The Obama administration seems to be holding its ground, insisting that Israel cease building of settlements in the West Bank. This is a good first step.
Another would be supporting having Israel move the "security wall" out of the West Bank and into Israel.
Another would be restricting Israel's use of American military aid to defensive purposes.
Ideas like these are no-brainers - but have been off the table in the past; any public figure broaching these topics is given the AIPAC treatment, any media outlet that even writes about them in other than derisive terms is assailed as anti-Israel or soft-on-terror.
What is hopeful for Israel in this new approach, is that if forced to abandon the old crutches of aggression and intimidation, she may learn to take real steps toward independent citizenship in the world community.
The US is being forced to take more responsibility for its actions in the current economic climate, and must discontinue dead-end policies. The days of unquestioned acquiescence by the US to Israel are over, by economic necessity more than progressive politics. The long term results for Israel will be positive.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Allow me to deconstruct this:
ReplyDelete"...restricting Israel's use of American military aid to defensive purposes."
When did Israel EVER use their military (I don't know how you separate their military from anyone's aid) for OFFENSIVE purposes?
Aside from providing hardware to Israel, if anything, the US has PREVENTED Israel from defending itself, in multiple instances.
But if that’s the military policy, I guess the US needs to take down it’s satellites, close it’s military bases around the world, recall its fleets back to US bases, pull back all of its extraterritorial intelligence gathering people, build a big fence around our border, and hope nothing bad happens to us. Hey, it would save trillions. Why didn’t anyone think of that earlier!?
"Ideas like these are no-brainers "
More like no brains.
"...forced to abandon the old crutches of aggression and intimidation..."
Yeah. And Clinton was a bully for bombing Kaddafi’s house.
This completely befuddles me. There is absolutely no rationale for why Israel would be aggressive and intimidating in the first place. They're not conquerors. They're not on a quest to spread Judaism. They have no interest to get more land beyond their borders. Their only interest is peace and security. Historically, factually, and in every other way possible, it is the case that if they are left alone, they are not otherwise aggressive or intimidating towards anyone. The only way that one arrives at this false and unfortunate conclusion is by not fully understanding and appreciating history and what is happening there. This is akin to dealing with anti-Semitism by telling the Jew to shut up and stop standing up for himself, because he comes off as being belligerent.
How wrong. How so terribly wrong.
Allow me to reconstruct:
ReplyDelete"When did Israel EVER use their military... for OFFENSIVE purposes?"
The most recent example was the ruthless and deadly bombing and artillery attack on Gaza during the waning days of the Bush administration. Ostensibly in response to rocket attacks by Hamas terrorists, they coincided with the runup to Israeli elections.
"They have no interest to get more land beyond their borders."
This claim is refuted by the growth of settlements outside of the 1967 borders, and construction of security barriers and checkpoints in the West Bank.
"dealing with anti-Semitism by telling the Jew to shut up and stop standing up for himself, because he comes off as being belligerent."
This sounds exactly like what the Israeli government is saying to the Palestinians.