Candidates’ Unconditional Support Isn’t Right for Jewish State
Once again, as the presidential campaign season heats up, the leading candidates are going to enormous lengths to demonstrate their devotion to the state of Israel and their steadfast commitment to its “special relationship” with the United States.
Each of the main contenders emphatically favors giving Israel extraordinary material and diplomatic support — continuing the more than $3 billion in foreign aid each year to a country whose per capita income is now 29th in the world. They also believe that this aid should be given unconditionally. None of them criticizes Israel’s conduct, even when its actions threaten U.S. interests, are at odds with American values or even when they are harmful to Israel itself. In short, the candidates believe that the U.S. should support Israel no matter what it does.
Such pandering is hardly surprising, because contenders for high office routinely court special interest groups, and Israel’s staunchest supporters — the Israel lobby, as we have termed it — expect it. Politicians do not want to offend Jewish Americans or “Christian Zionists,” two groups that are deeply engaged in the political process. Candidates fear, with some justification, that even well-intentioned criticism of Israel’s policies may lead these groups to back their opponents instead.
If this happened, trouble would arise on many fronts. Israel’s friends in the media would take aim at the candidate, and campaign contributions from pro-Israel individuals and political action committees would go elsewhere. Moreover, most Jewish voters live in states with many electoral votes, which increases their weight in close elections (remember Florida in 2000?), and a candidate seen as insufficiently committed to Israel would lose some of their support. And no Republican would want to alienate the pro-Israel subset of the Christian evangelical movement, which is a significant part of the GOP base.
Indeed, even suggesting that the U.S. adopt a more impartial stance toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can get a candidate into serious trouble.
These candidates, however, are no friends of Israel. They are facilitating its pursuit of self-destructive policies that no true friend would favor.
The key issue here is the future of Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel conquered in 1967 and still controls. Israel faces a stark choice regarding these territories, which are home to roughly 3.8 million Palestinians. It can opt for a two-state solution, turning over almost all of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians and allowing them to create a viable state on those lands in return for a comprehensive peace agreement designed to allow Israel to live securely within its pre-1967 borders (with some minor modifications). Or it can retain control of the territories it occupies or surrounds, building more settlements and bypass roads and confining the Palestinians to a handful of impoverished enclaves in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel would control the borders around those enclaves and the air above them, thus severely restricting the Palestinians’ freedom of movement.
But if Israel chooses this second option, it will lead to an apartheid state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said as much when he recently proclaimed that if “the two-state solution collapses,” Israel will “face a South African-style struggle.” He went so far as to argue that “as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.” Other Israelis, as well as Jimmy Carter and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have warned that continuing the occupation will turn Israel into an apartheid state. Nevertheless, Israel continues to expand its settlements on the West Bank while the plight of the Palestinians worsens.
Given this grim situation, one would expect the presidential candidates, who claim to care deeply about Israel, to be sounding the alarm and energetically championing a two-state solution. One would expect them to have encouraged President Bush to put significant pressure on both the Israelis and the Palestinians at the recent Annapolis conference and to keep the pressure on during last week’s visit to the region.
Hillary Clinton could be expected to be leading the charge here. After all, she wisely and bravely called for establishing a Palestinian state “that is on the same footing as other states” in 1998, when it was still politically incorrect to use the words “Palestinian state” openly. Moreover, her husband not only championed a two-state solution as president but in December 2000 he laid out the famous “Clinton parameters,” which outline the only realistic deal for ending the conflict.
But what is Hillary Clinton saying now that she is a candidate? She said hardly anything about pushing the peace process forward at Annapolis. More important, both she and GOP aspirant Rudy Giuliani recently proclaimed that Jerusalem must remain undivided, a position that is at odds with the Clinton parameters and virtually guarantees that there will be no Palestinian state.
Sen. Clinton’s behavior is hardly unusual among the candidates for president. Barack Obama, who expressed some sympathy for the Palestinians before he set his sights on the White House, now has little to say about their plight, and he, too, said little about what should have been done at Annapolis to facilitate peace. The other major contenders are ardent in their declarations of support for Israel.
As Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security adviser and now a senior adviser to Obama, noted, “The presidential candidates don’t see any payoff in addressing the Israel-Palestinian issue.” But they do see a significant political payoff in backing Israel to the hilt, even when it is pursuing a policy — colonizing the West Bank — that is morally and strategically bankrupt.
In short, the presidential candidates are no friends of Israel. They are like most U.S. politicians, who reflexively mouth pro-Israel platitudes while continuing to endorse and subsidize policies that are in fact harmful to the Jewish state. A genuine friend would tell Israel that it was acting foolishly and would do whatever possible to get Israel to change its misguided behavior. And that will require challenging the special interest groups whose hard-line views have been obstacles to peace for many years.
