It hardly matters to the Palestinians and Israelis who are facing aerial bombardment, but one downside of the fighting in the Middle East is that it is overshadowing the president’s trip to Southeast Asia. In my opinion, the timing of this escalation of fighting was at Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s choosing. He waited until after the U.S. election, but there was no particular reason to assassinate a Hamas leader on the eve of the president’s trip. Reading between the lines of this New York Times piece, it could not be clearer that the administration is angry with Israel for picking a fight right now and is deeply opposed to any incursion into the Gaza Strip.
The timeline of events is controversial, of course, as there is never really a beginning and an end to events in Israel and Palestine. And once rockets begin to fall on the outskirts of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the Israeli government feels compelled to keep fighting until the threat is eliminated. Yet, I think this just highlights how the status quo is not manageable for Israel. What they have done so far in this latest flare-up is to reveal that Hamas has longer-range rockets and can inflict unacceptable damage to Israel’s urban centers. They can periodically “mow the grass” in the Gaza Strip and go in, kill a bunch of people, and remove the rockets. But they can’t keep doing that and maintain their peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. They can’t sustain the kind of moral condemnation they receive from the international community every time they feel compelled to remove the threat.
At root, the problem is their determination to expand the settlements in the absence of any progress towards a Palestinian state. Even the United States government and its people do not see that as a fair and just policy. Israel it totally alone in pursuing this deteriorating status-quo. And it is going to start putting some serious strain on the U.S.-Israeli relationship very soon now.
And it is going to start putting some serious strain on the U.S.-Israeli relationship very soon now.
That’s the funniest thing you’ve ever written, Boo. It really is. Are we going to stop funding Israel with money and weapons? Are we ever going to publicly admonish Israel for launching an attack? While I’m glad the President told Cranky McSame and Mini-me(that’s Lindsey Graham for those that don’t know .. it’s a fitting name if you remember the ’08 campaign) to go Cheney themselves, I’m not getting excited about Susan Rice. Why? She’s an AIPAC stooge just like McCain and Graham. Speaking of being AIPAC stooges, how can there be strain when the Senate puts aside all the Pete Peterson boot-licking to pass a resolution supporting Israel in this whole mess with not one dissent? And that’s despite Israel/Palestine being a 50/50 issue at best. And of the support for Israel, a lot of it is the Talibangelicals thinking it will bring the 2nd coming.
You can be skeptical. It is certainly justified by experience. But Israel is going to rupture long-standing arrangements in the near future if they don’t act with restraint right now.
.
Netanyahu knew the Boss in Washington would be gone and occupied with business in Asia. Most likely our Likud friend in the State department would have the initiative to foreign policy response. And don’t forget the will of the American people displayed by an unanimous vote to back the State of Israel in its conflict with the terrorist regime of Hamas in the Gaza strip.
A Israeli incursion into Gaza would come for Obama and Clinton at a very inconvenient time
I couldn’t agree more, BooMan. The American-Israeli relationship has never been based on our national interest. Israel has nothing to offer us on that front. They produce nothing we need, their troops have never fought beside our own. Our alliance with them is a huge drag on our national interest – we constantly have to deal with diplomatic, and some would argue terrorist, blowback from their actions.
That relationship has always been based on American sentimentality. We felt bad for the European Jews after World War Two. We admired the plucky underdogs who held off a much larger force in 1946. We saw Israel besieged again in ’67 and in ’72. We perceived them as “the only democracy in the Middle East.” There was a strong, idealistic line of thought that came from the kibbutz movement.
But now? Now, plucky, besieged little Israel is an expansionist regional power. The oppressed have very clearly become of the oppressors. Turkey, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and even (arguably) Iraq are better democracies than Israel. Israel enjoys American support for reasons that are pretty close to the idea of brand loyalty, and if they keep trashing their brand, they could well discover how fickle American sentimentality can be.
What evidence do you have for it being 50/50 at best?
Example. Sure, this is Florida, but it’s at a pro-Obama rally/townhall:
And then you have poll after (Gallup):
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/gallup.html
As I said, the public doesn’t have the same view of the Palestine/Israel situation as the politicians do. How does this video show any different? PBO is obviously uncomfortable talking about it. Geez, I wonder why?!?
Did you hear the crowd? It booed the crap out of the questioner.
So what? Where in Tampa did this take place? Are crowds always right? BTW, you know who aired most of the anti-Obama ads I saw this campaign here in PA? wingnut Jewish groups(Bill “William the Bloody” Kristol and the like)!! And when those attacks aren’t being countered, some people start to believe them. So there’s that too.
He did this in the other thread too. I wonder is it an attempt to shift the conversation?
I remember Greenwald writing about it, for one. Especially in the context that the AIPAC-drafted resolutions on the Senate rarely, if ever, get any votes against. As far as actual polls, here are a few:
Gallup(which we know now isn’t very trustworthy).. and be sure to scroll all the way down:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/153092/americans-continue-tilt-pro-israel.aspx
Pew(who is more trustworthy):
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2020/poll-american-attitudes-foreign-poilcy-middle-east-israel-palestine
-obama
and here’s one more about that issue .. in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/u-s-support-for-israel-is-decreasing-new-poll-shows-1.
308855
Hope that answers your question. Because no, I don’t pull things like that out of my ass.
First poll: 61 to 19
Second poll: 48 to 11
Last poll: “51%” needing to support Israel, but it asks in a vacuum. If you put it into the context of Palestine, the numbers resemble the first two.
So how is this “50:50” at best? It looks to me like it’s 60-20 at best, just as I said on the other thread.
LOL!!!! And don’t forget that other 30% who don’t give a shit!! As I said, it’s not as cut and dried as the Senate would make you believe. What’s so hard to understand about that? Are you dense? I’ll turn things on their head for you. We know how the populace feels about Social Security and Medicare, yet D.C., via our so wonderful elites, wants to kill them. Why is that?
I’m willing to take more risks than most in politics. If I were a political consultant, I’d have had Obama come out for gay marriage sooner than he did, and more forceful. I’d also have had him come out in favor of marijuana decriminalization. However, it seems that you read that poll totally differently than I and the rest of the political consultants of the Dem establishment.
Here’s where I’ll give you some leeway:
1.) AIPAC is given more power than they really deserve, same with the NRA. A lot of their power is the mistaken belief that they have power; their legend is where it comes from, so to speak.
2.) The United States has had a consistent policy since World War II of fighting all regimes across the Third World who insist on controlling their national resources, whether it be land, oil, or other valuable minerals. US policy and support for Israel would be the same whether or not AIPAC existed.
So why is that? Because the Powers that Be want it to Be. And if AIPAC or some other Israeli lobby didn’t exist, we’d have the same foreign policy that we have today.
Since they don’t care, they don’t think the Senate policy is a problem. No way it’s 50-50.
Your forced laughter and pretense of superiority aside, seabe just took apart your claim about a “50-50 thing” and mopped the kitchen floor with it.
The most hilarious thing about it, Calvin, is that, according to Booman, it is not Israel’s wanton brutality that will get it into trouble with the U.S., but the fact that they timed this latest killing spree to take the spotlight away from Obama’s trip to Southeast Asia.
On the one hand, if the U.S. does stop supporting Israel, who cares why. On the other…..ATF?!!!!!
Make thet WTF?!!!
Sheesh!
wrong link, thats the washington post
Oops. I actually wanted both links and just forgot to put the NYT link in.
“According to Haaretz, Israel’s Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, said this about Israel’s attacks on Gaza: “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages.”
This intent signals the grotesque crimes of a sociopath.
What service is reducing human lives to bare survival? What service is driving others to the primal actions of a warrior with only courage to lose?
The irony here is that Israeli authorities act as if they are living in the Middle Ages. They are the barbarians.
Racism and intolerance is now deeply ingrained in the Israeli population. The nation has become an international pariah through its own actions and choosing.
And the US looks like an idiot by supporting the bully.
Israel and Apartheid
Ask, is Israel really such an international pariah? Certainly living in the U.S. one is taking one’s life and limb in one’s hands by criticizing Israel, but I seem to find plenty of people who will rush to its defense in Europe as well.
I hope I am wrong, but it seems to me that no matter what horrors Israel commits, it comes out of it with plenty of friends and supporters.
They certainly are within the majority of the population of my home country and, I believe, in many other northern European countries as well – not to mention ME, large parts of Asia and in Africa.
The media coverage here in the US is absolutely dismal and the propaganda is quite successful in keeping people uninformed about what is really going on.
