Damn Shame

Sayed Kashua is immigrating to the US.

This article in the Guardian does not explain how a decision to take a sabbatical could so easily become an immigration. I'm sad to hear this for Israel's sake, but I'm sadder still for his sake. Because he does not seem to understand that he is still going to be a minority in America. Electronic Intifada is already signaling that he will be a welcome addition to their anti-Zionist arsenal. He will not be able to resist the lure and he will be marginalized and coarsened, his great talent in the service of a political cause.

In Israel he reached the heights of his profession, the admiration of the multitudes. Literary awards, his own TV show, a new Israeli film based on his novel just been released. Israeli society needs talented, successful, visible and vocal Arab-Israelis like him, to internalize the notion that Israeli Jews need not fear Arab-Israelis. The Arabophobia he points to in his article as the reason for his decision is really the last gasps of a tiny radical minority. When you are losing, you become evermore noisy and threatening. It's a law of nature. The smaller the base, the greater the fanaticism.

I wish him well. But I do not relish the thought of him becoming a tool for the pro-Palestinian crowds' propaganda. We'll see how he navigates those waters.

Russian writer Alexander Herzen once observed

"I do say...that exile, not undertaken with any definite object,, but forced upon men by the triumph of the opposing party, checks development and draws men away from the activities of life into the domain of fantasy,...Leaving their native land with concealed anger, with the continual thought of going back to it once more on the morrow, men do not move forwards but are continually thrown back upon the past...All émigrés, cut off from the living environment to which they have belonged, shut their eyes to avoid seeing bitter truths, and grow more and more acclimatized to a closed, fanatic circle consisting of inert memories and hopes that can never be realized."

Update: Obama's Scary Advisers

"Contentions" follows up on Samantha Power's possible advice to Obama:


Question: Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine - Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?

Answer by Samantha Power:

What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing, I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.

Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Freidman has called “Sharafat.” [Sharon-Arafat; this is actually an Amos Oz construction — NP] I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention

Note that this is a thought experiment in which Power is cast in the role of an adviser to a President. Well, the thought experiment is no longer confined to the laboratory. It has become a near-reality, with Power advising Obama on how to conduct his foreign policy vis a vis Israel. And her advice is pretty chilling: Attack and break Israel, build up Palestine. And translated into simpler language, attack a democracy in order to empower an Islamic totalitarian genocidal regime.

And she now has Obama's ear, who has assembled a team of advisers who all share her fundamental urges; Obama, who has been a devoted member in a church that openly celebrates Louis Farrakhan.

I think, I hope, these grave concerns will reach a certain critical mass which Obama may be forced to face down. I'm looking forward to hearing him articulate some very clear ideas and positions about his intentions towards Israel, hopefully followed by decisive deeds. Like getting rid of his bunch of Achitophels...

__________

And for those who keep referring to his speech to AIPAC, let me draw your attention to this little story from Ali Abunimah, from "The Electronic intifada". By Abunimah's own testimonial, this is what Obama said to him in

"the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"

Does it need translation? Isn't Obama practically saying that he cannot reveal his genuine sentiments about the Palestinians because he is in a campaign to get elected? What remains unsaid but pretty clear is that as long as he needs to court the Jewish voice, he cannot be "upfront" about his own position.

As Abunimah himself helpfully adds later in the article:

... given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.

Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.

A quick tour of the rabid anti-Israel Left blogs and media outlets can reveal some other telling quotes which suggest Obama's so-called staunch support of Israel is merely a convenient pose. Like this, for example:

Less than two weeks after Obama gloated to AIPAC about his love for Israel, he unexpectedly admitted the truth while campaigning in Iowa recently. "[N]obody is suffering more than the Palestinian people..." said Obama, "the Israel government must make difficult concessions for the peace process to restart..."


So we have it on the best of the Indecent Lefty's authority that when Obama says

"[N]obody is suffering more than the Palestinian people..."

(Really? Not even the genocided people of Darfur? Not even genuinely starving, AIDS victim kids in Africa? Not even persecuted women in Pakistan and Iran? Not even the residents of Sderot, with the daily barrage of Qassams being lobbed at their children, by the very people who suffer most in the world ???)

he is "unexpectedly admit[ting] the truth".

Shades of Carter, Tutu.. etc etc..

Can this be a coincidence, when Obama's choice of Foreign Policy expert includes "Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, who says that Obama offers “a new definition of America's role in the world.” (Here)

____________

Late update: When I invoked Carter's name, I did not know that he was an Obama admirer, and an active one, too:

Former President Jimmy Carter lavished praise on Illinois Sen. Barack Obama during an interview at his home on Monday, though he won't formally endorse any candidate in the race for the Democratic nomination.

