Israel: A Bone in America's Throat »
Posted By hyperbola 1 year, 1 month ago in NewsEven before the voting began, Israeli politicians and pundits were asking: Will an Obama Administration be good for Israel? “Be good for Israel” is our code for “Will the US allow us to keep our settlements and continue to support our efforts to prevent negotiations with the Palestinians from ever bearing fruit?” For Americans the question should be: Will the Obama Administration understand that without addressing Palestinian needs it will not be able to disentangle itself from its broader Middle Eastern imbroglios, rejoin the community of nations and rescue its economy?
The Israel-Palestine conflict should be of central concern to Americans, near the top of the new Administration’s agenda. It may not be the bloodiest conflict in the world – its minor when compared to Iraq – but it is emblematic to Muslims and to peoples the world over of American hostility and belligerence. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not merely a localized one between two squabbling tribes. It lies at the epicenter of global instability. Go where you may in the world and you will encounter the same phenomenon: a sense that the suffering of the Palestinians represents all that is wrong in an American-dominated world.
To be more specific, the Israel-Palestine conflict directly affects Americans in at least five ways:
• It isolates the US from major global markets, forcing it to embark on aggressive measures to secure markets rather than peaceful accommodation;
• It thereby diverts the American economy into non-productive production (tanks not roads), making it dependent upon deficit spending which only increases dependency upon foreign financing while diverting resources into the military rather than into education, health and investment;
• Support for the Israeli military costs US taxpayers more than $3 billion annually at a time of deepening recession and crumbling national infrastructure;
• It leads to an American involvement in the world that is mainly military, thus begetting hostility and resistance which produce the threats to security Americans so greatly fear; and
• It ends up threatening American civil liberties by encouraging such legislation as the Patriot Act and by introducing Israeli “counterinsurgency” tactics and weaponry developed in the West Bank and Gaza into American police forces.
Like a bone in the throat, the issue of Israel’s occupation can be neither ignored nor by-passed. If it is not addressed, the US – even under Obama – will remain mired in conflicts with Muslim peoples, will continue to be reviled by peoples seeking genuine freedom and will not find the security and even the prosperity it so craves. We live in a global reality, not a Pax Americana.... In the global reality in which we live, the fate of Americans and Palestinians, it turns out, are closely intertwined.
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hyperbola
Military brat (14th generation American) with unassuaged wanderlust. By age 11, schools in four states and three foreign countries (in 3 languages). Left home at ...
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Thinker221 year, 1 month ago
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> Like a bone in the throat, the issue of Israel’s occupation...
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As usual you produce nothing but lies, Dr. Hyperbola, PhD. To see it better try to answer the following question:
If tomorrow Israel eneded the occupation and removed all settlements, all military bases, all Israelis-only roads, etc. and withdrew to the 1949 cease fire lines... WOULD THERE BE PEACE?
If you're not sure pleace consider that Israel already ended the occupation of Gaza and the Palestinians there enjoyed three years of peaceful life under their own Palestinian leadership. Can you see valid reasons to suggest that the life in the West Bank will be any different after ending the occupation there, too? -
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Endoscopy1 year, 1 month ago
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ROTFLMAO
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When Israel was created the border between Israel and Trans Jordan was the Jordan River. Hence the name trans Jordan. The immediate attack by the Muslims with the intent to drive the Jews into the sea and kill them there left that strange border where part of Jerusalem was held by Jordan. In an ensuing war the border was put back to the original line. But all the people ignore that that land was RETAKEN from Jordan and was originally part of Israel. Why is that? Why call it Israeli occupation and ignore the previous Jordan occupation?
What has happened with the Palestinians in Gaza. The Israelis close the border because they keep sending the suicide bombers to kill Israelis. Then the world screams about closing the border. They received rockets that they use to send into Israel. Obama was taken to one of the sites that they attack with those rockets and he kept his mouth shut. They teach their children that the best thing is to be a Muslim martyr and be a living bomb to kill Israelis. Over half of the elementary children want to do this. Muslim terrorists claim that their avowed intent is to kill all Jews. This is peace?
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