Israel’s Settlement Actions Causing Military Problems For America
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So says General Petraeus.
Sec. Clinton was pretty blunt about this:
“The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN Friday. “It was just really a very unfortunate and difficult moment for everyone, the U.S., our vice president who had gone to reassert America’s strong support for Israeli security, and I regret deeply that that occurred and made that view known.”
Clinton called “to make clear that the United States considered the announcement to be a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters.
“The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security and she made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process,” he said.
Israel keeps claiming that greenlighting these settlements right when Vice President Biden came to town was just a mistake. Bull.
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
Yes, well, of course, the Israeli statements are bull. They generally are. What else is new? What I want to know, however, is do you still look forward to the time that we, i.e., the U.S. can say go to hell to both the Palestinians and Israelis?
Anyone think that maybe we should just take the leash off of Israel, let them do what they want, and let the nutcases in the mid-east solve their own problems?
this part of the world is the biggest pain in the ass for us. I don’t see us gaining anything by dealing with these people in the manner we have been.
Me? Yes. Both sides are zealots.
How long before AIPAC lights a fire under Congress to force Petraeus to recant this statement? As noted in earlier threads, American presidents from time to time have had to tell Israel to back off when their actions went against our interests. But Congress is another story. A very embarrassing story.
BTW, how many Al Qaeda leaders has “America’s Number 1 Ally” captured? Zero.
Both sides are zealots? I don’t know any Palestinians who are zelots. I’m sure that among the Palestinian people there are are more than a few folks who are zealots. But what does that have to do with the desire and right of the Palestinian people to have a state of their own? Do you view the desire for statehood as a form of zealotry? Or, is it just the Palestinian’s desire for statehood that you consider noxious?
I don’t know any Palestinians who are zelots.
Yes, suicide bombings and anti-semitism are the actions of perfectly sane people.
Not pandering on Israel = no chance of winning the Republican nomination. The Rev. John Hagee did NOT endorse this message.
How many Palestinians do you consider to be suicide bombers or anti-Semites? All of them or a fraction of them? And what does the demonstrated willingness of some of them to act as suicide bombers have to do with the right of the Palestinian people to have a homeland?
I don’t see that their right to establish a Palestinian state is at all dependent on whether or not some of them refrain from killing Israeli Jews. Israel is doing everything in its power to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and, no, it makes no difference whether or not Palestinians refrain from murdering Israeli Jews now or forever. Israel’s opposition is glacially fixed.
As you demonstrate, both sides have intractable, fundamentalist beliefs that act as an obstacle to honest dialogue.
As you demonstrate, both sides have intractable, fundamentalist beliefs that act as an obstacle to honest dialogue.
I have demonstrated nothing of the sort with respect to the Palestinian people. The fact that some Palestinians hate Jews or that a smaller number of them are willing to blow themselves up to kill Jews has no substantive bearing on whether or not the Palestinian people are entitled to have their own state.
There many Palestinians who don’t hold what you refer to as “intractable, fundamentalist beliefs” so I am quite puzzled as to why you insist on judging and holding the Palestinians to a standard of behavior and belief that is impossible for them to meet. Ever.
Palestinian, and the larger middle eastern society, popularly supports suicide bombings and anti-semitism. These are sadly, not fringe ideas over there. I hold both sides to high standards, but as religious fundamentalists usually do, they’re blinded by hate.
A small gift that fell from the conflict in Northern Ireland:
“If you were born where they were born and you were taught what they were taught, you’d believe what they believe.”
“Bull”
Friend Willis speaks my mind in this matter.
Also truth to power.
Palestinian, and the larger middle eastern society, popularly supports suicide bombings and anti-semitism.
Please cite any credible polling data that you have access to that supports your assertion. Your reference to the degree of anti-semitism prevalent among Palestinians and the “larger middle eastern society” raises an intriguing question: How prevalent was anti-semitism among Palestinians, Arabs, Persians, Kurds and other sections of middle eastern society prior to the seizure of Arab lands and the establishment of the state of Israel?
