> Was Obama's Rhetoric on Israel for Real?
> Analysis by Thalif Deen
> Inter Press Service
> June 11, 2008
>
> http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42755
>
>
> When Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic
> candidate for the November U.S. presidential
> elections, addressed one of the most influential
> pro-Israeli lobbying groups last week, he offered
> himself as a more trusted ally of Israel than his
> rival, Republican candidate John McCain.
>
> In his address to the American Israel Public Affairs
> Committee (AIPAC), Obama promised Israel 30 billion
> dollars in U.S. aid over the next decade (adding to
> the 140 billion dollars it has received so far), and
> even justified the recent Israeli attack on a
> supposed Syrian nuclear plant (an attack in total
> violation of that country's national sovereignty).
>
> And in his eagerness to woo Jewish votes, Obama
> crossed more than one line in the Middle Eastern
> sand: he even vowed to protect an "undivided"
> Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
>
>
> The Jerusalem pledge drew furious denunciations from
> Palestinians -- on the very day that U.S. President
> George W. Bush, an avowed friend of Israel,
> announced he was suspending a proposed move to shift
> the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
>
> Obama tried to pacify the Palestinians by pledging
> "to help Israel achieve the goal of two states", a
> Jewish and Palestinian state.
>
> Was Obama playing up to a pro-Israeli audience
> (which gave him 13 standing ovations), or was it the
> usual rhetoric of a U.S. politician on the campaign
> trail?
>
> "Much has been made of Obama's recent shameless and
> altogether unseemly groveling at the AIPAC
> convention, making a series of statements that are
> anachronistic and extreme even by the standards of
> contemporary mainstream Israeli political
> discourse," Mouin Rabbani, contributing editor to
> the Washington-based Middle East Report, told IPS.
>
> No doubt Obama is insistent on demonstrating that he
> will be as faithful and dependable a "shabbes goy"
> as his predecessors and rivals, he added. "But I
> think most commentary on this issue misses the
> point. Obama has not done an about-face."
>
> Sure, he has some "indiscretions" from early in his
> political career where he indicated that
> Palestinians have some legitimate rights -- "and
> even went to the extreme of permitting the daughter
> of a Palestinian professor (Rashid Khalidi) to
> babysit his kids, and himself having dinner with the
> 'professor of terror' (the late Edward W. Said,
> professor at Columbia University)," Rabbani said.
>
> "But I have seen no evidence that in recent years,
> including those before the announcement of his
> presidential campaign, that he has advocated a
> serious reconsideration of U.S. policy towards the
> conflict outside the framework developed in the
> (former U.S. President Bill) Clinton years," he
> added.
>
> Responding to the Obama speech, even Mahmoud Abbas,
> president of the U.S.-backed Palestinian authority,
> was outraged enough to protest Obama's promise to
> hand over an undivided Jerusalem to the Israelis.
>
> As Abbas pointed out: "The whole world knows that
> East Jerusalem, holy Jerusalem, was occupied (by the
> Israelis) in 1967.And we will not accept a
> Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the
> capital," he added.
>
> Less than 72 hours later, and facing criticism from
> Palestinians, Obama backtracked on his statement on
> Jerusalem. In an interview with Cable News Network
> (CNN), Obama said: "Well, it's going to be up to the
> parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And
> Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations."
>
> Nadia Hijab, senior fellow and co-director at the
> Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington, told
> IPS that U.S. politicians respond to the strength of
> diverse interest groups and "Obama is no exception".
>
>
> "So the question is not whether we expect Obama to
> be even-handed because it is the right thing to do,
> but whether enough pressure can be brought to bear
> on him to make him do so," she added.
>
> "Currently AIPAC and its American Jewish and
> Christian Zionist allies are the strongest U.S.
> pressure groups when it comes to Israel, and
> politicians toe the line -- even if they have
> previously expressed some sympathy to the
> Palestinian cause (Obama, Hillary Clinton) or
> pragmatic approaches (McCain after the election of
> Hamas)."
