zionist state and its society. it is what helped to create apartheid on both sides of the so-called “green line,” contrary to jimmy carter’s attestations to the contrary. stu harrison’s interview with palestinian member of kenesset haneen zoabi in electronic intifada this week she makes it quite clear how racism and apartheid function in 1948 palestine:

Zoabi said: “The rate of hostility has increased a lot. Seventy-five percent of Jewish people do not want to live in a society with Arabs.”

“On the question of apartheid, most towns are mixed, with both Arabs and Jews. Most of the Jewish population and the authorities in towns like Jaffa and Haifa, are trying their best to transfer Palestinians out so they can become purely Jewish towns.”

“They prevent the Palestinians from renovating their homes and they are trying to push them into giving up their homes so they will leave. Arabs are being attacked a lot more in the streets and in their market shops, comparing the last year to previous years.”

However, Zoabi said such attitudes are nothing new. “We have a special case of racism in Israel. You can’t find this kind of racism in any other country in the world, where the state usually defines itself neutrally.”

“This is not the case in Israel. We don’t struggle simply against discriminating policies or attitudes. We are against the very definition of the state and this is what differentiates our struggle.”

it is this kind of racism that also leads the zionist entity to constantly demolish palestinian homes and build new colonies. this week another spate of both emerged in the news. first, the house demolitions and orders for future demolitions of palestinian homes:

Two Palestinian families were given orders on Tuesday by the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem to demolish part of their homes.

One of the homes is located inside the old city of Jerusalem while the other is located in the nearby Palestinian dominated Silwan neighborhood.

Local sources said that since Friday the Israeli municipality had handed out five such orders to Palestinian families inside the walls of the old city.

and more homes in al quds:

At least a dozen Palestinian families in vireos parts of East Jerusalem received on Wednesday demolition orders issued by the Jerusalem Municipality.

According to the Israeli municipality the homes are built without the needed building permits.

The families started the illegal process by hiring a lawyer to get their case heard in the court, local sources reported.

Since last week the Israeli municipality has forced four families to demolish parts of their homes because they lacked the needed permission.

and another home in another neighborhood al quds:

The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that the home of Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh in Anata, which has already been demolished by the Israeli authorities four times and has become a center for the peaceful struggle against home demolitions, can be demolished yet again.

and in the jordan valley:

Israeli bulldozers demolished 15 animal barns and 3 shacks owned by Palestinian residents of Ein Al-Hilwa neighborhood in the Jordan Valley near Israeli settlement of Masquin, eyewitnesses reported Wednesday morning.

Palestinian Authority official Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors Israeli settlement activity in the northern West Bank, condemned the demolition describing it as part of a clear Israeli policy aimed at emptying the Jordan Valley of all Palestinian residents.

the above news items are part and parcel for palestinians every day, but there is a new report from save the children that ma’an published the other day showing that 300,000 palestinians face house demolitions right now:

Over 300,000 people are facing house demolitions in the occupied Palestinian territories, a report issued this week by the UK charity Save the Children says.

“House demolitions in the OPT have escalated and thousands of families and in some cases entire villages remain under the threat of bulldozers arriving to destroy their homes and being displaced any day,” said Salam Kanaan, Save the Children Country Director in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) in a statement.

The new report is titled “Broken Homes,” and was also authored by Palestinian Counseling Centre (PCC), and Welfare Association.

Since house demolitions started in 1967 it is estimated that the Israeli civilian and military authorities have destroyed over 24,000 homes. However, since 2000 the number of homes being destroyed has escalated with an average of more than a 1,000 homes demolished every year, Save the children said.

This year (2009) has seen a massive increase, with more homes being destroyed than at any time since the Israeli occupation began 40 years ago, the organization said. Nearly 4,000 homes were destroyed as a result of the military offensive in Gaza at the start of the year.

“The majority of house demolitions are carried out for so called ‘administrative’ reasons or as a result of military operations,” said Kanaan. “Families lose everything when their homes are demolished; clothes, food and furniture are all buried in the rubble. There is precious little help for these families who are left with nothing, no support, no protection.”

Among the facts stated in the report are:

More than half (52%) of the homes were demolished in a collective demolition where a series of homes or neighborhood was razed

Two people were killed during the demolition of their homes

Only 13% of families had a chance to collect their belongings before demolition began
97% of parents are at risk of a mental breakdown as a result of their homes being demolished

Children whose homes have been demolished show a decline in their mental health, suffering classic signs of trauma, becoming withdrawn, depressed and anxious

The majority of families whose houses were demolished were repeatedly displaced for long periods of time – over half the families (61%) took at least two years to find somewhere permanent to live

Over a quarter of families had to split up so they could all find somewhere to stay.

Once a house is demolished, the family not only loses their home and its contents but is also liable for the costs of the actual house demolition. This can run into thousands of dollars.

East Jerusalem residents, rural communities in the West Bank, Bedouin, and refugees living in camps, communities close to the Separation Wall or settlements, and areas near Gaza’s borders are at the greatest risk of displacement from building or house demolition. More than 300,000 Palestinians live in these areas.

of course the main reason for palestinian home demolitions is to build colonies for jewish zionists who steal the land on which these palestinian homes exist. and expect a great increase in those colonies this summer:

The Land of Israel Faithful group responded to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech by saying that they are planning to construct 30 new outposts in the West Bank. In his speech Netanyahu declared that no new settlements would be built and no extra land would be confiscated from Palestinians for settlement development.

The group told Israeli media that it was “recruiting activists for this summer’s outpost building”. It is planning to create outposts between the settlement of Ofra and Shiloh, in Gush Etzion, near Hebron and near the settlements of Elon Moreh and Bracha.

The settler group has been engaged in building and rebuilding outposts for the past two years. Many of them have been demolished several times by Israeli forces, but the group keeps rebuilding them with determination.

One of the outposts that was destroyed was the Moaz Esther outpost. In the beginning of this month it was taken down, but now it’s almost completely rebuilt again. The group explained that action has to be taken to strengthen the Jewish hold on the West Bank.

supposedly the united states is working to “freeze” the colony building project, but the zionist entity is being defiant and racist as is par for the course:

Visiting Washington, Israeli Foreign Minister of the right-wing extremist Yisrael Beiteinu Party, Avigdor Lieberman, told the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, that Israel will not freeze the construction and expansion of settlements.

Clinton demanded Israel to stop the settlements as agreed upon with the former president, George W. Bush.

Lieberman said that the “Jewish people were born in Judea and Samaria, and will die there”, his statement totally disregarded the indigenous Palestinian people.

Clinton responded by stating that the United States under the Obama administration wants a freeze to all settlement activities.

