The two speeches of Barack Obama

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Written by Josh Ruebner Josh Ruebner

Published: 20 May 2011 20 May 2011

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During his speech today at the State Department, President Obama rightfully noted the “hypocrisy of the Iranian regime, which says it stands for the rights of protesters abroad, yet suppresses its people at home.”

But President Obama’s bifurcated speech—the greater part of which centered on the human rights of people throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the lesser part of which re-trod perfunctorily on the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” — points to an additional double standard that the United States must overcome if it is to have a coherent response to the Arab Spring.

The United States cannot continue to decry violent repression by governments against individuals acting to assert their fundamental human rights while continuing to provide Israel with the means—both weapons and diplomatic support — to continue its human rights abuses of Palestinians without mocking the values it claims to support universally.

President Obama asserted that “we will stand against attempts to single it [Israel] out for criticism in international forums.” Yet, by erasing Palestinians from the Arab Spring and trying to shoehorn Palestinian rights into a moribund and morally bankrupt “peace process” that, under the monopoly of U.S. brokerage, perpetually sublimates Palestinian desires for freedom, justice, and equality to Israel’s “security interests,” it is the President who singles out Israel for special treatment.

By placing Israel’s policies toward Palestinians, and Palestinian efforts to undo those discriminatory policies through nonviolent struggle, outside the context of the changes buffeting repressive regimes throughout the region, President Obama signals that Israel need not abide by the standards to which the United States holds regimes like Libya and Bahrain.

In the President’s view, “We support a set of universal rights. Those rights include free speech; the freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of religion; equality for men and women under the rule of law; and the right to choose your own leaders – whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus; Sanaa or Tehran.”  But if you live in Gaza City, or Ramallah, or in the Palestinian refugee camps of Yarmouk in Syria, or Ein Al-Hilweh in Lebanon, then you need not apply apparently.

In his address to the Muslim world two years ago in Cairo, President Obama chastised Palestinians that they “must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed.”  Yet, to this day, President Obama continues to overlook that Palestinians have preponderantly utilized nonviolent protest.

Events of the past week have demonstrated that even when Palestinians engage in the forms of popular, nonviolent protest championed by President Obama, they will still be met with Israeli brutality.  And that Israeli repression will not only be tolerated by the United States, but underwritten by it as well.

Last Sunday, to commemorate the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” as Palestinians term the dispossession inflicted upon them by Israel in 1948, thousands of Palestinian refugees marched unarmed to assert their internationally-recognized, but long-denied, fundamental human right to return to their homes.

Israeli troops killed at least a dozen of these refugees, shooting them with live ammunition, providing a stark reminder of the extent to which Israel will go to maintain its apartheid policies toward Palestinian refugees and deny them their fundamental human rights.

President Obama only referred to the plight of Palestinian refugees as a “wrenching and emotional” issue, not one that should be resolved by compelling Israel to follow international law.  Yet, even for Palestinians living under Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, for whom the President showed a degree of empathy in acknowledging their “suffering the humiliation of occupation, and never living in a nation of their own,” the illegitimacy of Israel’s repression of their basic human rights never enters Obama’s lexicon.

Recently, Israel finally released from prison Abdallah Abu Rahmah, who was jailed for nearly one and a half years “for the crime of organizing peaceful demonstrations against the illegal construction of Israel's wall on lands belonging to my village – Bil'in.”  The State Department was asked repeatedly about its position on his jailing, and refused to condemn it, mocking President Obama’s demand of Syria to “release political prisoners and stop unjust arrests.”

By lecturing Palestinians that “efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state,” President Obama evoked the supposedly sympathetic white pastors who counseled caution to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King wrote that the worst stumbling block to freedom’s advance is the person who “paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's [or woman’s] freedom.”

Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip have been denied their freedom from Israeli military occupation since 1967. Since 1948, Palestinian citizens of Israel have been denied equality, and Palestinian refugees have been denied justice.

Rather than relegate Palestinian rights to the background of an empty “peace process,” President Obama must take the “moment of opportunity” afforded by the Arab Spring to assert that Israel, like every other regime in the region, must respect the humanity, dignity, and rights of the peoples of the region.

Josh Ruebner is the national advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 350 organizations working to change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine. He is a former analyst in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service.

Netanyahu Insults Obama Again, Before He Even Gets Here

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Written by Mitchell Plitnick Mitchell Plitnick

Published: 19 May 2011 19 May 2011

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Today, the day of President Barack Obama’s long-anticipated “Middle East reboot” speech and one day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet with Obama, the Israeli Prime Minister’s office (PMO) took up discussionon two major East Jerusalem settlement expansion projects, in Pisgat Ze’ev and Har Homa.

