Had intended to spend the day at the Corrie’s trial over Rachel’s death today, but fate had other plans. Oh we did head for Haifa, but by train. I don’t know what the reason was, but the trains were extra slow, and also forced us to detrain and change trains more than usual. Someone said that there was a slow-down strike going on. But your guess is as good as mine. To make a long story short, a normally 1 hour trip took over 3 hours. By the time we arrived the questioning of what was to have been the first of two witnesses was almost over. The 2nd witness did not turn up (he is abroad), so that we were there for only a little over one hour. The final session has been postponed till July 10th at noon. Today’s session was the testimony of the IOF spokesperson (a female) at the time that Rachel was run over by the bulldozer. I can only hope that the impression that the judge makes is wrong, and that he will be fair and see justice done, that his verdict will be that the Corries have proved their case that Rachel did not merely die or was just killed, but was intentionally killed–in other words, murdered. We shall see.
3 items below, all relating to Obama’s speeches (Thursday’s and today’s), albeit the 1st one uses (rather than reacts to) the speech to make the point that today’s borders are indefensible. Am so glad that someone puts the cards on the table and states facts—that with today’s missiles, bombers, and other like equipment, borders are irrelevant to security.
The 2nd and 3rd items take very different views of today’s speech. The 2nd item was forwarded by Sabeel, which appears to be quite unhappy with the main points that Obama made. I must acknowledge that I was too. I especially felt my ire mounting when at the first part of the speech, in trying to show how much America cared for Israel and backed it up he said that in response to the Goldstone report, he (Obama) had stated that ‘Israel has a right to defend itself.’
I remember well hearing that unfortunate statement from the major Western powers just after the end of Israel’s Cast Lead attack on Gaza. Who, after all, was doing the attacking, destroying, and killing with heavy equipment? Surely not the 300 o4 400 children who were killed. Who, dear friends, needed defending?
The third report holds that “Obama Challenges Israel to Make Hard Choices Needed for Peace.” Maybe I had my ears clogged. I heard no hard choices. I did hear that Israel will continue to be armed, Palestine not (why not both be unarmed?), and that the 1967 borders are amendable because things have happened since 1967. What therefore happens to the 1967 green line that Obama seemed on Thursday to insist would be the basis? It appears to have disappeared!
Some people think that when Obama is re-elected next year, he will then come down much harder on Israel. Wish I could believe that. After all, had he used the financial difficulties that the US has had the past few years as a starting point, he could have insisted that the US had no money to support Israel with $3billion annually for the next 10 years in military aid. He might not have gotten the AIPAC vote, but would surely have won the election.
Am still hoping for better times.
Dorothy
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1. Haaretz Editorial,
May 22, 2011
Today’s borders are the ‘indefensible’ ones
Netanyahu’s decision to have Israel clash with Obama is not only a dead end, it could remove the only protective wall Israel has left and sacrifice the country’s future on the altar of hollow ideology and unbridled nationalism.
Lots of high-sounding words were uttered over the weekend. There was U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech, in which he welcomed the civil revolutions in the Middle East and sketched the outlines of the best diplomatic plan to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then came the unabashed longing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for peace on his terms. But the cascades of verbiage did not produce concord between Israel and the United States – to the point where it’s hard to decide which disagreement is greater, between Israel and the Palestinians or between Israel and the United States.
There is no doubt which is more dangerous for Israel. Netanyahu’s decision to have Israel clash with Obama is not only a dead end, it could remove the only protective wall Israel has left and sacrifice the country’s future on the altar of hollow ideology and unbridled nationalism.
Netanyahu is lying to the Israeli public and leading the U.S. administration astray when he portrays Israel’s current borders as defensible. The occupation of the West Bank, the planting of more settlements on the rocky hilltops, control of the Jordan Valley or the construction of thousands of homes in East Jerusalem do not remove the Iranian threat, prevent the firing of Qassam rockets or end Hezbollah’s willingness to fire missiles at Israel.
Borders themselves do not guarantee security. But borders that are recognized by the international community give a country the legitimacy to defend its sovereignty. Israel has no such borders, and more and more countries are finding it difficult to defend Israel’s position, which seeks to persuade others that occupation is a means of defense.
The real danger for Israel is not only the crisis in relations with the United States and most of Europe, it’s the deception Israel is trying to market to the Israeli public. According to that deception, a strong stand based only on nationalist slogans can replace a diplomatic solution; all that’s needed to survive Obama’s term with the current borders are well-crafted speeches and the right amount of manipulation. This strategy turns Netanyahu into a real threat to Israel’s security and future.