The Israeli FM claimed that there was no written or even verbal agreement with Bush regarding the settlements. Clinton “agreed” and said that a compromise could be reached between the United States and Israel.

here is a report on lieberman’s visit with hillary clinton by tom ackerman on al jazeera yesterday:

regardless of what is being reported, it seems as though the obama administration–like all american administrations before it–will yield to the zionist entity and their demand for jewish-only racist colonies on stolen palestinian land:

The US may ease its demand for a total freeze on construction in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Tuesday.

Quoting anonymous Israeli officials, the newspaper said that this possible change in position was expressed during US Envoy George Mitchell’s visit to Israel last week, when he held a four-hour meeting on the settlement issue with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

but glenn kessler pointed out in the washington post the other day that there once was a time when the u.s. was clear–at least rhetorically–about the illegality of colonies (though, unfortunately, the u.s. has always supported the colonies in 1948 palesitne):

Thirty years ago, the State Department legal adviser issued an opinion in response to an inquiry from Congress: The establishment of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories “is inconsistent with international law.”

The opinion cited Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” Israel has insisted that the Geneva Convention does not apply to settlers and broadly contests assertions of the settlements’ illegality.

Despite the passage of time, the legal opinion, issued during the Carter administration, has never been revoked or revised. President Ronald Reagan said he disagreed with it — he called the settlements “not illegal” — but his State Department did not seek to issue a new opinion.

But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is unlikely to bring up the U.S. opinion when she meets today with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman at the State Department. Lieberman lives in a West Bank settlement, Nokdim, that was established in 1982 as a tent encampment of six families and now has more than 800 residents.

Despite repeated inquiries over the past week, State Department spokesmen declined to say whether the 1979 legal opinion is still the policy of the U.S. government.

and lest you think that the zionist entity’s racism is directed only at palestinians check out this new report on irin news about their human trafficking:

The latest US State Department report on trafficked persons, released on 16 June, says Israel is still a destination for men and women trafficked for forced labour and sexual exploitation.

Women from the former Soviet Union and China are still being trafficked across the border with Egypt into Israel for forced prostitution by organized criminal groups.

According to local NGOs, such as Isha L’iash and Moked, each year several hundred women in Israel – many of them foreigners – are trafficked within the country for commercial sexual exploitation, according to the report.

In 2006 Israel was put on the US State Department’s Tier 2 watch list and has been described as a “prime destination for trafficking” by both the State Department and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Dennis Ross gets a bump up in the Obama Administration to manufacture consent for war with Iran; Obama to grant more power to the Federal [sic] Reserve; the ACLU releases a report analyzing the effects of racist anti-terror [sic] laws on private charities; Democrats unite to fund more war out of ‘loyalty to the president’; Russia, China, India, and Brazil begin talks to end dollar hegemony.

U.S. Iran envoy and Israel lobbyist, Dennis Ross, will now have a “more active role in shaping Iran policy at the White House”, according to a U.S. official. Mr. Ross suggests talks with Iran are for the purpose of ‘easier selling’ war with Iran in his new book, Myths, Illusions & Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East, co-authored by David Makovsky: “Tougher policies — either militarily or meaningful containment — will be easier to sell internationally and domestically if we have diplomatically tried to resolve our differences with Iran… Such an approach may build pressures within Iran not to forgo the opportunity that has been presented, while also ensuring that the onus is put on Iran for creating a crisis and also for making conflict more likely.”

Iran having nukes would “get that recognition to power and prestige and… an insurance policy against what they heard in the past about regime change, axis of evil,” says IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei to BBC. “[Iran] wants to send a message to its neighbors, it wants to send a message to the rest of the world: yes, don’t mess with us, we can have nuclear weapons if we want it.” This is exactly what Iraq did. Intimidation is a self-fulfilling prophecy from superpowers. Nowhere has Mr. ElBaradei ever said that Iran does have these capabilities after 14 snap inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities over the last six years. Iran’s nuclear program has always been within the guidelines of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which all signatories allow for the purposes Iran has shown — peaceful energy purposes. That said, posturing breeds posturing. Iran’s well aware that it would be obliterated the moment it began a nuclear weapons program, making the actions self-defeating and contrary to the motives of any “message” sent: to preserve and empower itself as a State, which can’t be done if it’s obliterated. For more, read Gordon Prather any day of the week.

“Power tends to consolidate. It tends to want to defend itself, and that’s a really insidious tendency and that’s, I think, what we’re seeing  [with the Obama Administration],” Chris Hayes, editor of The Nation, told Keith Olbermann regarding the continuity of secrecy after promising transparency. “I don’t even know what motive there is, other than this basic raw institutional prerogative of, you know, protecting oneself and accruing the maximal amount of power and latitude.” (video) Maybe, Mr. Hayes will stop being a fascist and become a libertarian now…. Probably not.

The Federal [sic] Reserve will receive more unchecked powers to “regulate” the financial industry in a proposal Pres. Obama will present Wednesday: “[C]urrent and former Fed officials worry that the central bank is setting itself up for failure.”

“Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity,” is the “first comprehensive report that documents the serious effects of Bush administration terrorism finance laws on Muslim communities across the nation”, says the ACLU in a press release. The report can be viewed on the web or downloaded in a .pdf format. Ali Gharib wrote a good analysis on the report at IPS.

$106bn war bill narrowly passes in the U.S. House with only five Republican votes (226-202). The GOP was holding out because of the $5bn to the IMF slipped into the bill. Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) statement here. Jeremy Scahill wrote a scathing piece at AlterNet today slamming the so-called “Anti-War Democrats” saying, “What once Democrats could argue was “Bush’s war,” they now officially own.” Glenn Greenwald commented as well on Democrats’ blind “loyalty” to the president. This is the War Party in full effect. They’re all a bunch of terrorists.

42 million people were displaced by war in 2008, according to a U.N. study. Marina Litvinsky’s article for IPS goes more in-depth.

Iran has banned media coverage of the protests following its election. Iran’s Guardian Council will be conducting a recount (video). No matter what the result, Pres. Obama will engage in “tough diplomacy… with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States”. Government-backed militiamen have reportedly fired hundreds of live rounds in the air and at crowds of protesters. Tens of thousands have taken to the streets again today. Thursday a rally will be held in memoriam of those who’ve died in the protests — BBC reporting eight dead, the LAT reporting “at least twelve” dead by midday Wednesday in the U.S.

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri says that “no one in their right mind can believe” the results of Iran’s presidential election, adding that “a government not respecting people’s vote has no religious or political legitimacy”.

A gutwrenching story from another brave blogger in Iran who Yossi Melman keeps anonymous for the blogger’s safety at Ha’aretz today.

