NOVANEWS

 

• The Emperor’s clothes are still on, for now (while his heckler is roughed up, hospitalized)

• We can only pray that Congress’s supine conduct before a rightwing foreign leader will have political consequences

• Code Pink’s nervy presence reminds us that consensus for segregation and Vietnam also seemed impregnable once

• Harry Reid sides with Netanyahu over Obama

• Netanyahu claims there are 650,000 settlers– not just half a million

• Videos of MoveOverAipac disrupting Netanyahu speech last night

• Pamela Olson’s ‘Fast Times in Palestine’ published

• Head of DNC sees eye to eye with rightwing funder Sheldon Adelson when it comes to Netanyahu

• Cantor says Arabs have a culture of ‘resentment and hatred’

• I’m fed up with criticism of Israel being shouted down as anti-Semitic

The Emperor’s clothes are still on, for now (while his heckler is roughed up, hospitalized)

May 24, 2011

Josh Ruebner

Gliding down the aisle of the House of Representatives like a popular president about to deliver the State of the Union address, escorted by a phalanx of dozens of ebullient Members of Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered a joint meeting of Congress today to a round of hearty handshakes and a thunderous standing ovation.

In a post-speech press conference, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gushed that Netanyahu delivered an “all-star” address, and Netanyahu proclaimed it a “great day” for Israel. And, in the self-contained world that is Capitol Hill, who could blame them for believing it to be so?

For in a world in which Israel finds itself as isolated as ever by a growing and successful Palestinian civil society-led international movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against its apartheid policies; in which Palestinians are taking matters into their own hands diplomatically and pushing to have the United Nations admit the State of Palestine as a full member of the organization this fall; and in which even the President of the United States appears disgruntled by Israel’s intransigent ongoing colonization of Palestinian land, at least on Capitol Hill, Netanyahu can still play the ace up his sleeve to aplomb and then chum around like the king of the castle.

There on Capitol Hill, Netanyahu still has friends like Senator Chuck Schumer, who told a Jewish radio program that “One of my roles, very important in the United States Senate, is to be a shomer [guard]—to be a or the shomer Yisrael [guard of Israel]. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body.” With friends like these wrapped around his little finger, no wonder Netanyahu’s forcible denunciations of international law were met with such rapturous approbation by Members of Congress who applauded his rejectionism dozens of times.

This bonhomie was punctuated only once during Netanyahu’s hour-long speech, when a lone and courageous activist—Rae Abileah—from CODEPINK, disrupted it. CODEPINK organized a series of events and protests—“Move Over AIPAC”—to coincide with the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last weekend. From the gallery, Abileah shouted “No more occupation, stop Israel[i] war crimes, equal rights for Palestinians, occupation is indefensible.”

Her protest was quickly shut down in a “hey rube” moment by AIPAC attendees in the gallery who assaulted and tackled her before she was hauled away by police, causing injuries to her neck and shoulders requiring hospitalization. At the same time, Members of Congress joined the AIPAC carnie thuggery by shouting down Abileah with boos before quickly resuming to feed out of Netanyahu’s hand.

Given both the intellectual mediocrity of the average Member of Congress and the Israel lobby’s deliberate strategy of electing and placing in key positions Members of Congress like Schumer, it is difficult to determine how much applause Netanyahu received due to ignorance of history and international law, and how much was due to their cheerleading for Israeli apartheid. Whatever the exact formulation, it amounts to a deadly combination that ensures Israel can continue to thumb its nose at the international community and oppress the Palestinian people while Congress keeps open the spigot of U.S. weapons to underwrite the job.

Only in an institution as self-delusional as Congress could Netanyahu pontificate with a straight face that the path of liberty “is not paved by elections alone. It is paved when governments permit protests in town squares, when limits are placed on the powers of rulers, when judges are beholden to laws and not men, and when human rights cannot be crushed by tribal loyalties or mob rule.”

Only before Congress would Netanyahu dare crow that there are now more than 650,000 Israeli settlers living in illegal colonies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a full 30% more than the upper limits of previous estimates, making his offer to be “very generous on the size of a future Palestinian state,” and willing to make a “far reaching compromise” unadulterated hokum.

In the wake of 10,000 AIPAC lobbyists deluging Capitol Hill today, there is no doubt that Congress will overwhelmingly vote to pass AIPAC-written resolutions condemning the Fatah-Hamas unity agreement and Palestinian moves for UN membership, once again asserting that Israel is truly the best thing since sliced bread.

Netanyahu may well feel smug from his reception in the last bastion of such uncritical support for Israel’s apartheid policies toward Palestinians. While the rest of the world has long since discovered that the emperor has no clothes, his sycophants and enablers in Congress pretend that it is business as usual. They will then be surprised to wake up one day in the near future to see their beloved apartheid state sanctioned.

Josh Ruebner is the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 350 organizations working to change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality. He is a former Analyst in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service.

We can only pray that Congress’s supine conduct before a rightwing foreign leader will have political consequences

May 24, 2011

Philip Weiss

In Israel they say that the occupation devoured Israeli politics so that everyone is beholden to the settlers, well the same thing is happening to American politics and today it was evident. I’m not the only one to feel shattered by Netanyahu’s bravura performance in Congress today laying claim to the West Bank as the ancestral Jewish homeland– and the Congress’s prostrate acceptance of his rightwing declarations.

“In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers,” he said to a standing ovation– I even saw John Kerry standing. “We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo.”

And Netanyahu got the same standing ovation when he said, crazily: “Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel. I know that this is a difficult issue for Palestinians.”

No wonder David Welna of NPR has quoted John Mearsheimer as lead analyst in his piece tonight– a breakthrough by the gobsmacked media. Writes a friend: “With this speech Netanyahu becomes the right-wing politician of most serious national stature in America. He put a lot of work into the words, and the delivery. It was necessary to have some understanding of (a) history, (b) politics, and (c) character in order to see through it. The distortions were everywhere. But I doubt that 20 members of Congress were equipped to notice them. There must have been a dozen standing ovations. He has taken Hamas off the table, put the peril of Iran back on the table, and bound the U.S. to Israel under the sign of power and providence.”

ABC says there were 20 standing ovations, on MSNBC I heard there were 26. Staggering. Our president is overseas, and his spokesman Ben Rhodes was afraid to contradict Netanyahu in any way today. This is power of the lobby in our politics, and it looks as disastrous to me as the slave power’s ability to enforce unanimity in American politics in the 1850s.