"Obama's campaign has been extraordinary and titillating for me and my family," Mr. Carter said.

Ah, well. The vapid ex-president, ostensibly "neutral":

* nonetheless goes on record beaming with avuncular delight as he "lavishes praise" upon the anointed one's head

* reports, discreetly, on a conversation with Bill Clinton about Obama

*and expresses confidence that the candidate "could carry some southern states if he becomes the Democratic nominee."

He does all this, and still maintains that he is keeping out of the race to the White House. No doubt he also believes it.

A mask and a face that shrinks from it:

Remember George Orwell's memorable quote: "He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” ?

I'm thinking about President Obama's successive broadsides at Israel's elected PM and his jaw-dropping declarations that "that two states is the best path forward for Israel’s security, for Palestinian aspirations, and for regional stability...or that a real knotty policy difference that has great consequences for both countries and the region.”

Here is the thing:

1. A two state solution will be good for Israel only if the Palestinians cut their aspirations to statehood in the Occupied territories, which entails an open and internationally-backed renunciation of their RoR claims.

2. Solution of I/P conflict will not make ISIS disappear, Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions or Assad to stop massacring and gassing his own citizens. So how is that going to bring "regional stability"?

My conclusion is the Obama is speaking as a liar. He cannot not know that what he's saying is false and based on moonshine rather than hard realities or verifiable facts. While wearing the mask of a peace-maker, his face doesn't grow to fit it but rather shrinks to make it all the more demonstrably a mask and no more than a mask. I mean, we have been reassured repeatedly that Obama is highly intelligent, a voracious reader of books and a lover of Jews and Israel. Yet he keeps saying things that contradict every one of these attributes.

As for the mask, I think we have some evidence that he's perfectly aware and comfortable with it.
Let me draw your attention to this little story from Ali Abunimah, from "The Electronic intifada". By Abunimah's own testimonial, this is what Obama said to him in

"the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies.
As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"

Does it need translation? Isn't Obama practically saying that he cannot reveal his genuine sentiments about the Palestinians because he is in a campaign to get elected? What remains unsaid but pretty clear is that as long as he needs to court the Jewish voice, he cannot be "upfront" about his own position.
As Abunimah himself helpfully adds later in the article:

"... given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power."

A quick tour of the rabid anti-Israel Left blogs and media outlets can reveal some other telling quotes which suggest Obama's so-called staunch support of Israel is merely a convenient pose. Like this, for example:

"Less than two weeks after Obama gloated to AIPAC about his love for Israel, he unexpectedly admitted the truth while campaigning in Iowa recently. "[N]obody is suffering more than the Palestinian people..." said Obama, "the Israel government must make difficult concessions for the peace process to restart..."

Right.

And then there was the famous hot mic incident in which President Obama was caught on camera assuring outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he will have "more flexibility" to deal with contentious issues like missile defense after the U.S. presidential election.

Both times there is POTUS openly admitting he's wearing a mask.

Too bad his face has not grown to fit that mask.

A pack of Jew-lovers

Ali Abunimah is Electronic Intifada co-founder. Here he talks to Amy Goodman about the presidential candidates:

A pre-note:

What's the meaning of "pack"?

* a group of people or things: a pack of fools; a pack of lies.
* a group of certain animals of the same kind, esp. predatory ones: a pack of wolves.

Here is what he says about Obama. Please note the barely concealed verbal violence of the way he describes the presidential nominees:

... they have all gone out of their way to express full support for what Israel is doing. Barack Obama is not distinguished from the rest of the pack, except by for how far he has moved to try to appease AIPAC and pro-Israel movements.

I remember, Amy -- I knew Barack Obama for many years as my state senator -- when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time. I remember personally introducing him onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. And that's just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation. And just yesterday, he apparently sent a letter to Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador at the UN, to urge the US not to allow any resolution to pass criticizing Israel and saying how Israel was forced to impose this barbaric medieval siege on [Gaza].

About Clinton:

...we saw Hillary Clinton, the moment her political ambitions became pronounced, shift. You'll remember, when she spoke in the 1990s in favor of a Palestinian state, since then she has become one of the most anti-Palestinian hawks. For example, a couple of years ago, she went and staged a photo opportunity in an Israeli settlement by the apartheid wall and talked about how the wall was necessary. This wall, of course, which has been condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice, which has ordered Israel to tear it down, Hillary Clinton went and stood in front of it and endorsed it.

John McCain

... talks like a maverick on other issues, but on this one he has gone out of his way to offer full support for Israel.


