Larry Derfner writes:
“Tafasta meruba, lo tafasta,” is a Hebrew saying that means, “If you get too greedy, you end up with nothing,” and it fits well to the arm-twisting job Israel just did on Obama at the UN. By leaning on him too single-handedly to block the Palestinian statehood bid, to pressure countries like Gabon and Bosnia-Herzegovina to go along, and to give a speech that Avigdor Lieberman said he would “sign with both hands,” Israel bent Obama too far, until he just broke. In the eyes of Palestinians, Muslims of the Middle East and probably everybody else in the world, the U.S. president has now assumed the identity of the ultimate Israel lobbyist, of Mr.Hasbara. “He’s not the president of the United States, he’s the president of Israel,” a man in Ramallah said to me the day after the speech, and that’s what Palestinians think today: They flat-out hate Obama. They may hate him more than any other U.S. president in history, including George W. Bush. They thought Obama was on their side, and in the moment of truth he sold them out to the LIkud, to the settlers, to the Republican wackos. Palestinians, and presumably all Muslims, feel toward Obama today how the settlers felt toward Ariel Sharon after he decided to withdraw from Gaza: betrayed.
With Obama’s America now having zero credibility in the Middle East, where does this leave Israel? Alone and vulnerable to an extent that’s unfamiliar to Israelis. Until now, the U.S. held sway with the Palestinians; it doesn’t anymore. It held sway with Egypt, Jordan and Turkey; I wonder how much it has left now. In highly dramatic fashion, the U.S. stood up for the occupation and against Palestinian independence, and the result of this disgrace is that outside of Israel and America, the occupation is more unpopular and Palestinian independence more popular than ever. It’s the Palestinians who have the wind at their back now, and Israel that’s pissing in the wind. And America can’t help us anymore because America has become a spent force around here.
I hope you are right. Obama’s speech was the most repulsive obsequious litany of lies so much so that he could be accepted as an Israeli Likud Zionist moving right towards Avigdor Lieberman and the vicious “settlers” with their dogs, guns and racism. How can he, and the grovelling Congress, be considered as acting in the interest of the USA. As you note, it is not even in Israel’s interest.
Obama has betrayed the world! We were given some hope for Palestinian justice when he was elected, but he will not be the catylist. What a bloody dissapointment he turned out to be. And when you look at the current group of Republican presidential hopefuls, it looks like it’s all down hill from here on!
Perhaps the Chinese will take up the anti-colonial cause? They have considerable experience of foreigners taking their territory…and have prevailed. The Palestinian diaspora has parallels in the Long March and they can empathise with the suffering. Certainly America is a spent force in the Middle East. At the greatest point of Yang, Yin appears. My questions are:
1. What is the status of the 20% 0f Israel proper that is Arab (Christian and Muslim) in a Jewish state? I have some idea having corresponded with Archbishop Riah.
2. With America impotent, will we see local attempts to resolve from Turkey and Egypt? Or will we see more gangsterism from the West Bank settlers following, as Israeli-Americans, their apartheit, manifest destiny?
3. Will Marwan Barghouti emerge as a Nelson Mandela?
I am amazed at the responses regarding Obama’s so-called collapse. Did you not know that no matter whether the Democrats or the Republicans have a man in the White House, that man is controlled by Zionist money. The Zionists have had the US “by the short and curlies” ever since Woodrow Wilson. Go take a look at history. America has had it. Americans are merely the Zionist surrogate army.
I just hope that Palestinians don’t think of Abbas as being trustworthy after this. Zionasties needed his reputation to be rescued.
Allowing Abbas to be seen to be standing up to the U.S. and Israel, after all of his toadying, could be just what a desperate zionist movement needs, to keep their favourite lacky in power for as long as possible
Rosemerry,
“Obama’s speech was the most repulsive obsequious litany of lies…”
For me it was a close second to Netanyahu’s despicable speech to the UN Assembly. Imeu.net has presented each whopper as he spoke them along with the reality he ignored.
http://imeu.net/news/article0021514.shtml
“The deliberate denial of factual truth – the ability to lie – the capacity to change facts – the ability to act – are interconnected; they owe their existence to… imagination.” Hannah Arendt: