Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 10:08 PM
*Bernie Sanders'speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5OtB298fHY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5OtB298fHY
***
http://www.truth-out.org/the-charade-israeli-palestinian-talks65701
The Charade of Israeli-Palestinian Talks
by: Noam Chomsky, Op-Ed
NY Times Syndicate: 06 December 2010
Washington's pathetic capitulation to Israel while pleading for a
meaningless three-month freeze on settlement expansion - excluding Arab East
Jerusalem - should go down as one of the most humiliating moments in U.S.
diplomatic history.
In September the last settlement freeze ended, leading the Palestinians to
cease direct talks with Israel. Now the Obama administration, desperate to
lure Israel into a new freeze and thus revive the talks, is grasping at
invisible straws - and lavishing gifts on a far-right Israeli government.
The gifts include $3 billion for fighter jets. The largesse also happens to
be another taxpayer grant to the U.S. arms industry, which gains doubly from
programs to expand the militarization of the Middle East.
U.S. arms manufacturers are subsidized not only to develop and produce
advanced equipment for a state that is virtually part of the U.S.
military-intelligence establishment but also to provide second-rate military
equipment to the Gulf states - currently a precedent-breaking $60 billion
arms sale to Saudi Arabia, which is a transaction that also recycles
petrodollars to an ailing U.S. economy.
Israeli and U.S. high-tech civilian industries are closely integrated. It is
small wonder that the most fervent support for Israeli actions comes from
the business press and the Republican Party, the more extreme of the two
business-oriented political parties. The pretext for the huge arms sales to
Saudi Arabia is defense against the "Iranian threat."
However, the Iranian threat is not military, as the Pentagon and U.S.
intelligence have emphasized. Were Iran to develop a nuclear weapons
capacity, the purpose would be deterrent - presumably to ward off a
U.S.-Israeli attack.
The real threat, in Washington's view, is that Iran is seeking to expand its
influence in neighboring countries "stabilized" by U.S. invasion and
occupation.
The official line is that the Arab states are pleading for U.S. military aid
to defend themselves against Iran. True or false, the claim provides
interesting insight into the reigning concept of democracy. Whatever the
ruling dictatorships may prefer, Arabs in a recent Brookings poll rank the
major threats to the region as Israel (88 percent), the United States (77
percent) and Iran (10 percent).
It is interesting that U.S. officials, as revealed in the just-released
WikiLeaks cables, totally ignored Arab public opinion, keeping to the views
of the reigning dictators.
The U.S. gifts to Israel also include diplomatic support, according to
current reports. Washington pledges to veto any U.N. Security Council
actions that might annoy Israel's leaders and to drop any call for further
extension of a settlement freeze.
Hence, by agreeing to the three-month pause, Israel will no longer be
disturbed by the paymaster as it expands its criminal actions in the
occupied territories.
With a donation to Truthout of $35 or more, you can receive Chomsky's recent
book, "Hopes and Prospects"!
That these actions are criminal has not been in doubt since late 1967, when
Israel's leading legal authority, international jurist Theodor Meron,
advised the government that its plans to initiate settlements in the
occupied territories violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, a core principle
of international humanitarian law, established in 1949 to criminalize the
horrors of the Nazi regime.
Meron's conclusion was endorsed by Justice Minister Ya'akov Shimson Shapira,
and shortly after by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, writes historian Gershom
Gorenberg in "The Accidental Empire."
Dayan informed his fellow ministers, "We must consolidate our hold so that
over time we will succeed in 'digesting' Judea and Samaria (the West Bank)
and merging them with 'little' Israel," meanwhile "dismember(ing) the
territorial contiguity" of the West Bank, all under the usual pretense "that
the step is necessary for military purposes."
Dayan had no doubts, or qualms, about what he was recommending: "Settling
Israelis in occupied territory contravenes, as is known, international
conventions," he observed. "But there is nothing essentially new in that."
Dayan's correct assumption was that the boss in Washington might object
formally, but with a wink, and would continue to provide the decisive
military, economic and diplomatic support for the criminal endeavors.
The criminality has been underscored by repeated Security Council
resolutions, more recently by the International Court of Justice, with the
basic agreement of U.S. Justice Thomas Buergenthal in a separate
declaration. Israel's actions also violate U.N. Security Council resolutions
concerning Jerusalem. But everything is fine as long as Washington winks.
Back in Washington, the Republican super-hawks are even more fervent in
their support for Israeli crimes. Eric Cantor, the new majority leader in
the House of Representatives, "has floated a novel solution to protect aid
for Israel from the current foreign aid backlash," Glenn Kessler reports in
The Washington Post: "giving the Jewish state its own funding account, thus
removing it from funds for the rest of the world."
The issue of settlement expansion is simply a diversion. The real issue is
the existence of the settlements and related infrastructure developments.
These have been carefully designed so that Israel has already taken over
more than 40 percent of the occupied West Bank, including suburbs of
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv; the arable land; and the primary water sources of
the region, all on the Israeli side of the Separation Wall - in reality an
annexation wall.
Since 1967, Israel has vastly expanded the borders of Jerusalem in violation
of Security Council orders and despite universal international objection
(including the U.S., at least formally).
The focus on settlement expansion, and Washington's groveling, are not the
only farcical elements of the current negotiations. The very structure is a
charade. The U.S. is portrayed as an "honest broker" seeking to mediate
between two recalcitrant adversaries. But serious negotiations would be
conducted by some neutral party, with the U.S. and Israel on one side, and
the world on the other.
It is hardly a secret that for 35 years the U.S. and Israel have stood
virtually alone in opposition to a consensus on a political settlement that
is close to universal, including the Arab states, the Organization of the
Islamic Conference (including Iran), and all other relevant parties.
With brief and rare departures, the two rejectionist states have preferred
illegal expansion to security. Unless Washington's stand changes, political
settlement is effectively barred. And expansion, with its reverberations
throughout the region and the world, continues.
Noam Chomsky's most recent book, with co-author Ilan Pappe, is "Gaza in
Crisis." Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 2010 Noam Chomsky. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.
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