Remember those stories last week about the unified stand on Israeli settlements? Ben Smith says it might be eroding:
But even a key defender of Obama’s Mideast policy, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), is seeking to narrow the administration’s definition of “settlement” to take pressure off Obama. And the unusual criticism by congressional Democrats of the popular president is a sign that it may take more than a transformative presidential election to change the domestic politics of Israel.
Other Democrats, in interviews with POLITICO, raised similar concerns. While few will defend illegal Jewish outposts on land they hope will be part of a Palestinian state, they question putting public pressure on Israel while — so far — paying less public attention to Palestinian terrorism and other Arab states’ hostility to Israel.
***“Part of being a good friend is being honest,” Obama said. “And I think there have been times where we are not as honest as we should be about the fact that the current direction, the current trajectory, in the region is profoundly negative, not only for Israeli interests but also U.S. interests. And that’s part of a new dialogue that I’d like to see encouraged in the region.”
The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC last week got the signatures of 329 members of Congress, including key figures in both parties, on a letter calling on the administration to work “closely and privately” with Israel — in contrast to the current public pressure.
We’ll see how this plays out.
dr. bloor
Because nothing says “honest broker” like “working closely and privately” with one side and not the other.
Dork
Allow me to save you a lot of time. Here’s the ending: nothing at all changes in the slightest. Nothing.
Cat Lady
Rahm needs to make some Congresscritters an offer they can’t refuse.
wilfred
Country first, eh? Oh right, Israel first.
Obama is speaking in Cairo on Thursday, his major speech to the Arab/Muslim world. What better time to show support, right?
Keith
I feel like I’m in some bizarro world because I swear only 6 months ago, I heard LOUD screams from the right that Obama would let foreign interests control US policy and allow international law to trump US law. However, I woke up this morning to find out that US policy is supposed to be geared towards protecting Israel, and Newt Gingrich is saying waterboarding is OK because British courts said so. Weird!
o kanis
Lots will change if Israeli policy becomes a public issue, hence the call for “privacy”.
It’s not as if Israel and its American enablers (politicians, media) are overwhelmingly popular on the issue of evenhandedness; the opposite, in fact. In a public fight, they’ll lose, and the loss will be irrevocable.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“Rahm needs to make some Congresscritters an offer they can’t refuse.”
Well, as Rahm volunteered to work at Israeli Defense Forces bases, and whose Dad was a member of Irgun, I wouldn’t hold my breath on him whipping the Congressfolks into line on this.
Mind you, Rahm might be far-sighted enough to know its in the long-term Israeli interest.
The Other Steve
TPM had a couple posts up today saying that Netanyahu after hearing Obama was against the settlements tried to use back channels to wink-wink find out how he really felt, and found out that Obama actually believed what he had said publicly.
We’ll see where this goes.
Dracula
This thread’s just begging to be Godwin’d
cleek
and how much cash do we send to Israel every year ?
Maus
that sounds so pleasing to the ear.
Mike S
I was talking to a right of center friend of mine at work last night. He was telling me that his E-mail was flooded with Israel stuff yesterday. People were OUTRAGED by what President Obama has been saying.
He was much more like me. The way things have been done for so long isn’t the least bit workable. Bibi is far too hardline, the settlements need to be stopped and some disbanded and our knee-jerk response of always backing Israel must change.
We also both agreed that the Palestinians are in no way blameless for what has been happening.
I only wish there were a few more moderates like him in his party. Mine too when it comes to Israel.
Zifnab
Oh bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The only concern of the US Government since this mess opened up was in how to give Palestinians just enough shaft such that they gave up their sovereignty but not enough that they’d keep blowing themselves up about it.
The idea that America just hasn’t given the Palestinians any consideration is about as laughable as the idea that the government has been paying too much attention to pro-life abortion clinic bombers.
Any attempt to address the Israeli side of the equation is inevitably met with, “ZOMG! BUT WHAT ABOUT TEH PALESTINES WHO ARE JUST AS BAD BUT WAY WAY WORSER!” It’s been like sixth grade for the last fifty years.