TIME Magazine correspondent Nahid Siamdoust was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! from Tehran. (video)

“The ‘Bomb Iran’ Contingent’s Newfound Concern for The Iranian People” by Glenn Greenwald (Salon)

American filmmaker James Longley is making a documentary on the 2009 Iran presidential election. Gaza Strip (2002) and Iraq in Fragments (2006) are highly recommended. Mr. Longley’s been live-blogging from Tehran. (h/t: Karina Longworth)

Side note: Iran’s “Twitter Revolution” is getting ridiculous. There’s a lot of bad info out there. Be careful and please read things before you re-tweet. The truth is that we can’t really follow these protests with the media blockade. The Gaza Massacre was difficult and we did the best we could combing through hundreds of sources a day and battling between Newspeak, bad rumors, and facts were difficult. Just attempting to learn about rallies in Iran has been damn-near impossible. For example, yesterday’s largest rally in Tehran was by Mousavi supporters and not covered by any media due to the blockade. That said, Ari Berman links to some good sources on The Nation blog and more great pictures from today’s “silent protest” from the brave, young Amir Sadeghi.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for a “fairer global economic order” and an end to dollar hegemony. See The Blog for more on the economic summit held by Russia with Brazil, India, and China. The U.S. dollar dropped again with this news.

“The American Empire Is Bankrupt” by Chris Hedges on TruthDig displays the significance of a dollar crash. (h/t: Scott Horton) Usually, you see socialists stay from this topic. Who knows? Maybe, Mr. Hedges’ll become a Rothbardian, someday.

“Russia’s laws and practices regulating nongovernmental organizations are stifling independent civic activism and need extensive reform,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) says in their report: “An Uncivil Approach to Civil Society: Continuing State Curbs on Independent Civil Society Activism” [.pdf]. “Reform” pisses me off. You’re advocates, not politicians. Call for abolition. I plan on reading this study either way before next week. HRW compiles great reports. (Little Alex)

“I have to hold back tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has been wreaked against your people,” said Fmr. Pres. Jimmy Carter during his visit to the Gaza Strip acknowledging Palestinians are treated “like animals”. Mr. Carter’s repeatedly called for Hamas to be removed from the U.S. terror list, in order for the group to be involved in negotiations. Gazans spoke to BBC about how the blockade has terrorized them.

A total settlement freeze is possible, Akiva Eldar reports. Documents contradict the U.S.-Israel claim that freezing all settlements would be “impossible”. No shit.

“Netanyahu wants Palestinians to become committed Zionists,” Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah comment at ei today.

“The [EU]… is to put most of the blame for the conflict on Georgian President Saakashvili,” reports RT. “The commission headed by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini has established that the Georgian attack on South Ossetia was pre-planned and was not a response to ‘Russian aggression’, as Saakashvili has been claiming ever since… The final report of the commission is to be delivered in late July. Der Spiegel expects Tagliavini to avoid harsh judgments and probably leave the door open for Georgia as a potential NATO member. The newspaper also says the report will not mention the U.S. and their military support of Tbilisi, despite some members arguing that it may have “inadvertently promoted Georgia’s collision course.” Listen to “The U.S., Russia, Georgia, and the Five-Day War” for more of the Five-Day War between Russia and Georgia last August. It should not be forgotten.

“North Korea has abandoned its own commitments and violated international law,” said Pres. Obama. “Its nuclear and ballistic missile programs pose a grave threat to (the) peace and security of Asia and to the world.” Talk about the Black man pejoratively calling the Asian, a “minority.”… North Korea has pledged that were the U.S. to “infringe upon [the state's] sovereignty even a bit… [it] will launch a one hundred or one thousand fold retaliation with [a] merciless military strike”.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee confessed to “committing hostile acts… out of political motives”, North Korea’s (DPRK) government news agency reports. “During their trial, they admitted that what they did was a criminal act inspired by political motives of isolating and stifling our republic by defiling our human rights situation through fabricated video footage,” the news agency reported. You don’t think the evidence was twisted and the confessions coerced, do you?

Peru’s Congress has launched a probe into a “massacre” which killed 34 this month in a clash between police and indigenous civilians. Why the hell do activists call for sanctions from the U.S. against the civilians with whom these activists claim to be in solidarity?

Former Gitmo detainees are making attempts to enjoy life after being freed. The CSM covers the recently released Uighurs. The men blame the Chinese, not the U.S. for their seven year detention.

Withheld evidence from the case of death row inmate, Mumia Abu-Jamal, was published in a very detailed San Francisco Bay News article Tuesday. The article is reposted on InfoShop News today. See Amy Goodman’s interview with Mr. Abu-Jamal here.

Journalist Florence Hartman went on trial in front of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Monday for using classified material in her 2007 book, Peace and Punishment, used to prosecute former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. Read more from Alecia McKenzie here at IPS.

Qais Azimy and Hameedullah Shah, were released from Afghan custody. The two al Jazeera producers were detained a couple of days ago after airing a report of Mr. Azimy meeting with Taliban leaders. A good guess is that Afghan intel was leaning on the men to reveal details, but they couldn’t go too far with the imprisonments of Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee and they don’t want to come off as worse than Iran in treating media people worse than Iran treated Roxana Saberi…. Not so soon, at least.

In 2002, then-president George W. Bush (like his father and many other presidents) tossed ‘brave rhetoric’ around while signing checks to Israel. His rhetoric was as fresh and promising as President Obama’s this week in Cairo,  in that it wasn’t.

Mr. Bush’s speech from 24 Jun 02 (h/t: Ali Abunimah):

“It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. And the current situation offers no prospect that life will improve….

“If Palestinians embrace democracy, confront corruption and firmly reject terror, they can count on American support for the creation of a provisional state of Palestine….

“Israel also has a large stake in the success of a democratic Palestine. Permanent occupation threatens Israel’s identity and democracy. A stable, peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for. So I challenge Israel to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state.

Mr. Bush even acknowledged the illegality of the settlements:

“Ultimately, Israelis and Palestinians must address the core issues that divide them if there is to be a real peace, resolving all claims and ending the conflict between them. This means that the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 will be ended through a settlement negotiated between the parties, based on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, with Israeli withdrawal to secure and recognize borders.”

U.S. military welfare to Israel increased in 2007, committing $30bn for a decade. Mr. Bush also signed over another $20bn and $13bn to the brutal dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, respectively. All three of these countries elevated its atrocities and were rewarded by the Bush administration for terrorizing people.

Prof. Noam Chomsky’s reaction to President Obama’s speech seven years later: “Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism.”

According to a senior Obama administration official, the U.S. will not cut military welfare to Israel, nor has the administration given any reason to believe that continuing to enable the Saudi and Egyptian regimes of terror will cease, either. This week, Mr. Obama called the despotic Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a “force for stability and good” and contrary to the Newspeak, Mr. Obama grants tacit consent to Israel’s illegal occupation which already exists in the West Bank — only objecting to further expansion of the colonization, as Olivia Zemor points out:

The media speaks of the American president’s “firm stand.” What sort of firmness is that? The AFP wrote again recently, “On Monday, before leaving for the Near East, the American resident Barak Obama reaffirmed the necessity for a certain firmness regarding Israel, on the subjects of a Palestinian state and the settlements in the Territories.”

