Israel’s impromptu massacre of a boatload of aid workers in international waters has caused something of an international stir, but other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceling a White House visit what effect will it have with the Obama Administration.
So far the sum total of the Obama Administration’s response was a brief phone call in which he “expressed the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances around this morning’s tragic events as soon as possible.”
Privately however many are expressing doubts about how sustainable the Obama Administration’s attempts to combine unquestioned support for Israel with efforts to appear moderate internationally.
The key to the administration’s strategy has been the indirect peace talks between Israel and the PA, but the massacre could well put enormous pressure of the PA to abandon the talks.
As Israel finds itself increasingly isolated internationally the Obama Administration will likely find itself scrambling for a new policy, one that doesn’t involve praising the right-far-right coalition government in Israel every time its military attacks something.
Well let's see, after Israel attacked the USS Liberty, the "ties" seemed to actually get stronger. Then, on Sept. 11, 2001, they attacked us again. Yet the "ties" seemed to get stronger still. So strong that we're almost indistinguishable as a separate entity. Now, it doesn't even matter if Americans have no jobs, no affordable healthcare, no food on the table, a crumbling infrastructure and a collapsing dollar, etc. All that matters to us as a nation is Israel. Even our very children are just disposable garbage to be used as fodder for our indespensible Zionist crusades.
Who would've guessed that our whole national purpose all along was to sacrifice everything for the whims of bloodthirsty madmen in Tel-Aviv?
So to answer your question, with history as a guide, this latest atrocity will likely make the "ties" stronger still, if that's even possible.
American taxpayers give Israeli's $1000 per year, has been the case for the last 30 years and commitments for the next 10. This subsidizes Israels socialized medicine which pay for massages with snakes and/or chocolate lotion. The USG should concern itself as much for Americans as Israel does for its citizens. The USG didn't even flinch when Israel attacked the U.S.S. Liberty and probably apologized to Israel for not sinking with all hands on board.
clarification, $1000 per years for each Israeli.
SHAME ON ISRAEL, BOYCOTT ISRAEL!!!! Even Naomi Klein say do it!!
Thanks to the Internet, how it will effect public opinion is another matter altogether. And while the public is a pretty fickle entity, the outrage over Israel's latest atrocity is curiously palpable even on *mainstream* news discussion forums. Indeed, knowledge of this act of insanely brazen barbarity—disseminated globally via the web, even to the farthest flung corners of Israel's American cash-and-cannon-fodder colony—is going to shock some of our many sleepers awake. More people are going to question the nature of the "special relationship." More are going to critically examine, for the first time, incidents like the attack on the USS Liberty (a name on a growing number of lips, a growing number of computer screens)—and, yes, even 9/11 and its ongoing aftermath.
But will MORE people be enough? Enough to eventually exert *effective* pressure on the treacherous whores in Washington who sell our lifeblood, our liberty and our hopes for prosperity to parasites like those who rule in Tel Aviv? I hope so. But, being a pessimist, I'm not going to bate my breath.
SHAME SHAME SHAME ON ISRAEL!!!
The only thing more deadly to an individual, . . or a nation, than inciting the animus of others, is to become tiresome. If one raises an animus in others, amends can be made. But when you truly become tiresome, all people want is to see the screen door slamming your backside on your way out. Even the cadences of Israeli spokespeople have taken on a predictable, mind numbing, sing-song quality as they seek to "educate" us about their latest adventure with mayhem.
Instead of asking the Israeli government how it can bear to look at itself in the mirror in the morning, we would do well to suggest they look at the world behind their reflection– a world that has changed while they remained frozen, inflexible and yes, . . tiresome.
well said
Well it appears that the U.S. and Israel have wasted no time in paying Turkey back for daring to broker a unilateral nuclear solution with Iran. My advice to any Brazilian ships in the Mediterranean is to drop any sticks or rocks you may be holding and get out before the Apache helicopters start hovering over your heads.
Brazil must be on the Israel/USG shit list also.
