I know what former President Bush would say if he had to comment on the results of AIPAC's conference this week. He would turn to Howard Kohr, its long time director, and say "heckuva job, Howie."
AIPAC supposedly exists to promote US-Israel relations or, more precisely, to promote them to the point where Israeli policies are never challenged by the United States. Most important to AIPAC is that the $3 billion aid package sails to Israel unimpeded, no matter what budgets cuts are inflicted here at home and no matter what the current president thinks.
AIPAC wants to put on a nice Washington show of power but without egregious poking of American eyes. For instance, the 7,800 delegates were warned in advance not to boo or hiss Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she discussed achieving peace with the Palestinians -- and they didn't. They allowed their feelings to show only when they stood and applauded her requisite criticisms of Palestinians while giving scattered applause to her calls for Israeli concessions.
But then came the most massive miscalculation in AIPAC's history. Just days earlier, a crisis erupted between the United States and Israel after the Israeli government announced that it would build 1,600 new settler units in the heart of Arab East Jerusalem while Vice President Biden was in Israel.
The Netanyahu government was well aware that building in East Jerusalem is strongly opposed by the United States and that the Israeli government is the only one in the world that recognizes the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem as part of Israel. The rest of the world, including the United States, believes that the final status of Jerusalem -- like that of Hebron, Nablus or any other place won by the Israelis in the 1967 war - can only be resolved in negotiations.
The announcement of the settlement units while Biden was in Jerusalem was a slap in his face, and the Obama administration took it as such. It was not so much that Netanyahu had publicly dissed the Vice President, it was the substance. The United States has made its position clear for years and last year Netanyahu yielded to President Obama's insistence on a settlement freeze (though not in Jerusalem). But his government announced the expansion while Biden was in town, thereby implicating the United States in the decision.
That move led to an unprecedented "condemnation" of Israeli behavior by the United States government (and our European allies).
Shortly thereafter, Netanyahu was en route to the United States to address the AIPAC conference taking place a few blocks from the White House.
Most observers assumed that Netanyahu would deliver a conciliatory address. After all, he was in Washington. He was addressing thousands of American citizens. The last thing anyone expected (although AIPAC probably knew what he was going to say) was that he would publicly challenge the president by saying that "Jerusalem is not a settlement" (no one said it was) and that he would no more freeze settlements in East Jerusalem than in Tel Aviv.
The 7,800 delegates went crazy cheering. Netanyahu had laid down the gauntlet and the AIPAC crowd was saying "we stand with you."
But here's the kicker. Netanyahu wrote his speech before Obama's health care reform victory. He is very close to Eric Cantor and other Republicans and believed (hoped, prayed) that by Monday night, when the speech was to be delivered, Obama would have lost and would be holding a ticket on the one-term express.
Instead, health care reform passed. And Obama supporters (including the 78% of Jews who voted for him) were ecstatic. Suddenly our laid back President seemed like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Republicans were (and still are) flailing and Obama is stronger now than at any other time in his Presidency.
For Netanyahu, this was a disaster. If AIPAC still knew how to do its job, it would have told him to scrap his speech and deliver a conciliatory one.
They didn't and he didn't.
And when Netanyahu came to see the President to explain that he didn't know about the settlement expansion and unrolled a flow chart to show he is not really in charge, Obama blew him off. He told Netanyahu that he was eager to talk to him after he agreed to freeze settlements and ease living conditions for the Palestinians.
Netanyahu returned to Israel humiliated.
Here is what Eitan Haber, the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's chief of staff, wrote in Yediot Achronoth today:
The Americans play no games. The moment Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's entourage was told that there will be no joint statement, that the media won't be allowed into the Oval Office, that there will be no photo-op, and that the meeting will be held at a late hour of night, the PM should have realized - and he did - that this won't be a happy funeral.
The Americans...were not impressed or scared off by the loud applause Netanyahu received at the AIPAC Conference. It may have worked the other way around: The loud cheers may have encouraged White House officials to show the Israeli delegation and its US supporters who's the boss in America.
But now AIPAC has another plan to win the game for Netanyahu.
An AIPAC letter circulated by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman, and Middle East Subcommittee chairman Gary Ackerman along with Republicans Eric Cantor, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Dan Burton sends a message to Netanyahu that they think the US-Israel confrontation is much ado about nothing. (A similar letter is being circulated in the Senate by Sens. Barbara Boxer and Johnny Isakson.)
300 House Members have signed the letter which contains not one word of criticism of Israel -- not one -- while calling on the President to keep differences with the Israeli government quiet and away from public scrutiny.
It quotes AIPAC's mantra (actually uttered by Biden in Israel before he understood the trap that Netanyahu had set for him):
"Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the U.S. and Israel when it comes to security, none. No space."
No space! In agreeing to this arrogant formulation, 300 members of Congress reject the famous warning George Washington gave in his 1796 farewell address, a speech that is read aloud in Congress each year on his birthday:
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
I wonder what President George Washington would think about the AIPAC/Congressional letter. The good news is that the Israeli public -- eager for peace -- is appalled by Netanyahu's behavior. They must be amused, or angered, that their supposed friends here don't understand the damage their prime minister has done. But then, nobody, not even Israelis, can possibly understand the motivations of American Members of Congress in an election year.
The Congressional letter should be torn up. At the very least, no Democrat should sign a letter designed to weaken their President at a moment when he is on the verge of helping Israel and Palestinians achieve peace and security for both peoples.
House signatories of AIPAC letter
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“No army kills children as a strategic policy in conflict. Not the British military, nor the French, nor the US, Italians, Dutch, Australian, Chinese, Russian, Japanese nor even the Germans. Israel is the only country in the world that implements such an odious strategy. The deliberate killing children is anathema to all civilized states. The killing of over 400 children in three weeks is a shocking indictment of the Israeli government. No state can survive if built on the foundation of the oppression of another people and the killing of its children. This is a policy that has no place in Jewish ethics that teaches the enormity of the taking of life - which is always sacred. The only exception is in genuine self-defence to protect one’s own life. Jews the world over look at the images from Gaza of shooting civilians in the head or killing them with cluster bombs and chemicals, with incomprehension and deep sadness that any state and any army could sink to such depths. NOT IN MY NAME AND NOT IN THE NAME OF JEWISH MEN AND WOMEN THE WORLD OVER WHO DISTANCE THEMSELVES ABSOLUTELY FROM THESE ATROCITIES. The only way to peace is by negotiation. More killing and more hatred simply brings more hatred and more killing. There must be a STOP TO ALL ARMS SALES TO THE MIDDLE EAST - PARTICULARLY BY THE US AND THE UK.”
Americans must begin to see what is being committed & supported in their names! The history of Israeli/IDF killings of civilians, especially children is very long and to defend or paper-over that inhumanity/brutality is shameful! Our foreign aid links us to the crimes/abuses committed with our arms/money, makes us complicit, & must be challenged. This is not “anti-Israeli” or “anti-Semitic”; it is pro-justice, pro-peace.
It is not all Jews or Israelis that control the dialogue or Israeli policy, many work for peace, but extremists that use religion to mask racism & brutality for common theft. To “defend” and expand their “state”, Israelis/Jews demean their sense of both justice & honor, & when the US defends that policy we demean our own. It is incumbent on the more powerful party to seek an end to the horror, not intentionally perpetuate it, and it is also incumbent on the US and our representatives to demand an end to the horrors, not be manipulated by a fifth-column to support injustice and abuse.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966014.html
http://www.rense.com/general84/expos.htm
http://www.house.gov/
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
I don't like being spit on...and I don't like selling our soul to the Chinese to finance the people doing it.
I am not surprised that our pols in Congress are stooping low, once again, to foster foreign interests at the expense of the American people. Once again, we are in the midst of a fools' errand, but what is different now is that the names are known of those who are promoting the enterprise, those who are signing on & those who are wise enough NOT to board this same train that has brought us one mess after another in the region for more than 60 yrs. MJ Rosenberg, please keep this information up front & center! Your work is needed now more than ever, despite the vilification you receive from your detractors, who must miss the old days when secrets, political machinations could be kept more easily from public view.
Tiny sample of Israeli contribution to U.S.
1.Herzliya, Israel-based Nano Retina's key project is the Bio-Retina, an implant... designed to replace the function of a retina destroyed by diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration and other diseases.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/two-innovative-views-on-restoring-sight-2010-03-12
Israelis invented:
instant messaging (ICQ),
firewall security software,
Intel wireless computer chips,
cell phone (most R&D done by Motorola in Israel),
voice mail technology,
VOIP technology
"Dr Shulamit Levenberg of the Technion in Haifa has been chosen by "Scientific American" as one of the worlds fifty leading scientists."
"Israeli companies have been working to provide alternative energy in the U.S. and ... built nine solar plants in southern California,
--eliminating the need for nearly two million barrels of oil each year----
Today, an American and Israeli company are working together in Nevada to build the world's largest solar power plant," US Senate record.
Next subject.
