Yet another capitulation by Obama to the State of Israel:
The United States on Friday vetoed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory after the Palestinians refused to withdraw the Arab-drafted text.
The other 14 council members voted in favor of the draft resolution. But the United States, as one of the five permanent council members with the power to block any action by the Security Council, voted against it and struck it down.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told council members that the veto "should not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity." She added that the U.S. view is that Israeli settlements lack legitimacy.
But she said the draft "risks hardening the position of both sides" and reiterated the U.S. position that settlements and other contentious issues should be resolved in direct peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.
British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, speaking on behalf of Britain, France and Germany, condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank. "They are illegal under international law," he said.
And look how far the UK ambassador has stuck his neck out:
He added that the European Union's three biggest nations hope that an independent state of Palestine will join the United Nations as a new member state by September 2011.
He forgot to mention that it won't actually have any territory.
an extraordinary – almost obscenely beautiful – financial arrangement in "Palestine". The EU funds millions of pounds' worth of projects in Gaza. These are regularly destroyed by Israel's American-made weaponry. So it goes like this. European taxpayers fork out for the projects. US taxpayers fork out for the weapons which Israel uses to destroy them. Then EU taxpayers fork out for the whole lot to be rebuilt. And then US taxpayers... Well, you've got the point.
That's just by the by. The article is titled Israel has crept into the EU without anyone noticing.
Enough with the 9/11 conspiracy theories. We have one much better: the evil trrrsts fixing beauty pageants!!! Or did the society of the spectacle go totally bonkers? We report, you decide.
And you thought beauty queens' infighting was fierce. No pageant managed by The Donald would be complete without its own outbreak of culture war...
This week, Lebanese-American immigrant Rima Fakih of Michigan was crowned Miss USA — maybe the first contestant of Arab or Muslim background to win...the highest decibels have been reserved for her Muslim Arab background (though the contestant herself has spoken little about religious matters, stressing that her family observes both Muslim and Christian holidays).
Daniel Pipes, who publishes a right-leaning blog on Middle Eastern affairs, pointed to a "surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants." While allowing that "they are all attractive" — Pipes, a former board member of the U.S. Institute for Peace, posted pictures of several — he said that their victories "make me suspect an odd form of affirmative action."
Pipes didn't theorize how shadowy beauty-pageant fixers might be greasing the skids for contestants — but other political bloggers were happy to advance more heated pronouncements.
"Miss Hezbollah is now Miss USA," declared conservative radio talk show host Debbie Schlussel, saying that Fakih's relatives in Lebanon had ties to the terrorist organization based there. Schlussel also said Fakih received some financial backing from onetime Hezbollah supporter Imad Hamad — or, as Schlussel put it, Fakih's "bid for the pageant was financed by an Islamic terrorist." Suggesting the pageant was "rigged," Schlussel wrote off Fakih's victory to a "politically correct, Islamo-pandering climate."
Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin saw a conspiracy afoot, too — generic rather than Muslim-specific this time. Malkin mocked Fakih as a "gaffetastic" contestant who tripped over her gown as well as over her answer to a question about birth control — exposing Fakih's ignorance, Malkin argued, about what constitutes a "controlled substance" and what the purpose of health care is. "Looks like the Miss USA pageant didn't want to risk the wrath of the open-borders mob," Malkin said. (Yahoo News)
I haven't said anything about J-street, mostly because I do not share the sentiment that it represent a big breakthrough. It is, at most a small and incremental, nay glacial, change. I also do not share the analysis that the emergence of J-Street reflects a dramatic change in Jewish attitudes. More on this later. I haven't been at their conference (thank God! I might have assaulted some speakers.) But thanks to the good coverage from Mondoweiss, I can at least express my reaction with some detail.
To begin, the event proves, once again, that Zionism is a stultifying drug. Exhibit A is blogger Matt Yglesias. Yglesias is a generally sober and progressive writer who dislikes the occupation and makes no bones saying it. This is what makes his following comment noteworthy. He criticized critics of "the Jewish state" by attacking the usefulness of comparing "cosmopolitan settler communities" like the U.S. and Australia to Israel. The latter, supposedly, "is modeled on the European nation state". (see here video, 4:20).