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2. Sabeel 21May11
« “I Got Vision and the Rest of the World Wears Bifocals” Obama Speech Mired in Zionist Rhetoric
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu returned to Washington this weekend for his annual love fest with AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is holding its annual Policy Committee meeting Sunday through Tuesday.
President Obama followed up his speech to his Arab Spring presentation at the State Department, Thursday, by reiterating his comments on Israel at the AIPAC conference Sunday morning.
The President’s speech Thursday provided an overview of the changes now sweeping the Arab world. Late in that address, Obama turned to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Unfortunately, in linking the changes emerging from the Arab Spring to the future of the Palestinian Territory, the President was playing with a very bad hand.
He is a man locked into the rhetoric of the past, honed over decades by Israeli propagandists and Israel’s many friends in the US.
The President is a terrific orator. But his rhetoric in this speech needs a careful exegesis to bring out its blatant contradictions.
It is not easy to please Israel’s many friends in the US while attempting, rather desperately, to balance the suffering and the hopes of Israel and the Palestinians. He did not succeed.
Consider his first reference to the suffering of the two “sides”:
For Israelis, it has meant living with the fear that their children could get blown up on a bus or by rockets fired at their homes, as well as the pain of knowing that other children in the region are taught to hate them.
For Palestinians, it has meant suffering the humiliation of occupation, and never living in a nation of their own.
Note carefully how he illustrates the “two sides”, trying, unsuccessfully to balance the suffering of an occupier with that of the occupied. The Israeli suffering he cites is that of children who live in fear of dying. His example of Palestinian suffering is more abstract, the humiliation of occupation and the quest for nationhood.
The bombing of Israeli buses is from the past; the suffering of Palestinian children, which the president does not specifically mention, is existential, ongoing, constant and a daily threat with no end in sight.
President Obama said he would talk about “security and territory”. He would “put off” the sensitive issues of refugees and Jerusalem, the same sensitive issues negotiators have “put off” for decades.
President Obama also dutifully followed the Zionist line that the “two parties” should negotiate between themselves. Any involvement by the United Nations is merely symbolic and is harmful to Israel. Here is his specific complaint:
For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.
“Delegitimize Israel”? How does recognizing a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders “delegitimize Israel?”
And what is “symbolic” about the UN recognizing a Palestinian state? It is not “symbolic”; it is a legitimizing action on behalf of the Palestinians just as much as the UN’s creation of the Israeli state in 1948 was a legitimizing action.
The President continued:
Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.
The President was talking about UN recognition before he moved quickly into the issue of Hamas which he insists on calling a “terrorist” organization.
The trouble with tossing in the “right to exist” phrase, is that Obama ignores the fact that nations do not have the “right to exist”. They simply exist within borders that their neighbors accept as legitimate because of historical circumstances. There are no “rights” involved.
It is embarrassing for our president to allow himself to be dragged into using the Zionist “right to exist” shibboleth (See Judges 12 for the term’s origins.).
And while we are reflecting on President Obama’s embrace of traditional Israeli-American propaganda language, these two short sentences do not sound like Obama; rather, they sound like something lifted from a White House manual on “How to Speak Israeli”:
As for Israel, our friendship is rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values. Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable.
What exactly is this “shared history” and what exactly are our “shared values”?
Modern Israel’s history begins in 1948. Aside from pushing the UN to recognize the state, and selling it arms, what have we shared? OK, we did share the pragmatic belief that Israel was our bulwark against communism in the Middle East.
In his report on the White House Friday meeting between Netanyahu and Obama, Jewish blogger Richard Silverstein includes an incisive reminder of what “shared values” now mean to American politicians, from the far religious right to the Obama White House:
Obama again, in remarks after the two-hour meeting, noted that Israel was a “Jewish state” making no reference to the fact that it was also composed of a significant minority of non-Jewish citizens. It would be as if a foreign leader congratulated the US. for being a Christian nation. It sure would make John Hagee happy.
When Obama bragged, in his speech, about the US killing of Osama bin Laden, he was providing a further example of the values that Israel and the US share. Our Navy Seals killed an unarmed man who could have been sedated and delivered to the American judicial system. Was that option even considered in advance?
A trial for Osama bin Laden would have been more consistent with our American values than the practice of assassinating enemies, a standard we learned from our Israeli friends, who have long killed their opponents by assassinations.
In his speech, Obama asserts that “every state has the right to self-defense”.