As former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argued in 2006, the American presidents who have made the greatest contribution to peace — Carter and George H.W. Bush — succeeded because they were “ready to confront Israel head on and overlook the sensibilities of her friends in America.” If the Democratic and Republican contenders were true friends of Israel, they would be warning it about the danger of becoming an apartheid state, just as Carter did.
Moreover, they would be calling for an end to the occupation and the creation of a viable Palestinian state. And they would be calling for the United States to act as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians so that Washington could pressure both sides to accept a solution based on the Clinton parameters.
But Israel’s false friends cannot say any of these things, or even discuss the issue honestly. Why? Because they fear that speaking the truth would incur the wrath of the hard-liners who dominate the main organizations in the Israel lobby. So Israel will end up controlling Gaza and the West Bank for the foreseeable future, turning itself into an apartheid state in the process. And all of this will be done with the backing of its so-called friends, including the current presidential candidates.
With friends like them, who needs enemies?
John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. Stephen M. Walt is a professor of international affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. They are the authors of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” published last year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
©2008 The Oregonian
It would be nice wouldn’t it to make our own foreign policy in the Middle East without Tel Aviv’s instructions. Not only that it would have been nice to have saved the $80 billion we’ve sent to Israel via our taxes in order to pay down our own debts and this isn’t even counting the neocons war with Iraq or the millions of dollars we have lost in trade by sanctioning most of the Islamic world on Israel’s behalf. When will the American people wake up and realize this has gone too far and hold our politicians accountable for their subserviance to AIPAC?
To the supporters of Hillary, Obama and Edwards: why do you expect me to support your candidates even when they all endorse Israel’s right to do whatever the hell it wants? Tell me why????
It is widely assumed that the US is a pawn of Isreal, occasionally assumed that Isreal is a pawn of the US, but almost never assumed that both are pawns of… well, what exactly? What have you informed outspoken folks got to say about this?
There’s a big chess-like game being played. Try to not stare so hard at the board that you start attributing the moves of one piece to the motives and powers of another piece. Even more important, don’t assume that there are only two colours of pieces on the board.
Humbug, I say.
Israel will some day realize that “unconditional support” is not something the the United States of Everything gives to anyone. What the US does give is “conditional support”. Our way or the highway.
Hoa binh
Palestinians must accept peace, not ‘victory’. Then, and only then will this situation be resolved.
How can we stop the tail from wagging the dog
www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-israel.php
It’s time to choose a new god. This one seems to have fallen in with bad company.
whatfools, there is nothing the matter with your god. Gods don’t kill people, zealots kill people.
Ron Paul says cut foreign aid to Israel… and to Israel’s “enemies” in the middle east.
So go hatin on Ron Paul.
At least he’s the loudest Prez candidate speakin the truth.
I aint here’n none of this from Baraklintwards.
What Massud is really saying is that the Palestinians should gladly accept the generous Israeli offer of genocide.
It’s time for American Jews who do not support the extreme right Israeli policies to step up and SPEAK OUT and it’s time for everybody to listen to what they have to say. Perhaps it’s time too to organize some debates on the sidelines of the presidential campaigns with representatives of groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, B’TSelem, and other similar groups
to face off with the official and, as I understand it, minority Jewish lobby AIPAC!
This is one of the reasons why Obama or Edwards will not get my vote.
But I’d like to make a small correction. Israel IS ALREADY an apartheid state. The conflict in Palestine is not a religious one - it is colonial.
Why doesn’t Mearsheimer call it like it is? Carter did. Ilan Pappe did. Jeff Blankfort has for years. Israel, which now INCLUDES Gaza and the West Bank, IS AN APARTHEID STATE. Stop mincing words and threatening “it will become an apartheid state”.
It already has become the 21st century’s sine qua non of an apartheid state. And before you marginalize this opinion as coming from an anti-Semite — I’m Jewish, was raised a Zionist, and my father was and brother is a cantor. I’m proud to be Jewish; I’m just not proud of Israel today (nor the USA) and, esp., the American Jews who support Israel right or wrong.
Mearsheimer is spot on that most “supporters” of Israel today are not really friends of Israel. Israel’s policies are not making Israel safer. Quite the opposite.
But, hey, appearances are more important than reality. When supporting Israel right-or-wrong is politically (not to mention emotionally) correct and necessary to win national elections, it doesn’t matter what tomorrow brings — leave that for your kids to figure out…or not.