Bibi never misses an opportunity to insult not only Obama but the US

This is not coincidence, nor bureaucratic happenstance. Terrestrial Jerusalem posted information about this more than a week ago. The discussion was intentionally put off before in order not to upset Netanyahu’s discussions with European leaders.

Upsetting the Americans is not a concern.

Truly Israeli hubris knows no bounds. But then, why should it?

Should this cause a controversy, defenders of the occupation will come out of the woodwork to say “it’s no big deal, it’s the Palestinians who are blocking progress, why are you pressuring Israel?” And Congress and, perhaps grudgingly, the President and State Department too will support that line of thinking.

So why should Israel limit its hubris? We encourage it, we allow Netanyahu to embarrass our president, our diplomatic corps, indeed our entire foreign policy in the region. We allow a country we call a friend and ally to doom itself to perpetual conflict, which it eventually cannot win, while pursuing policies that keep a dangerous region dangerous, jeopardizing both American influence in the region and American citizens, in and out of its military, on the ground.

As Daniel Levy has frequently pointed out, every successive commander of CENTCOM (The United States Central Command, the main command post in the Middle East) has agreed that Israeli policies are dangerous for US troops and interests. As every American foreign service officer, including former ambassadors, I’ve discussed this with agrees, Israeli actions severely undermine the US position in the region.

And yet, we do nothing. So why should Israel stop?

There is no reason for them to do so. Because every time they cross us or insult us, the only voices heard in Washington after the usual gnashing of teeth among the diplomats are AIPAC‘s and similar groups’.

The tiny lunatic fringe minority of the American Jewish community that willfully puts Israeli interests ahead of American ones, while lying and saying that the two are the same, and the larger group but still small minority of Christians who claim love of Jews while wishing only to see Jews and Muslims at each others’ throats, mobilize and yell loudly of their support for Israel’s occupation and settlement expansion.

When we can amplify the voices of those seeking a just and realistic peace and finally get genuinely patriotic Americans to stop standing still for this insulting behavior, we can see an American policy in the region that serves the interests of everyone—the Arab people, the Israelis, and the US. Right now, US policy serves only the Israeli right, and in the long run it will doom even then.

Let’s not sit still for it any longer. Call your Congressman and the White House and tell them this latest insult to our President, whether you like him or not, is too much.

ADDENDUM: Americans for Peace Now, whose Director of Policy and Government Relations, Lara Friedman, first alerted me to this development, has issued a very strong statement condemning the consideration of these settlement expansions:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
19 May, 2011

APN Outraged at Netanyahu Approval of Process for More Settlement Construction

Washington, DC – Responding to news that an Israeli Ministry of Interior committee – acting with the authorization of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – will today consider approving the construction of more than 1500 new settlement units in East Jerusalem, APN President and CEO Debra DeLee issued the following statement:

“By proceeding with settlement approvals in East Jerusalem today – precisely when Prime Minister Netanyahu is headed to Washington to meet with President Obama and address Congress, and when President Obama is about to make a major Middle East speech – Netanyahu is sending an unmistakable message: he values settlements more than peace.

“He is also telling the world, including Israelis, that he is content with a future in which Israel is an ever-more isolated garrison state, whose democracy and whose character as a Jewish state is eroded and eventually destroyed, by its preference for settlements over peace.

“Israelis and Americans alike who care about Israel’s future should be outraged.

“They should also be embarrassed to see an Israeli leader acting so cavalierly and disrespectfully toward any U.S. president.   Despite the Netanyahu government’s repeated actions to foil his efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace, President Obama has been exceptionally supportive of Israel by every measure.

“Inexplicably, it seems that Netanyahu can’t miss an opportunity to embarrass the president of the country that is Israel’s best friend and closest ally.  If this had only happened once, one could give Netanyahu the benefit of the doubt that it was not deliberate.  But this has happened in the context of virtually every high-level U.S.-Israel meeting since Netanyahu took office.

“President Obama is about to deliver a major speech about the Middle East.  Speculation is running high over what he will say about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.  Now, as he puts the finishing touches on that speech, President Obama must bear in mind this latest provocation.

“Israel needs an American president who can be a true friend to Israel, not only defending its security but also leading, credibly and resolutely, for peace.  With his action today, Netanyahu is directly challenging President Obama to show such leadership.”

Historian writes of 'pleasure' at murder of pro-Palestinian activist

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Written by Harriet Sherwood Harriet Sherwood

Published: 18 May 2011 18 May 2011

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Historian writes of 'pleasure' at murder of pro-Palestinian activist

Author of op-ed article in Jewish Chronicle tells me he 'rejoiced' at death of Vittorio Arrigoni

[PHOTO: Vittorio Arrigoni, murdered in Gaza last month. Photograph: ISM/EPA]

I was sent a link this week to a piece published in the Jewish Chronicle by historian Geoffrey Alderman, the opening sentence of which I found pretty shocking.