That’s right: Obama is not demanding the dismantlement Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. He’s not demanding the end of the occupation, nor the end of the blockade of the Gaza Strip, nor the payment of the costs of the enormous destruction wrought on the Gaza Strip.

Obama is not demanding that Israel return to the Palestinians what was stolen from them. Not all, not even some. Obama’s “demands” consist of calling for “a freeze in the settlements:” nothing new there! And the Palestinian state, where will that be now that Israel has annexed 89% of the Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem? What Bantustans will Obama propose to the Palestinians?

They dare to “arm wrestle” with us again: in what is now a well-oiled production. The Israeli government plays the “impossible and too painful concessions” card in order, as usual, to ratify a fait accompli. A fait accompli which consists of stealing and annexing practically all of the land in order to later give the impression of conceding when they stop, when there is no longer anything left to take….

The Israelis will have made a “painful concession,” and isn’t it that which counts? The settlers will cry out and menace. They will say, like the butcher Sharon, transformed into a man of peace, “Ah, what courage the Israeli government has to stand up to the pressure of a part of its population, its parliament, and its own government.” And while we talk about the yet to be born children of settlers who will be deprived of playgrounds, Israel can continue to massacre Palestinian children, chase Palestinians, destroy their houses, uproot their olive trees and imprison and torture thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. She can also continue to show proof of a confident racism by refusing to give the same rights to Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, without being restricted by any government or institution. Investigation reports follow one another when the massacres become too obvious. And we continue to roll out the red carpet for all of those war criminals, presenting them to be men of courage who have made generous propositions, but which the Palestinian terrorists refuse to accept.

And Obama, like Clinton, will he undoubtedly replay the “I did what I could” scene, but the Palestinians made the negotiations fail? How could an outlaw state oblige another outlaw state to act morally? Obama has just raised the US military budget and sent new troops to Afghanistan. Is it really like that, that you take the road to peace and justice?

In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, where they analyze the lobby’s influence on the actions of the U.S. government, no matter what the rhetoric of its leaders. Former American president Gerald Ford “threatened to reassess U.S. support for Israel”. In 1992, then-president George H.W. Bush “briefly withheld loan guarantees”. (165)

The Clinton administration of the 90’s is highly revered for the Oslo Accords in 1996 and the frequently misreported Camp David Summit in 2000:

The Clinton administration’s Middle East policy was heavily shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel organizations. The two most notable individuals in this regard were Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC and cofounder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who served on Clinton’s National Scurity Council, as ambassador to Israel (1995-97, 2000-01), and as assistant secretary of state (1997-2000); and Dennis Ross, who served as Clinton’s special envoy to the Middle East and joined WINEP after leaving government in 2001. They were among President Clinton’s closest advisers at the Camp David summit in July 2000.

Although both Indyk and Ross supported the Oslo peace process and favored the creation of a Palestinians state — which led hard-liners to denounce them unfairly for betraying Israel — they did so only within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israeli leaders… The American delegation at Camp David took most of its cues from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.… Even the “Clinton parameters” presented in December 2000 were less an independent American proposal than Clinton’s summary of where negotiations stood and his assessment of the bargaining space within which a solution might be found. Palestinians negotiators complained that the Israelis would sometimes present them with a specific proposal, and then later the Americans would offer the same idea, on the Americans would label it a “bridging proposal.” As another member of the U.S. team later admitted, Israeli proposals were often “presented [to the Palestinians] as U.S. concepts, not Israeli ones,” a subterfuge that fooled no one and reinforced Palestinian suspicions. (165-166)

It’s worth noting that Dennis Ross is a member of the Obama administration as one of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special advisers.

Dr. Mearsheimer recently commented:

The special relationship [between the Israel Lobby and the American government] means Washington gives Israel consistent, almost unconditional diplomatic backing and more foreign aid than any other country. In other words, Israel gets this aid even when it does things that the United States opposes, like building settlements. Furthermore, Israel is rarely criticized by American officials and certainly not by anyone who aspires to high office. Recall what happened earlier this year to Charles Freeman, who was forced to withdraw as head of the National Intelligence Council because he had criticized certain Israeli policies and questioned the merits of the special relationship.

Many hope that Obama will be different from his predecessors and stand up to the lobby. The indications thus far are not encouraging. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama responded to charges that he was “soft” on Israel by pandering to the lobby and publicly praising the special relationship. He was silent during the recent Gaza War—when Israel was being criticized around the world for its brutal assault on that densely populated enclave—and he said nothing when Freeman was forced to quit his administration. Like his predecessors, Obama appears to be no match for the lobby….

In short, a clear majority of Americans do not favor the special relationship and would back Obama if he leaned on Israel to accept a Palestinian state. The lobby, however, would surely side with Israel and pressure the White House to back off. Given the lobby’s track record—as well as Obama’s—it is difficult to imagine him not caving.…

This week, Dr. Walt asked, “Is the Lobby Getting Weaker?“:

Let’s start by recognizing that all Obama has done so far is lay down some rhetorical markers.… But Obama has yet to put any real pressure on Israel, and he certainly hasn’t tried to make U.S. support (still over $3 billion/year) conditional on Israeli compliance. And the main bone of contention right now is simply whether Israel is willing to stop expanding settlements; we haven’t even gotten to all the steps that will be necessary to make a viable Palestinian state possible.

Furthermore, we pointed out in our book that the lobby exerted more influence in Congress than on the Executive Branch, and we noted that several past Presidents (e.g., Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush) had been able to put limited pressure on Israel in recent decades. So mild Presidential pressure on Israel is hardly unprecedented. In the meantime, the situation on the Hill hasn’t changed very much: a recent AIPAC-sponsored “Dear Colleague” letter telling Obama to privately coordinate his Mideast diplomacy with Israel (and proposing various conditions on the Palestinians) garnered 76 signatures in the Senate and 329 in the House. And there are signs that Israel’s supporters on the Hill are beginning to mobilize in more direct ways.

Dr. Mearsheimer continues:

Israel’s backers often maintain that American support for Israel had nothing to do with 9/11, but this claim is simply not true. Consider the motivations of Khalid Sheik Muhammed, whom the 9/11 Commission describes as the “principle architect of the attacks.” According to the commission, “KSM’s animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.” Numerous independent accounts have also documented that Osama bin Laden has been deeply concerned about the Palestinian situation since he was young, and the 9/11 Commission reports that he wanted the attackers to strike Congress, which he saw as the most important source of support for Israel in the United States. The commission also tells us that bin Laden twice wanted to move the date of the attacks forward because of events involving Israel—even though doing so would have increased the risk of failure.

