Zionism's Last Card and Hope For Palestine - Alan Hart - 0 views
www.alanhart.net/st-card-and-hope-for-palestine
U.S. foreign policy Israel Palestine Israel-lobby Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Dec 13
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Following the interim agreement with Iran the next six months will tell us whether or not the American-led Zionist lobby and Zionism itself has played its last card and lost. If it does lose President Obama will be free to use the leverage he has to try to cause Israel to be serious about peace on terms almost all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept (and which would not pose any threat to the wellbeing and security of those Jews now living in Palestine that became Israel and who wanted to stay). The stakes could not be higher. As I write I am recalling what former President Carter said to my wife and I when we met with him and Rosalyn, words I quote in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews and which bear repeating. “Any American president has only two windows of opportunity to take on the Zionist lobby – in the first nine months of his first term and the last year of his second term if he has one.”
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I am happy to go public with this positive speculation in part because of an article by Philip Weiss. In it he noted that Netanyahu has been playing the Iran threat card “to keep the world’s eyes off the West Bank and Jerusalem.” Then, commenting on Netanyahu’s statement that Israel will not allow Iran to attain nuclear capability, he wrote this. “The ardent supporters of the Jewish state in the U.S. have never been in a worse position. They are largely supportive of this deal (as are a majority of all Americans, I add). They will have to throw Netanyahu under the bus.” Not long ago the proclaimed view of some American supporters of Israel right or wrong was that Obama was throwing Israel under a bus. The idea that American Jews should now throw Netanyahu under it appeals to me, as I am sure it does to Obama. If Congress does back away from doing Zionism’s bidding to wreck the prospects for a new-start American and European accommodation with Iran, what options if any will Netanyahu’s Israel have to distract the world’s media and political attention from Zionism’s on-going colonization – ethnic cleansing slowly and by stealth – of the occupied West Bank? Only one that I can see. War.
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Though events may prove me wrong, my overall speculation is that Zionism’s last card is not a winner and that Obama will succeed in getting, six months or so from now, what he wants – a new-start and mutually beneficial relationship with Iran. And defeat for the Zionist lobby will, as I indicated in my opening paragraph, free him to use the presidential leverage to try to oblige Israel to be serious about peace on terms the vast majority of Palestinians could accept.
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In the context above what I am suggesting is that if and when he is free to put real pressure on Israel to be serious about peace with the Palestinians, Obama should make best use of the Kennedy quote – “What we want from Israel arises because our relationship is a two-way street”. And he could and should put flesh on that bone by saying, among other things, that it is not in America’s own best interests to allow Israel to go on denying the Palestinians an acceptable measure of justice. But his crunch point could and should be something like this. “What America wants and needs, in order to best protect its own interests in the Arab and wider Muslim world, is an end to Israel’s denial of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. Unless we get that, I as president will have no choice but to use the leverage at my disposal to press you.” Israelis would know, even if Obama didn’t spell it out, that the pressure would include an end to American vetoes of Security Council resolutions condemning Israel and sanctions. If Obama was to go public with such a position in the wake of defeat for the Zionist lobby over the Iran nuclear issue, I think it’s reasonable to assume that a big majority of Jewish Americans would signal, if only by their silence and/or refusal to condemn Obama, that their first loyalty was to America not Israel.
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There is no certainty about how the Jews of Israel would respond, but there’s a good case for believing that because what most of them care most about is the relationship with America, a significant majority of them would say to Netanyahu and his coalition government something like: “Enough is enough. We insist that you make peace with the Palestinians on terms they can accept, even if that means a short, sharp civil war with those settlers who refuse to withdraw from the West Bank and be relocated and compensated.”
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For those who might believe there is little or no prospect of a Jewish civil war in the event of President Obama insisting with leverage as necessary on Israel making peace with the Palestinians on terms they could accept, I recommend Chapter 12 of Volume Three of the American edition of my book. This chapter is titled The Blood Oath. It reveals that Sharon convened a secret meeting of many senior military officers to sign a blood oath committing them to make common cause with those settlers who would resist “to the death” the implementation of any government decision to withdraw from the West Bank. My named and quoted source for that dramatic story was none other than Ezer Weizman, Israel’s defense minister of the time. When Ezer told me of the secret meeting minutes after he learned about it, he asked me a question. Did I think Sharon would act in accordance with the blood oath he and others had signed? I said: “What I think is of no consequence. I’m a visiting goy. You’re Israel’s defense minister, what do you think?” He replied: “Of course, he would. He’s mad enough to nuke the entire fucking Arab world!“ The coming months will tell us how mad Netanyahu is. And also whether or not the optimism expressed in this post was justified.