Obama Squeezed Between Israel and Iran

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual show in
Washington
would hardly be out of place in a Quentin Tarantino
movie; picture a giant hall
crammed with 7,500 very powerful people regimented by a
very powerful lobby -
plus half of the United States Senate and more than a
third of the congress -
basically calling in unison for Palestinian and Iranian
blood.

The AIPAC 2010 show predictably was yet one more "bomb
Iran" special; but it
was also a call to arms against the Barack Obama
administration, as far as the
turbo-charging of the illegal colonization of East
Jerusalem is concerned.

The administration has reacted to the quarrel with a
masterpiece of schizophrenic kabuki (classical Japanese
dance-drama) theater.
Corporate media insisted there was a deep "crisis"
between the unshakeable
allies. Nonsense. One just has to look at the facts.

Only 10 days after scolding Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu for 43
minutes over the phone,
US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton showed up at
AIPAC spinning the usual platitudes. At least she
talked about a "change of
facts on the ground" in Palestine and stressed the
current status quo is
untenable. Netanyahu for his part apparently told
Clinton in private (and later
Obama as well) that Israel
would take "confidence-building measures" in the
West Bank, but
would continue anyway to build settlements like there's no
tomorrow.

When Clinton switched to Iran demonization mode, she
was met with universal
rapture. The Obama administration will "not accept a
nuclear-armed Iran"; is
working on sanctions "that will bite"; and the
leadership in Iran must know
there are "real consequences" for not coming clean with
their nuclear program.
The demonization seemed to turn Iranian Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
into a paradigm of wisdom. Khamenei remarked this week,
"If they are extending
a metal hand inside a velvet glove, we won't accept
it."

Israel rules, Washington follows

AIPAC arm-twisted members of the US Congress to sign a
letter to the White
House calling for the US to bypass the United Nations Security Council and
unilaterally sanction Iran. And AIPAC also urged
lawmakers to pass with no
comments the annual US$3 billion US aid to Israel. This
means the new
made-in-USA F-35 fighter jets Israel buys will be
basically financed by US
taxpayers.

No surprises here. This is a congress that backed
Israel's assault in Gaza in
late 2008 and condemned the Goldstone Report on Israeli
atrocities in that
conflict by a vote of 334 to 36. After all, the
Democratic party depends
heavily on very wealthy Jewish - and Zionist - donors
for a chunk of its
budget.

Just one day after Israel's Interior Minister Eli
Yishai announced the building
of 1,600 exclusively Jewish apartments in East
Jerusalem (part of a planned,
non-negotiable 50,000 which will block it from becoming
the capital of a
Palestinian state and prevent Palestinian residents of
the city from traveling
to the West Bank), publicly humiliated US Vice
President Joe Biden went to Tel
Aviv University
and told his audience he is ... a Zionist.

He added, "Throughout my career, Israel has not only
remained close to my heart
but it has been the center of my work as a United
States Senator and now as
vice president of the United States."

Of course it does not matter that General David "I'm
positioning myself for
2012" Petraeus, chief of US Central Command, told the
US Senate Armed Services
Committee that the Israeli-Arab conflict "foments
anti-American sentiment due
to a perception of US favoritism for Israel". Even
though "perception" may be
the understatement of the millennium, as a potential
Republican presidential
candidate Petraeus knows he will be in deep trouble
with the Republican
hardcore Christians and with the Christian-Zionist
fringe.

When Obama, as a presidential candidate, addressed
AIPAC on June 3, 2008, he
said, "We will also use all elements of American power
to pressure Iran ... I
will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from
obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Everything in my power. Everything and I mean
everything." Obama even pulled a
Netanyahu avant la lettre and declared,
"Jerusalem will remain the
capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

At AIPAC this week, Netanyahu said the Israelis were
already building in
Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and will continue to do so.
Even without referring to
Israel's religious supremacist and colonialist approach
to Jerusalem for these
past few decades, historian and Middle East expert Juan
Cole at his blog
"Informed Comment" demolished Bibi's claim. For
instance, "Adherents of Judaism
did not found Jerusalem. It existed for perhaps 2,700
years before anything we
might recognize as Judaism arose. Jewish rule may have
been no longer than 170
years or so."

Cole points out that Muslims, Egyptians, Romans,
Iranians and Greeks have the
greatest claim on the city.

All in all, it's no wonder Stephen Green, in Taking
Sides: America's Secret
Relations with Militant Israel, a book published in 1984, had already
noted how "since 1953, Israel, and friends of Israel in
America, have
determined the broad outlines of US policy in the
region. It has been left to
American presidents to implement that policy, with
varying degrees of
enthusiasm, and to deal with tactical issues."

Free-for-all Zionism

Former Moldovan bouncer turned Israeli Foreign Minister
Avigdor Lieberman is
basically a spokesman for Zionist settlers and a
million immigrants from the
former Soviet Union. He can tell the German weekly
magazine Der Spiegel that "Iran is
threatening the whole world" and still get away with
it. No wonder multitudes
across the developing world - and not only Muslim lands
- increasingly deplore
Zionism policies of occupation/colonization, targeted
assassinations, Lebensraum
(living space) and degrading Palestinians.

But crisis? What crisis? Phyllis Bennis of the
Institute for Policy Studies
could not have put it better. "Someone seems to have
told the Obama
administration that a series of polite requests equals
pressure. It doesn't.
Real pressure looks like this: 'Please stop
settlements.' Answer: 'No.' 'Then,
you know that [the] $30 billion that [former president
George W] Bush arranged
for you from US tax money, and we agreed to pay - you
can kiss that goodbye.'
That's what pressure looks like."

It won't happen. This "crisis" between Tel Aviv and Washington is a non-event.
On the other hand, no one knows exactly whatever
hardball Obama and Netanyahu
played behind closed
doors for three-and-a-half hours in Washington. Did
Netanyahu "spit into Obama's eye", according to Israeli
Labor Party member
Eitan Cabel? Or was this was just more kabuki
designed to obscure a
not-so-silent drive towards an attack on Iran - where
once again fresh American
blood will be spilled to placate a non-existent
"existential threat" to Israel?