Code Pink’s nervy presence reminds us that consensus for segregation and Vietnam also seemed impregnable once

May 24, 2011

Scott McConnell

The Code Pink “Move Over Aipac” demonstrations in Washington were extraordinary. There are not yet thousands ready to come to DC to demonstrate against AIPAC and its fellows’ dominance of American Mideast policy, but there were a few hundred. Medea Benjamin and her crew molded us into a creative, witty, and challenging force—one that caused manifest discomfort to the smug and well-heeled delegates inside the convention center. Watching Medea and her staff work, supervising the creation and painting of signs and banners, building the props like the grossly fat inflated “Bibi suit” with “Show Me the Money” emblazoned on it, the cardboard checkpoints, the “Boat to Gaza,” the songs, the chants, an electronic billboard truck displaying the faces of murdered and imprisoned Palestinians circling around the AIPAC convention, was a reminder that focusing on the concepts and debating points of politics misses more than half of it. Code Pink does organized political theater, as well as it could be done with limited resources. Moreover we had a blast doing it, a feeling amplified by all the signs the vast majority of the AIPAC people couldn’t bear our presence. No doubt they would have preferred us to be treated the way Israel treats peaceful demonstrators, with barrages of tear gas canisters and stink grenades and arrests in the middle of the night. But the DC police I thought did a good job ensuring that the space outside the convention center retained the freedoms of America.

I’m not sure if there are global MacArthur awards for charismatic leadership, and the former academic in me kept trying to recall what Max Weber had said on the subject. But Medea Benjamin is in a very special class. Our group was young and old, kippahed, headscarved, and Christian (and probably some Buddhists) But its dominant tone is derived from the fact Medea is a Jewish woman who argues from Jewish social justice tradition to shame the AIPAC’ers. When the conference opened early Sunday morning, we were there to greet them in our little park. The AIPAC’ers filed past, the women dressed to the nines in stiletto heels and as dresses as brief as middle age allows. A smug and self-assured crowd, which tried to give us dismissive and condescending smiles. “You know, the Palestinians didn’t do the Holocaust” began Medea over the microphone, which may be the crucial point, so seldom made in America, which is at the heart of all this. And then, as they were leaving in the evening, “Were you taught to believe that you are chosen? I was taught that all people are chosen. I was taught to believe in the Golden Rule.”

There were of course more accusatory chants, which we took to the gates of the conference center, referencing Israeli war crimes, ethnic cleansing, checkpoints, the nascent apartheid state between the river and the sea that Israel is rapidly becoming. It was delicious to see the delegates’ discomfort at these accusations. They live in a bubble of self-righteousness, where they are told continuously that only anti-Semites oppose Israel. They have the satisfied aura of those accustomed to having American politicians bow and scrape before them, say what they want said, write the resolutions they want written, pass the laws they want passed. So it has been for nearly two generations, long enough to seem part of the natural order.

And thus it was as if they almost couldn’t bear the sound of criticism, loud and pointed, in the streets of Washington DC. And yet, since there is surely intelligence and historical memory in the ranks of the AIPAC’ers, so there is knowledge that the opposition to both segregation and the Vietnam war began with small groups confronting a seemingly impregnable dominant power. I don’t doubt that some of the conventioneers have begun to recognize how tenuous is their hold on American discourse, how quickly it could crumble once the first cracks begin to show.

Code Pink has held these gatherings for the past few years, and every year has been bigger than the last. I hope for justice in Palestine, but failing that, next year’s should be twice the size and far more powerful still.

Harry Reid sides with Netanyahu over Obama

May 24, 2011

Philip Weiss

I just saw Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s speech to AIPAC last night. He took a rightwing foreign prime minister’s side against his own president:

No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building or about anything else.

That’s flipping the bird at the 1967 lines. Do the American people get to discuss? And what about Chris Matthews’s claim that it’s just Republican leaders?

Netanyahu claims there are 650,000 settlers– not just half a million

May 24, 2011

Philip Weiss

In his speech to Congress just now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that 650,000 Israelis live east of the Green Line, in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. This is an inflation of the usual figure of settlers, 500,000, and maybe he knows? 650,000 would represent about 10 percent of Israel’s population.

Netanyahu’s statement my be a claim, but it is also an indication of a belief that the Israeli right shares with one-staters– it is impossible to remove Jewish settlements, and so this is one polity.

Maen Rashid Areikat, the PLO representative, said on CNN that Netanyahu had also understated the number of Palestinians living in Israel, from 1.3 million to 1 million. And so, by numbers, the Prime Minister performs a kind of cleansing.

Videos of MoveOverAipac disrupting Netanyahu speech last night

May 24, 2011

Matthew Taylor

Here is a report on the disruptions, from MoveoverAipac. And the videos:

Pamela Olson’s ‘Fast Times in Palestine’ published

May 24, 2011

Pamela Olson

After three and a half years, I’m delighted to announce that my book, Fast Times in Palestine, is between covers. It’s modeled in a sense afterUncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that didn’t try to pontificate about the evils of slavery but simply displayed these evils in the context of a story full of love, beauty, suspense, cruelty, and deeply human characters. It was therefore able to reach and move broad audiences.

Fast Times is non-fiction but it reads like a novel, with as many laugh-out-loud scenes as there are crushing horrors. The aim is to put things in a context that any American with half a heart can relate to at this crucial time. The hope is that after people like Mondoweiss regulars read it, they’ll pass it on to friends and relatives who can’t imagine why they’re so passionate about Palestine.

Below is an excerpt followed by ordering information. The main character in this excerpt is Qais, a Palestinian from Jayyous whom I was sort of almost dating, except that we could never get a moment to ourselves because of our crazy schedules — I worked in Ramallah while he studied in Jenin and helped his dad on their farm whenever he had time off — and because his family welcomed me as a daughter whenever I visited Jayyous, but they never let us be alone together. The only reason we could get to know each other well was because both of us spoke Russian and no one else did, so we could at least speak freely.

In this scene, Qais has carefully arranged his schedule so he can visit me in Ramallah for the first time.

Disappeared

A few days later, Qais called.

“I’m coming to Ramallah on Saturday morning, insha’Allah.”

My eyes widened. “Seriozna?” (Seriously?) The coming weekend would be his last before classes started again. And he wanted to spend it together. Maybe there was hope for us after all.

He laughed. “Yes. Insha’Allah.”

He called again on Saturday morning and said he was on the bus and would arrive in forty minutes if there were no checkpoints. I happily began cleaning the house, buzzing with energy, humming with possibilities.

By the time I finished and looked at a clock, I was startled to realize nearly two hours had passed. I called Qais’s number. He rejected the call.

