What will Hillary Clinton say when she meets her Israeli counterpart, the new Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman? Probably nothing at all. Considering the welcome she and Bill Clinton gave to Lieberman when he made a presentation at the right wing Saban Institute in 2006, it is likely that we will see more smiles and perhaps even some head bowing.
But for those of us who have not met Lieberman’s brain, Chris Hedges, writing for TruthDig, put it this way: Israel has degenerated. Lieberman, representing Israeli racism, “is the new face of the Jewish state.”
It was unthinkable, when I was based as a correspondent in Jerusalem two decades ago, that an Israeli politician who openly advocated ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from Israeli-controlled territory, as well as forcing Arabs in Israel to take loyalty oaths or be forcibly relocated to the West Bank, could sit on the Cabinet. The racist tirades of Jewish proto-fascists like Meir Kahane stood outside the law, were vigorously condemned by most Israelis and were prosecuted accordingly. Kahane’s repugnant Kach Party, labeled by the United States, Canada and the European Union as a terrorist organization, was outlawed by the Israeli government in 1988 for inciting racism.
Israel has changed. And the racist virus spread by Kahane, whose thugs were charged with the murders and beatings of dozens of unarmed Palestinians and whose members held rallies in Jerusalem where they chanted “Death to Arabs!” has returned to Israel in the figure of Israel’s powerful new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman. Lieberman openly calls for an araberrein Israel–an Israel free of Arabs.
There has been a steady decline from the days of the socialist Labor Party, which founded Israel in 1948 and held within its ranks many leaders, such as Yitzhak Rabin, who were serious about peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. The moral squalor of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Lieberman reflects the country’s degeneration. Labor, like Israel, is a shell of its old self. Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party, with 15 seats in the Knesset, is likely to bring down the Netanyahu government the moment his power base is robust enough to move him into the prime minister’s office. He is the new face of the Jewish state.
(snip)
Lieberman, as did his mentor Kahane, calls for the eradication of Palestinians from Israel and the territories it occupies. During the massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza in December and January he said that Israel should fight Hamas the way the United States fought the Japanese in World War II. He noted that occupation of Japan was unnecessary to achieve victory, alluding to the dropping of atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. When he assumed his position as foreign minister he announced that the 2007 Annapolis peace agreement was dead. He said in 2004 that 90 percent of Israel’s Palestinian citizens “have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost.” This statement was especially galling since Lieberman, unlike Palestinians who can trace back their ancestry for generations in the area, is a relative newcomer; he immigrated to Israel in 1978 from Moldova and retains a heavy Russian accent.
The pending confrontation with Obama’s America seems inevitable. If permitted to do so, America’s ally, Israel, on its present path, will only take us into yet another abyss: a protector of open racism and Apartheid.
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(Haaretz) – Obama seems to have completely adopted the report by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, compiled under the Bush administration, according to which Iran would be included in the region’s diplomatic developments.
Such involvement was also proposed to Iran in the incentive package the UN Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany offered last summer. Iran is increasingly being perceived not only as the ultimate threat, but also as a “land of diplomatic opportunities.” Iran is seen as a country that – more than Saudi Arabia and Egypt – can influence Hamas, certainly Hezbollah, and also Syria in negotiations with Israel, and as a country that can stabilize Iraq and contribute to the international effort in Afghanistan.
Unlike countries such as North Korea, or even nuclear Pakistan, U.S. policy toward Iran is based on more than preventing it from acquiring nuclear weapons. The United States wants Iran by its side on volatile battlegrounds, not against it. Washington’s willingness to talk with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran, and not wait for the results of the June elections, suggests a new, realistic and refreshing approach.
Israel will have to get used to this situation. Netanyahu’s bureau may continue to issue whatever statements it likes, pleased by plans to attack, and may later believe it is dictating the dialogue. But on the dance floor, the really important tango is going on, and it would be best if Netanyahu’s bureau takes its place among the spectators.