I seriously, doubt, for example that it was as widespread and certainly not as virulent and murderous as existed in middle and eastern Europe where the Jews in several of these countries, e.g., Germany, Austria and Hungary were seen as being successfully integrated. Whatever the degree of animosity toward Jews that existed and does exist in middle eastern society, the event we refer to as the Holocaust did not occur in this area of the world nor did the people living there lend material or moral support to the effort to exterminate the world’s Jews. I don’t believe the people of France, Poland, Norway, Italy, Albania, Rumania, Bulgaria and, sadly, the Irish Republic can make any such claim.
Let’s assume (laughably) that anti-semitism isn’t as prevalent in the middle east as it obviously is. Do bad actions from Israeli governments excuse it? Nope.
Further, the middle east has a culture that supports suicide bombers, particularly against Israeli targets. Similarly, the Israelis often feel justified in overwhelming responses that hurt innocent Palestinians.
Neither side has clean hands in this.
@Oliver -
Let’s be honest here, Oliver. What does the alleged prevalence of anti-semitism in the Middle East have to do with whether or not the Palestinians have their own country or not? You keep raising the issue of anti-semitism as if to imply that if it suddenly disappeared from the attitudes and belief systems of what you call “middle eastern society” that the Palestinian would then, and only then, be deemed sufficiently civilized to have their own state.
I’m not looking for clean hands in this situation. If you believe, however, that there a lot of innocent victims among those killed by suicide bombers then logic dictates that there are also a lot of guilty victims as well. I would prefer that not one more person be killed in this conflict but I’m not going to pretend that the violence that Israel routinely showers on the Palestinians is the consequence solely of Palestinian suicide bombers.
And I think both sides are to blame. I don’t think any suicide bombing is justified, government actions be damned. That’s like saying 9/11 had some justification due to past US bad behavior. There are innocent victims.
There are innocent victims.
Well, the problem with talking about innocent victims is that there must obviously be guilty victims as well. I would prefer that we stop using the term “innocent victims” because it establishes a hierarchy of victims of violence in which moral superiority accrues to one side or the other based solely on the number of “innocent victims” who have perished. The German city of Dresden, for example, is held out as an example of Allied excess during the war because of the horrific firebombing visited on the city’s presumably “innocent” residents at a time when it was clear that German would be defeated.
Dresden, however, had been an integral part of the Nazi war machine and, what is perhaps worse, its residents had been particularly vicious in their treatment of the city’s Jewish residents. Does this mean that Dresden deserved to be firebombed or that no “innocents” perished in the firestorm that followed? No, it doesn’t but it renders, at least in my mind, all talk of “innocent victims” etc. as little more than rhetorical or propaganda points.
The attacks that occurred on American soil on September 11, 2001 cannot be justified but it would be foolish to argue that they were not an expected and even predictable outcome of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Our nation and its allies have been complicit either directly or indirectly in the killing of thousands of Arabs, Persians and Muslims in the Middle East for nearly 7 decades or more. (The British military, with the enthusiastic approval of Winston Churchill, in the 1930s dropped bombs from airplanes on Iraqi peasants because they dared to protest and object to the Brits efforts to install a king of its choosing to rule over them.)
The reality, Oliver, is that if you engage in or condone acts of violence committed against other people that same violence will sooner or later show up on your doorstep. It is not a matter of right and wrong or innocence versus guilt. It is an inevitable part of the process once violence is used to settle differences. Violence begats revenge which begats more violence and so on and so forth. Palestinian suicide bombers within the context of the conflict with Israel are no worse and no better than Israeli military attacks on Palestinians.
Oliver
Israel has their fair share of religious fundamentalists so you really shouldn’t go there
Doc, are you a Friend?
If so, good morning to you. If not, where’d you learn the language?