Feeling some mixture of alarm and irritation, I texted,Bolshoi checkpoint?

Several minutes later, he texted back:

They booked my ID and the bus went i dont know wat wil happen. I am stopped with some bodyelse. Dont try to cal. I wil cal wen they leave me. My kissing to u.

My blood runs cold. This is how it starts. The soldiers take them off their bus, off the street, out of their house, and they disappear, maybe for hours, maybe for days, maybe for years. Palestinians can be held in Israeli jails for up to three months without charge or trial, a practice known as ‘administrative detention.’ The three-month sentences can be renewed indefinitely. I’ve heard stories of innocent people being held for years in Israeli prisons, of people being destroyed by the experience. No warrant. No charge. No phone call.

This isn’t arrest in any sense I recognize. This is government-sponsored kidnapping.

If the soldiers are just harassing him, he’ll call in a couple of hours. If they’re taking him for days or months, I’ll have to sit here as dreadful minutes drag into unbearable hours waiting for his call, my imagination getting worse as time goes on. I can’t concentrate enough to do anything but stare at my silent phone.

By the time four hours have passed, I am a basket case.

Shadi [Qais’s older brother] calls at four in the afternoon and says he’s been trying to call his brother all day with no luck. He asks me if Qais reached Ramallah.

“No,” I say. “He was stopped at a checkpoint. Soldiers took him off his bus.”

Shadi is silent for a moment. “Please call me if you hear anything.”

“I will. Same to you, OK?”

“Of course.” I hang up and think, Qais must have told Shadi he was coming to visit me, even though it was supposed to be a secret. A slight pang of betrayal is quickly replaced by the realization that it was a very sensible thing to do in a time and place where he knows he can disappear at any moment without warning.

Yasmine [my roommate, a sassy Communist from Gaza] shows up half an hour later with a cheeseburger and fries from the Checkers on Main Street. I haven’t eaten all day. She splits her food with me. I numbly choke it down.

She says reassuringly, “Don’t worry, habibti, they do this all the time. One time they took me off my bus at a checkpoint and made me stand in the sun for ten hours.”

“Why?”

She scoffed. “There is no reason. They just do this to humiliate us. He is not politically active is he? He is just a student. Maximum they will beat him and throw him in prison for a few days.”

I hope to God she’s right. But even that is more than I can bear imagining. He’s never been in prison before. If they keep him more than two days, he’ll miss the beginning of class. Even if he misses a single hour of his life, a day with his family, a week of class, it’s more than I can bear. Anything worse is beyond imagination, but I imagine it all the same.

Once while we were sitting on his porch in Jayyous, Qais told me about a cousin who’d been in prison for two months in unsanitary conditions and was suffering from terrible hemorrhoids and back pains, neither of which he’d suffered before. I think of Qais sitting next to me on the porch, whole and perfect, telling me about his poor cousin. Now maybe it is his turn.

The worst part is that even if they let him go and don’t hurt him, for every friend and mother and sister and daughter who’s ever felt what I am feeling (and much, much worse), the fears of some are justified. Some loved ones never come back or spend years of their lives being broken, caged, tortured, starved, injured and sickened, their dreams curtailed by the year, their hopes ground down into the most basic things they’d taken for granted before: respect, decent food, seeing their family. Never mind what they want to study, what lessons they want to teach their kids, where they want to travel or how they want to arrange their garden.

Hours before, my hopes for a nice visit with Qais were very important to me. Now all I dare dream is that he’ll be treated reasonably well and get to school on time. These dreams seem like almost too much to ask, whereas before they were a given. Imagine the whims of teenaged soldiers defining the boundaries of people’s hopes and dreams!

I call Shadi, but he still hasn’t heard anything. He sounds as worried as I am.

I call a friend named Mohammad Othman, a wiry peace activist from Jayyous who travels the world educating people about the situation in Palestine. We meet in a coffee house on Main Street.

“My brother was arrested one time while he was eating falafel in a restaurant,” he says. “The official report said he was throwing stones. But many witnesses, including Israelis, said he was not. I called a lawyer and human rights groups, and he was released after six days.”

“Six days! Surely they won’t keep Qais for six days…”

“And my best friend, who is also not political, was arrested eight days ago. He is still missing. We think he is in the Shin Bet interrogation facility in Petah Tikvah. I hope not. I’ve heard stories about the Shin Bet torturing and fatiguing prisoners to the point that they will admit to killing Yitzhak Rabin if only they can be left alone.”

My mind and stomach are spinning. I’m reminded of a time when I was fifteen and my mom asked me if I knew how to drive a stick shift.

“Sure,” I said confidently.

“How do you know how to drive a stick shift,” she asked, “if you’ve never tried?”

“I read a book about it.” They all laughed at me. Sure enough, when I tried to drive my brother’s little Honda Civic, I nearly dropped the engine out of the bottom of the car.

It’s the same difference, it turns out, between reading a thousand human rights violations reports and then having someone you personally care about disappear.

My body feels like I’ve been crying all day, but I’m too wrung out to cry. Yasmine and Mohammad seem almost embarrassed by how sensitive I am. In so many words they tell me to grow up. These things happen. If you want to live in Palestine and not be a complete greenhorn ajnabiya (foreigner), you’ve got to put a little starch in your spine.

On the one hand, I dread and fight against losing this sensitivity, because if I begin to accept things no one should ever accept, I’ll have lost a part of my humanity. But if I weep for every kid killed in Gaza, if I waste a day with my gut aching hollow and my back bent in dread and fatigue every time a friend disappears, I’ll never stand up.

But if we don’t put ourselves in others’ shoes now and then, we risk losing sight of the silent helpless horror that lies just below the surface of what we think we know. We can’t ignore it just because it is silent, snuffed out and shut up. It is there, manifestly, and it will come for all of us if we don’t put out the fires somehow.

I can’t stand the thought of going to bed without knowing where he is or what’s being done to him. But I don’t know what else to do. I lie in bed with my phone next to me until unconsciousness overtakes me.

I wake up in the morning, and the nightmare continues. I go to the office for something to do besides stare at my silent phone. I start writing the story of my weekend, trying to capture some of the feelings while they are still raw. It is impossible.

At half past seven, 32 hours after Qais disappeared, my phone rings. I see his name on my phone. My stomach seizes. Maybe it’s his family telling me that—

“Hello?”

“Privyet.” (Hi.) It’s his voice, full of sardonic exasperation.

Warm tears of relief stream over my fingers and onto my phone. The only utterances I can manage sound clumsy and inarticulate.

“Qais, are you OK? What happened?”