Yes, and when Israel made its massive attack on Lebanon a few years ago the goal was to set them back 30 years. And they did. I was in Lebanon about a year later, and though the Lebanese had done a phenomenal job of recovery, it was still heartbreaking to see so much destruction of new infrastructure still.
And in case someone tries to convince you that it was all military targets, what about the fact that the Israelis destroyed all the new bridges, leaving the old ones right next to the intact. I know because I was forced to drive over the old bridges where the new ones had not yet been rebuilt.
It is wanton destruction and killing for its own sake.
You write:
You mean even more strain on that relationship than already exists? Oh, I hope so!!! I can’t wait!!! The sooner the U.S. pulls the military plug on Israel’s little war bathtub the better it will be. Better for Israel, better for the U.S. and better for the whole region as well.
I repeat an idea that I have presented several times here…one more diaspora is eventually going to become necessary. Sorry, but there it is. Israel cannot survive forever surrounded by populations that are literally hundreds of times more numerous, many of whom are hostile to the point of fanaticism. Five million Jews in Israel, more or less? What the fuck, offer them safe passage and a hand up to get started in the U.S. Give ’em West Virginia or some other depressed state. The whole deal would cost less than did the bailing out of GM + Chrysler, plus the money saved in not having to support the Israeli war machine plus the goodwill that would accrue amongst the Muslim nations would repay the expense hundreds of times over. If the Jews can make Israel…just a nasty little slice of desert land when you right get down to it… into a well-functioning country, imagine what they could do with some really good real estate!
Oh.
Wait.
Israel is “The Promised Land?”
This simply can’t be done?
Oh.
So now God’s got a sense of humor?
Please.
If Israel is The Promised Land, let the Jews who really believe that idea stay there and take their inevitable medicine.
Betcha there wouldn’t be that many.
Betcha.
But…oh, wait some more!!!
The real “Promise” in the Promised Land idea is the promise that israel will act as a burr under the saddle of the Arab states so the U.S. and other NATO countries can maintain their hegemony in the region.
Oh.
Well.
In that case…israel has less than a decade left anyway.
Why?
Here’s why:
israel will have served its realpolitik purpose and will eventually be thrown under the realpolitik bus.
That’s the way it works, folks.
How do I know?
A nasty old man told me.
Watch.
Later…
AG
.
As clear as light and day, Netanyahu looked at the election cycle where the agenda was set for socio-economic issues and the recent protest movements. The old Begin/Peres/Sharon/Barak/Olmert/Netanyahu recipe: attack either the Lebanese front, West Bank or Gaza. Hamas in Gaza was shaking off links to Iran to become partners with Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia. So why not assassinate Al-Jabari who was responsible for reigning in the renegade militant groups belonging to the Salafist/al-Qaeda affiliates. Jabari was involved in an armistice or truce plan with Israelis.
Obama Win makes easy victory for Netanyahu less likely
See my recent diaries – Shalit Prisoner Swap – Israel Assassinates Ahmed Al-Jabari in Gaza Today.
There is an interestingly consistent correlation between the timing of major violent rampages on Israel’s part and Israeli elections. Correlation does NOT imply causation but still, it is interesting.
On the other hand, Israeli analysts differ on whether or not this latest is connected to the election.
I don’t know, but it certainly does fit other well-known Israeli behavior patterns, including the well-documented pattern of breaking a ceasefire or period of quiet, then blaming the Palestinians for striking back, and making their usual cries about their right of self-defense (a right Palestinians clearly do not have).
I still prefer Lazlo Toth’ excellent proposal. Dig a canal from Galveston Texas to San Diego California, and push all the landfill into the Gulf of Mexico, thus creating a homeland for the Palestinians.
Why not a homeland for the Jews? They were the “people without home”, right?
Can someone please explain to me why the US keeps supporting Israel at all? I understand that there was a time when we needed a friend in the area, but aren’t there other options at this point? For those of us who are not cheering the apocalypse, what does Israel have to offer?
Uh, maybe revulsion at genocide?
Pshaw.
We have ignored genocide elsewhere and will again, in parts of the world where horrible conflicts go or or happen, from time to time, that Americans don’t care about.
All the genocide stuff is hypocritical nonsense, and anyone who can explain why we need to get Americans killed to save Israeli?
If it’s about the Holocaust, shouldn’t the Germans run to the rescue?
We should never have become Israel’s bodyguard and should simply stop meddling in the region ASAP.
