The American-Israeli special relationship is a classic example of the tail that wags the dog. As a result of its palpable partiality towards Israel, America has lost all credibility in the eyes not only of the Palestinians but of the wider Arab and Muslim worlds. The so-called peace process has been all process and no peace. It is worse than a sham. Peace talks that go nowhere slowly provide Israel with just the cover it needs to pursue its relentlessly expansionist agenda on the West Bank.
US-Israel
The U.S. last year denied reports that it had received a request for assistance from Dubai, but a recently released WikiLeaks cable proves otherwise.
Please come join us in a walking vigil to remember the ongoing siege and attacks on Gaza.
IOA Editor: Also, read about the group’s upcoming Seattle Metro bus ad campaign, and the predictable reactions to it.
Given [Israel's] predispositions, combined with the disparities in bargaining power between the parties, as well as the one-sided hegemonic role of the United States, who but a fool could think that a just peace could emerge from the such a deformed pattern of geopolitical diplomacy?
Clinton illustrated how completely the administration has bought into the Israeli discourse. In her eagerness to support an Israel that is both Jewish and democratic, she skated perilously close to racism. She warned that “the long-term population trends that result from the occupation” were endangering the Zionist vision. In other words, that another four million Palestinians might soon demand equal rights in an Israel that has effectively controlled all of mandate Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea since 1967.
After reports reached Jerusalem that the Palestinian Authority is trying to persuade about a dozen European Union member states to upgrade the PA’s diplomatic status, the Foreign Ministry on Monday ordered every Israeli envoy abroad to begin “urgent” diplomatic activity. The aim is to thwart Palestinian efforts at drafting a United Nations resolution that would recognize a unilateral declaration of statehood and put international pressure on Israel to halt settlement construction.
We are outraged to learn that US Rep. Howard Berman, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is trying to push through Congress today a resolution “condemning unilateral declarations of a Palestinian state.”
The central difference between the US and the EU is that most European countries, rhetorically at least, believe that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict must be based on international law and UN resolutions, while the US seeks to negate these to ensure that any solution is based on Israeli-manufactured facts on the ground.
Australian intelligence agencies fear that Israel may launch military strikes against Iran and Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities could draw the US and Australia into a potential nuclear war in the Middle East.
26 former top EU officials, including ex EU chief Solana and former German President Richard von Weizsacker, urge world powers to confront Jerusalem over its refusal to obey international law.
The idea of dissolving the PA has many supporters – both inside the Palestinian territories and among the Palestinian diaspora. But this must not be a leap in the dark: the Palestinians must be prepared for the consequences of such a move and it must be undertaken as part of a clearly defined resistance strategy.
Settlement leader: “European countries must understand that without a state of Israel there is no one to stop the Muslim wave from eroding Europe, and without Judea and Samaria, Israel is unable to exist.”
Washington’s pathetic capitulation to Israel while pleading for a meaningless three-month freeze on settlement expansion—excluding Arab East Jerusalem—should go down as one of the most humiliating moments in U.S. diplomatic history.
According to the [US] ambassador, “Segments of the Irish public … see the [Shannon] airport as a symbol of Irish complicity in perceived US wrongdoing in the Gulf/Middle East.”
IOA Editor: And what might that be, one wonders?
RELATED Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks cables reveal “profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership”
Noam Chomsky speaks about the WikiLeaks documents release, comparing it to the 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers in which he had a role. Chomsky covers US-Israel relations in the context of the Occupation, the illegal Gaza siege, the separation of Gaza from the West Bank – in direct violation of the Oslo agreement, and much more.
Underlying the gossip and analysis sent back to Washington is an awareness from many US officials stationed abroad of quite how ineffective — and often counter-productive — much US foreign policy is… The possibility that Israel might go it alone and attack Iran is contemplated as though it were an event Washington has no hope of preventing. US largesse of billions of dollars in annual aid and military assistance to Israel appears to confer zero leverage on its ally’s policies.
Use The Guardian’s interactive guide to discover what has been revealed in the leak of 250,000 US diplomatic cables. Mouse over the map below to find stories and original documents by country, subject or people.
Jonathan Cook, reporting on Israel and the Occupation for over a decade now, provides a comprehensive review of the many ways in which Israel attempts to suppress, control, shape and bias media coverage of the Occupation – globally, locally, and via its far-reaching international Hasbara propaganda network.
RELATED Why NGO Monitor is attacking The Electronic Intifada
Jonathan Cook, reporting on Israel and the Occupation for over a decade now, provides a comprehensive review of the many ways in which Israel attempts to suppress, control, shape and bias media coverage of the Occupation – globally, locally, and via its far-reaching international Hasbara propaganda network. (Part II)
Palestinian resident of the building: “The settlers arrived in the morning and began to break the lock… We were frightened. The children are scared of them and of their guards… Why do they come here? They have a whole country. So why here of all places, in our house?”