He spoke in an indignant stream of Russian so fast I couldn’t understand it all, but I gathered that they had “checked his ID” for a few hours. “Kto ya, Bin Laden ili shto?” he asked. (Who am I, Bin Laden or what?) Then they tied his hands, blindfolded him, and told him to get into an army Jeep. He asked why. They said, “Just go.”

They took him to a settlement, tied him to a chair, and interrogated him about every aspect of his life. He had no idea if he would be in there for hours or years, and he was afraid he’d miss the beginning of school. They repeated questions incessantly. They terrorized and tormented a completely innocent person for thirty-two hours, not to mention his friends and family, and ruined all of our weekends. And there’s no one to appeal to. They are the law.

After we said good-night and hung up, I felt like a thread of unbearable tension holding me up sickeningly by the armpits had been cut. I was left fallen in a dazed heap in an old landscape of everyday concerns that now seemed unfamiliar and strange.

After all that, I just had to catch a taxi. Go home. Brush my teeth. Wake up the next morning, go to work, check my email. Life goes on. It keeps going on and on, with or without you. You ride the wave called ‘normal life’ because it seems easier. Every now and then, though, you catch a glimpse of just how mad it all really is.
You can find reviews, excerpts, and other information about Fast Times in Palestine at the author’s website. You can purchase the paperback for $14.95 directly from the author, through her Amazon-affiliated sell page, or from Amazon.com. You can also purchase it for Amazon Kindle or for iPhone, iPad, and other eReaders for $8.99.

Head of DNC sees eye to eye with rightwing funder Sheldon Adelson when it comes to Netanyahu

May 24, 2011

Philip Weiss

Last night, Chris Matthews attempted to politicize support for Netanyahu, and say that Republicans line up for Netanyahu while Democrats support Obama. Well if he wants to drive that wedge, good for him, it might actually politicize the issue ultimately, but it’s not accurate as things stand. Cynthia Tucker responded to Matthews last night, saying, Democrats too! [line up behind Netanyahu against Obama]. And isn’t this the ultimate proof– in Politico today, Debbi Wasserman Shultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee, meeting with Netanyahu and rightwing One-Jerusalem Sheldon Adelson!!! Get on that, Chris:

It’s a powerful enough force to bridge some divides among American Jews, as Netanyahu hosted a meeting with 10 prominent Jewish Democrats and 10 prominent Jewish Republicans, including Democratic Reps. Steve Israel of New York and Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Republican casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, at Blair House on Monday.

A source familiar with the discussion said “there may have been a little bit of airing of grievances about the politicization of Israel.”

While support for Israel is far from unanimous — there is a committed, bipartisan corps of lawmakers who side more closely with the Palestinians — it is overwhelming.

Cantor says Arabs have a culture of ‘resentment and hatred’

May 24, 2011

Philip Weiss

At Porter Speakman Jr’s site, here is Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, speaking at AIPAC:

Sadly, it is a culture infused with resentment and hatred. But it is this culture that underlies the Palestinians and the broader Arab world’s refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. And this is the root of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. It is not about the ’67 lines”.

I’m fed up with criticism of Israel being shouted down as anti-Semitic

May 24, 2011

Mya Guarnieri

I’m fed up with criticism of Israel being shouted down as anti-Semitic. Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic. Here’s one simple reason why: a majority of the Jewish people lives in the Diaspora.

Just because this place, this strip of land, claims to represent us all doesn’t mean it does. And just because Israel claims to be the embodiment of the Jewish people’s longing for self-determination doesn’t mean it is.

Is brainwashing school-children self-determination? Is stuffing those same kids into uniforms and plunking them down, illegally, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories self-determination? Is keeping the nation chained to a conflict opposed by a majority of Jews self-determination?

Is this the dream of the Jewish people? Is this what it means to live freely, to be masters of our own fate? Are we not self-determinate as individuals in the United States and elsewhere? Do we not live freely and securely in America and in other democratic nations?

Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute and say that criticism of Israel is indeed an attempt to delegitimize the state of Israel. But why is that anti-Semitic when most of us live in the Diaspora?

I’m not going to deny the religious link to the land. However, it’s worth pointing out that that link isn’t ours alone. This place is also sacred to Christians and Muslims (and Haifa is holy for the Baha’i, I might add).

Further, the early Zionists didn’t emphasize the religious connection. And they didn’t necessarily have their hearts set on Palestine. Other ideas were floated: Argentina, Uganda.

And not to defend Zionism because Zionism—as it has manifested itself in expulsions, massacres, and occupation, as it has manifested itself in the denial of the most basic human rights—has become indefensible. However, for argument’s sake, let’s turn to the source of it all, Theodor Herzl’s “The Jewish State”, we see: “But we shall give a home to our people.”

Nowhere is it written that this home will be only for our people. Some, including Shulamit Aloni, argue that Herzl did not seek to found a “Jewish state.” And Herzl didn’t discuss maintaining a Jewish majority here.

(That is not to say, of course, that the six million of us who live in Israel should just get up and leave. The only just solution, in my opinion, is a bi-national, democratic state).

Back to the religious connection: when the state of Israel was established in 1948, my ultra-Orthodox great-grandmother—a woman who had herself survived pogroms and who lost family in the Holocaust—opposed the move. And while their numbers are not great, there are members of the religious community who remain opposed to the state. There are some who are also indifferent to the state—for them, their connection is to the land, regardless of the government. This accounts, of course, for the continued presence of Jews in Palestine long before Zionism existed.

Just because Israel claims to be a symbol of the Jewish people doesn’t mean we all recognize it as one. As an American-Israeli who lives in Israel, I have to say that I don’t see this country as a “Jewish state.” I see Israel as a place that is Jewish in numbers but utterly lacking a Jewish soul.

I see a place that, by claiming to be the sole representative of the Jewish people, denies the majority’s deep connection to Judaism. I see a place—which is home to a minority and governed by a leader who caters to an even smaller minority, the settlers and American right-wingers—that has co-opted our identity and reduced it to a piece of land and a demographic struggle.

I see a place that, by claiming that the Jewish people cannot exist without this state, denies hundreds of years of Diaspora history, culture, and languages. And if that’s not anti-Semitism, I don’t know what is.

 

NOVANEWS

 
Dear Friends,

 

First of all, the good news that was announced about an hour ago:

“Egypt ‘to open Rafah crossing to Palestinians

Restrictions at the Rafah crossing have eased gradually since Egypt’s new government took power in February

Egypt is to open the Rafah border crossing into Gaza permanently to most Palestinians from Saturday, Egyptian state news agency Mena has said.”