I never really understood why some US President didn’t just pull up anchor and tell both countries to go fuck themselves. Historically, with all the lobbying and the failed peace talks and the irrationality on both sides, it seems like the entire affair isn’t worth the political capital it seems to soak up like a god damn sponge.
Fulcanelli
@Zifnab: This.
Elvis Elvisberg
Meh, it’s Politico stirring up crap w/o facts. Of course congressmen are going to say that “Palestinians are worser!” And getting ’em to sign something that says “talk to them in private” really isn’t much of a rebuke at all.
The Free Tibet lobby surely has more up its sleeve, but this article doesn’t prove much.
That One - Cain
@Zifnab:
I agree and it’s not like our support is because we’re all teary eyed about the Israel. The right wingers just think that’s where the end of the world is going to happen and God is going to send Jesus down to kill everyone. If that’s the case why the fuck are they concerned about abortions and what not? If the damn apcopalypse is right on the horizon they should head to a private bunker or something and wank off with Cheney.
God, I hate these religious rightwingers. I can deal wtih the other types since I can at least talk to them, but religious right wingers with their arrogance drives me nuts.
cain
Mike G
I never really understood why some US President didn’t just pull up anchor and tell both countries to go fuck themselves.
Win.
I can never understand why the Israel issue consumes such a huge amount of political energy in this country.
Or why a country with an indisputable history of repeated espionage against the United States is considered such an untouchable third rail.
NonyNony
@Zifnab:
The Holocaust. Ya pretty much can’t tell Israel “Go Fuck Yourself” without being compared to Hitler.
I doubt we’ll see that change in my lifetime, unless the Israelis do something so atrocious that it causes people to start sympathizing with the general Palestinian population and stop seeing the whole population as nothing but terrorists who deserve what they get. But given what the Israeli army has managed to do so far without getting folks in the US to sympathize much with the Palestinians, I’m not hopeful that that will come anytime soon.
anonevent
You lost me at Ben Smith.
Svensker
My own quite liberal Senator Lautenberg gives up all his liberal creds when it comes to Israel. The U.S. should not “telling Israel what to do”, we must do everything we can to protect and support “the only democracy” in the Middle East, blah blah blah.
I agree that nothing will happen there, except things will get worse and worse for the Palestinians, for a long time. The last people who experienced the Holocaust — either directly or indirectly — have got to finally pass from the scene before we can get past the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that has been making policy for the last 50 years. Unfortunately, a lot of people will have to die or live under brutal oppression until that happens.
I think Obama has the will but not the political strength to do this.
Zifnab
@That One – Cain:
That, and Israel buys a lot of our bombs and guns. With the tax money we give them.
@NonyNony:
Because Hitler’s biggest crime against the Jews was in not supporting an independent state in the Middle East. Or something.
Not that I don’t understand. I just can’t believe that any group of people seriously believes that bullshit. Surely, you aren’t losing any Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primaries over insufficiently zealous support of Israel?
I just can’t believe US voters really, really, really care all that much about this as an issue.
linda
uh, that would be this letter:
The Washington Post’s Al Kamen writes today about a discovery he made when opening the computer file version of the letter, in an item titled “Now, That’s Lobbying”:
Curiously, when we opened the attachment, we noticed it was named “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”
Seems as though someone forgot to change the name or something. AIPAC? The American Israel Public Affairs Committee? Is that how this stuff works?
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/15/hoyer-cantor-aipac-letter/
srv
A riddle these Evangelicals. This would all work out a lot quicker if the left came up with a “the apocolypse can’t happen until we abandon them” strategy.
And I’m all for coming up with a better name for settlements. Something like “illegal camps on occupied territory” works for me.
PeakVT
I never really understood why some US President didn’t just pull up anchor and tell both
countriespeoples to go fuck themselves.Fixed for accuracy.
