I was watching the news summary on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer last night. Lehrer reported that, at a Jewish or Israeli fundraiser or some such meeting, Obama denounced former president Jimmy Carter for trying to talk with members of Hamas.
Let's never mind the fact that the US has historically had a hypocritical view of denouncing defensive violence by Palestinians -- which came after years of occupation -- as "terrorism", thereby pairing it in people's minds with the worst kinds of Al Qaeda-type terrorism. People never imagine the French resistance or the American Revolution as terrorism, when they were by any objective standard. Israel's state tools of occupation and repression are given a free pass. During the Cold War, America portrayed insurgent movements working to fight fascism and the brutal oppression of Indios (ethnic native Americans) as Soviet- or Chinese-directed Communism, and used this as an excuse to fight them for threatening US economic and political interests in the region.
Let's never mind the fact that Hamas, like the Black Panthers, gets a bad rap in the Western, especially US media, as "evil", when it provides many social services to the inhabitants and was willing to call a cease-fire on Israel when it came into government; to demand renunciation of the desire to defeat Israel is unfair because Israel still occupies the Palestinian people and still has its arms; Israel has never practiced equal recognition of the Palestinian people; rhetoric is one of Hamas' most important weapons, and it can't give it up, only to go back on its word. A justified resistance movement, no matter how brutal its acts, cannot give up its power without evidence the enemy is doing the same. Yet all this was used as an excuse by the US-led West to unfairly penalize the Hamas-elected government and thwart the Palestinians' democratic will, and punish them for not giving in completely to Israel's will, which has not served the interests of the Palestinian people since 1948.
Let's also never mind the fact that Carter is hardly pro-Palestinian. Acknowledging the apartheid treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli state is hardly a revolutionary observation outside the pro-Israeli US media; it's fact. He has even expressed a kind of Christian fundamentalism in recognizing the Jewish people's right to the land; this is the kind of religiously-motivated thinking that motivated Harry Truman; if anything, he's pro-Israeli. All Jimmy Carter is bravely doing is talking to Israel's opponent to try to begin a constructive dialogue.
What seems at the heart of all this is that Mr. Obama seems unwilling to follow through on his message of hope and trying to correct America's past mistakes by fostering a healthy discourse with supposed "enemies" like Cuba and Iran. How can he, in good conscience and in compliance with his stated principles, oppose Carter simply speaking to Hamas?
I visited Mr. Obama's offical site (www.barackobama.com) and checked his stance on Israel. The site proudly states his defense of Israel's right to attack Hezbollah in 2006. What's missing is any sense of proportion or historic causation. Hezbollah came into existence due to Israel's occupation. Israel has arrested and detained thousands of Palestinians without cause, and could have opted for the simple prisoner exchange Hezbollah requested. Even if one doesn't agree with Hezbollah's actions, how can one justify the bombing of infrastructure and killing of over 1,000 innocent Lebanese civilians, who were not responsible for Hezbollah's actions? The West simply gave Israel carte blanche to destroy more lives, and US media portrayed the bloodshed as equal on both sides, when only 100 Israelis died in reciprocal rocket attacks and the vast majority if not all of them were soldiers -- not civilians. Only GOP Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel deplored the massacre, while cowardly Democrats sought Jewish votes and adhered to America's unjustifiable support for Israeli brutality and supply of arms; on this issue, they and George W. Bush were united.
I put to you that Mr. Obama is not the messianic, brave figure many of us are tempted to believe he is. He is a moral coward willing to support -- just like the Clintons, McCain and so many US politicians -- actions today we commonly oppose in a historical context. All have opposed the treatment of native Americans at the hands of white settlers and unjust laws, but how is Israel's treatment of Palestinians any different? Is Hamas any different from rebellious native tribes who would raid white settlements that had pushed them from their land, and would be labelled "barbaric" for their tactics?