In short, there is little hope of ending America’s terrorism problem and improving its standing in the Middle East if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not resolved. That will only happen if there is a two-state solution, and that will only occur if the United States puts pressure on Israel.

Mr. Obama’s words are nothing new. Israel’s dissent toward a president’s words are nothing new. The actions of the American government unconditionally favoring of Israel through it’s robbery and mass murder, contrary to rhetoric from the American government — its most charitable and loyal financiers — is nothing new.

Mr. Obama can say all he wants to seduce the ‘Muslim World’ as he seduced his way into the White House. They can’t avoid seeing him for the torture enabling, warmongerer that he is as he tortures and kills them, their mothers, their fathers, and their children. Alexander Cockburn asked in an absolutely scathing article a couple of weeks ago titled, “From Anti-War Law Professor to Warmongerer in 100 Days”: “How long does it take a mild-mannered, anti-war, black professor of constitutional law, trained as a community organiser on the South Side of Chicago, to become an enthusiastic sponsor of targeted assassinations, ‘decapitation’ strategies and remote-control bombing of mud houses at the far end of the globe?”

After the Cairo Speech, Paul Craig Roberts is quick to point out:

In [Obama's] first 100 days, Obama managed to create two million Pakistani refugees. It took Israel 60 years to create 3.5 million Palestinian refugees.…

Muslim extremists are the creation of decades of Western colonization and secularization that has created an elite, which is Muslim in name only, to rule over religious people and to suppress Islamic mores. All experts know this, and most of them hail it as bringing progress and development to the Muslim world.

Obama said that “human progress cannot be denied,” but “there need not be contradiction between development and tradition.” However, the West defines development and education. These terms mean what they mean in the West.  Muslim extremists understand that these terms mean the extermination of Islam.

Days before the speech, Robert Fisk accurately predicted strong rhetoric and the reaction that would occur from American client states and so-called “liberals” in the West:

He can, and will, surely, try his global-Arab line; that every Arab nation will be involved in the new Middle East peace, a resurrection of the remarkably sane Saudi offer of full Arab recognition of Israel in return for an Israeli return to the 1967 borders in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolution 242. Obama will be clearing this with King Abdullah on Wednesday, no doubt. And everyone will nod sagely and the newspapers of the Arab dictatorships will solemnly tip their hats to the guy and the New York Times will clap vigorously.

And the Israeli government will treat it all with the same amused contempt as Netanyahu treated Obama’s demand to stop building Jewish colonies on Arab land and, back home in Washington, Congress will fulminate and maybe Obama will realise, just like the Arab potentates have realised, that beautiful rhetoric and paradise-promises never, ever, win against reality.

Ali Abunimah captured the Newspeak aftermath of the Cairo Speech to the ‘Muslim World’ best — saying it “will please American liberals much more than it will convince [the] intended audience (unless that is the audience).”

Considering where the president is gaining political capital with his lies, the ponzi scheme seems to be in full effect.

MORE ON THE PRESIDENT’S CAIRO SPEECH:

• “Obama’s Cairo Speech” by Noam Chomsky
• “Obama in Cairo: High Words, Low Truths” by Alexander Cockburn
• “Obama, Like Bush, Just Doesn’t Get It” by Jacob G. Hornberger
• “Obama in Cairo: Words, Words, Words” by Justin Raimondo
• “Obama in Cairo: A Bush in Sheep’s Clothing” by Ali Abunimah

i find it disturbing that there are people who seem to think that there was something new or who were impressed by obama’s speech because he used the word “occupation.” here is the paragraph in which obama used that word:

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own. For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive.

the word i want to hear him utter is “nakba.” i want him to acknowledge the root of the problem and the only roadmap that will fix it, united nations resolution 194 that mandates palestinian refugees have a right to return to their land under international law. i find it increasingly problematic to use the word “occupation” because the word automatically signals the false notion that only land stolen by the zionist entity 42 years ago is “occupied.” but the entirety of palestine is occupied. is colonized. not just what is called the west bank and gaza strip. there is little difference between those zionist colonizers who occupy palestinian land whether in haifa or in khalil. and no the two people do not have equal legitimate aspirations.

there was an interesting debate on the speech on the pbs newshour, surprisingly enough, that featured abderrahim foukara from al jazeera, as’ad abukhalil, rami khoury, and some woman named sumaya hamdani whose reading of the speech was rightfully critiqued by the other panelists. this discussion was far more sophisticated and specific than anything i heard on al jazeera english because unlike al jazeera english, the newshour seemed to not make it a priority to find arabs and muslims who were salivating over the speech. you can also hear two good interviews nora barrows-friedman did with ali abunimah and robert knight with sami husseini yesterday on flashpoints that put the speech into its proper context.

helena cobban interviewed hamas leader khaled mesh’al yesterday for ips news in which mesh’al rightly states that palestinians want to see actions not words:

“We need two things from Obama, Mitchell, the Quartet, and the rest of the international community. Firstly, pressure on Israel to acknowledge and grant these rights. The obstacle to this is completely on the Israeli side. Secondly, we need the international actors to refrain from intervening in internal Palestinian affairs. You should leave it to the Palestinians to resolve our differences peacefully. You should respect Palestinian democracy and its results,” he said.

This latter was a reference to the hard-hitting campaign that Israel, the U.S. and its allies have maintained against Hamas ever since its candidates won a strong victory in the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s parliamentary elections in January 2006.

That campaign has included sustained efforts to delegitimise the Hamas-led government that emerged from the elections, attempts by Israel to assassinate the government’s leaders, including during Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, and the mission that U.S. Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton has led in the West Bank to arm and train an anti-Hamas fighting force loyal to the U.S.-supported Palestinian leadership in Ramallah.

In his reaction to Obama’s speech, Meshaal referred to the U.S.’s role in this intervention, saying, “Rather than sweet words from President Obama on democratisation, we’d rather see the United States start to respect the results of democratic elections that have already been held. And rather than talk about democratisation and human rights in the Arab world, we’d rather see the removal of Gen. Dayton, who’s building a police state there in the West Bank.”

this issue of american-zionist forces collaborating with the palestinian authority came to a head yesterday as obama delivered his speech. ghassan bannoura reported the events as follows for imemc:

Four Palestinians were reported dead and numbers injured as Palestinian security forces announced that clashes with Hamas fighters ended in the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia on Thursday midday.

The clashes started early morning and lasted till midday, The security forces and the gunmen exchanged fire after the gunmen opened fire at a vehicle that belongs to the Palestinian security forces, officials reported.

A security official in Qalqilia stated that the Hamas fighters hurled a grenade at the security patrol killing one officer and wounding several others. The security forces surrounded a building where three fighters of Hamas barracked themselves. Witnesses speaking under conditions of immunity told IMEMC that security forces stormed the building after heavy exchange of fire and found the three fighters dead.