The answer is that a combination of single-issue cranks and the military-industrial complex has been able to exploit our system of legalized bribery (euphemistically called campaign financing) to get the government to enact a policy that isn’t really in the country’s interests. That the general populace is wildly ill-informed on the issue has helped them substantially.
wilfred
If he has the will, the strength will be there. He’s brought things iout of the shadows, hence the dismay of Aipac and its congressional fifth column, who prefer secret agreements Bush made with Sharon – the Israelis are now shouting “Honor Bush!”. Let them defy Obama publicly.
Pay attention to his speech on Thursday. The mere fact he’s making it from Cairo says something.
Brachiator
@Zifnab:
Some messes won’t go away, even if we would like them to. Northern Ireland, Basque nationalism, Greek-Turk rivalry over Cyprus, Kashmir, even Sri Lanka, where the conflict appears to be entering a bloody end-game that almost ensures future enmity. All these conflicts have been continuing longer than any of us have been alive,
And the settlement controversy is a bit of a red herring. There is absolutely nothing that prevents the Palestinians from declaring what they think the boundaries of their independent state will be.
I mentioned in an earlier thread a public radio mock debate between an Israeli and Palestinian representative. (This debate is available as an iTunes podcast for the KPCC program Air Talk, and will soon be available on the KPCC web site archive of programs).
I was struck at how intransigent the Palestinian position was, despite moderate language, since it ultimately insisted on a Palestinian “right of return” and that East Jerusalem be the capital of any independent Palestinian state.
NonyNony
@Zifnab:
Naw. Because cutting off military and domestic support for Israel would be played up as a “death sentence” for the Israelis, given that they’re surrounded by hostile countries and militant groups. Might even be true though the advantages that Israel already has right now by no means guarantee that it is, but that’s how it would be spun. And everyone knows it.
Plus the debate in this country is really one-sided because we have a TON of people across the political spectrum who speak in favor of Israel. Those on the liberal side might want to see Israeli policies change, but they would be as appalled at the idea of just cutting off Israel entirely as those on the right would be. There’s no counter-balancing voice speaking on behalf of the Palestinians in this country, and without a massive influx of Palestinian immigrants, I doubt a group of comparable size and influence would ever arise. So the debate stays one-sided, where conservative proponents of Israel demand that we just help them do whatever they want to do and liberal Israeli supporters try to make the more nuanced argument that we should help them, but not help them make bad decisions. A dumb dynamic, but the one that we’re stuck with. For now, at least.
wilfred
And I’m struck at the use of the word instransigent to describe what has been the cornerstone of Palestinian nationalism for over 40 years. No Palestinian will negotiate that away – in exchange for what? A fucking Bantustan?
One state, or none.
wilfred
Sure there are. Here’s one of the best:
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
Napoleon
@Brachiator:
A year or so ago I was reading a book on language and it was describing how linguist have figured out the relationships between the world’s languages. But of 6000 world languages there was something like 5 of them that as far as they could tell were unrelated to any other language around today, and Basque was one of them. They figure it is the only remaining language of what Europeans spoke when whoever it was swept out of the Russian steppes on horseback speaking some Indo-European language that eventually swept all of Europe thousands of years ago, well all of Europe except the Basque.
Brachiator
@wilfred:
OK. None.
Yep. Basque territory overlaps what is now Spain and France, which have their own long histories and which would make any realistic recognition of Basque nationalism extremely difficult without some serious compromising.
Tony J
Regarding Northern Ireland, that’s a problem that really did start going away once the US made plain that it was serious about ending the conflict. In one stroke, the legs were cut out from beneath the rejectionists’ arguments, and people who really wanted a solution – even former terrorists – were given breathing room to work together crafting a compromise.
Ten years later, there’s one nailed-on constant no serious political group in Northern Ireland can ignore come election time, NO ONE wants to go back to the way things were, and the audience for No Surrender intransigence just isn’t there anymore.
