http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/blog/2072
'The smallest minds and cowardliest hearts': Is Congress clapping for apartheid?
Posted By Stephen M. Walt Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - 1:13 PM
Foreign Policy Blog: May 25, 2011
Mark Twain once described members of Congress as having "the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes." Twain's mordant assessment provides a parsimonious explanation for the predictably rapturous reception that Bibi Netanyahu received there yesterday. All one can say about the vast majority of our courageous elected officials is that they aren't genuine friends of
Why? Because Netanyahu's central message yesterday was an emphatic rejection of a genuine two-state solution. While professing to be willing to make major sacrifices for the sake of peace, his lengthy list of preconditions made it abundantly clear that he thinks Israel is entitled to rule the Palestinian population in perpetuity-even when it becomes numerically larger than Israel's Jewish citizens -- and that the United States should back this effort no matter what. And even though the only alternatives to a two-state solution are 1) further ethnic cleansing, 2) a binational, one-state democracy, or 3) permanent apartheid, Congress is just fine with that.
It would be both tiresome and fruitless to fisk Netanyahu's speech in its entirety, but you can find intelligent commentary on it here, here, here, and here. And don't miss Lara Friedman's hilarious annotated version here. Among his various applause lines, my personal favorite was the claim that
The key point, however, is that the settlements didn't sprout spontaneously, and the settlers themselves didn't just show up by accident. On the contrary, the vast majority of the settlers are there because every Israeli government since 1967 has actively promoted and subsidized the colonization of the
Some people still believe that settlement building was just a wacky project undertaken and backed primarily by religious extremists and by rightwing parties like Likud. In fact, colonization of the
As I said in my previous post,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/world/middleeast/02flotilla.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast
Americans Are Joining Flotilla to Protest Israeli Blockade
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
NY Times: June 02, 2011
When an international flotilla sails for Gaza this month to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of the Palestinian territory, among the boats will be an American ship with 34 passengers, including the writer Alice Walker and an 86-year-old whose parents died in the Holocaust.
A year ago, nine people in a flotilla of six boats were killed when Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish boat in international waters off the coast of
Organizers said the new flotilla, scheduled to leave in late June from a port they would not identify, had at least 1,000 passengers on about 10 boats. One boat will carry Spaniards, another Canadians, another Swiss and another Irish.
The Americans have named their boat “The Audacity of Hope,” lifting the title of a book by President Obama to make a point, said Leslie Cagan, a political organizer who is the coordinator of the American boat.
“We’re sending a message to our own government that we think it could play a much more positive role in not only ending the siege of Gaza, but also ending the whole occupation” of Palestinian land, she said. “The phrase does capture what we believe, which is that it is possible to make change in a positive way, and that’s a very hopeful stance.”
After Hamas took over
Noam Katz, minister for public diplomacy at the Israeli Embassy in
The American passengers say they support the Palestinian people, not Hamas. They liken their strategy to that of the Freedom Riders, who 50 years ago rode buses to the American South to challenge segregation.
Gabriel Schivone, a student at the University of Arizona who is joining the flotilla, said, “It’s in the tradition of Dr. King’s direct-action principles, to create a situation so tension-packed that it forces the world to look and see what’s happening to the Palestinians.”
To explain why she was joining the flotilla, Hedy Epstein, the 86-year-old, said, “The American Jewish community and
The American boat is owned by a Greek company and registered in
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