Acceptance of a two-state solution is a prequisite for peace talks
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I learned to detest Barak for his savage devastation of Gaza and the killings that went along with it. But he may be the person to approach about a two state settlement. In 2005 on the Charlie Rose Show, he stated that Israel must set its borders and withdraw tens of thousands of settlers behind it.
It’s about time. If there is any state in the middle east we want on our side, it is Iran. They are the only credible counterweight against, well, the entire middle east, to say nothing of the inevitable renaissance of Russian and Chinese imperial ambitions. From a cold-bloodedly pragmatic point of view, the US and Iran are natural allies. With the exception of perhaps Egypt, maintaining good relations with the Arab states yields no greater reward than simply avoiding poor relations; an alliance with Iran would carry with it considerable benefits.
Our alliance with Israel, of course, is only a liability, bereft of any benefits at all.
‘…the US and Iran are natural allies.’
I have never read this simple, convincing, eminently sensible thought anywhere before. But the US needs first to give Iran its freedom. And there is the kink in the cable. I’ll believe change when I see it: Mrs. Clinton in Tehran wearing a scarf. Discouraging, yes. Can someone tell me what was historically incorrect about President Ahmedinajad’s summation of the establishment of Israel in 1948?
I only heard the first part, but I can agree that nothing much was not factual.
The problem with Ahmedinajad’s speech was Ahmedinajad and his presence succeeded in total nullifying his statements, at least the initial ones I heard, and apparently, a discussion of Israel’s racism during the conference.
This was so totally predictable that one wonders if the UN did not intend for what subsequently happened: the walk out and then the exclusion of Palestinian rights from the remainder of the conference.
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True, Iran wants regime change in Israel and wipe Zionist regime off the ME map. With Lieberman as FM in Netanyahu’s cabinet of opportunity, seems like Iran could get other ME nations on it’s side: Lieberman not welcome in Egypt.
(Haaretz) – Senior U.S. officials in Washington and New York are leaning in favor of participating in the “Durban 2” UN-sponsored anti-racism conference scheduled to take place on April 20 in Geneva.
Leading figures in the organized American Jewish community have been lobbying Western ambassadors and European diplomats in the UN to dissuade their governments from participating in the Geneva summit.
Dozens of human rights groups and activists in the United States have petitioned President Barack Obama to rethink his decision to boycott the conference, expected by many countries to be used as a forum for criticizing Israel.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Sensing that the case has the potential to further cement Spain’s image as one of the most anti-Israel countries in Europe, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos said his government would consider a proposal to amend the controversial war crimes law that now allows the court to investigate the Israelis. But he was immediately contradicted by Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, who stated defiantly that “Spain is a country ruled by law and the justice system [here] enjoys absolute independence. This was made clear to Israel and we are sure they understand this.”
Jerusalem Post: ‘Spain won’t annul judge’s decision’
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Not that it matters much except in the eyes of the world. That not necessarily trivial, however. Bad points add up.
The International Court at the Hague had Ariel Sharon indicted for war crimes for many years relating to his Lebanon invasion, but he managed to escape their jurisdiction by restricting his travel to Israel and the United States. The United States should be proud to have harbored a war criminal of Sharon’s caliber, while getting ready to export a US citizen who was a former campguard at Auchwitz.
No Shergald: Israel has not degenerated. Israel has been acting the way Avigdor Lieberman talks from the very beginning.
There is a myth among nice, left-wing Zionists that Israel somehow “lost its way” after 1967 and changed for the worse. Not so. I am reading Jonathan Cook’s latest book, Disappearing Palestine, and being reminded once again of Israel’s beginnings, and the terrible abuses in its early years of the Palestinians who escaped being ethnically cleansed and ultimately became citizens – sort of. Strongly recommend this book.
By the way, I am writing this while flying to New York on my way to Damascus – technology is a wonderful thing! Now if only they would invite batteries that last forever!
Yes this is the essential Lebenslüge of Zionists of the Uri Avnery variety.