Israel/Palestine is a problem of a much greater magnitude, and it’ll take longer than ten years before the rejectionists stop trying to sabotage it, but it’s got to start in the same place, with the US telling everyone that the old rules no longer apply, and sticking to it.
Phoebe
“But even a key defender of Obama’s Mideast policy, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), is seeking to narrow the administration’s definition of ‘settlement’ to take the pressure off Obama”
He’s from Florida. Please. He’s doing it to take the pressure off himself. If Obama flips on this it’s going to look so bad.
Someday maybe spellcheck will stop freaking out over “Obama”. Also “spellcheck”.
NonyNony
@Tony J:
Where the comparisons to Ireland break down is that Northern Ireland is a secular state where it has become recognized that the Catholic/Protestant division is an artificial one and that to one degree or another, everyone is Irish in the end.
In Israel, the obvious “solution” to the problem – the one where everyone acknowledges that the idea of a two-state solution is now dead in the water, all of what is now “Palestine” and “Israel” are merged together into one nation, and Palestinians are given full voting rights – is a non-starter because it would end the idea of Israel as a Zionist project and make it a modern state (instead of a 20th century attempt to fulfill a 19th century idea that every ethnicity needs a “homeland” to call their own).
That is, of course, where Israel’s idiotic settlement policy will inevitably lead to of course – a point where there isn’t enough land for the Palestinians to actually have a separate state. Israel will fall into a true apartheid state for a while, until the world treats them like they treated South Africa. And then the Zionist project will collapse like a house of cards. The idiots pushing the settlements don’t even seem to realize that this is the inevitable outcome (probably because they really do think the world will just stand by and let them ethnically cleanse the Palestinians off their land and into Egypt, Jordan and Syria – idiots). The liberals in Israel actually see that this is the inevitable outcome of the settlement idiocy, but they get shouted down by shortsighted fearmongers on the right.
But the analogy to Northern Ireland is a good start, it just falls down when you reach the point where you’re dealing with a country that demands that the country be an “ethnic homeland” for a particular ethnicity, instead of a more modern idea of what a nation-state should be in the 21st century.
Svensker
@NonyNony:
Unfortunately, I think that point’s already been reached. Israel has backed itself into a corner, though not many see that yet. The choices they have given themselves — short of taking back land from the settlers, which will be very difficult — are to be an apartheid state, or to commit ethnic cleansing and/or genocide. Not very good options for the Middle East’s “only democracy.”
Mnemosyne
@Zifnab:
My grandmother genuinely and seriously believed that the Irish Republican Army were patriots fighting for a free Ireland, even through the terror of the 1980s. National elections may not have been won or lost over the IRA, but local ones (in, say, Boston) certainly were. So it’s not really without precedent.
Comrade Darkness
@cleek: If you decide to add it up, be certain to include loan guarantees that don’t get paid back and in-kind arms from our military industrial complex. I haven’t seen all that added up lately, I’ll confess, but 30 billion was the round number in equivalent cash last time I hunted it down. Another potential measure is to look at what we send Egypt, since they are the counterbalance.
which have their own long histories and which would make any realistic recognition of Basque nationalism extremely difficult without some serious compromising.
One of the interesting effects of a strong EU, is this sort of thing gets easier. It gets less like divvying up countries and more like divvying up california, with a bit of oregon thrown in the mix. Regionalization is SO strong even within countries, or especially within countries like France and Spain. I don’t think this is so far fetched anymore.
I wish we’d had the foresight to buy Kurdish territories off Turkey and make a viable country there too. Get some peace for real out of these deals.
Anne Laurie
Israel is the American xenophobe’s “Black Best Friend”, the country that gets brought up every time it’s suggested that Americans act like we’re an empire viewing the rest of the globe as either serfs or Disneyworld-lite. Even the reddest White American Heartland(tm) bigot knows a Jew or two, or at least remembers a couple Seinfeld quotes. But the Palestinians, well — to use the timehonored Jewish mantra, with friends like Wilfred, who needs enemies?
