Abunimah on Bush lite

Here's a perceptive Comment is free piece by Ali Abunimah:

Once you strip away the mujamalat – the courtesies exchanged between guest and host – the substance of President Obama's speech in Cairo indicates there is likely to be little real change in US policy. It is not necessary to divine Obama's intentions – he may be utterly sincere and I believe he is. It is his analysis and prescriptions that in most regards maintain flawed American policies intact.

Though he pledged to "speak the truth as best I can", there was much the president left out. He spoke of tension between "America and Islam" – the former a concrete specific place, the latter a vague construct subsuming peoples, practices, histories and countries more varied than similar.

I quickly skimmed the first page of comments and there was an openly anti-Jewish one quite early on:

Obama's Chief of Staff is named Rahm Israel Emmanuel.

Did you really think Obama was going to say anything different from George Bush?

Skimming down further I see an offering from a commenter calling himself Schachtman, who I have good reason to believe is actually Dr David Hirsh of Engage:

Ali Abunimah would rather dream forever of a one state solution than have an actual 2 state solution.

Oh dear, assuming that Shachtman is indeed Hirsh, this self-styled "anti-racist campaign[er] against antisemitism" has failed to notice an antisemitic comment and failed to realise that the so-called two states solution, at best, simply recasts a a racist situation. In fact, given what we now know of Gaza, if two states really does become passed off as a solution, life could get even worse for the Palestinians who would then be captives of their own, albeit imposed, leadership.

I did post a comment of my own, using the name "Ilan". I'm only posting it here because the editor of comment is free seems to take order from either David T or the Zionist Federation. In other words, it might get disappeared:

This is very strange. There is an openly antisemitic comment in this thread, as follows:

Obama's Chief of Staff is named Rahm Israel Emmanuel.

Did you really think Obama was going to say anything different from George Bush?

And yet none of the usual suspects seem to have noticed it. You see, having a Jewish name does not mean that a person automatically supports Israel. In the case of Rahm Emanuel, we know that he supports the racist war criminals of the State of Israel because he volunteered for the its army back in 1990. We also know that his father is a hardcore anti-Arab racist because his racism is a matter of public record but that has nothing to do with his Jewish name either. It does speak volumes for his upbringing though.

But I see one of the usual suspects has come here to denounce Ali Abunimah for wanting Israel/Palestine to be a state for all of its people rather than have most of the country run for the world's Jews and not for the people who actually come from there.

I think this is proof positive, that zionists tend to see antisemitism where it isn't and yet they don't see it where it is.

The same usual suspect seems not to have noticed that most of the article deals with Obama's racist/sectarian take on what Obama calls "Islam". How about if Obama was to speak of America on the one hand and Jewry or Christendom on the other? They would be the ludicrous equivalents of what he actually said. Both would be seen to be excluding Jews and Christians from America. There would be howls of hysterical protests from the usual suspects if he said that of Jews.

Still, this youtube video of Max Blumenthal interviewing young American Jews in Jerusalem suggests that Obama's dismissive take on the world of Islam is still not enough appeasement of Israel for some zionists.

Comments are still open for the rest of today.