Jimmy Carter and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu are calling Israel an apartheid state. Period. All the while Israel continues to expand its settlements on the West Bank and the plight of the Palestinians worsens. Period.
Time to tell the truth, in spite of one’s emotional affinities.
Eepwakat!
I am certainly no friend of Israel. In fact, I don’t believe that a country founded on stealing the land of it’s rightful owners has a right to exist (makes for some interesting discussions of the U. S., doesn’t it?).
I’m all for cutting ALL of our financial and military aid to Israel. I say leave them to deal with their neighbors and victims totally on their OWN. If the Palestinians want to negotiate away what is rightfully theirs, that’s up to them, but U. S. taxpayers should have no roll in this continuing human rights tragedy. If the Israelis end up being driven into the sea, so be it, they have no right to benefit from the original theft of Palestine.
De-country Israel.
Put the zionists in the state of the candidate who beats the drum loudest for Israel.
See how he or she does with those terrorists tripping the light fantastic.
That will be a small taste of justice.
Massud:
How do you define “peace?” Are we talking about Olmert’s “peace,” GAP (Gulag Archipelago Palestine) or a genuine peace with an economically viable Palestine enjoying full sovereignty?
There will only be peace when we abandon the two state solution. Partition was a bad idea in ‘47 and its a bad idea in ‘08. The Palestinian leadership should disolve the PA and declare themselves to be part of Israel and demand full rights as Israeli citizens. When there is true democracy in the new Israel and after a generation or two, the Zionists will be a small rump minority. This is when the Jews, Muslims and Christians can live together in peace like they did when the land was called Palestine. It was only when the Zionists came and started bombing the markets of Haifa and the hotels of Jerusallem that the region became a tinderbox and neighbor turned against neighbor.
Sadly for Dr Paul and Common dreams,Fox news recognizes his candidacy while Common Dreams does not.
Noam Chomsky talks about the Israeli/Palestinian issue on Charlie Rose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBDyGsIHzDc&feature=related
Israel’s strategic mistakes:
1) Settling the occupied territories.
2) Not settling affairs with the Arabs as soon as possible. The consequences of conflict will escalate.
3) Relying on a declining empire.
4) Helping guide this empire into decline.
The Doctor will cure our Federal Government’s Sickness.
Vote on Jan 21 for Freedom.
Be a patriot give ’till it hurts.
http://www.freeatlast2008.com/
“Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said as much when he recently proclaimed that if ‘the two-state solution collapses,’ Israel will ‘face a South African-style struggle.’ He went so far as to argue that ‘as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.’”
Olmert does not advocate a viable Palestinian state. He advocates a Palestinian open-air concentration camp where he can deport unruly Israeli Arabs who want equality.
Religions have no right to national territory, much less to steal territory. There can be no peace as long as racist supremacists are controlling a “Jewish State” in the Middle East. The only viable solution is a secular democracy for both Israelis and Palestinians, instead of a racist theocracy, with a right of return for Palestinian refugees displaced from their land by Israeli ethnic cleansers.
Interesting. All this because of the jewish interpretation of the Old Testament. What IF, the jews, and the colonialist zionist, are completely wrong? What if their homeland is somewhere else? Is it worth sacrificing US troops or monies for? I think not. And does the world really need a theocracy as a political/national system? Is the US is one diebold machine away from a US theocracy?
sung425 - Perhaps the moon. It’s a fixer upper, but they could make it bloom. And hey. No worrisome neighbors, no rockets, no need for concrete ghetto walls or cluster bombs. I’m sure if God had it to do over again that’s what he’d suggest.
Interesting that a Chicago senior Professor has to publish in the Oregonian to be heard.
But what is this ‘turning itself into an apartheid state in the process’?
Israel was conceived, born and survives as an apartheid state.
Apartheid is intrinsice to its raison d’etre. Read Uri Davis’ Apartheid Israel for starters.
Who said that this was about the jewish state any ways? They are all looking out for number one.
Israel cannot last in its present form as a racial enclave. Israel is guided by westernized Zionistic Jews who are out of place in the heart of the Islamic Arab world. These Jews hate the Arabs, want nothing to do with Arabic culture, and demand a style of living (westernized incomes, swimming pools, etc.)that is out of place where they are. The best analogy I can think of is that the Zionist Jews are like birds who think they can make a new home in a river by driving out all of the fish.
The cult of Ron Paul is maddening, drink the damn koolaid all you wish but do not stand up in thoughtful forums and expect any sympathy for an opinion derived at through careful editing of the politics of Libertarianism.
