In spite of Obama's historic speech in Cairo early last year finding Israel's siege "intolerable," the siege remains intact and deprivations worsened by Israel's three week attack a year ago continue. At least 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians and roughly 300 children were killed. Israel has since ignored Washington pleas to permit sufficient humanitarian aid and building materials into the Strip.
Now, two Congressmen, Rep. Jim McDermott and Rep. Keith Ellison, have acted to create a letter to President Obama calling attention to the devastating humanitarian impact of Israel's illegal blockade of the occupied Gaza Strip
54 Members of Congress have signed on, irrespective of possible repercussions from the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, in particular.
Alan Dershowitz, the bane of human rights advocates in the US and elsewhere else, has been given his day in court to vent for Israel on Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington's left wing blogosphere newspaper.
Alan is not my favorite Democrat, far from it, mainly because his hypocrisy is so evident. When you discuss Israel, he falls into the deepest abyss of right wing Zionist ethnocentricism. He appears liberal and humanistic, and even advocates for human and civil rights, but when it comes to Israel, he falls into the exceptionalist trap. Alan is so rightward in his support of Israel, he is even able to justify the killings of Palestinian children, who he implies are terrorists.
Still let's give Alan his day in court, even though he uses the occasion to ply Israeli propaganda by the barrel full and gives the usual exceptionalism to Israel's occupation, colonialism, and state terrorism, the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This is a quick hit posing as a diary, but the article it draws attention to is just not a news event, but an analysis of why Obama seems to be screwing up on the Israeli-Palestinian peace front. Well, apart from the fact that he has most of Israel against him, then George Mitchell's threat to cut loan guarantees to Israel (which in any case support Israel's colonialism), and the blowback from Israel's finance minister who said, "who needs you," the article asks whether Obama know what the hell he is doing?
Two days ago, 1,360 Gaza Freedom March activists from 42 countries including the United States intending to enter Gaza for a commemoration of the Gaza massacre of a year ago, were confronted by Egyptian security forces on the banks of the Nile. These international activists have been continually denied access to the Rafah border crossing, and some groups have been confined to their lodgings, bus stations, and embassies under threat of deportation.
In the past few months and years, media coverage of Israel has had subtle but distinct change in tone. The mainstream media is taking a harder look at Israel's policies, and has found not everything is to its liking.
There are several reasons why coverage of Israel has previously been so positive, and why recently a slight change has occurred. In the first place, Israel is a country culturally very attuned to us. Israel is part of the West; it shares Western norms and values. Many Jews would be comfortable living in the West and do so to this very day. Some of them work in the media and are sympathetic to the struggles their peers face.
Moreover, many in the media (and the vast majority of our country) believed that Israel had been in the right before 2006. Israel had - has - a democracy and a free press and all the things we like a country to have; the Palestine cause and their Arab supporters by and large do not. Israelis such as Yitzhak Rabin were calling for peace; meanwhile, Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas were sending suicide bombers to kill Israelis civilians day after day.
Then came the 9-11 attacks by Muslim terrorists. In its aftermath media coverage of Israel was probably the most positive it had ever been.
There were three events, however, which changed things. At the very least, they have damaged Israeli prestige.
....seeking to reverse Obama's backtracking from his Cairo speech, in particular, contradicting a later statement that Palestinian East Jerusalem is part of the unified capital of Israel, an issue yet to be negotiated.
This gesture is sucking up to the right wing Likud government of Bibi Netanyahu at a time when Netanyahu seems to be putting Obama in his place. Who the hell does he think he is, Bill Clinton once said of the arrogant Bibi.
On October the 28th, 2009, Jon had the good sense to invite two guests who favor (get this) a peaceful, non-violent, diplomatic approach to the middle east problem. No harm in a little civil discussion, huh?
I've said a few times in comments recently that I'm pretty optimistic, from my antiwar and similar perspective, on the Iran and sanctions issue. The reasons are various, but centered on the analysis of India career diplomat M K Bhadrakumar, who also believes the sanctions effort will fail. More on those ideas a couple paragraphs down.
