Obama and Israel–It Gets Worse [alienate American Jews and Evangelicals]

A follow-up to my post yesterday about the troubling views of one of Barack Obama’s top foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power. In 2002 she sat for an interview with Harry Kreisler, the director of the Institute for International Studies at Berkeley. Kreisler asked her the following question:

Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine - Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?

What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing, I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.

Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Freidman has called “Sharafat.” [Sharon-Arafat; this is actually an Amos Oz construction — NP] I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention.

Just so we’re clear here: Power said that her advice to the President would be to 1) “Alienate” the American Jewish community, and indeed all Americans, such as evangelical Christians, who support the state of Israel, because 2) Israeli leaders are “destroying the lives of their own people.” 3) Pour billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money into “the new state of Palestine”; 4) Stage an American ground invasion of Israel and the Palestinian territories — what else can she mean by a “mammoth protection force” and a “military presence” that will be “imposed” by “external intervention”? — in order to do the exact same thing that she considers the height of arrogance and foolishness in Iraq: an American campaign to remake an Arab society.

Note that this wasn’t her response to a question about her personal views of the conflict, or about what she envisions might be a utopian solution to the conflict; it was a response to a question about what she would tell the President of the United States if she was his adviser. Yesterday Barack Obama took a large stride toward the presidency–helped in some small measure by the speeches on behalf of the Obama campaign that Power has delivered–and it is time that someone asked him, while he is still a candidate, what he thinks of the perverse things his many foreign policy advisers have said about Israel and the Middle East.

As Samantha Power herself acknowledged, there is “a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import” that would like to know where Obama stands on these matters.

www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org	Date: 3/7/2008 2:45:45 PM

ALI ABUNIMAH

Vice president of the Arab American Action Network Anti-Israeli activist Born in Washington, DC on December 29, 1971, Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian American who serves as the Board of Directors’ Vice President for the Chicago-based Arab American Action Network. He is also a co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website, which was created by activists affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement. His personal website, abunimah.org, acts as a clearinghouse for his writings, which are fiercely hostile toward Israel and the United States. Abunimah authored the 2006 book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which rejects a two-state solution for the Mideast conflict and proposes instead the creation of a single, united, democratic state for Israelis and Palestinians alike. In Abunimah’s calculus, Palestinian violence and terrorism is caused entirely by Israel's "land confiscation," its "ongoing orgy of violence," and its "routine human-rights abuses" that have "made life under a seemingly endless occupation so intolerable." In February 2002 he characterized “Israel's humiliation and virtual imprisonment of [Yasser] Arafat” (after the Palestinian leader had failed to prevent or discourage a recent wave of suicide bombings) as confirmation that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his supporters had “never given up the dream of a Greater Israel stretching from the Mediterrannean to the Jordan River and perhaps beyond.” According to Abunimah, “Zionist leaders, academics, and propagandists are actually professional, malicious liars as much as they are violent, merciless murderers.” From that premise, Abunimah reasons: “[I]f lying is Israel's best policy, … shouldn't the world … doubt the Zionists' official stories about … the holocaust, for example? … Indeed, if Zionists could lie about their present and ongoing torment of my [Palestinian] people, usurpation of my homeland and arrogation of my rights, and they do it rather obscenely, couldn't they likewise lie, equally obscenely, about the holocaust, an event that took place over half a century ago?” Abunimah is strongly opposed to America’s military operations in Iraq, whose 2003 invasion he called a “massive assault on a small, defenseless country by an uncontrollable superpower.” “We should also remember,” he added, “that America's armed forces are disproportionately composed of the economically and socially disenfranchised, people who, denied a slice of the ‘American dream’ at home by failing schools, racism, the prison industry, and growing economic inequality, must seek to escape by joining the military. Empires have always sent their poorest, least educated and most marginalized to fight in the distant provinces.”

Ping

I read where this Samantha Power lass came to the US from Ireland at age 10 and is only 37 now. I’m just wondering what influenced her intellectual development in such a pernicious direction.

I don't know. Perhaps a better question, what qualifications does she have to be a key foreign policy advisor. She's a professor, and wrote a book on genocide and the world's lack of reaction, as I remember it a pretty good historical look at the issue. I don't remember much anything about palestinians, a lot about Armenia and the lack of world reaction to Raphael Lemkin's warnings in the 1930s That's about it. Not a particularly impressive resume for a Presidential advisor. Of course better than his, state political hack and two inconsequential years in the Senate.

Do you understand that every single time Israel wants to protect its citizens - America comes in and says please STOP, peace must go forward, remove your checkpoints, give up your land, stop retaliating, give up Jerusalem, our capital.<<<

Oh please! There goes the blame America first for all your woes. Then stop sending your Leaders here to Washington anytime there is a flare up there. Why did you leaders come here when you bombed Lebanon when it was getting too hot for you to handle? Further, how many BILLIONS in aid do we send you? Just say STOP the billions in aid. Never bite the hands that feed you. Your enemies are ISLAMICS - not America - the ONLY friend you have in the world. Never bite the hands that feed you. Give up Jerusalem? No way - the Christians want it preserved.

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