I fervently hope that the Israeli people soon hold new elections and find someone less loathsome than Benjamin Netanyahu to be their leader. He is extremely aggressive about making us stupid in appearance and in reality. I believe he could have stated that Mongolia is actually part of historic Israel and still gotten a standing ovation from our moronic Congress. Netanyahu is asking us to adopt a position on the Israeli-Palestinian question that is not accepted by any country in the world. It’s not even accepted in Israel, or, at least, it never has been until now. Whether you call it ‘Judea and Samaria’ or you call it ‘the West Bank,’ it’s still not territory that was set aside and approved by the United Nations for the State of Israel. It’s territory that belonged to Jordan (or Transjordan) until the 1967 war. Jordan doesn’t want it back, but there has been a process in place since the Camp David Accords to create a Palestinian homeland on the West Bank.
I understand that Netanyahu was speaking historically. If we go back nineteen hundred years things are a bit different. But when he goes before a Joint Session of Congress and says, “You have to understand this, in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers,” and he receives a standing ovation, you have to wonder what the hell is going on. The Israelis (those Jewish people that Bibi was talking about) who are living in the West Bank and serving there in the armed forces, are illegal occupiers under every description of that term that you can devise. Ariel Sharon was not confused about this matter:
“You cannot like the word, but what is happening is an occupation — to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation. I believe that is a terrible thing for Israel and for the Palestinians.”
I don’t think I’m just bitching about semantics here. Sure, it wouldn’t be as bad if Netanyahu has simply said that the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria are not strangers to the land. I understand that his overall point is that it’s politically painful for him to give up any land in the West Bank because of the historic ties of that land to the Jewish people. I get that. But the way he put is not just offensive and detached from reality, it’s patently false. And his reward was foot-stomping applause from our cheerleading Congress.
I mean, let’s be honest. The equivalent speech by a Palestinian leader would argue that the Israelis have no right to be on a single inch of historic Palestine. It would be like Congress giving an ovation to a grumpy leader of Hamas or President Ahmedinejad. Think about it.
Rerun the tape, but I’m sure I even saw Keith Ellison giving standing O’s. These are the same Democrats and “progressives” who have lectured even berated the President to show more party loyalty and ideological principle. And they can’t show loyalty to office of the presidency?! Country?! FUCK THEM, EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM! ESPECIALLY HARRY REID’S TRECHEROUS SLIMEY ASS!
And it’s really interesting that the President’s harshest critics on the left line Grenwald, Richard Cohen, Taylor Marsh and others have been his most defenders in this fight. Democrats, progressives and Negroes ran like cowards or stabbed him in the back.
you make comments like this a lot, which makes me feel weird. I’m white; I’m progressive, but I’m usually saying something that you agree with when you tell me that white progressives aren’t doing what you want. But, in any case, you’ll notice that there is no shortage of Jewish-American progressives who are quite comfortable criticizing Netanyahu and defending the president. Maybe they’re more secure in speaking up because they don’t have to worry that people will think they harbor anti-Semitic feelings. I don’t know. The one thing you be certain about is they are familiar with the facts and know when the facts are being distorted. J Street is a lot more representative of Jewish-American opinion than AIPAC but for some reason all we hear from DC is the AIPAC line.
Ultimately, this is about Israeli politics more than American politics, and Bibi’s playing an interesting game.
This article is very interesting. It sounds like he was thinking about (or at least wanted people to think he was thinking about) moving toward a peace process. What he’s doing now, however, is basically doubling down on an ultra-military, hardline stance. Unfortunately, in the context of Israeli politics, this is probably the right thing to do.
The Arab Spring has to have a lot of Israelis pretty nervous. There is a lot of basic, ugly racism happening on both sides of the regional Arab/Hebrew divide, and seeing a lot of empowered, energetic Arabs changing their governments is big, scary news for many Israelis. After all, a big factor in the uprisings around the region is the unpopularity of the status quo agreements between Arab governments and Israel. Egypt in particular is of unparalleled importance in regards to Israeli/Arab relations. Now the government of Egypt has fallen. The new government will almost have to be less friendly towards Israel, or risk riots in the streets.
Israelis almost certainly (and pretty rationally) feel threatened by this, and so a shift to the right in their politics is predictable. This is saying something; Israel’s polity is already much further right than ours. Netanyahu is playing to that likely shift, and doubling down on hostility and provocation. In the mean time, he is very intentionally undercutting any good will the US might have in the region.
We should really be like Rome and go roust the Jews out of there. Israel has been a foreign policy liability to us for a long time, if not an outright hostile party. As it is, our country has a bunch of religious zealots with race issues against Arabs as well, who have an interest in having Jews in the Holy Land to try to bring about the End Times to boot.
It’s a clusterfuck. The best case scenario is a massive non-violent Palestinian uprising, which would only put the Obama administration in a huge bind. The Israelis would almost certainly slaughter non-violent Palestinians and Obama would have to twist himself in a pretzel with regards to so far very clearly stated principles or else turn against the government of Israel. The worse (and more likely) scenario is a third Intifada and an unholy bloodbath that could become episodic throughout the region. In any case, the status quo is already over, and things are going to get worse. What we don’t yet know is how much worse and in what ways.
And Iran, nervous about their own activists as they may be, doesn’t mind at all.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say you shouldn’t suggest we “roust the Jews” out of anywhere militarily. Might be a bad PR move…
Humiliating! Don’t these people have any pride or at least shame? Al Jazeera has seen to it that the entire world gets good and long view of these fawning asses. The Israeli colonization of Palestine is a congressional priority. That might be why it’s necessary to send Israeli 3 billion dollars a year so it can maintain its universal—socialist—health care program. That might be the reason the US can’t have one of its own: it’s too expensive.
I am not a biblical scholar, but my recollection is that Jews came from Judea and Christ got a hard time for saying a good word about a Samarian foreigner. Bibi seems to be not content with writing history: He wants to re-write the Bible as well!
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."They may be Israelites, but that doesn’t make them Jews – who were the people of Judea.
That would be Judah. There was a Kingdom of Israel, too. And Samaria could be considered its capital. In any case, it was a major city.
You are focusing on the 1st Century CE. Bibi is focusing on the 8th-10th centuries B.C.E.
Boo, these speeches almost always come down to semantics. You need to carefully parse Netanyahu’s sentence. He said that the Israeli’s are not “foreign occupiers”. That is not the same as saying they are not occupiers. His construction can be taken to mean that Israeli ties to the west bank are strong, perhaps as strong as those of the Palestinians who also live there. This has a certain moral force to many people.