This recent piece on a former army psychologist in Haaretz draws a fascinating portrait of a classic left-Zionist, his sentimental lies about 1948 (“I distinctly remember my father going to the neighboring Arab villages to persuade them not to flee. Dad believed that the land was theirs and that the Jews must not harm them. But the Arabs were terribly afraid and in the end they left. He was deeply frustrated by the fact that he was unable to persuade them.“) and his peculiar Ashkenazic racism (“Ehud [Barak] was very bright and talented (…) but because he was small and dark, he didn’t fit in and developed feelings of inferiority.“).
(Besides, I am terribly jealous: you are about to be fed Fatteh.)
Yep! That’s the happy myth! We really REALLY wanted “the Arabs” to stay, but they were just too scared by all the rumours of massacres and stuff to stick around, and once they were gone – well, what COULD be do but take their land, their houses (when we didn’t destroy them, of course), their furniture, their clothes, their dishes, their glassware, their jewelry, their family heirlooms, their pots and pans – everything, that is, that they did not take with them, and some stuff they tried to take with them – and use it ourselves.
And all that dirt cheap labour lost, too – what a shame!
One of my favourites is how they’ll tell you with a straight face how the mayor of Haifa begged and begged “the Arabs” to stay, and it was really all the fault of the Arab leaders that they left. The people who tell you that don’t seem to have any idea what the Irgun was doing in Haifa at that same time that tended to be somewhat more persuasive than the words of the mayor.
PS Right now I am very much not enjoying a 6 hour layover in Dubai, where I paid $8 for a Starbucks capuccino, and now have two hours to go before the final leg of my journey. Oh – and my laptop battery is nearly finished, and none of the numerous charging stations they have set up here has juice.
I CAN endorse Emirates airline, however. Excellent in-flight service, including electrical plugs available in each row, and pretty comfortable seats with good space between rows, and it doesn’t hurt that the flight was not full. No internet though.
Hard to figure Avnery out. Umkahlil calls him a “soft” Zionist but a Zionist nonetheless for his views, especially as they apply to the Palestinian refugees. Yet he has worked for decades to obtain justice and rights for Palestinians and pleads that Israel engage the Palestinians in peaceful talks, including Arafat earlier and Hamas recently.
But Jeff Halper and recently Jonathan Cook have been correct: the nonviolent peace movement has been totally ineffective. It rarely gets international press, while local press is ineffectual. His organization, Gush Shalom, only has about two thousand members.
You cannot fight the enemy as the enemy without becoming the enemy eh?
That said this is not a recent development. It is merely the point at which it can no longer be hidden.
lieberman can rest easy now that it’s official, there will be no american presence at the UN conference on racism next week:
the canadians backed out as well, and the EU may do.
laying down the law would appear to be yet another chimera.
meet the new boss, same as the old boss…can’t be seen offending our ally, eh.
On the occasion of this second Durbin conference, one must consider the fact that the theme, Zionism is racism, is even more strongly supported today, given recent political events in Israel, than in 2001. It would be too embarrassing for the US to be in attendance, in effect defending Israel while the facts support racism.
To be fair, it would be more than embarrassing for the United States. To equate Zionism with racism is, in effect, to deny Israel’s right to exist.
And yes, sure, Zionism is racism. But having spent decades defending Israel’s right to exist, such an abrupt change of course is unlikely to be taken by the United States, or if it is, it will be at a time of our choosing, not when the Arab states — hardly bastions of egalitarianism themselves — want to force the issue.
If it was me — and I am a lot more incendiary than Barack Obama, to be sure — I’d attend the conference and make recognizing Zionism as racism contingent upon recognizing an equally obvious fact: that sharia law is incompatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I’m not sure that I would go that far to suggest that the racist label implies nonexistence. As for the conference, I cannot imagine that it is solely focused on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, even though I don’t know that for sure.
I think most Americans or people who live within liberal democracies would agree that sharia law is incompatible with the basic tenets of equality and freedom we strive to live by.
It implies nonexistence in the sense that Israel cannot abandon the racist aspects of Zionism and remain a Jewish state or, arguably, a state at all, since it is inconceivable that, after all this, Jews could live unmolested as a minority in Palestine. Even without the lingering bitterness from the Zionist experiment, it’s not as if the Islamic world has learned to reliably keep the peace between even their own sects, much less other religions altogether.