As for my perspective, first of all, not that it's stopped the U.S. before but there is pretty much zero justification for U.S. saber-rattling, as indicated by the mundane headlines (i.e., Iran vows to stick with low-level nuclear enrichment) only two days after the three imperials (Obama, Sarkozy, Brown) news conference about a 'secret' low-grade nuclear 'facility' that was neither secret nor a facility, since it won't be a functioning one till construction ends 18 months from now. This is weak soup for crippling sanctions, naval blockades, and worse. Today, even weaker stuff, 'IRAN TESTS (short-range) MISSILES! Oh my gawd y-a-w-n, weak stuff for scaring us up and dealing death.
Secondly, and Bhadrakumar's analysis is critical here, despite Beltway pundits fishing for wish fulfillment, both China (emphatically) and Russia oppose sanctions on Iran. And this time the U.S. needs international cover, imho, or its 'X must prove it doesn't have WMD' campaign (Hillary Clinton) won't have the outcome (severe sanctions and an attack on Iran's nuclear power facilities) desired by the U.S. & Israeli military-industrial complexes.
Bhadrakumar makes three major points in Moscow holds the line on Iran sanctions:
News is 'news' in our corporatacracy. Currently, for example, we have the Israeli-Warmongers-Only-Perspective 'News'. See below for how the release of a UN report on the war criminal conduct on both sides of the Gaza war is widely headlined in the mainstream news (to see how news of 320 dead Gazan children in that massacre is handled (hint: 'not at all'), see NPR's Linda Gradstein):
Israel fights 'perverse' UN report on Gaza
The funniest part is this sentence --
Both sides of the Gaza conflict criticised the report for putting them on the same footing.
-- followed by 5 paragraphs of Israeli criticism of the report, and then the article ends.
Just a reminder that it is possible to headline the release of the UN report fairly: Israel, Hamas called to account. Now was that so hard?
Related is the 'Anything to get "Iran's Got Nukes!" Into the Headline' 'News':
Iran is a nuclear power: Ahmadinejad aide
Where the Iranian spokesperson is allowed to dispel the headline's glaring implication in paragraph 20:
Javanfekr said Iran is ready to face the six powers and "during the talks we will definitely speak of banning nuclear arms globally because it is not a problem for us as we do not possess any nuclear arms."
So, obviously 'nuclear power' means 'nuclear power power'. Some of you got your war on before you realized that, right? That was the intent.
Meanwhile, McClatchy continues to be a source of news. Here it provides some reality on the domestic side, first the real health care catastrophe:
On Monday, August 3rd, there was a candlelight vigil for the victims of the shooting at a support group meeting for LGBT youth at the Agudah LGBT community center headquarters in Tel Aviv. Hundreds of people gathered in Dupont Circle in Washington, DC at sunset. You can download the event press release in pdf format.
It is often the case that Americans in general, and people on the left in particular, will decry the makeup of our political system, directing much of their anger at the current two-party system, and our 'checks and balances'-based Federal government. Often, the European model of Parliamentary government elected via proportional representation will be offered up as an alternative. While this system does have some obvious advantages, and in some ways is more democratic than ours, in this diary, I intend to show that it has other flaws that can be quite undemocratic.
What Is A Parliamentary System?
First, before we begin, I should explain exactly what a Parliamentary system is. For this, I will take as a model a government with at least four strongly-disciplined political parties elected to sit in a Parliament. What will be described below is relatively close to the system that exists or existed in the Netherlands, Sweden, Israel, the French Fourth Republic, pre-'90s Italy, and the German Weimar Republic*, along with many other examples. In these systems, the main components of the government has are; a head of state (usually a monarch**, the monarch's representative***, or an independently elected head of state****), a Parliament^, and an executive (essentially, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the executive agencies under the control of the Cabinet). The primary distinction between a Parliamentary system and a Presidential system like that of the United States is that within a Presidential system the executive is primarily accountable to the Head of State, while in a Parliamentary system the executive is primarily accountable to the Parliament.
What About Accountability?
Now, how does this accountability play out? Well, the most obvious way that this happens is the mechanism of the vote of no confidence. The essential meaning of the vote of no confidence is that a Prime Minister and her/his Ministers (from here on, we will just call them the government) can be removed by a simple majority vote of Parliament. As a result of this, no government can exist without at least an unwillingness of a majority of Parliament to vote against them.