Tension was high in Qalqilia since the start of the week. On Sunday a group of Hamas fighters clashed with the Fatah controlled security forces in the city. The clash left two fighters, one civilian and three security officers dead.

Meanwhile Fatah security forces in the West Bank and Hamas forces in Gaza arrested members of each other’s factions all week.

here is some footage from the associated press of the gun battle yesterday in qalqilia:

nora barrows-friedman’s interview with diana buttu the other day reveals the important details about these events and its relationship to larger concerns among palestinians more generally. here is nora’s post on her blog and below that is a partial transcript that i typed up from the interview.

Listen to my interview with former PLO advisor Diana Buttu earlier this week about the Palestinian Authority’s moves to:

1) accept “counter-terrorism” training from a US military colonialist-orientalist, Lt. Keith Dayton;

2) use that training to turn against Palestinians trying to resist the illegal occupation and apartheid regime of Israel;

3) further fractionalizing any national unity coalition to fight occupation and subjugation by Israel and the US.

here is a partial transcript of the interview with some revealing and insightful analysis and questioning (the link below is to the actual interview, which i highly recommend listening to):

Nora Barrows Friedman: …The PA placed the entire city of Qalqilia under curfew, which is reminiscent of Israeli tactics as they did their search and seizure mission. Can you give us your assessment of this in the current climate of the Occupied West Bank at this point?

Diana Buttu: Certainly, one of the interesting things about this case is that one of the individuals with Hamas who ended up being killed is somebody who was being sought after by the Israelis and who had gone under cover for a period of nearly 7 years. Rather than–so the irony is that instead of Israel person, the body that assassinates, it ended up that it’s the Palestinian Authority that has killed this man. And so it points to the direction that the Palestinian Authority is heading into: that is being the security sub-contractor to the Israeli Occupation.

NBF: And this also comes just three days after Israel assassinated another Hamas leader, Abed Al-Majid Dudin, in the southern West Bank city of Hebron. You know, let’s talk about the timing of all of this. The PA security services have been ramping up their suppression of the civilian population, within the West Bank, and more and more Palestinian civilians are unimpressed, you could say, with the PA’s involvement with the Israeli government and the United States. You know, after this meeting with Obama, what’s the significance really of the timing of all of this under the Abbas leadership?

DB: It’s very significant. The significance of it is that President Abbas wants to demonstrate to the Americans that he is the address, particularly since his mandate expired in January 2009. And the only way he can demonstrate he is the address is–and Salam Fayyad being the prime minister who has now twice been appointed and not been confirmed by the PLC–the only way that they can that is by showing that they can take control of security. In other words, it’s become very clear that the equation is that the Palestinian Authority has to crack down on Hamas and demonstrate that it can actually take control and take charge of security in the West Bank. And in exchange for that there may, perhaps, be some pressure brought to bear on Israel–not to dismantle settlements, but just to simply freeze settlements. It’s becoming clear that this is the equation. Especially in light of the fact that President Abbas’ mandate expired in January of this year.

NBF: Diana, let’s talk also about the training of the PA services by the U.S. contra-style military commander Lieutenant Keith Dayton. Dayton has been employed in the West Bank for a couple of years. His contract was just renewed for another two years. And he’s been tasked to train Palestinian Authority forces in so-called “counter-terrorism tactics,” not against the illegal israeli occupiers, but against their own people in the Hamas movement. What are your thoughts on the appointment and employment of Dayton?

DB: Well this is, again, part of the long-term strategy and the long-term thinking when it comes to this region. Nobody–and certainly not the United States–they do not recognize that this is an occupation. They do not realize that this is a political issue that has some security ramifications. But instead they view it as a lack of security and security only, thinking that this is a security problem and that if we address the security side of things, in other words, approach Israel’s security first, then somehow the political ducks will line themselves up. But that’s clearly not been–that’s proven to be false in the past and, of course, it will be proven to be false in the future. What’s interesting about Dayton and the forces that he’s been training in the West Bank is that when Dayton thought to give his first interview to an Israeli paper, one of the key sentences and one of the messages that he sent to the Israelis was the following: what they were doing is that they were training the Palestinian Authority forces not to combat Israel’s occupation or even to resist Israel’s occupation, but instead they were training the security forces to undermine those very individuals who at any point in time believe that it is alright to resist Israel’s military occupation. In other words: pit Palestinian against Palestinian rather than ensure that the Palestinians are able to resist Israel’s military rule.

NBF: And, Diana, how does this kind of Iran-contra style tactic play out in the Palestinian street?. How are Palestinians looking at what’s going on here?

DB: Well Palestinians are looking at it with a lot of horror and a lot of disgust. I actually remember 15 years ago, when the Palestinian Authority first came into the area. This is an Authority that was greeted with candy, with flowers, people were throwing rice–with a lot of jubilation thinking that somehow there was going to be a Palestinian presence, a Palestinian entity that was going to rule over their lives rather than being an Israeli entity, an Israeli force. You have to contrast that with the demonstration that happened yesterday where people were cursing the Palestinian Authority. People were chanting slogans against the Palestinian Authority–the same slogans that Palestinians once chanted against Israeli Occupation Forces. So you can see the connection that is being made, that people are making between Israel’s occupying forces soldiers and those of the Palestinian Authority. And unless this equation gets broken somehow, unless the Palestinian Authority re-gears itself or re-directs itself, which I don’t think is likely, then you’re going to see a much higher level of cynicism along with much more acts of a police state, which the West Bank is now turning into being.

perhaps it is in this context that you can see why some palestinians call the palestinian authority collaborationist. for instance the palestinian information center reported that the zionist entity is rather pleased with its subcontracted army here in the west bank:

The Israeli occupation authority has expressed extreme satisfaction at the success of Abbas’s security men in assassinating Qassam resistance fighters wanted by the IOF for a number of years.

Occupation military sources described the assassination of Muhammad Atteya and Eyad al-Abtali and the wounding of Ala’ Deyab in the city of Qalqilya as an important operation carried out successfully by Abbas’s security men, especially that this operation comes only two days after the assassination of Qassam commander Muhammad al-Samman and his assistant Muhammd Yassin after a 6-year pursuit by the IOF.

The Israeli occupation army radio said that Abbas’s forces besieged the hiding place of the Qassam fighters, which was in the cellar of a house, and when they failed to make them surrender they poured large quantities of water into the cellar drowning two of them and wounding and arresting the third.

it should come as no surprise, then, that resistance is now promising to turn its guns on the collaborationist authority as imemc reports:

The Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, issued a statement on Thursday calling on all fighters in the West Bank to defend themselves against the security forces of president Mahmoud Abbas, the same way the fighters counter the Israeli occupation.

In a press conference in Gaza, Abu Obaida, spokesperson of the Al Qassam, said that the brigades will prevail in the West Bank “in spite of the aggression of the occupation and its tails”, and that if the security forces think that the Al Qassam is vanishing in the West Bank, “they should know we are here, and here we will prevail, God willing”.