Congenitally hopeful people on both ends of the American political spectrum (i.e., center-right through neocon-right to Stormfront sympathizers) thought that maybe having an actual “Black Best Friend” in the Oval Office would provide cover for changing the existing dynamic. I’m afraid this is yet another example of Americans confusing symbols with reality, because the reality is too depressing to look at without blinkers.
Brachiator
@NonyNony:
Hmmm. Officially, and one public road signs, the name of one Northern Ireland city is Londonderry. But refer to it by this name in the Catholic areas of the city, and you will invite an arse-kicking. And as Wiki notes, “In the Republic of Ireland, the city and county are almost always referred to as Derry, on maps, in the media and in conversation.”
The Catholic/Protestant division has quieted down, but it is still simmering below the surface, as is the notion of one Ireland, even though it is doubtful that the country was ever a unified nation anytime in the history of the universe.
When I read stuff like this, I wonder why there isn’t an equal insistence to dismantle Pakistan and Bangladesh and to have these nations re-absorbed into India. This would solve a lot of problems, including those involving Kashmir.
Mark
@NonyNony @Svensker etc.
What’s all this nonsense about “if such and such doesn’t happen, the West Bank will eventually become an apartheid state”?
What has to happen? The West Bank is a de facto apartheid state now. It has been for 42 years. Don’t you understand – the current situation is Israel’s desired end state. They’ve been stalling for time for decades. Any further delay suits them just fine.
Steve S.
Because Israel is America’s Imperial outpost in the region. I frequently read this “pox on both their houses” refrain and it doesn’t make any sense to me. Do you really think that America’s primary interest is in seeing Jews and Muslims dance around the maypole together? Israel is hyperarmed and has 200+ nuclear warheads at the ready just in case one of the Islamic countries in the region gets a crazy idea about going in a direction the U.S. doesn’t like. Note that one country, Iran, HAS told the U.S. to go fuck itself, and as a consequence now faces daily existential threat from the U.S.-Israel axis, threats that are continual and far more egregious than anything Ahmadinejad is alleged to have said.
In the absence of better information always go with the parsimonious explanation. In this case, understand the U.S. investment in Israel as nothing more than naked self-interest.
wilfred
@Anne Laurie:
What the fuck are you even talking about? I’ve been involved in the Palestinian cause for almost 25 years, that cause stands on its merits, not its spokesmen. Tell me, will you withdraw your support of Israel because its people elected a racist like Lieberman?
I’ll tell you what. The recent murders of over 500 Palestinian women and children brought what from you, exactly? Not a fucking word. See – that’s the pro-choice crowd when confronted with real misery.
People who care about Palestine get involved. So take your womb concerns and shove them up your ass. If you’re a spokeperson for pro-choice it’s got to be slimy.
wilfred
Funny, that’s exactly what the South African apartheidists used to say to the ANC. But then Israel was on their side in those days, wasn’t it?
John
When I read stuff like this, I wonder why there isn’t an equal insistence to dismantle Pakistan and Bangladesh and to have these nations re-absorbed into India. This would solve a lot of problems, including those involving Kashmir.
The Subcontinent is much larger than the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Bangladesh alone is way way larger in area than Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza put together. I think it’s clear to many at this point that Partition was an awful idea and that all of British India ought to have become independent as a single country in 1947, but that doesn’t mean you can go back now and make it so. Pakistan has nukes. How on earth would you ever persuade them to become part of India?
itsbenj
Obama should stick to his guns. Yes, the Congress (who nearly everyone hates) is bought and paid for on this issue and will never act reasonably or in a way that represents people’s actual views. Israel has nowhere to turn but the US, Obama (who has very high approval numbers compared to the hapless fools in Congress) knows there is little actual public support for our unconditional support of Israel. They need us, we don’t need them, that has been the reality this whole time, but the US kept acting like it wasn’t for reasons beyond most people’s comprehension. Glad he’s ending this whole paradigm. It has been entirely stupid this whole time.