It’s just a shame that you have to retire before you can speak the plain truth about the Middle East.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Progress is directly related to an annual $3 billion appropriation. Gen. Mattis doesn’t go there. So the candor is calculated.
Certainly, but remember something. TMNP(aka The Man Named Petraeus) also went there a while back and got hammered for it by AIPAC, then backtracked.
Just saying. That’s my seriousness test. Anything else is spin.
could you link, that sounds like a good read.
thks.
Here:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/u-s-general-israel-palestinian-conflict-foments-anti-u-s-sentiment-1.264
910
plus:
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/03/now-general-petraeus-is-dangerous-foxman-on-the-case.html
and:
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/07/petraeus-fed-his-pro-israel-bona-fides-to-a-neocon-writer-including-pa
thetic-recitation-of-meeting-wiesel.html
The appropriation to Israel (and the one to Egypt) are part of the Camp David Accords.
For Israel comes with free reigns, however for Egypt with strings attached.
If the puppet doesn’t jump, the purse of $1.5bn closes as we have witnessed recently.
See my comment: Obama appoints AIPAC man as mediator for peace talks.
You’re wrong about this as far as I can tell. The Egyptian military conspired from the beginning to engineer Morsi’s overthrow. The US government, knowing this, is still willing to provide this aid because it helps achieve certain narrow interests. The relationship is mutually beneficial (not so much for the American or Egyptian people).
In case it needed to be said the only string worth mentioning is that Egypt needs to abide by the Camp David accords. Thus the aid continued from Sadat to Mubarak to Morsi and now likely on to the new government.
You probably meant inversely related to progress in peace proces.
Let’s dig into that a little bit. Our government has decided it needs to ensure Israel has a military and technological edge in the ME.
From the military side I’d say that Mattis is far more comfortable with negotiated aid that fits in line with the military’s interests in regional stability than with Israel domestic policy that harms regional stability and American interests. Getting rid of our monetary support for Israel does not solve any problems because the Israelis don’t need the money.
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Has just been announced, is this for real … is Hillary Clinton still pulling strings? An AIPAC advisor mediating what and for whom? Martin Indyk appointed US mediator for peace talks. I do hope Obama and Kerry will be fair and balanced and appoint an Palestinian as 2nd US envoy and mediator.
See my diary – John Kerry Brokered Agreement for Start I-P Peace Talks.
Such candor can of course initiate an early retirement, a la Helen Thomas.
It’s clear that the long run strategy of the Israeli’s is simple ethnic cleansing. They are simply going to make life so miserable for the Palestinians they will all leave or resort to violence that can be dealt with in a violent manner.
Everything else is just a diversion until they can change the facts on the ground.
It’s not that hard to understand. American influence/credibility declines daily with the Israelis and the Arabs because we pretend otherwise.
Even if Arabs can respect that America and Israel have a ‘special’ relationship, how can they respect that the Israelis have no respect for that relationship except when it suits their needs?
I’m not sure when the obligation to act from the guilt of the Holocaust expires but for me that time is past. They don’t need our weapons to put down the next Gaza rock throwing rebellion or to push the Palestinians off the West Bank. Just cut them loose, they already have cut us loose.
Are you saying that AIPAC has an iron grip on the entire Congress?
the blogosphere has a notorious adolescent track record of worshiping people like Weiner and Warren
pulling back the current is always wise
oops
pulling back the curtain is always wise.
Warren is impeccable on banking policy. I’m not sure how much she knows (outside of international banking) about national security or foreign policy.
Wiener was a flash in more ways than one. Not a New Yorker, but I think there are better candidates.
She supported TARP! How is bailing out rich fat-cat bankers and their obscene bonuses to the tune of trillions impeccable?
Because bank runs and depressions cause people to starve to death in their homes?
It’s a measure of American privilege that so many people manage not to know what happens when a nation’s entire banking sector goes belly up.
And if you don’t remember, she was the figure who came to prominence when, serving on the TARP oversight board, fought against the bonuses.
“It’s clear that the long run strategy of the Israeli’s is simple ethnic cleansing.“
That’s been a very clear short-term strategy of theirs as well, beginning with Herzl’s seminal work Der Judenstadt.
Throughout the pre-state period there were a number of proposals and plans for “transfer” of the non-Jewish population, including one involving moving them to Iraq. The Zionists quickly ethnically cleansed the very small amount of land they were able to purchase by evicting many thousands of tenants, who for the most part had lived on and worked the land for generations, and who suddenly found themselves not only without homes, but without livelihoods.
As time went on the Zionists committed increasingly frequent and vicious actions to make life unpleasant, force Palestinians out or induce flight, including the bombing of a civilian-owned Semiramis hotel in West Jerusalem that killed an entire (Christian) family staying there as well as a foreign diplomat, and others. That bombing was the final straw for many, mostly-Christian, West Jerusalem families who fled the city carrying little more than the bare necessities. I have quite a number of good friends whose families fled during that period, and who remember the daily terror they were subjected to, as well as the bombing itself.