Implicit in Abunimah's complaints is the convinction that all presidential candidates are actually corrupt, no better than beasts of prey, posturing for the sake of the Jewish vote. He expresses the classical victim syndrome, of whining and eschewing all responsibility for any agency in the Palestinian choices for their own misery.

He should be reading with extra care Bradley Burston's letter to Palestinians in order to get an idea as to a much stronger "why" Obama, Clinton, McCain are not fiercer champions of the Palestinian cause:

Worse, perhaps, is the way in which you took deadly aim at the concept of land for peace, and destroyed it, perhaps for all time. Your artful justifications of using Gaza settlement ruins for Qassam launchers wash with no one. You have justified every last claim and prediction of the Israeli right. You have lost immeasurable international support. You are looked upon abroad as Polarized to the heart, paralyzed by internal strife, and unable to arrive at, abide by, or implement decisions.

True, Israel was once isolated, stigmatized, universally condemned, boycotted. But your actions, and those of Bin Laden and Iran, have effectively welcomed Israel into the good graces of a range of countries which have begun to think twice about you. And have ceased to care about you. No country in the world - Israel included - has cried wolf more often in the past than you have. Now, when your distress is truly worse than ever, the cry has fallen on deaf - or hostile - ears.

...Your celebration of terror has alienated many of your closest friends. You did this. You. No one else. You have convinced exactly those Israelis who were willing to trade the West Bank for peace, that this would be a literally fatal error.

...Last month, as if to remove the remainder of doubt, the veteran Palestinian Authority Representative in Lebanon.. told a Lebanese television station, "Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine."

AMNON RUBINSTEIN also on The Jerusalem Post, further explains why Palestinians are no longer as warmly supported as they used to be just a few years ago:

Such is the Hamas policy: not only an endless blood-letting war against the Zionist entity, but also a readiness to lose their hold over Gaza as part of this war. This signifies a readiness not only to sacrifice the lives of men, women and children, but also a readiness to sacrifice the very regime they established not long ago through a violent coup. In other words, it is a process of political suicide writ large: The shahid is not only the individual, but the regime itself.

Suicide in the struggle against Israel has acquired a degree of legitimacy the West cannot even fathom.

This unpalatable conclusion must be confronted. On the one hand, it should drive us to increase our efforts to reach some sort of modus vivendi with the PLO to decrease the impact of the fanatics (despite the fact that any such compromise will be rejected by Iran and its cohorts); while on the other hand, Israel, as well as the West, should be prepared for a long, irrational and costly war, unlike any other fought in the past.

And here is some further illumination from an unexpected quarter

Free at last, POTUS goes from Mild to Red Hot Contempt

In view of Jeffry Goldberg's recent article:" The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here

The Obama administration's anger is "red-hot" over Israel's settlement policies, and the Netanyahu government openly expresses contempt for Obama's understanding of the Middle East. Profound changes in the relationship may be coming."

I recalled a post I'd written in  2008.  Read this and tell me how wrong it was to have grave doubts about America's "first Jewish president":

And for those who keep referring to his speech to AIPAC, let me draw your attention to this little story from Ali Abunimah, from "The Electronic intifada". By Abunimah's own testimonial, this is what Obama said to him in

"the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"

Does it need translation? Isn't Obama practically saying that he cannot reveal his genuine sentiments about the Palestinians because he is in a campaign to get elected? What remains unsaid but pretty clear is that as long as he needs to court the Jewish voice, he cannot be "upfront" about his own position.

As Abunimah himself helpfully adds later in the article:

... given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.

Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.

A quick tour of the rabid anti-Israel Left blogs and media outlets can reveal some other telling quotes which suggest Obama's so-called staunch support of Israel is merely a convenient pose. Like this quote from an article by Joshua Frank, for example:

Less than two weeks after Obama gloated to AIPAC about his love for Israel, he unexpectedly admitted the truth while campaigning in Iowa recently. "[N]obody is suffering more than the Palestinian people..." said Obama, "the Israel government must make difficult concessions for the peace process to restart..."


So we have it on the best of the Indecent Lefty's authority that when Obama says

"[N]obody is suffering more than the Palestinian people..."

(Really? Not even the genocided people of Darfur? Not even genuinely starving, AIDS victim kids in Africa? Not even persecuted women in Pakistan and Iran? Not even the residents of Sderot, with the daily barrage of Qassams being lobbed at their children, by the very people who suffer most in the world ???)  he is "unexpectedly admit[ting] the truth".

Shades of Carter, Tutu.. etc etc..

Can this be a coincidence, when Obama's choice of Foreign Policy expert includes "Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, who says that Obama offers “a new definition of America's role in the world.” (Here)