Uri Avnery, founder of Gusn Shalom, the Israeli peace activist group, once predict that America will eventually turn against Israel on grounds of its human rights abuses, but like a large ship in the ocean, its turn will be slow. The turn has come as we are seeing more and more evidence that Israel will no longer wag America’s tail and bring it more and more international opprobrium on its account.
This article, Clinton warns Israel over delays in Gaza aid, which appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz today, already intimates a new US policy concerning Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians.
February 25, 2009
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has relayed messages to Israel in the past week expressing anger at obstacles Israel is placing to the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. A leading political source in Jerusalem noted that senior Clinton aides have made it clear that the matter will be central to Clinton’s planned visit to Israel next Tuesday.
Ahead of Clinton’s visit, special U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell is expected to issue a sharply worded protest on the same matter when he arrives here Thursday.
It has already been announced that the US is willing to contribute 900 million dollars to the rebuilding of Gaza, devastated by Israel’s 22 day bombing and shelling of the Strip in December and January, America again paying for Israel’s foibles. Of particular note was Israel’s earlier ignorance of President Obama’s request that Israel open all entrances to Gaza in order to permit humanitarian aid to flow in freely. Israel’s actions, tantamount to a refusal, continued to permit only 10-15% of food and medical supplies into Gaza.
Unless Israel is depending upon AIPAC and other right wing American Jewish organizations to intervene, confrontation is inevitable. And Hillary seems to be providing the first round.
In the meantime, Israel continues to play games, even insisting that aid is sufficient and that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Here is an interesting interaction that John Kerry had on his recent trip into Gaza (from the same article):
Major General (res.) Amos Gilad, who heads the diplomatic-security bureau at the Defense Ministry, issued a statement yesterday denying European Union reports on the breadth of humanitarian aid being allowed to enter Gaza….”any claim of food shortage [in Gaza] is false.”
…an incident occured last week at a crossing into the Gaza Strip that gave a very different impression to a senior observer. When Senator John Kerry visited the Strip, he learned that many trucks loaded with pasta were not permitted in. When the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee inquired as to the reason for the delay, he was told by United Nations aid officials that “Israel does not define pasta as part of humanitarian aid – only rice shipments.”
Kerry asked Barak about the logic behind this restriction, and only after the senior U.S. official’s intervention did the defense minister allow the pasta into the Strip.
“This is outrageous (said another Israeli official). Why should a senior American official issue a protest on pasta in order for us to recognize that we need to allow it into the Gaza Strip?”
Confrontation is inevitable. Apparently, some American politicians are not longer willing to play a game that recently led to the killings of over 1,300 mostly Palestinian civilians. And let’s not even begin to talk about the number of Palestinian children slaughtered.
“Unless Israel is depending upon AIPAC and other right wing American Jewish organizations to intervene, confrontation is inevitable.”
at the ready, AIPAC’s co-founder, Dennis Ross was justed appointed a Clinton adviser.
Steve Clemons observes pitifully:
*all of 22 Arab league states
When Clinton “warns,” it is still tiptoeing because I would guess that the US media are not even picking it up. And Obama is likewise proceeding slowly. Just how do you grab a friend by his necktie, politely?
We really have to go to Israel now to get the truth? Did any US paper report this story as “Hillary warns?”
“Just how do you grab a friend by his necktie, politely?“
If I had a “friend” who was a mass murderer with genocidal tendencies, not to mention a baby killer, I would not feel compelled to be polite.
It may be that the current administration intends to be effective and is therefore avoiding histrionics. Pressure is best applied behind the scenes. Direct confrontation seldom produces any result other than to get the one’s opponent to dig in their heels. Has Israel’s blunt approach in Gaza pacified the Palestinians?
Something the Islamic world in particular would do well to learn about the West (and, for that matter, east Asia), is that open displays of extreme emotion by adults are generally interpreted as signs of instability at best, and severe mental illness at worst. Every time the Palestinians hold a public protest, or worse, the bizarre and terrifying spectacles that accompany funerals, the message they are sending to western observers is, “Hey, look at us! We’re stark raving mad!” By contrast, when the Israelis commit some horrific war crime, they get a neatly dressed, well-spoken, and — most importantly — perfectly calm spokesman to make some blandly measured statement, usually involving an empty promise to conduct an investigation, but invariably avoiding anything that could be interpreted as hyperbole.
It’s not fair, and to be sure, it’s the product of (mostly unconscious) cultural bias, but the Israelis know how to play the west — being themselves westerners — and the Islamic world in general and the Palestinians in particular, do not.