He added that the Brigades considers the security forces of Abbas as “outlawed militias, that violate the morals of the people and the country”, and added that “the only way to deal with them is by resistance; we call on our fighters to fight the gangs of Abbas the same way they fight the occupation”.

He held Abbas and his Prime Minister, Dr. Salaam Fayyad, responsible for the events in Qalqilia, and added that “no talks or future agreements would pardon them or grant them security”.

in spite of all this kenneth bazinet reported in the daily news that obama had to send out an email assuring american jews that he still supports the zionist entity in all its destruction and war crimes that they commit on a daily basis with the help of the palestinian authority and the united states:

The White House tried to ease Israeli concerns over President Obama’s fence-mending speech Thursday to the Muslim world, insisting he remains loyal to the strong U.S. relationship with the Jewish state.

In an e-mail sent to some Jewish groups and the U.S.-based lobby for Israel, the White House insisted Obama’s outreach to the mainstream Muslim majority is no threat to relations with its key Mideast ally.

“The President’s commitment to Israel’s security is as firm as ever, which he has emphasized many times,” the e-mail said.

it seems that they do need reassuring because all one needs to do is take one look at joseph dana and max blumenthal’s video of zionist terrorist colonists in al quds last night after the speech (one view of this video and you’ll see what i mean by terrorists):

oddly enough, in spite of all the racist ranting in the above video, there is a newish restaurant i pass by in between beit lahem and al quds just before you reach the old city that seems to pay homage to the new american president:

zionist terrorist colonist pizza restaurant in al quds

and today a brand new colony is being built on palestinian land named after barack obama:

Israeli settlers established a new illegal West Bank outpost on Thursday, dedicating it partly to US President Barack Obama.

The settlers, calling themselves the “Land of Israel Loyalists,” named the outpost Oz Yehonatan, near Binyamin, but were calling part of it the “Obama Hut,” according to the Israeli news agency Ynet.

And according to a report from Israel’s Arutz Sheva news agency, the outpost was named “in recognition of the president’s actions, which have led to a dramatic increase in the number of outposts being built throughout Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].”

of course in spite of what those zio-nazis say in the above video, the united states, and obama are firmly supporting only jewish suffering and a jewish state. obama confirmed this today when instead of traveling to nearby gaza to see the damage created by american weapons in the hands of the israeli terrorist army he chose to look back and history to see what europeans did to jews, and in his comments there he reinforced the deeply flawed logic that palestinians should pay the price for european sins as mark smith reported in the star tribune:

President Barack Obama witnessed the Nazi ovens of the Buchenwald concentration camp Friday, its clock tower frozen at the time of liberation, and said the leaders of today must not rest against the spread of evil.

The president called the camp where an estimated 56,000 people died the “ultimate rebuke” to Holocaust deniers and skeptics. And he bluntly challenged one of them, Iranian President Ahmadinejad, to visit Buchenwald.

“These sites have not lost their horror with the passage of time,” Obama said after seeing crematory ovens, barbed-wire fences, guard towers and the clock set at 3:15, marking the camp’s liberation in the afternoon of April 11, 1945. “More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what happened have not diminished.”

Buchenwald “teaches us that we must be ever-vigilant about the spread of evil in our own time, that we must reject the false comfort that others’ suffering is not our problem, and commit ourselves to resisting those who would subjugate others to serve their own interests,” Obama said.

He also said he saw, reflected in the horrors, Israel’s capacity to empathize with the suffering of others, which he said gave him hope Israel and the Palestinians can achieving a lasting peace.

this point of view is why most people in this region will never believe the rhetoric coming out of the united states even if the president’s middle name is hussein. zeina khodr’s report for al jazeera on the afghan response to obama’s speech is indicative of this sentiment:

egyptian blogger hossam el hamalawy also spoke out against the obama speech eloquently in an interview with al jazeera’s james bays, although there is some vapid woman sitting next to him who i wish would shut up to enable hossam to have more time to explain his important points:

and natalie abou shakra kindly translated khaled saghiyyeh’s article in al akhbar today on the speech:

People, let’s hear it out for Mr Obama who has just recognized Islam as a religion! Not only so, but he also recited Koranic passages at his University of Cairo speech!

And we, the “colonized” overwhelmed by permissiveness, did not stop clapping every time we heard a sura recited in English. But, frankly, despite this harmonious wonder between cultures and religions, it is worthy to note that the problem with the American administration was never cultural to begin with, and has not been merely a difference in political perspectives.

The difference lies in the bloodshed of hundreds of thousands that were killed in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan…. either by American-made weapons, American support, or by Americans themselves as is the case with war on Iraq for the so-called struggle for democracy, and the war on Lebanon as a passage to a New Middle East.

However, there’s no use crying over spilt milk, for Mr. Obama has thus spoken and has asked us to start over a new beginning. Simply, in a snap of his fingers he asks us to put aside all that without the need for an apology to the victims of these wars. We do not mean to waste the precious time of this new emperor, but is he asking us to be his partners? And, are we supposed to believe him? But, wait a minute… we have a lot to learn from our “big brother.” Not only shall he impose on us his democracy, but also imposed on us what he thinks of human rights… O, Mr. Obama, thank you for reshaping the etiquette.

More so, as the first step to this new recipe, Obama asks of the Lebanese Maronites to look onto themselves as minorities, just as the Copts, and he shall be the one who will defend their rights. As for “Hamas”, who was democratically elected by the way, he thinks they “represent, maybe, some of the Palestinians.” And based on his account of human rights, he emphasized the wrongness of the “violent” resistance. And what is the alternative? The same old talk about the two-state solution and the road map in Palestine, completely ignoring the right of return and the issue of the refugees. As for Iran, it should [according to Obama] abandon its nuclear dreams in the purpose of preventing an arms race in the Middle East- as if Iran was the one who begun the race! Hello Mr. Obama!!

Imperialism did not always come in the form of violent speeches. But, rather, it usually came in with a stronger sense of allure. Well, it seems that “development” rates will hit the ceilings again. Prepare yourselves for more bloodshed and victims to fall… this time in the name of humanity and progress.

and for those readers questioning me yesterday when i doubted the sincereity of obama in reference to his promises about iraq and guantanamo, just click on these recent news stories by jeremy scahill and you will start to understand what i mean:

IN FOCUS: “Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama” (AlterNet): The ‘Black Shirts’ of Guantanamo routinely terrorize prisoners, breaking bones, gouging eyes, squeezing testicles, and ‘dousing’ them with chemicals.

WORLD VIEW: UN Human Rights Council Blasts US for Killing Civilians, Drone Attacks and Using Mercenaries: The UN group is also calling on the US to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate crimes by US officials.