Ron Paul’s doctrine is one of isolationism, a far cry from the correct path for the worlds leading economic consumer, and a nation whose future is intrinsically linked to the rest of the world. I only wish that all these well intentioned Paulistas would have read further and educated themselves better on exactly how much harm libertarianism would do to the social contract between our government and ourselves, the very kernel of that which makes this nation so special.
What a bunch of ’spin’…
In first-place, Israel has intentions to go ‘Ersatz’, not “share” Anything…but even if some ‘miracle’ occurred and produced a public-demand there for a “Two-State” model, it would/should be for ALL of the West Bank/Gaza AND 1/2 of Israel-’proper’ including 1/2 of Jerusalem.
Secondly, all of the ‘X-ian Zionists’ (and the real-ones, who poisoned their ‘thinking’ with dispensationalist Scofield-RefBible propaganda and later ‘achieved’ a modern-’Israel’) are sadly Misinformed, since nearly all modern-’Jews’ in America/Israel are Ashkenazic-’jews’, as were all PM’s of Israel and all ‘founders’. As such, they are NOT the ‘chosen-people’ at-all, and their ‘Homeland’ is actually Georgia — not 800+miles south, in Palestine.
[Only the Sephardic-Jews (generally hated and discriminated against by the Ashkenazim here, and in Israel) have any ‘legitimate-claim’ on this land, but they resisted the formation of any Jewish-State — since they remain ‘People of the Book’ who prefer to await their Messiah _before_ killing-off their Arab-brothers…]
American X-ians simply lack reading-comprehension/skills — they misunderstand all-History, fail to apply common-sense/allegory/symbolic-interpretation, and never even develop an understanding of ‘their’ Original-Book/OT (much-less their Sequel/spin-off). Even the OT is a hodge-podge rewrite of earlier/also-’failed’ Mythos, and the so-called NT-mythos is a bad rewrite of Horus and/or other-and-earlier and Hermetic ‘inspirational-myths’.
But, they absolutely Believe they have “G-d’s Word” on anything their simpleton ‘Leaders’ single-out, with never any attempts for ‘balancing’ with all the varied and contradictory-Texts/Quotes within their own espoused ‘Literal-Truths’…
Early Zionists were right ‘on target’ with all of their twisted-scheming for a ‘ME Conquest’ — too/damn-bad the American Empire (and its Financiers) found all this GWofT-crap so very-handy to cabbage-onto and Adopt after World-wars and especially since the fall of our other ‘phony-Enemy’ — the ‘Communists’. What a Nightmare-scenario…
Now, we have the neo-phony-Enemies of ‘Revolutionary-Iran and Al-Qaeda’ — both of them just Creatures of our own Realists/CIA/Mossad…
“These Jews hate the Arabs, want nothing to do with Arabic culture, and demand a style of living (westernized incomes, swimming pools, etc.)that is out of place where they are. The best analogy I can think of is that the Zionist Jews are like birds who think they can make a new home in a river by driving out all of the fish.”
ROF, LMAO…
Is that an Original? [Love-it…]
One in-return:
“Political tags-such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth-are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
-Robert A. Heinlein
[He may have added Zionist, neo-Con/Lib to the-above…you Grok?]
Ostrogoth
You focused on the real problem: Israel’s a theocratic state.
Its ironic that Israel’s theocratic government is defined as democratic while Iran’s theocratic government is defined as a dictatorship.
Both hold elections which include candidates representing views within a liberal/conservative spectrum within the religious parameters of their respective theocratic states.
Israel actually possesses nuclear weapons of MD (although its elite will imprison anyone who spills the beans about them) while Iran can almost build one or two nuclear reactors.
However, the US is presently leading a crusade against Iran beacause they could attempt to start a nuclear weapons program in the future.
Why? Because Iran is controlled by an anti-American, Islamic extremist dictatorship which would somehow help terrorists to use nuclear weapons against the US.
Of course, this explanation would have to bring into the discussion of why the US supports Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Isn’t Pakistan is an unstable, Islamically extremist prone,terrorist imbued, dictatorial nation?
Last, on another note, if you love your child (or partner), do you let them do anything they want? Or do you give them guidance or suggest different solutions to long-term problems that waste their energy, resources and limit their self-awareness?
So long as there is any sort of campaign financing all candidates running for office would be scared shitless of special interest groups and lobbies, particularly of Israeli lobby groups including AIPAC if the issue concerns Israel. I have noticed that almost without exception any candidate running for office proudly declares: My first priority is the security of Israel. To these people I say, f**k you. Go run for an office in Israel then.
When you control the representatives of a country, you own that country, lock, stock, and barrel. It’s that simple.
balakirev January 14th, 2008 11:09 am, says:
“However, the US is presently leading a crusade against Iran because they could attempt to start a nuclear weapons program in the future.
