Obama's Middle East Moment of Truth
Mar. 17, 2009
by Gary Kamiya
The new Middle Eastern diplomatic detente leaves Obama only one way forward. If he wants to succeed, he will have to make it clear to the far-right Israeli government that it must stop settlements, return to its 1967 borders and accept a viable, contiguous Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
If Obama dares to do this, he will find himself in a political storm like none he has ever seen. But there is reason to believe that Americans are starting to think about Israel and Palestine in a new way. Israel's brutal attack on Gaza badly damaged its international standing: Only its most hard-line supporters defend that atrocity. Roger Cohen's confession in the New York Times that "I have never previously been so shamed by Israel" expresses a widespread sentiment. Even the Israel lobby's victory on Freeman may have been Pyrrhic. As IPS's Jim Lobe, whose reporting on the neoconservatives and the Israel lobby stands above all others, pointed out in a piece he co-wrote with Daniel Luban, the Freeman affair forced the mainstream media to at last acknowledge the elephant in the room: that there is an Israel lobby, and that it wields enormous power. (When Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer published "The Israel Lobby" in 2007, they were widely accused of being anti-Semitic, scurrilous charges that have now mostly disappeared.) Unswerving support for Israel is still official America's default position, but it is becoming more and more hollow as politicians and American Jews alike begin to question whether such "support" is in America's, or even Israel's, interest.
more
by Gary Kamiya
The new Middle Eastern diplomatic detente leaves Obama only one way forward. If he wants to succeed, he will have to make it clear to the far-right Israeli government that it must stop settlements, return to its 1967 borders and accept a viable, contiguous Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
If Obama dares to do this, he will find himself in a political storm like none he has ever seen. But there is reason to believe that Americans are starting to think about Israel and Palestine in a new way. Israel's brutal attack on Gaza badly damaged its international standing: Only its most hard-line supporters defend that atrocity. Roger Cohen's confession in the New York Times that "I have never previously been so shamed by Israel" expresses a widespread sentiment. Even the Israel lobby's victory on Freeman may have been Pyrrhic. As IPS's Jim Lobe, whose reporting on the neoconservatives and the Israel lobby stands above all others, pointed out in a piece he co-wrote with Daniel Luban, the Freeman affair forced the mainstream media to at last acknowledge the elephant in the room: that there is an Israel lobby, and that it wields enormous power. (When Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer published "The Israel Lobby" in 2007, they were widely accused of being anti-Semitic, scurrilous charges that have now mostly disappeared.) Unswerving support for Israel is still official America's default position, but it is becoming more and more hollow as politicians and American Jews alike begin to question whether such "support" is in America's, or even Israel's, interest.
more
posted by willtotruth @ 9:55 AM
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