HMMM: Obama Wants $736 Million Colonial Fortress in Pakistan: Critics say the White House wants to use the new “embassy” for “pushing the American agenda in Central Asia.”

SAY WHAT??: Mastercard-istan: Ex-Bush Henchman Wants to be “CEO of Afghanistan” (Literally): Obama may allow famed neocon Zalmay Khalilzad to become the unelected shadow leader of Afghanistan to “push American interests.”

and as for obama and all his words of supporting muslims in the united states one only needs to remember the holy land 5, most recently, or check out this story by cath turner on al jazeera about an egyptian man, youssef megahed, who was found innocent of “terrorism” charges, but who is still being targeted by the american authorities:

welcome to amrika and its empire. oh, and by the way, check out this article on the bbc yesterday that wrote up a piece on those tweeting about obama’s speech. my tweets seemed to have made it onto their radar screen:

Mr Obama also came in for some sharp comments on his treatment of democracy: “How about Mubarak and his ruthless suppressing the rights of others?” tweeted Marcy Newman, who describes herself as a teacher, writer and activist in Palestine.

And “Obama does this mean you will be recognizing Hamas given they were democratically elected?”

Palestinian Obama. Zan Studio

Personally, I found it unpleasant to see Obama lecturing the Arabs, and the handpicked audience clapping as ecstatically as trained apes whenever the President (rather like Napoleon in Cairo) made an Islamic allusion. No matter that he said ‘hajib’ intead of ‘hijab’. Most depressingly, Obama’s address was heavily influenced by the Bernard Lewis school of Orientalism – Arab and Muslim anger is caused by the cultural trauma of modernity and a “self-defeating focus on the past,” rather than by very present realities, such as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the destabilisation of Pakistan and Somalia, the unwelcome military bases in the Muslim world, and the support of dictatorial regimes such as Mubarak’s. Obama’s assumptions repeated falsities, such as the notion that Arab regimes focus on Palestine to distract the people from their own failings. In fact the Arab regimes do everything they can to take the focus off Palestine, as the Palestinian tragedy is the key symbol of the bankruptcy of the client regimes. And Obama mocked violent resistance while not saying a word about the 1400 just killed in Gaza or the million slaughtered in Iraq.

The best response I’ve seen to the speech is by Ali Abunimah, who studies Obama’s phrases well: “Suffered in pursuit of a homeland? The pain of dislocation? They already had a homeland. They suffered from being ethnically cleansed and dispossessed of it and prevented from returning on the grounds that they are from the wrong ethno-national group. Why is that still so hard to say?” Ali goes on:

Once you strip away the mujamalat – the courtesies exchanged between guest and host – the substance of President Obama’s speech in Cairo indicates there is likely to be little real change in US policy. It is not necessary to divine Obama’s intentions – he may be utterly sincere and I believe he is. It is his analysis and prescriptions that in most regards maintain flawed American policies intact.

Though he pledged to “speak the truth as best I can”, there was much the president left out. He spoke of tension between “America and Islam” – the former a concrete specific place, the latter a vague construct subsuming peoples, practices, histories and countries more varied than similar.

Labelling America’s “other” as a nebulous and all-encompassing “Islam” (even while professing rapprochement and respect) is a way to avoid acknowledging what does in fact unite and mobilise people across many Muslim-majority countries: overwhelming popular opposition to increasingly intrusive and violent American military, political and economic interventions in many of those countries. This opposition – and the resistance it generates – has now become for supporters of those interventions, synonymous with “Islam”.

It was disappointing that Obama recycled his predecessor’s notion that “violent extremism” exists in a vacuum, unrelated to America’s (and its proxies’) exponentially greater use of violence before and after September 11, 2001. He dwelled on the “enormous trauma” done to the US when almost 3,000 people were killed that day, but spoke not one word about the hundreds of thousands of orphans and widows left in Iraq – those whom Muntazer al-Zaidi’s flying shoe forced Americans to remember only for a few seconds last year. He ignored the dozens of civilians who die each week in the “necessary” war in Afghanistan, or the millions of refugees fleeing the US-invoked escalation in Pakistan.

As President George Bush often did, Obama affirmed that it is only a violent minority that besmirches the name of a vast and “peaceful” Muslim majority. But he seemed once again to implicate all Muslims as suspect when he warned, “The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer.”

Nowhere were these blindspots more apparent than his statements about Palestine/Israel. He gave his audience a detailed lesson on the Holocaust and explicitly used it as a justification for the creation of Israel. “It is also undeniable,” the president said, “that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation.”

Suffered in pursuit of a homeland? The pain of dislocation? They already had a homeland. They suffered from being ethnically cleansed and dispossessed of it and prevented from returning on the grounds that they are from the wrong ethno-national group. Why is that still so hard to say?

He lectured Palestinians that “resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed”. He warned them that “It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.”

Fair enough, but did Obama really imagine that such words would impress an Arab public that watched in horror as Israel slaughtered 1,400 people in Gaza last winter, including hundreds of sleeping, fleeing or terrified children, with American-supplied weapons? Did he think his listeners would not remember that the number of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians targeted and killed by Israel has always far exceeded by orders of magnitude the number of Israelis killed by Arabs precisely because of the American arms he has pledged to continue giving Israel with no accountability? Amnesty International recently confirmed what Palestinians long knew: Israel broke the negotiated ceasefire when it attacked Gaza last November 4, prompting retaliatory rockets that killed no Israelis until after Israel launched its much bigger attack on Gaza. That he continues to remain silent about what happened in Gaza, and refuses to hold Israel accountable demonstrates anything but a commitment to full truth-telling.

Some people are prepared to give Obama a pass for all this because he is at last talking tough on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. In Cairo, he said: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”

These carefully chosen words focus only on continued construction, not on the existence of the settlements themselves; they are entirely compatible with the peace process industry consensus that existing settlements will remain where they are for ever. This raises the question of where Obama thinks he is going. He summarised Palestinians’ “legitimate aspirations” as being the establishment of a “state”. This has become a convenient slogan to that is supposed to replace for Palestinians their pursuit of rights and justice that the proposed state actually denies. Obama is already on record opposing Palestinian refugees’ right to return home, and has never supported the right of Palestinian citizens of Israel to live free from racist and religious incitement, persecution and practices fanned by Israel’s highest office holders and written into its laws.

He may have more determination than his predecessor but he remains committed to an unworkable two-state “vision” aimed not at restoring Palestinian rights, but preserving Israel as an enclave of Israeli Jewish privilege. It is a dead end.

There was one sentence in his speech I cheered for and which he should heed: “Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.”

• Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Editor’s note, 5 June 2009: This article originally included a sentence saying “the last suicide attack targeting civilians by a Palestinian occurred in 2004″. This was incorrect and Ali Abunimah posted a clarification here in the discussion thread.