How will Israel react to this?

[for more on this see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13552685?print=true ]

As for the rest, I have spent the day reading domestic and international newspapers for commentary about Obama’s and Netanyahu’s speeches, particularly Netanyahu’s last speech to the US Congress.  Below are the texts of 4 reactions that I find particularly interesting, one of which (item 4) was not in the newspapers, but which has been circulated privately. Following them are links to other readings that you might find interesting.

Item 1, however, is a link to a video (about 5 minutes) of a flash dance to ‘move over AIPAC.’  Worth watching.

Item 2, though published in the British Guardian is by an American Jew who blames Netanyhu for making American Jews have to choose between their president and the prime minister of Israel.  The writer, Jane Eisner, believes that she represents many American Jews.  I hope that she is right and that American Jews will feel more loyalty to the United States than to an Israel that is committing unbelievable crimes.

Item 3 is an interview in Der Speigel, of Luxenbourg foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, who states that “The European Union is backing US President Obama’s call for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders,” and, further, that “if the Israelis remain stubborn, the EU must consider taking political action.”

Item 4 is by Professor Micah Leshem and is, I believe, one of the better analysis that I have read today.  It presents one Israeli’s view.

Item 5 by Louis Andoni presents the Palestinian or Arab view of Obama’s stand or policy, and claims that in effect Obama tells Israel “take whatever you want.”

Several of the links take you to comments from the Palestinians on Netanyahu’s speech.  Where we go from here, does not look good.  Security, justice, and peace for either Palestinians or Israelis will not flow from Israel’s intransigence, supported to a large degree by the current president of the United States.

Enjoy the items below.

Dorothy

=====================================

1.  Forwarded by Anwar

Watch the instant Dance group in Washington Central singing:

Move over AIPAC, you don’t speak for me….

Please circulate widely

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V7pU5aZmYbM

=======================================

2. The Guardian,

 

25 May 2011

Don’t be fooled by the applause, Binyamin Netanyahu

Israel’s PM received a rapturous reception from Congress, but US Jewish opinion at large is frustrated with his intransigence

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/25/israel-binyamin-netanyahu

Jane Eisner guardian.co.uk, larger | smaller Article history

Israel’s PM Binyamin Netanyahu told US Congress: ‘It’s time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say: I will accept a Jewish state – with those words, I will be prepared to make a far-reaching compromise.’ Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, his first audience was the assembly of federal lawmakers and other government dignitaries seated before him. His second audience was President Obama, who was off hobnobbing with the Queen of England, but who, only days earlier, had set out his vision for achieving a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And his third audience was the American Jewish community. People like me.

Judging from the extraordinarily warm welcome he received in the Capitol building – by my count, there were 30 standing ovations, including the applause that greeted his entrance and the conclusion of his speech – Netanyahu easily won over the Congress with his passionate defence of Israel as America’s most trusted ally in the convulsive Middle East.

But whether the prime minister’s spirited defence of the status quo and his reluctance to offer a way back to the negotiating table will be received well by the White House is an open question. And that puts American Jews in a difficult, uncomfortable situation.

Jews in the United States do not like finding themselves in the position of choosing between their president and the prime minister of Israel. No matter who is in the White House, no matter who is in charge of the government in Jerusalem, we like to see consensus, a smooth connection, the enunciation not just of shared values, but a shared approach to geopolitical challenges.

In the two years since Netanyahu cobbled together a rightwing coalition in Israel, and came up against an American president scrambling to improve his nation’s image in the Muslim world, that smooth connection got awfully bumpy at times. I fear the impasse is only growing.

It need not be this way. Obama’s speech last Thursday at the state department outlining his administration’s response to the so-called Arab Spring contained a ringing defence of Israel’s continued security and a stinging rebuke to Hamas, the terrorist organisation that rules Gaza and recently signalled an alliance with the Palestinian Authority. Obama plainly defended Israel’s right to exist and its place in the community of nations, pledging to resist attempts to “delegitimise” the homeland of the Jews. And he promised to work against a unilateral declaration of statehood that Palestinian leaders intend to put before the United Nations in September.

But the president also stated out loud what every president (and many Israeli officials) of the last two decades have acknowledged: the borders of Israel before the 1967 war, before the 43-year occupation, are the starting point for negotiations with Palestinians. The starting point, not the conclusion, as Obama also called for “land swaps” that, again, have long been an accepted mechanism for dividing the contested land. And he unequivocally stated that maintaining the status quo was not a wise option in a region that has been shaken to its core by revolutionary stirrings for democracy.

Netanyahu must have known that the stern conditions for peace talks that he enunciated Tuesday were framed in such a way to leave little diplomatic space for the Palestinians. His narrative placed all the blame on them for the current impasse. He pledged that Jerusalem will remain entirely under Israeli sovereignty. He flat out denied that Palestinians have any claim on the land that is now Israel. He vowed to keep a military presence along the Jordan River. And while he promised he’d make “far reaching compromises” in the interests of peace, it’s unclear what that could mean when so much is off the table.

And so, for those American Jews who were hoping that this week’s string of public pronouncements would lead to a breakthrough, Netanyahu’s defiant stance puts us in a heart-wrenching conundrum. We can choose to support his view of the world, in which an aggrieved Israel bears no responsibility for the occupation and for the impasse in negotiations – and many American Jews will. They will side with him and the Republicans in Congress who offered him this unusual platform without, of course, any reciprocal chance to hear another point of view.

But I don’t believe that all or even most American Jews share that position. Most of us want don’t want further procrastination but an end to the conflict, which has stained Israel’s moral standing in the way that occupation and continued violence does to anyone. Most of us dread what will happen in September, if the UN vote is successful and Israel will become even more isolated and demonised.

Most of us, I bet, hoped that Netanyahu would have issued a bold, creative speech that would have moved the process forward, safeguarding Israel’s security as he must, but also recognising the cogent, entirely reasonable requests from the president of the United States.

You are making us choose, Prime Minister Netanyahu. Please don’t.

=============================

3.  Spiegel Online,

 

May 24, 2011

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and US President Barack Obama at the White House. “We Europeans need to send a message,” argues Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,764642,00.html

The European Union is backing US President Obama’s call for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn says in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE. He also argues that, if the Israelis remain stubborn, the EU must consider taking political action.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected plans by US President Barack Obama for a Palestinian state based on the borders as they existed before the Six Day War in 1967. Is the Mideast peace process now dead?