Let me present a few basic observations that do not require an advance degree in logic. First, reality matters. I can "model myself" after Bill Gates but that won't make me a billionaire. Likewise, in order to be a "European nation state" a state must meet a number of conditions, one of which, quite obviously, is to be located within the geographic confines of Europe. Trying to establish a "European nation state" outside Europe, on inhabited land, leads to certain inexorable problems, including the outcome not being a European nation state but a European colonial settler state. Second, describing "settler communities" such as the U.S. and Australia as "cosmopolitan" (in contrast to the allegedly more justifiably chauvinistic Israel) does not quite capture the full range of historical experience within these settler states, unless one subsumes under cosmopolitanism such phenomena as slavery, genocide and expropriation of the natives. Israel, of course, is just as "cosmopolitan" as the other settler states are in as much as it is composed by immigrants from every corner of the world. That is not the basis for setting Israel apart from other settler states. Likewise, Israel's racism towards the native people does not set it apart from the US and Australia either. There are differences, because circumstances are different, but the general scheme of settler colonialism, with, on the one hand, welcoming a broad range of immigrants, and, on the other hand, genocidal racism towards the natives, is precisely what makes Israel so much like other settler societies.
Yglesias makes his silly observation about the fundamental difference between Israel and the U.S. in reply to an audience member asking how Jews can support a Jewish State that exclude a 20% of a population (and not, mind you, 70%, which would be a lot more on the mark), while they would reject a much more demographically relevant Christian State in the U.S. It is quite significant that Yglesias misreads the question on the basis of an implied essentialist comparison between the alleged cosmopolitan values of the U.S. and the nationalistic values of Israelis. It is tempting to make such a comparison based on relatively recent race-positive events in the U.S., such as Obama's elections. Broadly, however, such a comparison fails because neither the U.S. nor Israel can be reduced to an essence, e.g. U.S. liberalism vs. Israeli "European" nationalism. There are many models of the kind of a country the U.S. should be. The U.S. is the country of both Daniel Berrigan and Father Coughlin, of Martin Luther King and Milton Friedman, of Tom Delay and Paul Wellstone. Likewise, Israel wasn't made from the European nation state model the way a piece of plastic springs out of its mold. Israel was made what it is now, an apratheid state, by a series of struggles in which a whole lot of alternative potential futures lost. There is Shimon Peres's vision of Israel and there is Avigdor Lieberman's vision of Israel. But however wide the gap between them seems to Yglesias, it shrinks within a much larger array of options, both current and historical. There is also the Israel of Azmi Bishara and the Israel of Mahmoud Darwish. There is the Israel of Yehuda Magnes and the Israel of the Israeli Black Panthers. There is the Israel of Matzpen and the Israel of Isma'il Haniyeh. Identifying the "nature" of Israel does not settle anything. Nobody forces Yglesias to defer to those who conceive of Israel as a "European nation state" for Jews on land expropriated from Arabs. Nobody forces Yglesias to eschews in advance the visions of Israel's future that are proposed by non Jews, or by Jews outside the dominant Israeli mainstream. It is a matter of politics, of who in Israel Yglesias chooses to be the ally of, and of the consistency of that choice with his other political commitments. That is the question that was asked, and that Yglesias sought to deflect by appealing to an essentialist (and incoherent on top of that) distinction between the U.S. and Israel.
I assume that moment of less than stellar intellect reflected Yglesias's difficulty to explain his choice of allies within Israeli society. Conclusion: Zionism may impair your mental faculties. Try not to drive, operate heavy machinery, or speak in public while under the influence.
And this was, mind you, the "left wing" of the J-Street conference.
A war criminal visited Chicago. He was feted by the University of Chicago, which, like every U.S. institution, offers a safe space for war criminals to explain why racism and mass murder of brown people are good and necessary. This is called "free speech" and "respectful dialog." Olmert was invited to give the annual "King Abdullah II leadership lecture." Now, every word of this expression deserves a Talmudic commentary.
"Lecture," because Olmert was supposed to speak for twenty minutes unchallenged, followed by pre-screened softball questions allowed by the organizers. Respect for war criminals precludes the right to call them out on their crimes. l "Leadership," because this is what higher education stands for, the training of the next generation of leaders, those who will be called upon to commit crimes against the lesser breed, to justify and rationalize these crimes, to avert their eyes when they are being committed, and to treat the criminals with the highest respect and deference .