US out of NATO, too.
And out of Japan and the Pacific and Europe.
Being the Big Dog is great for the military-industrial complex and playing international cop for capitalism is great for the plutocrats.
But I would prefer a policy confined to the good of the American people.
I don’t want to be an isolationist. The world is small, and we are affected by everything that happens. I don’t mind protecting the weak and helping to resolve conflicts. I just want to know that we are not supporting the aggressors. Why should we be protecting Israel, but not the Palestinians?
Hear hear!
I’m opposed to genocide. In this particular case, though, I’m not sure on whose side that would put me. As I understand it, Israel started this latest battle. Maybe they wouldn’t have to worry about genocide so much if they stopped invading and killing other people.
Maybe they wouldn’t have to worry about genocide so much if they stopped invading and killing other people.
Um, you know there’s a bit of a history with this whole Jewish-genocide thing, right?
Yes, they have a history. Does that make it acceptable for them to invade and murder other people? Or would those other people perhaps learn to not fear and hate them if they started behaving the way they wish to be treated? I’m sorry, but these are not children. It’s time for Israel to stop using the past as an excuse for current actions.
Thank you!
And the Palestinians are not responsible for the Holocaust, nor ar the Lebanese, or the Jordanians, or the Syrians, or the Iraqis, or the Iranians. Not one of Israel’s victims was or is responsible for the Holocaust.
That’s a very good point. I have tremendous sympathy for the Israeli people. And for the Palestinian people. Very few of them were even alive when this situation was created, and it’s terrible that they have inherited such fear and violence. But I have no sympathy for any government that believes it is OK to bomb another back to the stone age. It’s time, as far as I can tell, for Israel to be judged by the same standards as any other government.
And no one seems to be able to give me a convincing reason for why that isn’t what the US government is choosing to do.
It’s time, as far as I can tell, for Israel to be judged by the same standards as any other government.
Outstanding point! And that’s really all we ask for.
By the way, are you aware of the Peace Proposal unanimously approved by the Arab League in 2002, rejected out of hand by Israel, and repeatedly unanimously re-approved despite everything that has happened over the last ten years?
Which party is it that never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity?
Pardon me, butif ANYONE is trying to commit genocide, it is Israel committing genocide against the Palestinians.
Can someone please explain to me why the US keeps supporting Israel at all?
Sentimentality. Lord knows, it’s not cold-eyed national interest.
You assume the two-state solution provides a reasonable chance of a safe outcome at an acceptable risk of things getting worse, both from the Israeli point of view.
Netanyahu does not.
Romney does not.
Few if any neocons agree with you.
Sure you’re right?
Would you risk it, as an Israeli?
Israel has pretty much succeeded in obviating the two-state solution, as was their plan going back to 1947.
…Comparing Hitler and the Jews to Israel and the Palestinians, I find two differences:
I get your point, but I do not find the comparison useful, in part because it is offensive to many Jews who are dedicated to the pursuit of justice for the Palestinians.
“one downside of the fighting in the Middle East is that it is overshadowing the president’s trip to Southeast Asia.“
I have rarely heard a more obscenely America-self-centered remark anywhere at any time.
America-centricity is alive and well in the “progressive” community.
Did you ever stop to think that the President’s trip to Southeast Asia was important for the people in those countries? It gave them a chance to shine on the world stage. Now since the I/P conflict is full blown again the media can’t help themselves and do 24/7 on it, and totally ignoring the countries that were trying to showcase themselves, some for the first time, this weekend.
The Israel/Palestine conflict is never going to end and there are other parts of the world that need attention too.
I have no words……
How DARE the Palestinians allow the Israelis to take the spotlight away from anyone the U.S. president chooses to visit. The NERVE!
You always have words.
What you lack are thoughts. For instance, some kind of thought about his point regarding the significance of the President’s trip to Southeast Asia to the people of those Southeast Asian countries.
Word, though – you’ve got plenty of those.
Right Joe.
What’s the point of discussing the I/P conflict, it’s never going to end. Neither side wants it to, so why give them news coverage when there are other parts of the world with just as much negative history that are making positive progress.
That’s what the President’s trip was trying to highlight.
It had nothing to do with US-centrism but actually the exact opposite.
“ it’s never going to end. Neither side wants it to“
Typical clueless American way to dismiss the whole thing.