1947-50 was Israel’s largest ethnic cleansing effort, and resulted in the exodus or killing of an estimated one million Palestinians, and the systematic prevention of their return. In the early years of the state the government enacted laws specifically intended to deny property rights to Palestinians who had not been ethnically cleansed during the 1948 war, and resulted in their being forced out of their homes, lands, and businesses, which were claimed in perpetuity for the Jewish People.
Ethnic cleansing of non-Jews from specific areas inside Israel continues to this day using various methods including “gentrification”, which was used in Jaffa and other cities. One of the most broad, clearly-named and best-known of those internal ethnic cleansing efforts is called “Judaization of the Galilee” in which the mostly-Christian Palestinian inhabitants of the Galilee were forced out in favor of Jewish Israelis.
It is less well known that Israel conducted significant ethnic cleansing operations in the territories it occupied during the 1967 war. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven out of certain parts of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza into neighboring countries, mainly Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt. Some were “offered” transport by bus, many were forced at gunpoint to cross the Jordan river with only whatever they could carry (and managed to keep dry). I have a fairly detailed academic study of these events in my library.
Israel’s most successful (in terms of per cent removed), and probably most carefully systematic ethnic cleansing to date, was in the Golan Heights from which Israel cleansed 96% of the Syrian population, in many cases selectively cleansing the area of “Arabs” and allowing Druze to stay. Druze, unlike Muslims, are religiously ordered to cooperate with whomever is in power, so when the Israeli government entered a town or village they would order Druze on one side and “Arabs” on the other, drive the “Arabs” out and allow the Druze to stay.
For the record, that has not worked out quite as well as the Israelis had expected, since not all Druze, the younger ones in particular, have felt bound by their religion to accept having their land occupied and colonized by a foreign country,and their neighbors driven out.
And as you said, for decades now it has appeared very clear that the long-term goal is to make life in the West Bank and East Jerusalem so untenable for non-Jews that eventually there will be very few left.
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Cross-posted from my diary – The Truth, Nothing But the Truth – Netanyahu on Obama.
I don’t want the military speaking on foreign policy, even if the person is right.
That’s why he had to wait until he retired.
booman said “it’s a shame you have to retire first….”
I’m sayin, I’m glad he had to retire first.
Even then, I’m still uncomfortable with former general officers weighing in on foreign policy and politics, even when they’re right.
How about John McCain? Wesley Clark? Joe Sestak?
Do you mean just in public? This is exactly what the role of the Joint Chiefs is in regards to military matters. Mattis, as a combatant commander and head of CENTCOM, was in an appropriate position to give advice where military matters overlapped with foreign policy. Congress often asks the military for their foreign policy input in hearing after hearing. See McCain’s feud with Gen. Dempsey.
I have no problem with retired military speaking their minds on foreign policy. I expect them to give candid advice and recommendations in private and refrain from public criticism or conflict with civilian political leaders.
I’ve been saying that Israel is an apartheid state for years and everyone acts like I’m breaking Godwin’s Law. Saying that Israel is apartheid is NOT like saying “Israel is like the nazis” (although if I WERE going to commit the cardinal sin of defying the great Mr. G, that’s where I’d start).
NO – it’s not an analogy or an exaggeration – Israel is an apartheid state just like South Africa was – period.
And the flip side of Godwin’s Law is saying that anyone who says what I’m saying is anti-Semitic – also pure BS – an overwhelming majority of American Jews hate Netanyahu with an all-consuming passion. In fact, my hatred for the Israeli right began by listening to the rantings of my American Jewish friends – who are representative of the exit polls showing the American Jews vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
Netanyahu’s base in America is non-Jewish right-wing, fundamentalist zealots and corporate robber barrons who would turn the US into an apartheid state if they could.
Good, so many US Jews dislike Netenyahu. Big deal. What good does that do the Palestinians and the US. There are still enough US Jews who support him and Israel politically and financially to keep the apartheid show on the road (blaming the Christian Zionists is a cheap ploy). And if push ever comes to shove (Israel withdrawing from the West Bank, dismantling colonies, allowing East Jerusalem Palestinians to return and breath in their city freely, etc.) I’ll bet you everything I have that the greater majority of the US Jews would side with Israel. Until they come out shouting and demonstrating on the streets I won’t buy into their sanctimonious, hypocritical cries of innocence: ‘We detest Netanyahu!’.
You just can’t trust what those people say, and should assume dual loyalty (at best) unless faced with extraordinary proof.
Is that about it?
No, that’s not about it. It’s about cheap talk and tribal impulses.
They’re so tribal.
You just can’t trust them when they act like they’re not.
Uh huh.
There are many, many examples of accusations of anti-semitism towards a critic of Israel and Israel’s American cheering section being totally bogus.
This is not one of those times. You probably think you did a very clever job of slipping in the word “tribe.”
Clever jog? No not at all. I meant tribal in the more general current sense. It is not a reference to their ‘ancient tribes’. Funny you picked up on that.
President Carter pointed to Israeli apartheid already back in 2006, and the Israelis themselves admit to apartheid attitudes, as I described in this diary last October:
Israel and Apartheid
Not too surprisingly, Israel was one of Apartheid-era South Africa’s few UN allies back in the day.