Columbia University student Maya Yechieli Wind organizes campus display depicting IDF soldiers abusing Palestinian students at checkpoints. Israeli students form counter-protest. ‘Many think this is what really goes on,’ one of them says.
IOA Editor: Perhaps it is precisely because this is what actually goes on… Flag-wrapping not withstanding, even this ‘pro-Israeli’ coverage of anti-Occupation activism at Columbia University fails to materially challenge the protesters’ message.
Top Palestinian officials, including President Mahmoud Abbas, are engaged in “very serious” discussions about whether to abandon negotiations with Israel and seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state, a senior Palestinian official said yesterday.
At the beginning of his term, Barack Obama became the first US president to call for a halt in Jewish settlement construction in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories as a prerequisite for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But if a deal that stipulates a partial 90-day freeze of settlement building in return for US military and political incentives is reached, he will become the first US president to legitimise the Jewish colonies.
The Middle East policies of US President Barack Obama may well prove the most detrimental in history so far, surpassing even the right-wing policies of President George W. Bush. Even those who warned against the overt optimism which accompanied Obama’s arrival to the White House must now be stunned to see how low the US president will go to appease Israel — all under the dangerous logic of needing to keep the peace process moving forward.
Many analysts and observers fear that life in the west Bank is taking on an increasingly authoritarian hue. “I feel real concern that we are reaching the level of a police state,” says Shawan Jabarin, the director of al-Haq, a Ramallah-based human rights group.
In any other country, the current American bribe to Israel, and the latter’s reluctance to accept it, in return for even a temporary end to the theft of somebody else’s property would be regarded as preposterous. Three billion dollars’ worth of fighter bombers in return for a temporary freeze in West Bank colonisation for a mere 90 days? Not including East Jerusalem … [T]here is only one word for Barack Obama’s offer: appeasement.
As it becomes increasingly difficult to justify Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people, Israel’s apologists — whether based in Israel or at pseudo-academic centers such as the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism — resort to another line of defense: namely, they accuse Israel’s critics of being anti-Semitic. Not the sort of classic anti-Semitism found for example in Hamas’s Charter, but instead the anti-Semitism of an anti-Israel double standard.
Appendix to Anti-Semitism and the Israel-Palestine conflict – assessing the claim of double standards, by Stephen R. Shalom, Israeli Occupation Archive – IOA (19 Nov 2010).
Despite lavish incentives offered by the U.S. to bring about a 90-day settlement freeze Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has intensified illegal settlement construction in the occupied territories, further casting doubt on the future of peace talks and on the Obama Administration’s ability to secure Israeli cooperation. Listen in on an earlier IMEU briefing with historian Rashid Khalidi and author John Mearsheimer.
Irene Gendzier, professor of Political Science at Boston University (and IOA Advisory Board member), will present her research on the foundations of US foreign policy in the Middle East in 1945 – 1949. The findings point to very early recognition on the part of US foreign policy planners of the future role the newly created State of Israel could have in protecting US interest in the region.
The talk by Irene Gendzier is THIS Monday, 22 November 2010- Columbia University, 207 Knox Hall, at 12:30pm
As … Netanyahu knows very well, it is not “settlements” per se that are illegal. It is the transfer of an occupier’s population into the occupied territories that violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory. Such transfers are illegal irrespective of where they take place—whether in settlements in the West Bank countryside or in apartment buildings in East Jerusalem.
In addition to the concession in the Jordan Valley and the [$3.00B] offer of combat jets that would effectively double the annual aid from the US, the deal is said to include a promise by Washington to veto for the next year any UN resolutions Israel opposes and to refrain, after borders have been agreed, from demanding any future limits on settlement growth.
According to a June 2010 fact sheet on the USAID Internet site, last year American taxpayers funded the paving of 63 kilometers of asphalt roads in the West Bank.
Israel signed a contract for 20 F-35s – a fifth-generation stealth fighter jet made by Lockheed Martin – in early October in a deal valued at $2.75 billion. Under the offer made to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his meeting last week with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Israel would receive a second, free squadron of the advanced fighter jet if it agrees to impose a three-month freeze on settlement construction.
IOA Editor: $2.75B worth of long-distance killing machines, free of the usual “charge,” in return for a short 3-month pretense of a stop of colonization: An even greater US taxpayer subsidy of Israel, Lockheed Martin, and other US and Israeli military corporations. Not a terribly impressive deal, for a guy who graduated from Harvard Law School.