If all of the parties holding positions in the government form a majority in Parliament, then you have a majority coalition forming the government. Otherwise, it is a minority government. The latter case has been the tradition in Sweden, where you typically have had the Social Democrats holding 40% of the seats in their parliament, the Riksdag, but were unwilling to form a coalition with the Communists, which would have been necessary to form a majority government. Instead, they would merely count on the Communists to not vote against them in a no confidence vote. On the other hand, for the past two terms, you have had minority Conservative governments in Canada, as the three center-left parties' reservations about each other have prevented them from coming together to remove the Conservatives from power.
Follow me below the flip to investigate the problems with Parliamentary government.
This humble diary is simply to suggest that the United States use it's muscle to force the countries of the Middle East with which it has close relations, to air 1 hour per week of their 'enemy's' TV programs, simultaneously across all major TV stations, during prime time. The programs need to be politically and socially significant. The end goal is to engender empathy for 'the other' as human beings, without which there's no long-term basis for confidence in treaties for peaceful-coexistence, no matter elaborate and positive they may seem to be.
Jewish American peace activist groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) are beginning to become exasperated over Israel's progressive leaning toward ethnocentric fascism, as indicated by this review of recent untoward, anti-democracy developments by the right wing government. Requiring loyalty oaths from Palestinian-Arab citizens, outlawing anniversary celebrations of Nakba Day, the day of the year that Palestinians commemorate the "catastrophe," the ethnic cleansing of 1948, and other rules such as denial of Israel as a Jewish state, which seem intent on discriminating against Israel's minority Arab population, are cited.
Muzzlewatch, JVP's propaganda watch site, recently published this news about what is essentially the curtailment of free speech in Israel.
These headlines appeared this morning in the sometimes liberal Israeli newspaper, Haartez, about Netanyahu's meeting on Monday with President Obama and the issues likely to be on the table, including Palestinian statehood, settlements, Iran, etc.
(Despite recent disappointments--to put it mildly--I still think that Israel is one issue on which Obama might actually deliver on some of his foreign policy promise. But more importantly, we should not be giving up. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Friends, I just wanted to give you a heads up that over at Avaaz.org we have decided to run this Ad ahead of the Obama-Netanyahu face-off on Monday.
The Ad -- titled "Leadership" will run during the Sunday talk shows in the DC market. We have been inspired to take this step by a stunning poll of Israeli-Jews suggesting that 65% want President Obama actively involved in helping solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Ad draws attention to the controversial statement made by new, right-wing Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman that Obama will do as he's told. This comment runs counter to the sentiment expressed in our poll of Lieberman's fellow Israelis, carried out by major Israeli polling institute Hagal Hahadash, which shows that a majority of respondents believe Obama could help bring about a two-state agreement (53% said he could help a lot or somewhat to achieve this, and only 19.2% answered not at all).
When Netanyahu recently announced that this land belongs to the Jewish people, all of it, it merely harked back to the 1996 document, "A Clean Break" and the Likud Orwellian dictum: 'no land for peace, peace for peace.' A Clean Break essentially meant a break from the Oslo Accords, which had promised, falsely, to achieve peace between the Israelis and Palestinians through a two state solution. It was the Clinton era, the settling of the Palestinian territories by Israelis doubled, and then ended in the Camp David/Taba hoax.
So when Netanyahu recently committed himself to giving the Palestinians 'economic peace' rather than promoting the two state solution, the past returned. Economic peace means peace for peace, which means no two state solution.
A Clean Break will undoubtedly, once again, guide Likud policy in negotiations with the Palestinians as well as Washington. Only one change is notable. Instead of Iraq being the security issue, pushed by Neocons Wolfowicz and Feith (along with Richard Perle, a Clean Break author), today it is Iran. But there is also a new player on the field: Obama.
Obama's recent pronouncement on two states suggests that a confrontation with the Likud government of Israel is inevitable. If understood correctly, it is a confrontation with an old if outmoded Neoconservative pro-Likud policy agenda.
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