Asselborn: Netanyahu’s rejection of peace based on the 1967 borders is self-important and arrogant — especially given that Obama explicitly stated that a variation from the 1967 borders would be possible under a mutual land swap. Netanyahu is suppressing the political reality and betting on a stalemate instead. For the peace process, that is deadly.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The European Union constantly reiterates that Israel has a guaranteed right to exist. So shouldn’t Europeans take more seriously Netanyahu’s concern that Israel wouldn’t be able to defend itself inside the 1967 borders?

Asselborn: As one of my counterparts correctly stated, the sole security guaranty for Israel is a peace treaty with the Palestinians and the Arab world. No government in the EU questions Israel’s right to exist. Nor does Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas or his prime minister, Salam Fayyad. The only people who refuse to recognize Israel are the extremists of Hamas.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: It is precisely with this Hamas that Abbas and Fayyad recently signed a reconciliation treaty. Can you not understand why this has made the Israelis even more concerned?

Asselborn: Abbas’ Fatah party and Prime Minister Fayyad want to hold elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At the moment, though, this is being blocked by Hamas, which came to power in Gaza by force. In order to overcome this division, Fatah and Hamas have signed a treaty. It frees the way for a transition government that includes all Palestinian groups.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Netanyahu has said that Abbas must choose between a peace with Hamas and a peace with Israel.

Asselborn: This is not about an either-or choice. The plan is that the transitional government should sit down with the Israelis as soon as possible to negotiate a two-state solution. In this way, Fayyad wants to prevent a vote at the United Nations General Assembly in September on the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. If Abbas negotiates with Israel and Hamas is part of this transitional government, then Israel will implicitly recognize it.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Should the European Union hold talks with Hamas?

Asselborn: Four years ago, when the first attempts at reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas took place, I harbored reservations myself. Today, I ask myself if it was a mistake not to have provided stronger support for reconciliation at the time. I can understand that it requires a lot of strength to sit down at the table with people who only promote violence. But time hasn’t stood still. We need to make an attempt to draw Hamas into a democratic process and bring it on to the path of freedom — just as we succeeded in doing with Fatah during the 1990s. That would also include informal talks with Hamas.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Israel is not alone in demanding that Hamas forswear the use of violence. The Middle East Quartet, of which the EU is a member, is also calling for that.

Asselborn: And that’s a position we Europeans are going to maintain. Still, you can’t just put conditions on the Palestinian side, as they’re not the only source of the violence. Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a prison. There, 1.7 million people live in an area one-seventh the size of Luxembourg. To shut its borders and to only allow certain goods into the country and hardly any out — this is also a form of violence. In the West Bank, Israelis continue to build settlements on expropriated land. It is a constant provocation.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How can the EU apply additional pressure on Israel?

Asselborn: The first thing the EU needs to do is be more courageous and united in its support of Obama. Large parts of the Republican Party — and particularly the Tea Party movement within it — are opposed to a two-state solution. That (sentiment) can’t be allowed to cross over to Europe. The only way for us to have a chance at bringing the Israelis back to the negotiating table is if we present a united front.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Still, this unity simply doesn’t exist. In September, the UN General Assembly is scheduled to vote on whether to recognize a Palestinian state. But Chancellor Angela Merkel has already hinted that Germany might vote against it.

Asselborn: Now is the time for us to focus on getting the talks back into gear. If Germany’s chancellor publicly rules out voting for a Palestinian state in the UN General Assembly, it takes all kinds of pressure off the Israeli government. And if the French president speaks out in favor of recognition, then the EU’s two largest states will be standing on opposite sides of an important foreign-policy issue. As a result, we won’t be taken seriously.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Can the Europeans really exercise any pressure anyway? It seems like Israel can only really be influenced by its most important ally, the United States.

Asselborn: Obama is saying and doing the right thing. But there will be elections next year in the United States, and experience tells us that, in such situations, American presidential candidates grow less bold about taking a stance against the Israeli government. The pro-Israel lobby in the United States is very strong. We Europeans aren’t exposed to the same amount of pressure.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So far, it’s only been the Israelis’ desire to upgrade relations with the EU that have been put on ice. Should the EU also consider downgrading relations?

Asselborn: In 2008, we wanted to honor Israel’s wishes to have an upgrade. But we made such an upgrade contingent upon progress being made in the peace process. That unfortunately didn’t happen. Now we find ourselves in a situation in which the Israeli government is doing all it can to stand in the way of new talks. For that reason, we in the EU should think about whether we can allow our relations with Israel to carry on as they have been. If the Israelis continue to dig their heels in and we just let them do what they want, it could lead to a new war. We Europeans need to send a signal — not only with words but, if necessary, with actions as well. We need to consider political action if need be.

Interview conducted by Christoph Schult

========================

4.  From Professor Micah Leshem

 

Netanyahu’s speech is a turning point.

Micah Leshem

Netanyahu’s speech is a turning point.

Micah Leshem  25.5.11

Netanyahu’s recent expressions of policy in the US are a clear turning point in Israel’s public stance. Netanyahu has picked the ripe fruit nurtured by 40 years of Israeli settlement policy. Israel’s settlement policy is the cornerstone of all Israeli political aspirations – and designed to incorporate the West Bank into a Greater Israel.  To that end, the strategic rationale of Israel’s settlement policy has always been to establish “facts on the ground”, meaning that the settled territory will not, and cannot, be returned to the Palestinians –  as N stated to Obama’s face: “it will not happen”.  Years ago the policy was stated (in Hebrew, for home consumption only) as creating “Hishukim”. This is the term coined, its literal translation is ‘bands or hoops’ but in context it was a new invention, meaning ‘manacle’ or ‘shackle’ but differing in substance from those in that it is self-binding. In other words, if we build enough settlements in a large enough area and populate them with enough Jews, a time will come when we will be ‘bound’ to maintain, defend and expand them (the doublespeak term coined for the latter is “Natural Growth”). And so the time has come to tell the world that there can be no going back, Israel has chained itself to its settlements and Netanyahu has revealed to the world that we threw away the key.

No country can be expected to move 10-15% of its population out of their homes, villages and towns. This is the proportion of Israel’s Jewish population settled in the West Bank. Many of them are unwitting settlers, because Israeli school books, road maps, and all geographic and graphic representations of our country, even tourist advertising, have been expunged of all reference to the 1967 borders which can serve to reveal the extent of the settlement effort. This censorship was designed to, and has completely succeeded, in erasing any distinction between pre- 1967 Israel and what the world recognizes as occupied territory. Any Israeli below 50 years of age, who has no private memory of pre-’67 Israel, has no inkling of whether her Jerusalem home is in occupied territory or not, nor does she care, the issue has been removed from Israeli mainstream discourse.

