Israel progresses down the path to isolation

Peter Beinart facetiously congratulates Benjamin Netanyahu now that he’s thwarted President Obama’s Middle East peace efforts.

Now all you have to worry about is…Argentina. You see, Argentina just recognized a Palestinian state on 1967 borders. Brazil did so days earlier. Uruguay and Paraguay are expected to follow suit, and then Bolivia and Ecuador. Oh, and you have a small problem with rock stars: last year Elvis Costello and Carlos Santana cancelled Israel gigs because of the occupation, and more seem poised to follow. Dock workers are another worry: from Sweden to South Africa, they keep protesting the occupation and the Gaza blockade by refusing to offload Israeli goods. And then there’s Hanna King, the 17-year-old Swarthmore freshmen who along with four other young American Jews disrupted your speech last month in New Orleans because, as she told Haaretz, “settlements…are contrary to the Jewish values that we learnt in Jewish day school.” You should probably expect young Jews like her to protest all your big American speeches from now on.

I know, I know. You consider all this unfair, and in some ways it is. But when you’ve been occupying another people for 43 years, confiscating more and more of their land and denying them citizenship while providing it to your own settlers, it doesn’t do much good to insist that things are worse in Burma. Your only effective argument against the Elvis Costellos and Hanna Kings was that you were trying to end the occupation. That’s where Obama came in. As long as the U.S. president seemed to have a chance of brokering a deal, his efforts held the boycotters and protesters and Palestinian state-recognizers at bay. When Brazil and Argentina recognized Palestinian independence, the American Jewish Committee’s David Harris declared it “fundamentally unhelpful to the Arab-Israeli peace process.” But what if there is no peace process? What’s your argument then? Maybe you can tell the Ecuadorians that Israel deserves Hebron because Abraham bought land there from Ephron the Hittite.

Rest assured, the Obama administration won’t go along with these efforts to punish and isolate you. It may even denounce them. But as you may have noticed, the world doesn’t listen to America like it used to. Non-Americans have grown tired of hearing that only the U.S. can broker a deal, especially because you’ve now shown that to be false. And so the dam preventing countries and institutions from legitimizing Palestine and delegitimizing Israel may soon break. You didn’t like the American way? Get ready for the Brazilian way.

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{ 6 comments }

Vince J. December 9, 2010 at 10:33 pm: I’m from Brasil and I’m proud of my country! I’m from South america and I’m proud of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
Viva Equador and Bolivia! Viva Venezuela and all the countries that opose Israeli ocupation!
DE Teodoru December 9, 2010 at 10:57 pm: Israel has been living on an endless chain of lies because it wanted all Diaspora Jews to believe that only in Israel is a Jew happy and safe. This was to raise its value in their eyes in order to raise the price they would pay in assets, security and influence to keep it on life support. The lies have been flowing like a river that Israelis came to rely on as a sign that all is not so desperate. Little do they know that all the decision makers in the government have a SECOND PASSPORT in their back pockets from some Western nation where they’ve established citizenship. The desperate average Israeli is in a this homeland or none life-and-death situation, he has no second passport. WOULD NETANYAHU, LIEBERMAN AND THEIR AMBASSADOR TO AMERICA, ETC. ALL DIVEST THEMSELVES OF ANY DUAL CITIZENSHIP OR PASSPORT SO THAT THEY FACE THE SAME RISKS FROM THEIR DECISIONS AS THE EVERAGE ISRAELI?

If the honchos and their rich backers in the US had no place to go but Israel– that includes no foreign bank accounts like African potentates– you would see how quickly Israel would make itself a most beloved neighbor and guide to its Arab brethren.
Renfro December 10, 2010 at 10:01 am: Go Brazil! Go South America!
Now let’s see Russia and Turkey weigh in.

In a way it’s a black comedy to watch the world greatest power and so called democracy, home of the brave , land of the free, slowly circle the toilet because x % of the 1.6% minority population of US Jews control the US congress’s policy on Israel.

Someone needs to check Washington’s and Jefferson’s graves, there are probably some soil distrubances from their turning.
Christopher Hoare December 10, 2010 at 4:45 pm: Obama and his Keystone Cop administration may have given up pretending to broker a peace deal, but that is only half of what’s needed. Now they need to get the hell out of the way to let the adults (the honest and mature citizens of the world) do the job.
DE Tedooru December 10, 2010 at 7:56 pm: Only thing Israel is losing is support of the moral and educated Diaspora Jews who are Jews FIRST– bound to the Jewish Ethic. But it won’t lose the Zionist billionaires who’d rather live abroad where they make lots of money and then give a part of it to Israel in return for its recognition of their “mensch-hood”– something they lost slinking about to pile up nickles. This bunch’s effect as 51% of the Democrat Party’s coffers is to have squeezed every Democrat President and Congress since Truman to give Zionism carde blanche for extermination of Palestinians with gift of the USA WMDs as recompense.

What better defines the Obama Presidency that his Cairo Speech and his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Peace vis-a-vis the following report from the WashPost:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/08/AR2010120803317_pf.html

As the American Empire dies, we can all say: at least we have done our bit for Zionazism for not even the Zionists who wanted a peaceful Israel integrated in the Middle East would have believed that Obama would sell America’s soul for 20 pieces of silver.
So now add to Reverend Wright the Nobel Committee on the list of screwed by Obama the Political Lion Without Courage. This is prologue to Clinton takeover of his presidency. I had sooooo much hope in Netanyahu and soooo much hope in Obama….Maybe I should just stick to molecular medicine and leave politics to more astute types on WAR IN CONTEXT. I’m such a dumb sucker in my old age. Hope in people seems to be a poison.
John Somebody December 12, 2010 at 3:30 pm: DE Teodoru,
Maybe it’s only be hope in unworthy , unworkable things, that’s poisonous. Like a system that requires abandonment of integrity, for the group mentality that goes with majority rule.