Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/mjrosenberg/)
The bottom line is that without changing our political system, it is unlikely that the United States will ever do anything to end the occupation. This is not to say that the occupation won’t end. It very well might but through actions on the ground in the Middle East, by Palestinians themselves, rather than due to anything our government does.
After an unnecessary congressional vote regarding a $225 million appropriation to “replenish” Israel’s Iron Dome system, one thing is clear, the sole reason for the vote was to enable AIPAC and its House and Senate cutouts to demonstrate their support for the war and their unfailing loyalties to the Israeli government.
I had a depressing conversation with a young man (thirties) last night. I had just heard the report that the “kidnapped” soldier was dead and that, as I had expected, Netanyahu had lied about him right from the beginning. His purpose was to use the soldier to get President Obama to authorize more war, and, if you saw Obama’s Friday press conference, it worked like a charm. It’s so obvious. A soldier disappeared after an ambush.
The two-state solution is the answer, as it always has been. The solution–which can only be reached through U.S.-brokered negotiations that will include the Israelis and all Palestinian factions–is two states living side by side in peace. That is no fantasy!
If the polls are correct and the Senate goes Republican this November, the House of Representatives will make impeaching the president its first order of business. And it will pass the Republican House overwhelmingly. On what grounds, one might ask. The reason the President will be impeached is because he is African-American.
Is the Israel-Palestine conflict a testament to to the failure of American democracy? One author believes that as the Gaza war continues on, with little hope of a cease-fire or negotiations, the one nation in the world which can mediate such a deal, the United States, will not do so because it fears retribution from big donors mobilized by the lobby.
The New York Times devoted a few thousand words on Tuesday to telling us what we already know: the peace process is dead and Prime Minister Netanyahu killed it. Of course, it hems and haws, apportioning blame to both sides but, it is clear that the Times knows that the sole reason there was no chance that Kerry’s fool’s errand would succeed is because the Israeli right has no intention of giving up the West Bank. The good news is that this time the Palestinians did not play along with Israel’s (and America’s) game. That game required the Palestinians to sign on to some agreement that Israel would not abide by anyway. Then, following the deal’s collapse, the United States would join Israel in blaming the Palestinians for killing the deal.
President Obama is not, apparently, going to be steamrolled into acting as if Russia is the Soviet Union and Ukraine is Czechoslovakia. (Not that we did anything in 1968.)
And I’m grateful for that. Just imagine if that crazed warmonger John McCain was president or even Mitt Romney (although Romney is not unstable so I don’t suggest they are the same). Instead, we have Obama who seems to understand that the United States is limited in what we can do about Ukraine. And not just logistically either.
As I have written before, I don’t much like the BDS movement for many of the same reasons Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn’t. It demonizes Israel, many of its leading proponents are anti-Semites, and its rage against Israel is entirely selective. I also believe (from reading its material) that the movement exists to eliminate the State of Israel by replacing it by “One State” in which Jews will be a minority. As one who supports the continued existence of a secure Jewish state, I have no choice but to oppose the BDS movement. So I wasn’t offended by anything Netanyahu said about it in his AIPAC speech.
One of the first acts taken by New York’s Mayor Bill De Blasio was to convene a secret meeting with AIPAC to tell the lobby that he will always do whatever it wants. This is, of course, typical behavior for New York politicians but rather surprising coming from a progressive like De Blasio rather than the likes of Ed Koch, Al D’Amato or Chuck Schumer. The only indication that De Blasio knew that what he was doing was wrong was his insistence that the meeting be kept secret. This is also an indication of how toxic AIPAC has become for liberals. (Read the full story of the secret AIPAC meeting here)
Shortly after the meeting, the senior rabbis at Congregation Bnai Jeshurun In Manhattan, Rolando Matalon and Felicia Sol, signed a letter to De Blasio which stated that AIPAC does not speak for them.