Of course, this was always the brain-dead side of Zionism, especially after the Holocaust. The plan to establish Israel after the Holocaust amounted to leaving lands where people were starting to think anti-Semitism was actually a bad idea and moving to a land where everyone who wasn’t already an enemy would become one after the invasion.
“The plan to establish Israel after the Holocaust amounted to leaving lands where people were starting to think anti-Semitism was actually a bad idea and moving to a land where everyone who wasn’t already an enemy would become one after the invasion. “
Which lands were those?
Europe and Palestine, respectively. Post WW2, the western world was so horrified by Nazism and the Holocaust that people began to question racism, which had been an ordinary, accepted part of our culture until then. Arguably, the Holocaust triggered a global awakening on the subject. As a result, Germany is today one of the safest places on earth for a Jew to live.
Conversely, most of the Islamic world has yet to recognize, much less build popular support for, most of what we consider basic civil liberties, including religious freedom.
Exactly in the same way that Native Americans don’t run into racism in New York.
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Replace Jew by foreigner and little has changed.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Try doing business as a Jew in Germany. It’s so common to be told things like “I understand why you don’t want to do that, Jews are very stingy with money.”
If there were a million Jews in Germany, there would be riots.
Corvus, I just have to disagree with you to a significant degree. First of all, why do you single out the Muslim world in particular? Civil liberties are limited or absent in many parts of the world, not just the Muslim world. The issue is not Islam or Muslims but authoritarian regimes, which exist in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and parts of Europe, and most of which are not “Islamic”. Arguably, for the last eight years the United States was trending in that direction as well.
As for freedom of religion, again, I would have to disagree with you that the “Islamic world” has not recognized it. As a matter of fact, the Qur’an explicitly states in a number of places that there should be freedom of religion. Iran affords a degree of religious freedom that would surprise most Americans. Only Baha’is are truly repressed religiously, and the State provide support for Christian and Jewish religious and civil institutions. Here in Syria there is certainly freedom of religion. In fact, Syria is largely ruled by members of a religious minority. This morning I was treated to the sound of both church bells and the call to prayer, and I spent considerable time this morning at the Maronite Archdiocese talking to people and taking pictures of the church. This visit I am staying in the home of a Christian family in Damascus, and my stay in Aleppo will also be hosted by a Christian. Even in Saudi Arabia which deserves much more criticism than it receives, there is freedom of worship for non-Muslims, though it must take place in private.
I could go on, but you get the idea. The situation in the Muslim world is really quite varied, and you simply cannot make a blanket statement about it.
How very true. Corvus you are a good guy and you no doubt have the purest intentions, but look at all the stereotyping you engage in in your brief comment: e.g. “civil liberties” “we” take for granted?
I know what you mean of course and a statement like that is neat and pretty like a well-tended bed of flowers, but… what about the fact that more than 3% of the US population at this moment are in some way under the thumb of the judicial system, incarcerated, on probation, or doing “community service”. How “free” is a community that knows to function only by coercing and/or locking away so many of its own? By that standard the US is one of the least free countries on this planet.
And who is “we”? Is this the “we” routinely invoked as “the world” when the West tries to impose something or other?
Beware of self-congratulatory Liberal White Man Speak. (If Booman had written the comment, I would have called it Wasp-Speak.)
Prior to calls that Israel be recognized as a Jewish and democratic state, a recent development, Israel was maintaining its Jewish majority through population control. Its fear of the so-called demographic bomb seemed more related to its colonial activity in the Palestinian territories than to Israel proper. The relinquishment of Gaza probably had more to do with the dense Palestinian population that resided there than anything else. The projection of annexation of the other territories, however, carried with it the bomb if Israel were to extend its borders to the Jordan River.
I may be wrong, but that is my take on this issue.
OT, but I arrived in Damascus a few hours ago, very tired, but at the same time energized now that I am here. I will try to make a few postings in the sidebar while I am here.