"Abdullah II," because the King of Jordan, affectionately called "King Playstation" by Angry Arab, is the kind of leader brown people should be proud of. Trained and educated in the colonial mother country, (where he absorbed the same values shared by Olmert and his listeners in Chicago), King PS2 is a CIA contractor on the White Man's payroll. His sympathy for Palestinians is so legendary, he did not have to apologize for being more occupied with his dog's health than with the massacres last year in Gaza. Indeed, while Palestinians in Gaza were butchered, he sent his dog to Israel to be treated by Israel's superior veterinary medicine. King Abdullah II is also famous for the kind of "free speech" celebrated by Chicago University. Who then is better placed to grace a lecture by war criminal Olmert, who ordered and oversaw the punitive expedition into the heart of Gaza, than Abdullah II?
However, some thirty area activists conspired to disrupt the ceremony of death at Chicago University, and their illegal and uncouth shenanigans have been immortalized by a clandestine video recording, which I hope is going to inspire us all to match and better at every opportunity.
P.S. the first heckler is Ali Abunimah from the awesome Electronic Intifada.
The Goldstone report was a milestone in demanding accountability from Israel. Unfortunately, to tear one's hair out, it is being buried with the help of the Palestinian Judenrat in Ramallah.
the Palestinian Authority, under heavy pressure from the United States, has withdrawn its support for a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution on alleged war crimes in Gaza, diplomats in Geneva said Thursday.
U.N. and European diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with reporters, said the Palestinian delegation's surprise turnaround means any resolution on the report would likely be delayed until next March. (AP)
This is exactly what Nadia Hijab predicted less than two weeks ago:
The Obama administration could send a strong signal by voting to submit the report to the General Assembly, or even by abstaining. But, despite its fine words on Monday, it is more likely to want to bury it. Otherwise, attention will focus on prosecuting an Israel it’s trying to nudge to the negotiating table. The problem it will face is that Third World countries dominate both the Human Rights Council and General Assembly and they traditionally support Palestinian rights. So it will seek an alliance with Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. If they indicate they do not want the report to go forward, the rest of the Third World would find it hard to go over their heads.
But could Egypt and the Palestinian Authority possibly want to stop accountability for war crimes in Gaza? Hard to believe, but they may have already done so earlier this year when Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the General Assembly’s Nicaraguan president, tried to get the international community to stop the slaughter.
Father Miguel has named no names, but in his speech at the end of his one-year term this week, he left little doubt about what happened. He said he had tried to persuade “those who should have been most closely involved” to convene the General Assembly to help the Palestinians under fire. But “all I received was advice to give the process more time… we should do nothing that could endanger the success that was always just beyond our reach.”
And he went on to make a very serious accusation against “those who should supposedly have been most interested” yet “denied their support.” He said he hoped “that they were right and that I was wrong. Otherwise, we face an ugly situation of constant complicity with the aggression against the rights of the noble and long-suffering Palestinian people.”
If this complicity repeats itself at the Human Rights Council, the Goldstone Report will be sunk. The power of the state system (and a putative statelet) will have trumped the principles of international law and human rights -- unless human rights advocates act to make sure the right thing gets done. (Middle East Online)
I wish I am wrong, but I see this success of Israel at the Human Right Council as one major advance toward genocide. This won't happen next week. But the brakes are being cut one by one. The righteous fury is in place, the silent world is watching incapacitated, and all is made ready for the final push down the hill.
Manual Zelaya, the president of Honduras, deposed by a military coup with the blessing of the Honduras oligarchy and its rotten supreme court, is back in the country, having snicked into the Brazilian Embassy after a trek through the mountains. Zelaya started his political career is a kind of Ross Perot, but that is now water under the bridge as he has become the symbol of popular sovereignty and rejection of the oligarchic rule of Honduras. Obama could learn from Zelaya what it means to stand tall.
But taller still stand the people of Honduras:
As all this goes on, the Honduran National Front Against the Coup is consolidating the movement for a return to constitutional order and a constitutional assembly. It decided to boycott the elections and candidates are being met by angry demonstrations throughout the country.
