Another socialist blog

Barack Obama, now the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, lost no time assuring the Israel lobby that it has his unquestioning support. Pandering to the supporters of Israel is nothing new in American politics, of course, but for a guy who claims to be all about change, Obama is looking an awful lot like reheated Bush.

Like George Bush, he continues to beat the drum of the supposed Iranian threat. Like George Bush, he is willing to threaten military action to stop Iran from exercising its sovereignty by building nuclear weapons. (Of course they shouldn’t build nukes, but they don’t have less right to do so than Israel and the U.S., both of which have recently started wars in the Middle East.) Like George Bush, he supports full funding of military assistance to Israel. Like George Bush, he supports enforcement of U.N. resolutions against Israel’s enemies, while ignoring U.N. resolutions against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Like George Bush, Obama believes in one-sided preconditions for negotiations with Hamas, e.g., Hamas must renounce violence while Israel does not. Obama even says Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel, going beyond even Republican policy.

With Obama in the White House we can forget about a one-state solution in which Palestinians can exercise their right to return to their homes in Israel. And we can forget about U.S. helping to dismantle the Berlin Wall that Israel is building deep inside Palestinian territory. Justice for the victims of Israeli war crimes? Forget about it. An end of the occupation? Oh please, we’ll be paying to maintain it.

Meet the new boss.

http://debs.pinko.net/pipermail/socialistsunmoderated/2004-March/000984.html

(anyone who wants to reproduce or circulate this is free to do so . . . David McReynolds)

Israel’s action in assassinating Sheik Ahmed Yassin early Monday is one more nail in the coffin of any possible peace process, and, as time and events may show, a nail in the coffin of Israel itself..

Israeli spokespersons have pointed out the involvement of Sheik Yassin in a range of bloody suicide bombings, which claimed so many Israeli lives, most of them civilian. The fact that the Sheik was a quadriplegic and in no position to personally throw a bomb, hardly exempted him from moral responsibility for Hamas, of which he was the spiritual head.

However Israeli spokespersons - and the Western media - have not noted that Hamas was supported in its early days by Israel in hopes of undercutting Arafat and the PLO. Nor have these spokespersons explained why, if they had the power to engage in an “extra-judicial murder”, they could not have arrested the Sheik and tried him in a court of law.

I have said for some time that Israeli actions have been, almost consistently, acts of folly, giving Israel short term benefits and leaving them with a long term disadvantage. (This goes back a very long way, to the Israeli support for the French side in the Algerian war, and the Israeli/French/British action in invading Egypt when Nasser took over the Suez Canal. . . which has resulted in the Arab world seeing Israel as a colonial power, and seeing it as a direct threat to national sovereignty of surrounding Arab states).

In the short run Israel has strained US/Israeli relations, which is fine by me, but not what Israel desires. And in the short run there will be some flurry of random attacks which are not likely to do much damage to Israel. But, in part because Israel is, relatively, militarily secure, one must expect that the irrational furies unleashed by Israel will have a fall out in Western Europe and elsewhere, where Palestinians and their supporters will seek vengeance on innocent Jews far from Israel. This is not to the benefit of Jews anywhere, but it will increase the degree of anti-Semitism, which is flowing not from the historic roots of Christian anti-Semitism, but from the much more recent Muslim anti-Semitism. (Let me anticipate my critics - yes, after the creation of Israel there was a wave of expulsions of Jews from Arab states - but prior to that, for many centuries, the Muslim countries had a better record of providing a safe haven for Jews than Western Europe).

Internally, within Israel, Sharon’s action may be of some immediate political benefit to a Prime Minister facing corruption charges, but surely wiser heads within Israel must realize that they have removed one of the few leaders among the Palstinians who could have made a cease fire work. Apologiists for Israel often ask, sometimes sounding sincere, “we would love to negotiate - but with whom can we negotiate?” Leaving aside the fact that present Isreali leaders have no interest whatever in negotiations, the bitter reality is they are eliminating those who would have had credibility if they had been any negotiations.

Israel depends for its survival on something more important than its “invinceable” military machine - it depends on some respect for law in - that is, some sense that it was created by valid legal processes. If it seems to be an illegal state, world support for its survival will sharply diminish. Any nation as tiny as Israel needs friends - and friends that can offer more than the tainted friendship of the United States, which has little control over Muslim feelings and actions.

Yet Israeli actions - ranging from the massacre at Jenin to the illegal wall being constructed to the present extraordinary extra-legal murder of the religious and political leader of Hamas - undermine not only public sympathy for Israel, but also undermine the sense that the State of Israel is legitimate. (Israel’s defenders argue that Jenin wasn’t a massacre and I can only wonder why the bulldozing of a part of Jenin, and the killing of dozens of civilians, doesn’t count as a massacre, but if half that number are killed by a suicide bomber in Israel it is a massacre?)

Israel, and its defenders in the US, will use any rise in Anti-Semitism to defend any actions Israel takes and to condemn any critical discussion of Israel as anti-Semitic. (I find myself in the odd position of being considered an anti-Semite because I’m sharply critical of Israel, and a Zionist apologist because I’m not critical enough.) The fact is that Israel today and its actions, are much more directly responsible for a rise in deep hostility to Israel than any efforts by old-fashioned anti-Semites. And those actions that offend a community of world opinion are the shooting of children, the murder of militants, the building of walls on Palestinian territory, and the determined effort by Israel to bypass any real discussion toward a peaceful settlement.

The logic offered for the criminal act today is that Israel wants to withdraw from Gaza, and the murder of the Sheik and the continued heavy-handed military “intrusions” and killings in Gaza are a way of showing that when, suddenly, one early day in summer, all the Israeli tanks and troops unilaterally withdraw, it will be seen as a victory. I don’t know what psychological world Sharon lives in, but it isn’t, I believe, a real world. No matter when and how Israel leaves Gaza, the murder of a religious leader beloved by the Palestinians (and hated by Israelis) will echo through the years to come.

For us on the “ground” in the US, we need to do three things.

1. Never to forget there are good and decent people in Israel who work and live for peace, who have risked a great deal for peace, and that this is also true of Jews in the United States, many of whom are deeply committed to peace. It is not Jews that pose a problem - it is Israel.

2. At the political level raise the demand for an end of all US military and economic support for Israel. Bring this issue into the political forum everywhere.

3. Change the dialogue so that when we discuss states that have weapons of mass destruction, we include Israel, which has a substantial stockpile of nuclear weapons, and insist that any plans for international inspection must include Israel.

David Mcreynolds

An American peace activist has been killed by an Israeli bulldozer driver who was demolishing a Palestinian home. Contrary to the official Israeli story and reports in several news media, Corrie did not run in front of the bulldozer. In fact, photos taken at the scene demonstrate that she was clearly visible, wearing a bright orange jacket, and speaking to the driver through a megaphone at the time. She was run over twice.

Corrie was killed trying to stop a war crime, one more reason that the U.S. should support creation of an International Criminal Court.

Update: The Israeli army has prevented an ambulance carrying her body from leaving the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli government, which provides gas masks free to its own citizens, has been caught selling gas masks to foreign workers. Not only did the foreign workers pay more, they got less: the kits contained drugs that were past their expiration date.

NPR reported Friday (audio here, transcript here) that Palestinian civilians are being used as human shields by the Israeli army. Wednesday a 19-year-old named Nidal Duralma died of a gunshot wound to the head while acting under orders from Israeli soldiers. This has been army policy for “quite a long time,” according to NPR.

There have also been reports that Palestinians have been used to detect booby-traps in houses.

Even the Israeli Supreme Court has outlawed these practices, but the army has continued anyway. At least one Israeli Cabinet minister says there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Lest you think that events in the occupied territories are taking place against a backdrop of good-faith efforts by the United States to bring a just peace, here’s a link to House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey’s position on the subject. He openly favors removal of the Palestinians from their land, an activity that is called “ethnic cleansing” when Serbs do it.

The latest atrocity of the Israeli government is a missile attack in which one Hamas activist was assassinated, 15 civilians were killed including eight children as young as two months, and 154 civilians were wounded.