Why? Because Iran is controlled by an anti-American, Islamic extremist dictatorship which would somehow help terrorists to use nuclear weapons against the US.”
That sounds so much like Bush propaganda. Please quit listening to MSM.
“Because Iran is controlled by an anti-American, Islamic extremist dictatorship which would somehow help terrorists to use nuclear weapons against the US.
Of course, this explanation would have to bring into the discussion of why the US supports Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Isn’t Pakistan is an unstable, Islamically extremist prone,terrorist imbued, dictatorial nation?”
Patently-wrong, on both-points.
Iran, itself, is our 2nd-greatest (most-Cooperative) Partner in our bs-GWofT, and Pakistan holds 3rd.
Both are in-Thrall and Suzerainty to the US (unlike our #1-’partner’, so-called ‘Israel’) — which of-course is a Theocracy, as-designed/intended by the mostly-Secular Zionists who dreamed-it-up as a ‘profitable-venture’ in the 1800’s…and manipulated most of the intervening-History since. [With the help/funding from the same/crooked ‘Financial-titans’ who ‘won’ our Civil War, killed-Lincoln, funded Scofield and his ‘bible’, bribed&blackmailed Wilson, established the FedReserve (and the UN after a League-mishap), ‘Balfoured’ England, rigged Versailles, triggered-Depressions, elevated-Hitler/holocausts, and profited from most displacements/’changes’ arising out of a Machinated WW-II (just like the Prior-War, and most-since]
But, don’t blame the Zionists OR the Financiers…after all, they ‘learned’ from our BS-’success’ with our-own Natives and ‘Manifest Destiny’…after first-profiting from the Hessians used against-us, and later from ‘revolutionary France/Russia’, Nappy, and a certain-Duke…[it ain’t easy to make Trillions, ya know?]
Dear MeAlsoToo,
Thank you for the compliment of my analogy of Zionists being like birds thinking that they can make a new home for themselves in a river by simply driving all of the fish out. This is not terribly original. It derives from a Jewish witticism - “a bird could fall in love with a fish, but where would they live?”. Generally used to discourage Jewish youth from intermarriage with non-Jews. Ironic, that Zionists can’t see how living amonst people that they hate and steal from, can never be home.
Ok we all agree that the tyrannical regimes of Israel are scoring major own goals regards fighting anti-semitism but a small yet important part of the problem are the corrupt puppets of Fatah, sat comfortably in their homes fitted with gold taps. The Israelis play these pathetic people, akin to taking candy from children, while the ordinary citizens ( viz Gazans ) suffer the daily hardships of the extreme occupation. No politician who can sniff power in the USA and Britain has the guts or will to stand up for justice, as all funding is controlled by the Zionist lobbies AIPAC across the atlantic and Levy, Mendelsohn etc from the Labour Party in the Uk. I still can’t believe that the BBC actually came out and said it’s news reporting was too anti- Israeli, what utter nonsense.
salia
The passages you quoted were only my description of the MSM’s stenographic efforts on behalf of the Bush regime.
Please reread what I was positing and you’ll observe that I in no way accept the blather of the MSM or the Bush adm. relative to Iran or any other neocon-designated foreign enemy.
The biggest mistake of Ron Paul is his neoliberal economic model
A CAPITALIST RIGHT-WINGER CRASHED INTO JOHN EDWARD’S DAUGTHER’S CAR
I think it was a capitalist, right winger who did that. even though it was a lady, it might have been a capitalist, bushist, right winger pro-war, anti-socialist american. That bumping and hitting people into rear ends at stop lights is a tactic that capitalists and fascists in USA use to intimidate people, but pray that a capitalist dont that to me, coz i will physically fight with them real hard
CLG News wrote:
News Update from Citizens for Legitimate Government
14 Jan 2008
http://www.legitgov.org/
http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news
Breaking: Edwards’ daughter hit by alleged drunk driver 14 Jan 2008 (NC) A alleged drunk driver crashed into a car driven by Cate Edwards in Chapel Hill on Friday afternoon. Cate Edwards is the older daughter of presidential candidate John Edwards (D). According to Chapel Hill Police investigators, Edwards was driving a 2007 Ford Sedan when she slowed down at a red light and was rear-ended by a woman driving a 1989 Toyota. Officials with the Edwards Campaign say Cate was not injured in the crash and calls the accident “minor”.
If ever the US of Asininity pulls the plug on Israel, peace and a Palestinian state would emerge before the ink was dry on the last arms deal.
Thomas Hussey;
I support the two state solution; one state for jews the other for arabs. Each fully independent of each other.