Under the headline This Was No Peace Activist, Alderman wrote:


"Few events - not even the execution of Osama bin Laden - have caused me greater pleasure in recent weeks than news of the death of the Italian so-called 'peace activist' Vittorio Arrigoni."


Arrigoni, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was murdered in Gaza last month after being abducted by Islamic extremists. He was strangled with a plastic cord. Hamas subsequently killed those responsible for Arrigoni's death.

His murder, wrote Alderman, "was immediately pounced upon by the western media as an affront to the civilised world". This is indeed the case; many newspapers - including the Guardian - ran stories and profiles describing Arrigoni's commitment to the Palestinian cause and the extremist stance of those who killed him.

But, wrote Alderman, "the truth is very different. Vittorio Arrigoni, a disciple of the International Solidarity Movement, had travelled to Gaza to assist in the breaking of the Israeli naval blockade. As a supporter of Hamas he was a consummate Jew-hater."

He said Arrigoni's Facebook page - in Italian - contained "explicit anti-Jewish imagery".

I asked Alderman - who has occasionally contributed to the Guardian - whether he regretted recording his "pleasure" at Arrigoni's death. "It's still my view," he told me on the phone from London. "He was a Jew-hater like Adolf Hitler. Yes, he deserved to die for being a Jew-hater. I rejoiced in the death of a Jew-hater. I have no regrets."

Jeff Halper, an Israeli activist and academic, who knew Arrigoni well, said Alderman's charges against him were "outrageous".

"Sometimes things are so outrageous there simply isn't a response. Vik [Arrigoni] was unique. He was political and he had strong opinions. But the idea that he would differentiate between someone Jewish and someone non-Jewish - there has never been a hint of that."

Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, told me he had no qualms about publishing the piece. "I have no problem at all with publishing it. I don't agree with [Alderman], it's not my view - it's his."

He rejected the description of Arrigoni as a "peace activist". "He was a member of the ISM, for God's sake. That's not peace activism, that's hard core Palestinian terror."

Neta Golan, an Israeli founder of the ISM, denied the organisation supported terror attacks or backed Hamas. "The ISM supports the avenue of non-violent and popular resistance," she told me. "It is a grassroots group, and we will work with anyone who wants to organise non-violent resistance. The ISM does not have a position on internal Palestinian politics."

She also rejected suggestions that Arrigoni was anti-Semitic. "It was so obvious he wasn't a racist. Absolutely he was not anti-Semitic."

I never met Arrigoni and I don't know what his views (if any) on Jews, as opposed to his views on Israel, were. Attempts to conflate opposition to Israeli policies with anti-Semitism are not new.

Scenes of Palestinian militants handing out sweets to celebrate suicide bombings or other deadly attacks are familiar - and sickening.

Now Alderman's rejoicing in the death of a pro-Palestinian activist seems to me a new and repugnant development.

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Israeli Home Demolitions More Than Double Since Last Year

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Written by Kevin Murphy - IMEMC Kevin Murphy - IMEMC

Published: 17 May 2011 17 May 2011

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The UN Agency for Palestinian refugees has stated that Israel has displaced 149 children, through housing demolitions, in the West Bank so far this year. The figures show a stark increase on numbers displaced and housing units demolished for the same period last year.

A total of 333 Palestinians were displaced from January to April as a result of the destruction of 78 residential units. The figures show a more than doubling of Israeli housing demolitions since the same period last year when 142 Palestinians were forcibly displaced.

The UN has urged Israel to halt the demolition of Palestinian homes. Chris Gunness, UNRWA spokesman, told Maan news agency that women and children live under the constant threat of harassment, eviction and disruption of their lives. EU commissioner Kristalina Georgieva echoed the UN statements on the issue, saying that Israel must be respect its obligations under international law.

For Palestinian activists the figures confirms the greater picture of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Territories of Palestinians. Demolitions have been targeted specifically around areas in which the Israeli separation barrier is being built, that would then be annexed into Israel on completion of the divide. The UN figures come after the revelation by Israeli human rights group The Centre for the Defence of the Individual that Israel covertly cancelled the residency status of 140,000 Palestinians abroad during the period of 1967 to 1994 and refused to allow them back into the country.

The news comes on the back of a Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions report of a distinct slow down in demolitions in East Jerusalem as a result of international pressure. City Counciler and co founder of the Israeli Commitee Against Housing Demolitions Meri Margilet said in a statement to the Jerusalem Post that “Right now house demolitions are at the minimum that is possible – there’s only been four or five demolitions so far this year...Why? Because the Americans came and said, This time, really, stop, no excuses, no stories.”