“Blunt approach”? Is THAT what you call it?
And are you suggesting that Palestinians should stop protesting, and never show emotion at funerals in order to keep the West happy? How very 19th century colonialist of you.
I rather figured I’d get a rise out of you with that, which only serves to illustrate my point.
I am not suggesting that the Palestinians take or not take any particular action or approach. I am merely observing that if the Palestinians are trying to curry the sympathy of western nations which could apply pressure to Israel, they are doing an exceptionally poor job of it. Should they protest? Certainly, but if the purpose of the protest is to favorably influence the opinions of westerners, their mode of protest is poorly chosen. If the purpose is to inflame their own public into continuing to play into Israel’s hands, then they are very well-designed protests.
The Israelis want the Palestinians to continue doing exactly what they are doing right now, because it makes it easy for Israel to continue its program of ethnic cleansing. The west may not much care for Israel’s behavior, but with Israel’s constant provocation, there is never a shortage of TV coverage of Palestinians behaving in ways that neutralize any sympathy they would otherwise receive.
Arguably, Israel overplayed its hand with the Gaza massacre. Pictures of dead toddlers do inspire western sympathy. What Israel wants westerners to see are Palestinian gunmen, their faces hidden, toting Kalashnikovs in the middle of a funeral procession, complete with hysterical people, their hands stained red, holding aloft their Qurans and prayer beads, and maybe an open coffin with a mangled lump of hamburger that used to be a human being. That’s a scene that feeds right into western, and particularly American, preconceptions about Arab religious fanaticism.
Nice. Because I’m not unquestioningly supportive of everything the Palestinians do and the way they do it, I’m a bigot. Pro-Israeli activists use a similar approach, and while I can’t blame you for wanting to emulate their success in shutting down debate, I think the constant false accusations of have finally worn thin with Americans, and Americans actually liked the Israelis. Let’s see how far it gets your side.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that if you are trying to change minds, you’re going about it the wrong way. I believe the language of my original message made it quite clear that I heartily disapprove of what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. Of course, I phrased it in a way that was almost certain to tweak you enough to lose the argument in western terms, which is to say, you lost your cool, and degenerated into hyperbole and reflexive slander. Just like the Arabs on TV who keep alienating the people they are ostensibly trying to persuade. The Palestinians need a Gandhi, not a Khaled Mashal.
To make it quite clear, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’m an American, not an Israeli or a Palestinian, and I regard both sides as enemies of the United States. If it was up to me, I’d cut off funding and diplomatic relations with Israel and use the billions in savings to pursue an energy policy that would someday allow the middle east to fall back into the obscurity it so richly deserves.
Human beings tend to get hysterical in the face of mass murder. They tend to get hysterical when they are forced to face death for 23 days in a row. They tend to get hysterical when they are punished for their democratic choices by being caged up like animals and denied essentials such as food, water, medicine, and education, and are constantly under threat of attack for any reason or for no reason.
I submit to you, Corvus, that you, sitting in the safety and comfort of your lovely western cocoon, are criticizing the Palestinians for reacting as any group of human beings, including Americans, would react when subjected to the same things. In fact, as others have pointed out, what is remarkable is how restrained the Palestinians are after everything they have been put through. Clearly Americans would not be as restrained. Look how they reacted to September 11 which was, relatively speaking, no big deal compared to what Palestinians have had to deal with for the last 60 years.
And it’s a sad, tragic story, those 60 years, and it is continuing to unfold.
It’s curious that you would use the American reaction to 9/11 — easily the dumbest thing Americans have done in their entire history except, possibly, the secession of South Carolina in 1860 — as an argument here. The Americans did something unimaginably stupid and will pay for it for generations to come, therefore the Palestinians should expect better results from their own stupidity?
My point, despite your efforts to misconstrue it, is only that the Palestinian approach to changing American minds is ineffective — as evidenced by, um, their failure to change American minds — and that if they do, in fact, wish to change American minds, they should change their approach instead of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
You — and they — can, if you prefer, continue to argue that the intractability of the American position is due to the western sense of superiority. You’re quite probably right, but that does not, from a pragmatic point of view, matter in the least. Being right won’t raise the dead of Gaza, or Jenin, or Shatila, or any of the other countless Israeli massacres of Palestinian civilians. It doesn’t matter if you’re right. What matters is whether you get results or not, and an insistence on being right is all too often a serious impediment to getting results.
The Palestinians have been trying more or less the same counterproductive strategy since around the time of the Munich Olympics. It has failed to either deter the Israelis or to cause the US to withdraw its support of Israel. It has, in fact, done the reverse. The Palestinian leadership may think, like George Bush, that they are about to turn to corner, but they are as likely to actually see that happen as George Bush was.