Israel must be able to defend itself – by itself – against any threat. Provisions must also be robust enough to prevent a resurgence of terrorism; to stop the infiltration of weapons; and to provide effective border security.
Makes sense. No nation wants to be without the ability to defend its own citizens. But, then Obama adds this remarkable exception:
The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, non-militarized state.
This is a convoluted sentence that could be construed to suggest that when Israel withdraws its military forces from the Occupied Palestinian Territory, it will continue to provide “security” for the new sovereign state of Palestine, which will not have its own military forces.
Or, does the sentence say that Palestine will be left with no defenses? Difficult to tell from this sentence in what was reported to be some frantic, last minute speech revisions.
Whatever it was intended to say, the defense exception for Palestine is a stunningly ugly example of Obama’s embrace of Zionist–as in, whatever is best for Israel–values.
Three days before Obama’s speech, President Mahmoud Abbas wrote a guest column for the New York Times. He began with a story:
Sixty-three years ago, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was forced to leave his home in the Galilean city of Safed and flee with his family to Syria. He took up shelter in a canvas tent provided to all the arriving refugees.
Though he and his family wished for decades to return to their home and homeland, they were denied that most basic of human rights. That child’s story, like that of so many other Palestinians, is mine.
President Abbas linked his personal story to the decision of his government to request international recognition as a state along the 1967 borders. That request will also ask that the new state of Palestine be “admitted as a full member of the United Nations.” Abbas added:
Many are questioning what value there is to such recognition while the Israeli occupation continues. Others have accused us of imperiling the peace process. We believe, however, that there is tremendous value for all Palestinians — those living in the homeland, in exile and under occupation. . . .
Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.
Our quest for recognition as a state should not be seen as a stunt; too many of our men and women have been lost for us to engage in such political theater.
We go to the United Nations now to secure the right to live free in the remaining 22 percent of our historic homeland because we have been negotiating with the State of Israel for 20 years without coming any closer to realizing a state of our own.
The Barack Obama who said in his May 19 speech that the US “will oppose an attempt by any group to restrict the rights of others”, is not the Barack Obama who dismisses the Palestinian appeal to the UN General Assembly as merely a “symbolic action” designed “to isolate Israel”.
The Obama speech was both a missed opportunity and a sad failure.
The picture of the Palestinian woman with a flag at the top of this page, and the picture of Mahmoud Abbas, are from Intifada Palestine. [to see the pictures use the link. D]
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3. NYTimes,
May 22, 2011
Obama Challenges Israel to Make Hard Choices Needed for Peace
WASHINGTON — President Obama, speaking on Sunday to the nation’s foremost pro-Israel lobbying group, repeated his call for Palestinian statehood based on Israel’s pre-1967 borders adjusted for land swaps, issuing a challenge to the Israeli government to “make the hard choices that are necessary to protect a Jewish and democratic state for which so many generations have sacrificed.”
In his remarks to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the president did not walk back at all from his speech on Thursday which had infuriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Rather, the president took indirect aim at Mr. Netanyahu, first by repeating what the Israeli prime minister so objected to — the phrase pre-1967 borders — and then by challenging those whom he said had “misrepresented” his position.
“Let me repeat what I said on Thursday,” Mr. Obama said. “I said that the United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”
The president emphasized the “mutually agreed swaps,” then went into an elaboration of what he believes that means. Mr. Netanyahu, in his critique of Mr. Obama’s remarks, had ignored the “mutually agreed swaps” part of the president’s proposal.
“Since my position has been misrepresented several times, let me reaffirm what “1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” means,” Mr. Obama said. “By definition, it means that the parties themselves — Israelis and Palestinians — will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. It is a well known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation. It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years.”
The audience, which had been quiet, cheered, although the cheers were far more muted than the standing ovation they had given at other points of Mr. Obama’s speech, like when he talked about Iran and when he reiterated that his opposition to a looming United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood.
“I know very well that the easy thing to do, particularly for a president preparing for re-election, is to avoid any controversy,” Mr. Obama said. “I don’t need Rahm” — __former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel — “to tell me that.”
But, Mr. Obama added, “as I said to Prime Minister Netanyahu, I believe that the current situation in the Middle East does not allow for procrastination. I also believe that real friends talk openly and honestly with one another.”
It was a quietly delivered speech that lasted 20 minutes, and at the end, the packed hall of at the Washington Convention Center stood up for Mr. Obama and clapped — some even cheered. There were no boos or hisses, as some of the president’s allies had feared.