Greater Israel can no longer be contested, not even by the President of The United States. N has now made it evident to foreigners too that Israel cannot return the territories it has occupied, and that the settlement momentum will continue. Implicit in N’s statements is the fact that even if a Government in Israel wanted to return the territories, eg in a peace deal, it could not.  Rabin’s assassination clearly demonstrated that already 16 years ago no Israeli leader could be allowed to negotiate the West Bank. A significant proportion of Israelis enthused over the consequent cessation of the peace process, and today it would be a majority.

Over 40 years, we have successfully, willingly, deviously and surreptitiously, bound ourselves to a policy of colonial expansion. Israel will extend from the Mediterranean in the west, to the Jordan River Rift Valley in the east. For N, there never was any intention to negotiate peace, his vision is clearer than of all his predecessors.   He has produced a plethora of preconditions designed put off, shackle, and humiliate any negotiating partner. They ranged from the unconscionable during negotiations  (accelerated settlement expansion, Palestinian home demolitions, expulsions, and discriminatory and restrictive laws and regulations) to the ludicrous (not merely to recognize Israel (which they have), but to do so as a State for Jews).  In addition, N has stated to an enthusiastic US congress that Jerusalem is not negotiable, neither the majority of settlements, neither the Jordan Valley, and the Palestinian State will not armed. Thus the starting point for negotiations is for a Palestinian state of 4 reservations communicating by corridors and surrounded by Israel controlling all access.  These preconditions torpedo negotiations, and others are freely added, the latest being that negotiation is not possible with the Palestinians because they include the Hamas because it does not recognize Israel.  If Hamas were as formidable as Hezbollah, Israel would negotiate, as it did with Hezbollah, and with the Palestinian Fatah before that.

A new precondition N seems to be nurturing is the release of Hamas’ Israeli soldier prisoner, Shalit. Again the double-speak – N actually opposes the deal on offer. Patently, Hamas leadership cannot compromise on the conditions they set. They know that the moment he is freed they will all be killed by Israeli drones, like their leader Sheikh Yassin, blown up in his wheelchair with a score of other casualties by a guided missile, some years after a deal for his release from Israeli prison.  As long as they have Shalit,  Israel is “hooped” not to kill them.  That stalemate has lasted for 5 years, suits both sides, and will persist until we discover his whereabouts and mount a rescue operation.

In sum, Israel’s policy, defined by N’s stated wish for peace belied by his impossible preconditions, is now almost explicit. It is to complete the annexation of the entire West Bank. Greater Israel has been part of the Likud Party manifesto for the past 60 years or so, and N is its current leader.  The Palestinians do not really figure. There has been one compromise to that manifesto – Israel no longer covets the territory of the State of Jordan. Instead, that has been repeatedly and officially ceded by Israel’s leadership to the Palestinians. That is where many will be required to go in Israel’s final settlement.

=============================

5.  Al Jazeera,

 

23 May 2011

 

Obama to Israel: Take whatever you want

 

In his latest speech, Obama’s thinly veiled rhetoric proves he will do anything to satisfy his pro-Israel voter base.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/2011523115553473983.html

Lamis Andoni

EmailPrintShareSend Feedback

 

For years, American presidents taken a weak stance on illegal Israeli settlement construction, but none have come so close as Obama to actually legitimising them [GALLO/GETTY]

In 2008, Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, pandered to pro-Israeli voters and Israel by promising in a speech addressed to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that Jerusalem would forever remain “the undivided capital of Israel”.

Three years later, Obama is on another pre-campaign trail in order to improve his chances for re-election in 2012. As part of this campaign, he has made a new round of half-hearted attempts to revive the stalled “peace process” completely under Israel’s terms.

In his latest speech addressed to AIPAC, Obama promised Israel everything short of allegiance by reaffirming America’s commitment to Israel’s political and security goals. His speech denied the right of Palestinians to declare a nation and he even vowed to block any peaceful Palestinian efforts to claim their legal rights at international organisations.

Obama’s lip service to Palestinian “self-determination” is nothing more than vacuous rhetoric – as he clearly implied that Israeli interests, especially its security, remain the top priority for American foreign policy in the region.

He mechanically repeated his commitment to the vision of a two-state solution – establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. However, as expected, he left the borders and terms of the creation of such state subject to Israel’s “security interests”.

His reference to resuming peace negotiations on the basis of the 1967 borders (also known as the Green Line) means neither a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories nor the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state on all of the land within the Green Line, including East Jerusalem.

There is a significant difference in negotiations “lingo” and even legal language between saying that the establishment of a Palestinian state “will be based on” 1967 borders as opposed to saying it “will be established on” the 1967 borders.

The first leaves ample room for Israel to continue occupying and even annexing vast settlement blocs (and perhaps even all of the illegal, Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem) for “security reasons”.

Take whatever you can

Just in case his pro-Israel support base misunderstood the thinly veiled statements from his Middle East speech last Friday, Obama made sure to clarify to his definitively pro-Israeli view that there is no going back to the true 1967 borders:

“[The statement] means that the parties themselves – Israelis and Palestinians – will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 196… It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last forty-four years, including the new demographic reality.”

In clearer words, the president is effectively, although not explicitly, equating the presence of Palestinians on their own land with the illegal presence of Israeli settlers living on land confiscated forty-four years ago from the Palestinians.

Basically, despite the fact that settlers live on that land illegally under international law, because they are physically there, the land becomes theirs.

This confirms the belief of many in the region that the construction of Israeli settlements and of the Separation Wall inside the 1967 borders is Israel’s way of slowly completing a de facto annexation of Palestinian land.

This latest of Obama’s statements may be the closest the president has come to legitimising illegal Israeli settlements.

Obama’s message to Israel appeared to confirm that he is ready to keep former president George Bush’s 2005 promise that Israel would be able to keep their largest settlements blocs as a result of any negotiated solution for the conflict.

In other words, Obama’s idea of Palestinian self-determination is for Palestinians to accept whatever Israel decides.

In his AIPAC speech, and the previous speech addressed to the Middle East, Obama seemed to have either  been out of touch with, or to have simply ignored, the changes brought about by the Arab Spring. For while he argued that Israel should understand that the Arab Spring has altered the political balance in the region, and that Israel should understand it now has to make peace not with corruptible Arab leaders, but with the Arab people themselves.

So much for hope and change

In fact, when it comes to the Palestinian cause, Obama is speaking and acting as if the Arab Spring has not taken place. He has to remember that even America’s most loyal Arab allies in the region could not openly support the American-Israeli formula for peace with the Palestinians. So, why then would it be acceptable to millions of pro-Palestinian Arabs?