>
> However, Hijab added, AIPAC's stranglehold is being
> challenged by diverse groups: Palestinian and Arab
> Americans; liberal as well as non-Zionist American
> Jews; and U.S. "realists" like Stephen Walt and John
> Mearsheimer, co-authors of 'The Israel Lobby and
> U.S. Foreign Policy'.
>
> During the recent commemorations of Israel's 60th
> anniversary, she said, the Palestinian narrative was
> heard in the United States louder than ever before
> in the mainstream media.
>
> New Jewish organisations -- such as J-Street, the
> U.S. office of the Israeli human rights organisation
> Btselem, and Jewish Voice for Peace -- are being
> established to push for peace in a way that
> recognises Palestinian rights,
>
> "The realists are refusing to be silenced. If these
> trends get stronger, then -- and only then -- will
> we see a shift in Obama's stance," she declared.
>
> Rabbani pointed out that as a general observation,
> the ability of individual U.S. presidents to
> influence, let alone reverse, policy on important
> (as opposed to marginal) issues is rather limited
> due to a powerful combination of institutional,
> political, economic and other constraints.
>
> This applies to both domestic and foreign policies.
> U.S. policy towards China is a good example: every
> new president campaigns -- most recently Bush and
> before him Clinton -- on a platform of reading
> Beijing the riot act about all and sundry abuses,
> and within months of assuming office learns to treat
> China like the valued partner that it is.
>
> "Very quickly, human rights abuses become phenomena
> that only exist in weak or hostile regimes like
> Iran, Zimbabwe and so on," Rabbani said.
>
> So even under the very best of circumstances --
> which is assuming that Obama is genuinely committed
> to pursuing policies that are even-handed vis-a-vis
> the Arab-Israeli conflict -- this would not happen.
>
> "At most, there would be some changes at the margin,
> pushing the policy a bit more this or that way
> without transforming its fundamentals," Rabbani
> said. After all, what would an even-handed policy
> look like?
>
> It would, for example, encompass making U.S.
> military aid to Israel dependent on Israel using
> such weapons in accordance with existing U.S.
> legislation (such as cluster bombs); it would entail
> U.S. re-classification of Israeli maintenance and
> continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the
> West Bank as grave breaches of the IV Geneva
> Convention (with the requisite accountability)
> rather than an unhelpful inconvenience that might,
> or might not, affect the atmosphere at the next
> round of scheduled, utterly meaningless,
> Israeli-Palestinian talks, and so on, he said.
>
> Rabbani also said it would require a transformation
> of Washington's relations with the various parties,
> including a termination of U.S.-guaranteed Israeli
> impunity in the occupied territories, and holding
> Israel and its Arab adversaries to the same
> standards.
>
> "The prospects of any of this happening -- i.e.
> pursuing a policy of genuine even-handedness -- are
> simply nil," he added.
>
> Since the 1970s, he pointed out, it has become a
> commonplace to characterise every outgoing U.S.
> president as "the most pro-Israeli president in
> American history".
>
> It has also been a truism, with U.S. presidents
> generally behaving in ways that are more pro-Israeli
> than Israel itself, particularly during election
> campaigns.
>
> "I have every confidence this will be equally true
> of a potential Obama administration. I don't think
> personal factors will have a significant influence,
> but to the extent they do his determination to prove
> he is not a Muslim (rather than denounce this ethnic
> baiting), to live down his former dinner engagements
> etc, will only add to this."
>
> Simply stated, Rabbani said, "Obama should be seen
> for what he is -- a thoroughly conventional American
> politician who has every intention of becoming a
> thoroughly mainstream American president."
>
>
>
> Forwarded By:
> _______________________
> Ravi Khanna, Director
> 1world communication
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http://www.topica.com/lists/1worldcommu Received on Wed Jun 18 22:49:25 2008