Both sides want it to end. The Israelis want it to end with them having everything and the Palestinians and their history being obliterated. The Palestinians are not willing to give away everything, and are willing to take the small part of their homeland that was left in 1949 after they were ethnically cleansed from most of it. That’s it in a nutshell.
If both sides want it to end then it would be over.
This is how Israel gets international aid, mainly from the US. It is also how the Palestinians get aid. Keep it in the news.
One time the Israelis will start a flare up, the next time it will be the Palestinians.
I choose to focus on people who are actually trying to resolve their differences. That’s why the President’s trip to Southeast Asia was important, it allowed those countries to highlight their progress.
By the way, saying something is a “typical American” anything is not exactly making a point.
You missed my point. Israel wants it to end when and only when they have the West Bank and East Jerusalem minus the inconvenient non-Jewish indigenous inhabitants.
The Palestinians do not want it to end by them giving up everything.
This is not a “balanced” conflict as you seem to think. This is not just a matter of people with “differences”. This is a situation in which a far stronger player is oppressing a much weaker player in an effort to take what belongs to the weaker player and the weaker player is resisting.
America-centricity is alive and well in America – it’s what we do. An airliner might crash in some part of the world and we will focus on the 3 Americans who died, more or less ignoring the other 200 or more people who died. I’m sure other nations do this to some extent, but the ponds to our east and west make it much more pronounced around here.
One of the cultural adjustments (aka culture shock) one must make upon arriving or returning to the United States from abroad is getting used the extreme nationalistic self-centeredness here as compared to other countries.
Oh, I don’t know, lol! I spent four years in China stunned at how much Canadians react to our every flea bite. And how very class bound the Brits still are: they know to the very pence what the father of any given accent had during their growing up years. And how much the French despise the English, and everyone despises the Italians. Was my only ex-pat community, evah, and I began to really understand the need for the UN.
The big hole I fell into on returning was how damned MUCH we have here. And how much that just seemed, and seems, “normal.”
Well, maybe it’s a North American thing, and Canadians are just as self-centered as USA-ans.
I’ve never been part of an ex-pat community, and that might also be quite a different experience.
“there was no particular reason to assassinate a Hamas leader on the eve of the president’s trip.“
Apparently you are unaware that the “Hamas leader” the Israeli government chose to murder at such an inopportune time for the United States was in the process of negotiating a hudna with Israel at the time of his murder.
I know you are focused on the unfortunate effect this is having on the United States, but might that put a slightly different light on the motivation for assassinating Jaabari and thus providing yet another excuse for massive spree of slaughter and destruction in Gaza?
This is the first time I can recall that the news coverage of an Israel-Palestine conflict has focused on the suffering of the Palestinians. Things are changing.
Is it? That’s funny. All I am hearing is how many rockets “Hamas” has fired at Israel (setting aside the fact that it is not Hamas that is firing most of the rockets), and how terrorized the poor Israelis are. Have heard very little about what Israel is putting the Palestinians are going through, or the fact that Israel started it by assassinating the man who was negotiating a long-term truce with Israel.
I doubt you have spent a fraction of second actually watching the news, and are just basing your understanding on what your gut tells you the coverage must be saying. That’s pretty much your style.
Like you, my assumption was that the CNN coverage would be pretty much what it has always been. Unlike you, I actually bothered to turn on CNN to see if I was right – and was quite surprised by what I saw.
The story that leads off their coverage today was the family of ten that was killed. But you wouldn’t know that.
Yeah, glad you know how I spend my time, Joe, since I clearly have no idea.
I could tell you hadn’t watched any American news before mouthing off about it, because of how egregiously you misrepresented what was on it.
Now, the top-line story has shifted to hopeful reporting that the head of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, President Morsi, can negotiate a cease fire.
You could tell nothing of the kind. For starters TV is my source of mindless American entertainment, not my primary source of American news, and the American news I listen to, read, and even the news I watch always begins by telling us that Israel is being besieged by Hamas rockets, which is inaccurate on so many levels, including the fact that the overwhelming majority of the rockets do not come from Hamas, but from fringe groups over which Hamas does not have a whole lot of control.
You also do not seem to have heard from any of your wonderful American media about the fact that Israel’s murder of Hamas leader Ahmad Jaabari ended negotiations between Jaabari and Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin for a long-term truce.
But hey, I am just a no-nothing with daddy issues, so why pay attention to me?