The weird thing here is that, despite your belief that I am trapped in my “lovely western cocoon”, I nonetheless hold the view that Israel has no right to exist and that Palestine should be returned to the Palestinians — a position that, on those two points, would not likely arouse much argument from the leadership of Hamas. I apparently only cross the line past which civilized discourse is no longer possible for you when I state the simple and largely unarguable fact that westerners withdraw their sympathy from the oppressed when they resort to blowing themselves up at weddings. (Well, that and the assertion that neither Israel nor Palestine are vital American concerns, which I think is also true, though I can see how it would ruffle the feathers of someone who thinks that Palestine is the center of the universe.)
Reality presents the same challenge to all of us: adapt or perish. I hope that the Palestinians will eventually prove to be more creative and pragmatic than you are.
Oh yeah, Corvus – what else can you expect from an Ayrab and a Moslum other than hyteria, hyperbole, and slander. They are so backward and primitive, you know.
Sit for one week with the situation that Palestinians have endured every minute of every day for the last 60 years, and then see what you have to say.
You ought to click on Little Green Footballs. This antiMuslim, antiArab, and antiPalestinian site provides some clues as to how the American public is allowed to see these worlds.
LGF seems to be an alternative to the American Nazi party, existing to propagandate a similar class of prejudicial ethnic propaganda, in its case, the Muslim-Arab-Palestinian kind.
If Palestinians, in particular, have suffered from bad press in American media, it is only because they do not have an effective propaganda mechanism of their own. As such, they have had to rely on the truth and the reality, however weak they may be.
Ah! Being forced to rely on truth and reality is such a curse in this world of P.R. experts and accompanying every atrocite with a 20 million dollar marketing campaign.
PS You know, we really DO need to train those Arabs to act more like Americans in front of the camera. Seeing all those strangely-dressed women wailing, beating their chests and slapping their faces after having their entire families brutally murdered is so off putting for western sensibilities, you know.
Don’t you know. And you might also want to commend Hollywood for its contribution to hyping the stereotypes.
Oh super, I’ve got both the anti-Israeli Muslim and the anti-Israeli Jew accusing me of colonialism and closet Nazi sympathies.
Is this the scene where I yell “anti-Semites!” and attempt to close off all debate?
Hypocrites.
Get over yourself, Corvus. No one here has said anything about Nazi sympathies.
And yes, you do have a good dose of the kind of that lovely western sense of superiority that is almost universal among nice American liberals and progressives. It shows itself in different ways, including “those Palestinians need to learn that if only they will act more like us we would be able to support them”, or “we have to stay in Iraq at least three more years to teach the Iraqis the right way to run their country”. And the irony of it is that if Americans were subjected to anything remotely approaching what Palestinians and Iraqis have had to deal with, they would not be able to cope even half as well as Palestinians and Iraqis have.
Get over yourself. You are no better than anyone else.
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“Europe is interested in helping the Palestinian population,” Pöttering said. “Europe wants to see practical steps in the field, confidence building gestures, and we turn to you as a man of peace to advance this process.”
Peres responded clearly: “Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization that takes advantage of its poor countrymen as human shields for its own advancement… Unfortunately, the world, led by Europe, does not recognize and are not exposed to the true situation – namely, that Hamas is a terrorist organization that works with violence, with no logic and no compassion towards its own people, and [all] in the service of Iran.”
Peres: Uninterrupted Supply of Food and Medicines
“Israel is fighting and will fight a no-holds-barred against terrorism,” Peres said, “though at the same time it does not prevent and will not prevent the flow of food and medicine into the Gaza Strip.”
Peres said that the delivery of food and medicines into Gaza is proceeding uninterruptedly, “the only problem being the wild and hostile takeover by Hamas of some of the deliveries for its own personal benefit.”
Iran’s Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant readied for launch
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."More and more, Peres is showing himself to be Israel’s greatest propagandist.
Peres needs a reminder:
it was not so long ago, Arafat’s Fatah were murderous …..terrorists.
Clinton has relayed messages to Israel in the past week expressing anger at obstacles Israel is placing to the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
I feel the world ever so slowly beginning to turn. Only rice what kind of insanity is that restriction? Bunch of sadists.
And no doubt only 15% of the amount of rice needed to adequately feed 1.5 million people.
Gotta keep those Palestinians on a diet, you know. Until they all starve to death.
Imagine what would be the reaction if any other country were doing that to 1.5 million human beings!