If there was an elephant in the room during the presidential debates that the candidates dared not speak about, it is Iran and the Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as the influence of the Israel Lobby on American foreign policy.
This article was posted by Cecilie Surasky of Muzzlewatch, a subsidiary of Jewish Voice for Peace that uncovers censorship and false propaganda about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Palestinian aspirations for their own sovereign state, a few weeks ago on Thursday, Jan 10th, 2008.
Hat tip to Philip Weiss for uncovering Mother Jones’ documentation of the obvious: feeling subject to a settler-mentality lobby that is firmly planted in the US, the media and politicians collude in their own “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to US foreign policy in Israel-Palestine. It’s hard not to envision candidates and major league media outlets as the infamous can’t hear-can’t speak-can’t talk monkeys.
Remember back when Howard Dean, running for president with a former president of AIPAC, no less, as his campaign co-chair, had the audacity to suggest a more “evenhanded” policy regarding Israel and Palestine. Within seconds, 34 Democratic members of Congress (and Abe Foxman) rushed to admonish him a warning letter affirming our unique, and anything but even-handed friendship with Israel. How DARE you suggest, well, balance?
Well, now we’ve got a parade of debates between presidential hopefuls, the perfect opportunity to once and for all get some clarity on candidates’ positions on the occupation, on Gaza, on Sderot, on peace negotiations. Right?
Wrong.
Justin Elliott at Mother Jones reports on 11 Democratic debates:
In nine of the 11 debates, the terms Israel, Palestinians, and Gaza were either never uttered or were mentioned once or twice peripherally. For instance, Joe Biden said at the October 30 NBC debate that Pakistan has missiles that can reach Israel. The two exceptions were the November 15 Democratic debate in Las Vegas, where Bill Richardson, unprompted, briefly outlined his ideas for a two-state solution, and the December 4 Democratic radio debate on NPR, in which moderator Robert Siegel posed the single question about Israel of the past 11 debates. Unfortunately, the query was effectively avoided.
What is shocking and new is that any reporter even dared to ask a candidate about these things at all. Even then, NPR’s Robert Siegal hedged his bets, affirming the “rationality” of supporting illegal settlement growth and land grabs in a question presented first to John Edwards:
“When we do things that policymakers in Washington may think are rational, like very strong support of Israel, that also upsets a lot of those 1 billion Muslims you’ve described. How would you, Senator Edwards … answer the complaint that the U.S., in its support of Israel, is so pro-Israeli, it can’t be an evenhanded, honest broker of matters and is anti-Muslim?”
And still, Justin Elliott at Mother Jones writes:
Edwards proceeds to ignore the question, makes a point about Ahmadinejad and says to improve relations with Muslims we must “help make education available to fight global poverty.” He makes no mention of Israel/Palestine. Siegel then turns to Obama. The senator says we need to close Guantanamo and talk not just to our friends but to our enemies. He, like Edwards, doesn’t touch the Israel issue. To their credit, Dodd and Kucinich do a much better job at engaging.
So in the past 11 debates the grand total of references to the Gaza Strip is zero. Considering that Israel is our biggest ally in the Middle East and the biggest recipient of U.S. aid in the world, isn’t it about time the candidates were asked what they think of our ally’s destructive policies in Gaza? Will any moderator have the courage to pose the question?
So here we are three weeks later, through Big Tuesday, and we have yet to hear a single word from our remaining Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama, about these important Middle East issues and how they would resolve them. By contrast with Obama’s noncommittal proIsrael (security) statements, Clinton’s right wing perspective actually incorporates AIPAC’s agenda, that defames Palestinians as terrorists, disenfranchises them even further from their ancestral lands, and precludes a fair and just solution most Americans support, to say nothing about her attack mentality concerning Iran. Yet she has not been confronted with her positions during the debates, and is not likely to be. The same holds for Obama, who must somehow skirt his earlier statements of sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians, and, of all things, having dinner with the late Palestinian-American professor, Edward Said.
Yeah, I’d noticed that, in fact. It’s like the entire issue of Israel/Palestine has mysteriously vanished off the map…. the blockade of Gaza has somehow dropped it into a media black hole.
Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, there were two big issues that goups like Al Qaeda used to incite hatred and terrorist recruitment: (1) The presence of US (non-Muslim) troops too near to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina (this was bin Laden’s chief complaint, and the ONLY one that actually was responded to — the US has since moved those troops to Iraq); and (2) the ongoing issue of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. Both those issues were matters of US foreign policy, and as such, the US had a fair amount of power (and responsibility) to address them.
Now, of course, the Bush administration has greatly compounded the tension in the region by its invasion and occupation of Iraq (and its rhetorical threats to Iran), and its continued unquestioning support of Israel, even when Israel attacked Lebanon or continues to starve the population of Gaza, as punishment for the Palestinians electing members of Hamas into their government.
I would like to think that both Clinton and Obama would actually attempt to DO something to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and attempt to broker a return to serious negotiations between Palestinian authorities (and factions thereof) and Israel. Obama has said he’d talk to Iran… talking to Hamas (or brokering discussions between the two major Palestinian factions and Israel) isn’t that far a stretch from that… but given the flack he’s gotten just for saying he’d talk to Iran and Syria, etc., I guess mentioning anyone else would be impolitic at this time — he has to be elected before he can do much of anything here. Bill Clinton did try to address this issue during his administration, so I’m guessing Hillary would do so as well — though her hawkish rhetoric on Iraq might make her less effective as a negotiator.
This is a humanitarian issue above all — I wish someone would at least address it as such.
Couldn’t agree more: these issues are important to future foreign policy. Yet we get silence, even when we are supporting a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the continued killing of occupied Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. A seige is not different from a military occupation.
According to some Palestinian observers, Bill Clinton did more to damage the possibility of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians than any one else, and is responsible for the stalemate. Perhaps, he understood that political forces in Israel were too heavily focused on gaining Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and annexing it into Israel. But during his administration, the rate of settlement of the West Bank DOUBLED as did the number of settlements. These are of course Israeli villages, towns, and cities in the West Bank, and at the time, in Gaza, and number over 200 if the so-called illegal ones (they are all illegal according to international law) are included.
When Barak came to Camp David in 2000, settlements were announced to be off the table. How can you have a Palestinian state when you have over 150 legal villages, towns, and cities dispersed all over the West Bank, and roads and highways interconnecting them to Israel that were restricted to Israelis only? You can’t. In 2005, Barak admitted that he was not able to remove even a single settlement. Not even his own party, Labor, the so-called liberal party, would have condoned it. The generous offer we all heard about was actually a hoax, and it was Clinton who participated in the ruse to blame Arafat.
I do not expect anything different from Hillary were she to get elected president. Hillary, furthermore, makes no bones about her support of right wing Israeli aspirations. I could go on.