The Arab Spring may have affected the semantics of American discourse on Palestinian rights but it has not created anything close to a real shift in American policies.

Once again, Obama has succumbed to political blackmail by Netanyahu – whose main goal of raising objections to the peace process is to make sure that Israel continues undisturbed with its expansionist polices, and not because of any real fear from the president’s weak demands.

Yes, there is no doubt that Netanyahu wants to see any reference to 1967 borders dropped from the discourse, because Israel is currently busy drawing its own militarily imposed future borders, he could not have misunderstood Obama’s clearly pro-Israeli statements.

As the American president pointed out in his speech, he has made good on his declaration of “full commitment” to Israeli interests and security needs: “That’s why we’ve increased cooperation between our militaries to unprecedented levels. It’s why we’re making our most advanced technologies available to our Israeli allies.”

“And it’s why, despite tough fiscal times, we’ve increased foreign military financing to record levels.”

Obama has not only been consistent in maintaining full US support for Israel but has also articulated a new, more decisive stance which explicitly confirms the long-standing American policy of blocking any peaceful Palestinian efforts through international law and the United Nations.

“…The United States will stand up against efforts to single Israel out at the UN or in any international forum. Because Israel’s legitimacy is not a matter for debate”, he promised the gathering of the staunchest and most influential supporters of Israel.

By siding with Israel against the Palestinian Authority’s plan to seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, the US has in effect declared war on all Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority and activists alike.

He will unabashedly thwart any efforts to pursue legal and peaceful means of challenging the continued Israeli colonisation of their land.

But by labeling such campaigns aimed at recognition of a Palestinian state as an attempt “to delegitimise” Israel, the president is inadvertently recognising that those Israeli policies themselves lack legitimacy.

A rights based discourse?

Furthermore, while Obama’s assertion that UN recognition alone cannot create a Palestinian state is technically true, it will restore the topic within a legal rights discourse – which would not be defined by Israel’s security concerns as it has in the past.

Such UN recognition, of course, would work towards the establishment a Palestinian state defined by the 1967 borders – meaning that all Israeli settlements within that border would have to be evacuated. Without this, it would only legitimise and perpetuate the American-Israeli negotiations formula.

But Obama has not taken any risks in order to promote peace.

He fears foiling decades of American policies that have aimed to veto any UN resolution pertaining to Israeli crimes and, starting a new discourse about the conflict that would be rights-based.

It was no surprise either when Obama declared the reconciliation agreement between Fateh and Hamas, signed earlier this month, to be an “obstacle” to peace in the region. After all, in his purely pro-Israeli mindset, any attempt at Palestinian unity – regardless of how feeble – does not serve Israeli interest and its tried and true “divide and conquer” method has prevented any real progress for years.

Obama’s repeated refrain about Hamas being an unacceptable peace partner, sounds not only like a broken record, but also like a lame excuse for Israeli extremism and intransigence.

If he wants to know who the true unacceptable partners for peace are, all he has to do is get an English transcript of discussions from the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and read how members from the political right call Arabs “animals” and make all manner of racist slurs against Palestinians.

But if Obama is willing to encourage Israeli policies such as ‘land transfers’, which aim to displace whole Palestinian communities and refers to them as mere “demographic changes”, then why would he care about racist rhetoric and threats by right-wing Israelis?

In his latest speeches, Obama did not refer once to the events that took place on the May 15 ‘Nakba Day’ protests. During these peaceful demonstrations, the Israeli military responded in a predictable way, in the only way they know – by firing indiscriminately on unarmed protesters. By the end of the shooting spree, more than 20 people were killed at the Syrian and Lebanese borders.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of Obama’s speech is his exaggerated attempt to adopt the Israeli narrative and by default, his complete denial of Palestinian national rights.

In the end of his speech, Obama’s claim that Israel’s history could be characterised by a struggle for freedom (a repeat from his 2008 AIPAC speech) says it all:

The American president refuses to see Israeli oppression and repression. He refuses to recognise the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle for freedom – because if he did, he just might hurt his chances at winning a second term as US president.

Lamis Andoni is an analyst and commentator on Middle Eastern and Palestinian affairs.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

==================================

6.  US president, British PM Cameron stress urgent need for solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict in joint press conference. Obama says UN can’t declare establishment of Palestinian state, urges resumption of peace talks

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4073937,00.html

——————-

Netanyahu’s win is Israel’s loss

Once the dust of the media storm settles down, the citizens of Israel will be faced with the stark truth: The specter of Israel’s ever-growing isolation and of increasing international pressure looms large.

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/strenger-than-fiction/netanyahu-s-win-is-israel-s-loss-1.364022

By Carlo Strenger

———————————

By Begin’s logic, the Palestinians should have a state

Those rejecting a future independent Palestinian state as an Iranian proxy must have missed the history lesson of the establishment of a strikingly similar small country not far away.

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/by-begin-s-logic-the-palestinians-should-have-a-state-1.363990

By Ron Ben-Tovim

================================

Obama, the theoretician of the Arab revolution of the masses

Obama’s historic approach sanctifies the struggle of the individuals who dared stand up to tyranny.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/obama-the-theoretician-of-the-arab-revolution-of-the-masses-1.363924

By Aluf Benn

———————————-

Democrats join Republicans in questioning Obama’s policy on Israel

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrats-join-republicans-in-questioning-obamas-policy-on-israel/2011/05/24/AFkEJpAH_story_1.html

By Peter Wallsten

—————————-

In speech to Congress, Israel’s Netanyahu offers few concessions

The Israeli leader says he’s ready to make ‘painful compromises,’ but he sets requirements for peace talks that vary little from previous views.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-congress-israel-20110525,0,7007895.story

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Washington and Jerusalem

=====================

Abbas dismisses Netanyahu speech

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0525/breaking26.html

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Israel was offering “nothing we can build on” for peace and that without progress he will seek UN recognition of Palestinian statehood in September.

——————————-

Palestinians dismiss Netanyahu’s Middle East speech

http://www.france24.com/en/20110525-palestinians-reject-netanyahu-middle-east-speech-israel-settlements-borders

By News Wires the 25/05/2011 – 07:44

==========================

Netanyahu’s defiance on deal is ‘declaration of war’

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/netanyahus-defiance-on-deal-is-declaration-of-war-2288591.html

By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem

———————————–

Palestinians say Netanyahu speech will not bring peace

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13534775

Palestinian officials have dismissed Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress, saying it will not lead to peace.