Friday, February 18, 2011

Thank You, Mr. President

Thank you, Mr. President, for vetoing the UN Security Counsel Resolution condemning the Israeli settlements as illegal.

Thank you for making America the only country in the world to support Israel on this matter.

Thank you for contradicting long-standing US policy on the settlements.

Thank you for not abstaining on this vote – which is what the US has done in the past.

Thank you for talking the talk on settlements but not walking the walk.

Thank you for allowing Israel to say, as it always does, "We and the US have disagreements on various items, but our bond is strong."

Thank you for doing nothing about the biggest settlement activity within East Jerusalem in over forty-three years.

Thank you for undermining the PA and Abu Mazen.

Thank you for showing the Palestinian people how much – or how little – you can be relied upon.

Thank you for holding the Palestinians hostage to a non-existent (fortunately) peace process.

Thank you for allowing Israel to kill any chance of a two-state solution.

Thank you for making the United States irrelevant in the Middle East.

And Shabbat Shalom from your neighbor up 16th Street.

7 comments:

pabelmont said...

Thank you, President Obama, for showing the international community that it must act without the help (and against the active resistance) of the USA. It kept hoping that the USA would reform, but the USA did not reform.

The USA is a dog, President Obama, a dog! -- and Israel the tail which wags it. Thanks so much for making that perfectly clear.

"Make no mistake," I hear you saying in your patented ringing tones, "The USA opposes international law whenever Israel asks us to. Period."

Juan said...

And thank you, Jerry, for a biting and totally accurate assessment of this matter!

pabelmont said...

In order to vote YES (or ABSTAIN), President Obama would have had to act like a statesman rather than as a politician, that is, to elevate a "long view" of world history and progress over the "short view" of imminent elections.

Apparently working for the benefit of the world or for long-term American interests is unthinkable to this (and to almost any other) USA politician when America's always short-fuse electoral politics would be adversely affected.

If the "system" of Palestinians, Israelis, and Americans is to be "saved" from the ravages of fierce ideological Zionist expansionism and control-freakiness, it appears that the "saving" will have to come from outside the "system".

Turkey and South America, are you listening?

Anonymous said...

jerry,'

you have finally learned the concept of hakoras hatov...amazing.

what you still dont seem to understand is why 242 left out the words, "all" and "the", when discussing the territories.

too bad

but i think its great...the right is ticked off because of the statements made by rice and clinton and the nutty far left is ticked off by the veto.

obama is doing good...cutting out the extreme, and going with the middle.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Mr Haber for ridicule, rather than analysis.

There were two wordings floated in the press and blogosphere, two similar wordings that the opportunistic switch (as in car dealer).

1. New settlement construction is illegal. (The US would have to either abstain from this, or sign on to it.)

2. THE settlements are illegal. (Some are, some aren't. When THE settlements are named and in a security council resolution that becomes the law, law by decree, by hasty enactment, no exceptions, no clarification.)

I know its a cliche, but EVERY non-Indian American lives on stolen land in some material part of the chain of title.

But, law affirms that residents have rights even if they don't have clear title. They have preference for the perfection of title. Not the Indian tribes, but the residents.

In the case of Palestinians, a majority of families of refugees were NOT title holders to property, but residents by consent. Those residents by permission have rights, relative rights.

And, a minority of the land that settlements are sited on, was owned by Jewish organizations, whose title was expropriated in war following 1948.

The blanket is the problem, the polemic generalization, rather than the assessment of cases, by LAW.

It could work for peace, for stopping the settlement expansion, and returning the parties to negotiations, hopefully adopting the PA's latest.

Or, if Iran decides it wants opportunity in its zeal for the undifferentiated Islamic umma, then all hell can break loose, and I mean all hell.

I foresee an offer of the Iranian navy to escort Turkish aid ships to Gaza, which if pushed could turn global. A military confrontation between Israel and Iran is now possible.

Tobias said...

"what you still dont seem to understand is why 242 left out the words"

Because they thought 'inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war' was clear enough, I'd say.

Unknown said...

It is always illuminating Zionist settler colonialism is justified by reference to the genocidal episodes of US settler colonialism.

It demonstrates what solid moral ground the Zionist project is founded on.