Yitzhak Benhorin in Y-Net reports:
The US State Department described Israeli actions as "unacceptable" 87 times in 2014, with only three countries being more "unacceptable," according to a Foreign Policy article published last week.
Journalist Micah Zenko searched the State Department's website for usage of the term, and his "top ten" list shows Israel sandwiched right between North Korea and Pakistan. Zenko pointed that the US officials regularly use the phrase "but then do very little in response to prevent or deter those actions from reoccurring."
Most of the condemnations relating to Israel involved building in settlements or the announcement of plans to construct additional housing behind the Green Line.Six years and this administration has learned next to nothing.
They continue to double-down on the notion that Jewish people have no right to live, and therefore build, in the land of Judea and even find Israel to be more "unacceptable" as a country than Pakistan. The injustice of it and the bigotry of it and the counterproductiveness of it - and the fact that it justifies centuries of theocratically-based Arab-Muslim contempt for Jews - seems entirely beyond the intellectual capacity of this administration.
Just as Kennedy's "best and brightest" holdovers in the Johnson administration would not help extract the US from the Vietnam War, because most of them - with the notable exception of Adlai Stevenson protégé George Ball - were too ideologically rigid and invested in the war, so the Obama administration cannot bring itself to rethink its initial conclusion concerning where Jews may be allowed to live despite the fact that this conclusion has been proven exceedingly unhelpful and is prejudicial on its face.
This president, much to my disgust, continues to demand that Jews be allowed to live in some places, but not others. We may be allowed to live in New York and Oakland, California or Istanbul, Turkey, but not Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and not Amman, Jordan and not Hebron, Israel.
In this way, among others, Obama's foreign policy directly contradicts its liberal ideology.
What kind of contempt must one have for the Jewish people to insist that we have no rights to live in Judea? This is profoundly prejudicial and entirely unjust, but the Obama administration clings to the notion like a wolverine with a hot pastrami sandwich.
Little know fact!*
ReplyDeleteThe tendency of Wolverines to fiercely cling to their pastrami is actually a relic of pre-Zingerman's Ann Arbor. Prior to 1982, Wolverines had to go all the way out to Detroit for places like Lou's on Seven Mile, Hygrade or The Stage, to get their sandwiches.
(*because I just made it up right now)
Aghghghghghg!!!!
Delete:O)
In other words, it's been around as long as palestinian history
DeleteThe administration has learned quite a bit including you can be a raving antisemite and it doesn't cost you politically.
ReplyDeleteTo this day I still do not consider Obama an anti-Semite.
DeleteHard to imagine, no?
There wasn't a great deal of actual racist antisemitism among the Soviet elite either, unlike the groundlings and ordinary thugs. But it served them well all the same. I'm not sure there's a difference between hatred and cynicism here.
DeletePerhaps I am naive, but I don't think that with Obama we're dealing either with hatred or cynicism.
DeleteI think that we're dealing with Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi.
I think that Obama honestly believes that the "settlers" are usurping someone else's land and represent a major impediment to the peace process.
I see every reason to doubt and question his faulty and unhelpful analysis, but no reason to doubt his sincerety.
Once again, I do not think that the guy is nearly so intelligent as they constantly told us because I see very little in the way of creative thought in terms of governance and a tendency toward intellectual intransigence which keeps him trapped in old grooves, old ruts.
Because Obama seems incapable of rethinking the situation he relies on what he knows, despite the fact that what he knows simply is not helpful. And what he knows is that the "settlers" are an impediment to peace.
It is an Idée fixe.
Well just because ethnic cleansers don't believe they're carrying out ethnic cleansing doesn't mean that it's ok to do. At some point to have to take people not only at their word but at their deeds. I can't see any bizarro world where Obama is ethnically cleansing black people and someone's saying 'well....he's really not doing that, per se, it's simply a result of a policy.'
ReplyDelete