Ordinarily sensible people use the word terrorist to describe someone who would even threaten to fire a missile at an apartment building in a densely populated residential neighborhood, let alone someone evil enough to actually commit the act. If the target were American, the retaliatory strike would already be underway. But the target is not American, and the killers are U.S. allies, flying a U.S.-supplied warplane, so the word terrorist is to be reserved for those on the ground.

The Israeli Defense Ministry actually claims to be surprised by the civilian casualties. “According to the information we had, no civilians were expected to be in his vicinity,” the ministry said. This lie is shocking even by the low standards of Israeli government credibility.

Even the U.S. can’t stomach it, which is a bit of a shame since we paid for it, and in every way encouraged Israel to wage war against the Palestinians.

The Bush administration will support a Palestinian state, it seems, conditioned on the ouster of Yassir Arafat. Never mind that Arafat is the democratically elected leader of the Palestinian people, that independent observers have determined the election to be free and fair, and that the Bush administration has publicly admitted Arafat’s legitimacy in the recent past.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in an interview with CNN, said “Chairman Arafat is head of the Palestinian Authority, and he is recognized — whether you approve of it or not — as the leader of the Palestinian people.” On April 9, 2002, Powell said “I have said this repeatedly: it is up to the Palestinian people to decide who their leader will be.” That tune has changed. Powell told NPR today that the Palestinians don’t have “the right kind of democracy.”

Indeed. So the Bush administration supports democracy in Palestine, but only if that democracy produces the concessions demanded by the United States.

It’s especially clawing that Bush would call for “multi-party” elections in Palestine, considering the opposition of Republicans and Democrats to multi-party elections here at home.

I’ve been hesitant to write about Israel’s war against the Palestinians, not because I lack an opinion but because I doubt I can do justice to the subject.

What Israel is doing to the Palestinians is nothing less than a war crime. By that I mean that Israel is in stark and flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits collective punishment and reprisals against protected persons or property. It also prohibits Occupying Power from moving settlers into the occupied territory, deporting civilians out of the occupied territory, and destroying property except where absolutely necessary in a military operation. Destruction of Palestinian homes and fields in reprisal for attacks on Israel, which is a standard Israeli tactic, is not just mean-spirited, it’s an actual de jure war crime. So are the settlements. So are the confiscation of land and water resources. Prolonged curfews and sealing-off of various areas by the Israeli military, which are so destructive to the Palestinian economy, are war crimes, not just short-sighted policy.

Using the word “terrorism” to describe Israeli policy is by no means out of line with Israel’s history. Just a few examples come to my own mind right away. These aren’t necessarily the most important ones, and they aren’t in order of importance.

• In 1994 a settler entered a mosque in Hebron and massacred at least 30 people during prayers. Israeli soldiers on guard outside the mosque did not challenge the perpetrator, a man who had publicly threatened violence against Arabs, to explain why he was carrying a rifle into a mosque.
• Ariel Sharon himself is personally responsible for the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982, in which an estimated 2,800 people died or disappeared.
• In 1973 Israeli fighter planes shot down Libyan Airlines Flight 114, a regularly scheduled passenger flight, killing 113 people.
• Menachim Begin, who became Israel’s Prime Minister, was himself a terrorist, having personally planted the bomb that blew up the King David Hotel, killing 91 people, during the British occupation of Palestine. (What’s amazing to me is how much this picture of the King David Hotel looks like this picture of the Oklahoma City bombing.)

The desperate terrorist response of Palestinians to the occupation does nothing to make Israel less culpable. This isn’t a symmetrical situation, no matter how much our news media refer to “the cycle of violence” involving “both sides.” One side is in military occupation of foreign territory, one is occupied. One side has helicopters and tanks and planes, one side has none. One side enjoys an alliance with the world superpower, one does not. Israel, despite all the PR to the contrary, is not beseiged and is not the victim.

Nor can the United States claim to be an honest broker of peace in the Middle East. The U.S. bankrolls Israel to the tune of $5.2 billion, and there’s no end in sight. The Bush administration talks a lot about getting rid of the “terrorist infrastructure.” We could get rid of some serious terrorist infrastructure in our own budget.