It's time for recognition of Palestinian human rights, a negotiated end to occupation, and reconciliation so that Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-arieli-is-a-man-with-a-plan-the-trouble-is-its-a-map-of-israel-1898173.html
and yes you are fanned...please keep posting HERE!
"For 43 years, the Israeli public - schoolchildren, TV viewers, Knesset members and Supreme Court judges - have been living in the darkness of the occupation, which some call liberation. The school system and its textbooks, the army and its maps, the language and the "heritage" have all been mobilized to help keep Israelis blind to the truth. Luckily, the Gentiles clearly see the connection between the menace of Iranian control spreading across the Middle East and the curse of Israeli control over Islamic holy places.
Monday night, when we read the Passover Haggadah, we should note the plague that follows darkness. That may open our eyes. "
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1159849.html
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/31/040531fa_fact2_a?currentPage=1
you are already fanned and now favd
good for them./ And will be punished for it.
And Palestinains celebrated when Hussein fired SCUD missiles at Israel civilians.
Palestinians actively support invasion of Kuwait.
Palestinians were trained and indoctrinated in KGB terrorist camps in Soviet Union.
Palestinains actively support Ayatollahs of Iran.
This is what enemies of U.S. do.
You want to find excuses for it. based on misguided notion that weakness has its virtue--go ahead. But rrealpolitik doesn't' function like this.
Because of this lack of political maturity and appalling political and military choices-- Palestinains have no state
you are already fanned and now favd....thank you
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-gazas-defiant-tunnellers-head-deeper-underground-1894563.html
There is nothing "right" - except as a political branch - about blindly supporting AIPAC, especially when it's for money, honey. Once again, I say we must, must, must close the revolving door between Congress and lobbyists and back again, and again. Let the voting public decide what our policies should be.
Public opinion won't be with giving away billions to Israel every year, nor in favor of Israel's refusal to abide with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, nor on making our Pentagon expenses decisions based on Israel's demand that we supply their missile defense. These PACs distort the public's voices - just as a majority of us favor universal health care, not private insurance corporations, but ended up w/private insurance-only thanks to lobbyist donations.
April 1, 2008.
Whereas Jews have lived mostly as a minority in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf region for more than 2,500 years;
Whereas the Palestinian refugee issue has received considerable attention from countries of the world while the issue of Jewish refugees from the Arab and Muslim worlds has received very little attention;
Whereas approximately 850,000 Jews have been displaced from Arab countries since the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948;
Whereas the United States has demonstrated interest and concern about the mistreatment, violation of rights, forced expulsion, and expropriation of assets of minority populations in general, and in particular, former Jewish refugees displaced from Arab countries as evidenced, inter alia, by--
(1) the Memorandum of Understanding signed by President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan on October 4, 1977, which states that ‘[a] solution of the problem of Arab refugees and Jewish refugees will be discussed in accordance with rules which should be agreed’;
...Israel is full of people, Jewish people, who lived in predominantly Arab countries who came to Israel because they were made refugees in their own land.’;
Whereas the international definition of a refugee clearly applies to Jews who fled the persecution of Arab regime...
Whereas on January 29, 1957, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), determined that Jews fleeing from Arab countries were refugees that fell within the mandate of the UNHCR;
(continued)
Continued:
Whereas the initiative to secure rights and redress for Jews who were forced to flee Arab countries does not conflict with the right of Palestinian refugees to claim redress;
Whereas all countries should be aware of the plight of Jews and other minority groups displaced from countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf;
Whereas an international campaign is proceeding in some 40 countries to record the history and legacy of Jewish refugees from Arab countries;
Whereas a just, comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace cannot be reached without addressing the uprooting of centuries-old Jewish communities in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf; and
Whereas it would be inappropriate and unjust for the United States to recognize rights for Palestinian refugees without recognizing equal rights for Jewish refugees from Arab countries: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That--
(1) for any comprehensive Middle East peace agreement to be credible and enduring, the agreement must address and resolve all outstanding issues relating to the legitimate rights of all refugees, including Jews, Christians, and other populations, displaced from countries in the Middle East...
Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967, calls for a ‘just settlement of the refugee problem’ without distinction between Palestinian and Jewish refugees...
They zero rights NOW to claim enforcement of its provisions now, because they failed in their 60 year war to defeat the Jewish state.
Get used to it.
Deal with it...
Our aid to Israel makes us complicit in the Occupation and settlements, wars against Gaza and Lebanon, and numerous other abuses by the Jewish state.
http://alawda.rso.wisc.edu/aidtoisrael.htm