Through a combination of spontaneous local organizing and an explicit decision from the Front, organizing efforts have spread from the capital city of Tegucigalpa into the departments. A rotating national committee with regional representatives was formed. On the Atlantic coast, the city of La Ceiba has been particularly active. Groups have formed to defend teachers arrested for suspending classes two days a week to participate in the resistance in La Ceiba, El Paraiso and other parts of the country. New women's organizations have also formed to join the resistance to the coup in western Honduras, and poor neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa have created their own organizations to coordinate community actions.
The National Agrarian Institute has been in the hands of anti-coup organizations since June 28 and demonstrations have paralyzed other government institutions for periods of time since the coup. A lively debate exists on how to step up the pressure through these actions while maintaining the commitment to non-violence and avoiding situations that could lead to violent repression and conflict. The defense of human rights is an on-going pillar of the movement, as demonstrators face increasing repression and arbitrary arrests. (Laura Carlsen, HufPo)
The coup government is responding to the escalating resistance with escalating brutality. The Brazilian Embassy is under siege, a curfew has been imposed and the army attacked the people gathered to welcome the President, apparently killing two protesters and wounding scores. Reports of brutality abound. Brazil moved for an emergency meeting of the security council, upstaging Obama's first address to the UN. Latin America is firmly united against the coup, and most of world agrees. Mo country has recognized the coup. (I have mistakenly claimed that Israel alone so far recognized the coup government. While common interests suggest that there are some ties between the golpistas and Israel, e.g. their lead lobbyist in Washington is also the lawyer of the Israel Project, there seem to be no basis for the claim of official recognition.)
But there is one country that has gone out of its way to help the coup leaders last so long. That is the government of the U.S. Officially, aid was cut and support for the restoration of Zelaya expressed. The White house did not recognize the coup and threatens not to recognize the elections. Yet although Zelaya visited Washington six times, Obama has never given him a meeting. The State Department has yet to condemn the massive repression unleashed against the people, and the numerous human right abuses, including the killing of non-violent protesters. Instead, Hillary Clinton repeatedly called for "calm," effectively asking the protesters to stop protesting and thus let the coup stand. More importantly, although the flow of US funds to Honduras have been squeezed, it has not stopped. As Bill Conroy writes,
...since the earliest days of the coup regime in Honduras, the U.S. has done little more than repackage and rebroadcast the same aid cuts to appease the media and to complement its rhetorical position of being against the coup. But behind the scenes, the economic effect of the aid cuts has been little more than symbolic posturing. (Narconews)
Moreover, the IMF and the IDB, institutions that do Washington bidding, approved loans to Honduras both in preparation for the coup and immediately after it, giving the golpistas a lifeline without which they could have survived so far.
The Obama administration is talking through both sides of its mouth. There is much to rejoice here. The very fact that the White House does not support the coup and is slowly ratcheting up the pressure in response to international pressure is an example of how far the U.S empire has fallen in terms of hegemonic power. As part of the necessary repackaging of the U.S. as a smiling and avuncular Uncle Sam, the kind of uncle that you might call occasionally to baby sit your kids (and not fear them drowned in the bathtub), Obama is forced to follow rather than lead the governments of Latin America. Yet the administration is doing its bit to buy the Honduras oligarchy the time needed to defeat the popular revolt and maintain its power. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to work.
Now, if you read the Washington Post, you know that the reason why Obama cannot stand for what is right in Honduras the way he has been pushing Netanyahu hard on freezing settlements is the powerful Honduras Lobby. No, wait, I made this up.
But with the teachers on strike, protests continuing without respite, the National Front boycotting the elections, the people radicalized and learning to rise up and isolation deepening, there is a chance that the Honduras oligarchy will be the next domino to fall. (as always, there is also chance for counter-revolution and betrayal. )
Here is an interesting item and interview. The the first minutes can be sent to your representative so they have an idea what political courage means. (There are a few troubling statements by the interviewed journalist, note e.g. 5:02 on the timeline, about which it would be useful to know more, but might be another example, as was the case with the riots in Iran, how ethnic tensions will continue to be used to divide and defeat solidarity.)
Here some more interesting reporting from the latest events:
