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Palestine: U.S. Negotiator Asks For Third Intifada
Kerry had fooled himself believing that Netanyahoo would ever allow for a Palestinian state. One hundred meetings later he finally admitted that such will never happen. Without robust U.S. pressure, unlikely to happen due to U.S. domestic politics, Netanyahoo and other right wing Israelis will never move from their absolutist position.
There is something to learn about self-illusion and the painful process of recognizing it in the Ynetnews interview with the U.S. negotiating team members, Inside the talks' failure: US officials open up. This line though stands out:
And then one of them added bitterly: "I guess we need another intifada to create the circumstances that would allow progress."
Maybe. Maybe a third intifada could help move the U.S. towards some serious pressure on Israel. I doubt it though. The Palestinians have better options. Join all possible international clubs including the International Court system, sue Israel, threaten to dissolve the Palestinian Authority, other steps. What is needed is unity and better, more decisive leaders. When will those evolve?
Ah, yes, Finkelstein, the great anti-zionist hope.
Link to The Pro-Israel Lobby Debate by Hagit Borer, James Petras, and Norman Finkelstein
Below are quotations from that debate, NF or unattributed are by Finkelstein, JP is Petras and HB is Borer.
“In the case of Iraq, if you look concretely at what happens: Number 1 — There is no evidence, whatsoever, that people like Wolfowitz or the others were trying to further an Israeli agenda.”
“Now, it happens that in the late 1990s Israel would have preferred that the skull that was cracked would have been the Iranian one. There was no evidence that Iraq was uppermost on the Israeli agenda. In fact, all of this talk about the famous document that was written up by these neo-cons to attack Iraq — that famous document — was handed to Netanyahu when he came to office to try convince him to put Iraq at the top of the agenda. It’s not as if Israel passed that document to the neo-cons, who then plotted to get the US government to attack Iraq. It was the opposite. Israel would have preferred to attack Iran. However, once those in our government, maybe for misguided reasons for all I know, decided to fasten on to Iraq — that is to attack Iraq — Israel was of course ‘gung ho’ because Israel is always ‘gung ho’ about smashing up this or that Arab country.”
“It doesn’t mean that people like Wolfowitz, let alone people like Cheney, are trying to serve an Israeli agenda. There is no evidence for claims like that. Its pure speculation based on things like ethnicity.
Lets take a simple example, that, I’ll call him James, I don’t usually call people by their first names, but Jim Petras mentioned . . . Let’s take the case of Elliott Abrams. These are interesting cases. Elliott Abrams is the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz. And Norman Podhoretz was the first big neo-conservative supporter of Israel, the editor of Commentary, the magazine. But if you look at people like Podhoretz, you look at their history, I’ll take a book which I am sure Jim is familiar with, in 1967 Podhoretz publishes his famous memoir called Making It. It’s how he succeeded and made it in American life. He was a young man and the editor of Commentary Magazine. You read that book, his celebrated memoir written two months before the June 1967 war, there is exactly one-half of one sentence in the whole book on Israel. People like Podhoretz, Midge Decter, all the neo-cons . . . I have gone through the whole literature on the topic and have read it quite carefully. Before June 1967, they didn’t give a hoot about Israel. Israel never comes up in any of their memoirs, in any of the histories of the period. They become pro-Israel when Israel is useful to them in their pursuit of power and fortune in the United States. Elliott Abrams is as committed to Israel as his father-in-law, Norman Podhoretz, was committed to Israel: When it is convenient and when it is useful. This idea of trying to serve an Israeli agenda, especially coming from somebody as sophisticated as Jim Petras, strikes me as absurd. He knows as well as I do that power . . .
HB: Lets me just interrupt to let James . . .
JP: Its very strange that one says Wolfowitz was not influenced by the Israeli agenda when he was caught passing documents to Israel in the 1980s. And Douglas Feith lost his security clearance for handing documents to Israel. Elliott Abrams has written a book calling for maintaining the ‘purity’ of the Jewish race . . .
NF: I know. They write that crap . . . and you believe them? Jim, do you think they care?
JP: Its not a question of believing them, it’s a question of looking at the documentary evidence of uncritical, support for Israel in all of its policies — a position that is taken by the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations. They give unconditional support!”
Throughout that debate, Finkelstein repeatedly engages in what is well known as weasel wording and obfuscation. His pretense that well known Israeli assets are acting independently is obviously chutzpah. His comments about Iraq are beyond chutzpah. At best Finkelstein is an a culturally chauvinistic airhead, but I doubt he’s actually an airhead. That leaves the obvious.
Posted by: scalawag | May 4 2014 0:02 utc | 54
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