I supported Obama for what he said about race a month ago (and actually agreed with much of what Rev. Wright said about the hypocrisy of America's reaction to 9/11, while supporting Israeli killings for decades), and I also sympathized with his statements about the unhealthy nature of how many Americans embrace a petty form of religion, xenophobia, and gun culture; I found Hillary Clinton's claims and typical pandering far more condescending than Obama speaking his mind.
However, I am seriously disgusted with his stand on this issue. Even if it's all an act, it's unlikely that things will improve in America's stand because, as Dan T. Carter wrote in a book, called "Race and the Conservative Counterrevolution" my big brother bought me in my last year of high school, campaigns are when the public pays most attention to issues, and when the culture can be shaped anew. The book argues that Nixon and Reagan exploited negative depictions of the black community as violent and as welfare queens manipulating the food stamp system to buy Cadillacs. These were distortions -- and especially Nixon, an NAACP member in the '50s knew this above all -- but they used them to win elections. Obama is doing the same by pandering to the Jewish and conservative non-Jewish vote.
There shall be no peace if America continues on this course of biased support for Israel, looking the other way every time its leaders violate any peace process by continually building settlements, walls into Palestinian land, diverting water, taxes and other resources, and use other terror tactics to place the costs of occupation on the Palestinians. The Israeli lobby even campaigned heavily for the Iraq invasion and is now urging attack on Iran. If Mr. Obama isn't willing to stand up to the immorality of America's folly with regard to Israel, then he won't understand Iran's support for certain kinds of terrorism. Nothing will change.
And many Israelis want it to change, as evidenced in this National Film Board of Canada documentary about Israeli soldiers opposed to the occupation.
http://www2.nfb.ca/boutique/XXNFBibeCCtpItmDspRte.jsp?a=b&formatid=51412&support=DVD
These views are also subtly placed in Steven Spielberg's "Munich"; they are also obvious in the writings of Ira Steven Behr, Noam Chomsky, and many others. And Ralph Nader has long felt Obama's stance on Palestine has been indefensible.
As Robert Smith wrote in "One Hundred Years", "over and over, we die one after the other.." (Okay, that may sound a bit melodramatic, but I really feel that way, after finding this out about our man Obama.)
Let's never mind the fact that the US has historically had a hypocritical view of denouncing defensive violence by Palestinians -- which came after years of occupation -- as "terrorism", thereby pairing it in people's minds with the worst kinds of Al Qaeda-type terrorism. People never imagine the French resistance or the American Revolution as terrorism, when they were by any objective standard. Israel's state tools of occupation and repression are given a free pass. During the Cold War, America portrayed insurgent movements working to fight fascism and the brutal oppression of Indios (ethnic native Americans) as Soviet- or Chinese-directed Communism, and used this as an excuse to fight them for threatening US economic and political interests in the region.
Let's never mind the fact that Hamas, like the Black Panthers, gets a bad rap in the Western, especially US media, as "evil", when it provides many social services to the inhabitants and was willing to call a cease-fire on Israel when it came into government; to demand renunciation of the desire to defeat Israel is unfair because Israel still occupies the Palestinian people and still has its arms; Israel has never practiced equal recognition of the Palestinian people; rhetoric is one of Hamas' most important weapons, and it can't give it up, only to go back on its word. A justified resistance movement, no matter how brutal its acts, cannot give up its power without evidence the enemy is doing the same. Yet all this was used as an excuse by the US-led West to unfairly penalize the Hamas-elected government and thwart the Palestinians' democratic will, and punish them for not giving in completely to Israel's will, which has not served the interests of the Palestinian people since 1948.
Let's also never mind the fact that Carter is hardly pro-Palestinian. Acknowledging the apartheid treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli state is hardly a revolutionary observation outside the pro-Israeli US media; it's fact. He has even expressed a kind of Christian fundamentalism in recognizing the Jewish people's right to the land; this is the kind of religiously-motivated thinking that motivated Harry Truman; if anything, he's pro-Israeli. All Jimmy Carter is bravely doing is talking to Israel's opponent to try to begin a constructive dialogue.
What seems at the heart of all this is that Mr. Obama seems unwilling to follow through on his message of hope and trying to correct America's past mistakes by fostering a healthy discourse with supposed "enemies" like Cuba and Iran. How can he, in good conscience and in compliance with his stated principles, oppose Carter simply speaking to Hamas?
I visited Mr. Obama's offical site (www.barackobama.com) and checked his stance on Israel. The site proudly states his defense of Israel's right to attack Hezbollah in 2006. What's missing is any sense of proportion or historic causation. Hezbollah came into existence due to Israel's occupation. Israel has arrested and detained thousands of Palestinians without cause, and could have opted for the simple prisoner exchange Hezbollah requested. Even if one doesn't agree with Hezbollah's actions, how can one justify the bombing of infrastructure and killing of over 1,000 innocent Lebanese civilians, who were not responsible for Hezbollah's actions? The West simply gave Israel carte blanche to destroy more lives, and US media portrayed the bloodshed as equal on both sides, when only 100 Israelis died in reciprocal rocket attacks and the vast majority if not all of them were soldiers -- not civilians. Only GOP Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel deplored the massacre, while cowardly Democrats sought Jewish votes and adhered to America's unjustifiable support for Israeli brutality and supply of arms; on this issue, they and George W. Bush were united.
I put to you that Mr. Obama is not the messianic, brave figure many of us are tempted to believe he is. He is a moral coward willing to support -- just like the Clintons, McCain and so many US politicians -- actions today we commonly oppose in a historical context. All have opposed the treatment of native Americans at the hands of white settlers and unjust laws, but how is Israel's treatment of Palestinians any different? Is Hamas any different from rebellious native tribes who would raid white settlements that had pushed them from their land, and would be labelled "barbaric" for their tactics?
I supported Obama for what he said about race a month ago (and actually agreed with much of what Rev. Wright said about the hypocrisy of America's reaction to 9/11, while supporting Israeli killings for decades), and I also sympathized with his statements about the unhealthy nature of how many Americans embrace a petty form of religion, xenophobia, and gun culture; I found Hillary Clinton's claims and typical pandering far more condescending than Obama speaking his mind.
However, I am seriously disgusted with his stand on this issue. Even if it's all an act, it's unlikely that things will improve in America's stand because, as Dan T. Carter wrote in a book, called "Race and the Conservative Counterrevolution" my big brother bought me in my last year of high school, campaigns are when the public pays most attention to issues, and when the culture can be shaped anew. The book argues that Nixon and Reagan exploited negative depictions of the black community as violent and as welfare queens manipulating the food stamp system to buy Cadillacs. These were distortions -- and especially Nixon, an NAACP member in the '50s knew this above all -- but they used them to win elections. Obama is doing the same by pandering to the Jewish and conservative non-Jewish vote.
There shall be no peace if America continues on this course of biased support for Israel, looking the other way every time its leaders violate any peace process by continually building settlements, walls into Palestinian land, diverting water, taxes and other resources, and use other terror tactics to place the costs of occupation on the Palestinians. The Israeli lobby even campaigned heavily for the Iraq invasion and is now urging attack on Iran. If Mr. Obama isn't willing to stand up to the immorality of America's folly with regard to Israel, then he won't understand Iran's support for certain kinds of terrorism. Nothing will change.
And many Israelis want it to change, as evidenced in this National Film Board of Canada documentary about Israeli soldiers opposed to the occupation.
http://www2.nfb.ca/boutique/XXNFBibeCCtpItmDspRte.jsp?a=b&formatid=51412&support=DVD
These views are also subtly placed in Steven Spielberg's "Munich"; they are also obvious in the writings of Ira Steven Behr, Noam Chomsky, and many others. And Ralph Nader has long felt Obama's stance on Palestine has been indefensible.
As Robert Smith wrote in "One Hundred Years", "over and over, we die one after the other.." (Okay, that may sound a bit melodramatic, but I really feel that way, after finding this out about our man Obama.)
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