Every time Israel does something evil, the US gets deeper in bed with them. It's fork time for Obama's image as a moderate, which was never more than an image anyway, and I doubt if he cares at this point. Like every US president, he figures that the Hegemon doesn't have to give a ****, except when it comes to Israel.
President O'BushBombya is no moderate. He as implemented assassinations orders for Americans, just as Stalin did for Trotsky. If O'BushBombya is a moderate then so is Stalin.
One really must wonder what more Israel needs to do for the US to realize just how damaging its association with the Zionist entity is to its international image. If the US is despised in the Arab or Muslim world, it is simply because of this blind support for Israeli policy toward Palestinians. Will Americans never wake up to the reality that their very support for these fanatics who rule the Zionist entity severely damages their international standing – and indeed, their security? The Zionists have very effectively played the guilt card and managed to dupe (or coerce) successive US administration into buying in on the make-believe compatibility of interests between Israel and the US. Nothing could be further from the truth. This dangerous liaison has meant that the US has willingly become a partner-in-crime in dispossessing native Palestinians from their ancestral hearth and home . Until the process is reversed and justice is meted out to Palestinians, there can be no hope for peace in the Middle East. The US must decide if it can afford to continue to patronize the aggressor with its tax-payers' money, material, and now, blood. Stop this genocide of Palestinians.
What stunned me was when Gen. Betrayus went to the WH esp. to inform the insulate o-bought-ma that Israel was an albatross around the neck of the occupied country of US. It took Betrayus to wake up the anestized o-bought-ma.!!!!!
Not a chance, the glue is in the dollars and the American election cycle, when our elected "representatives" shut their eyes, grit their teeth and hold out their hats.
This is a slap on the face of America towards it,s blind support to killings of civilians. I do believe in the long run America will have to pay the price. Israel has become an terrorist state to kill civilians, children, men and women and the sick and old one. They can,t be victim of jenocide if they themself do the same. God may bless blind Americans for their blind actions. Remember minorities have no rights and Jews in America will have to pay fr that.
As a client state of Israel, the United States must share the guilt of Israel. However, our political elites, like psychopaths, do not have the the ability to feel guilt; their only goal in life is to be re-elected ,and their road to re-election is through appeasement of Tel Aviv and AIPAC.
"Appeasement" – now that's a word worth repeating in this context. It has some real consequences for us if Israel, acting unilaterally, starts a war with Iran or Turkey or both. On the other hand, we have set ourselves up for the debacle which will follow. Ah, Katherine Harris, you said you felt like Queen Esther, with Al Gore, of all people, in the role of Haman. Now I see where this was going.
One no longer regards the American Administration with surprise everytime they reflexively support another atrocity commited by Israel. It has become clear that they don't have a choice. The surprise has turned to contempt, that a country like the US has been bought and paid for by that shitty littly country in the Middle East.
A simple and direct answer to Jason Ditz’s question is an emphatic NO!. You can call it what you will–Israeli lobby, Christian Zionism, genocide guilt by the West, decades of well prepared animosity against Arabs and Islam, US imperial hubris, whatever–America has taken its position on the Middle East for some time now, and it is solely in the camp of Israel. Our “ties” with friendly regimes–Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc–are meaningless when it comes to Israel. These “servants” are useful to America’s grand design, not some deep seated connection. We would turn on them in a moment if it dealt with Israel. Remember Nasser’s Egypt? Remember the vilification of Jordan’s King Hussein when he aligned with Saddam? Remember US actions against freely elected governments like Mossadeq’s Iran?
No. Israel is given a “by” for everything it does. During the 1982 Lebanon Invasion, Reagan stood by week after week so that Israel could move up to Beirut and then pound the hell out of that Arab capital so that the PLO would be destroyed. The US changed its description of the illegal settlements to “unhelpful actions.” Resolution 242 no longer was interpreted as return of all the land for peace–adjustments were implied. The 2008 invasion of the Gaza Strip was permitted to continue only by the good graces of the Bush administration. When the neocons who misled the US into an unnecessary war in Iraq were shown to be wrong, they metastasized into the champions of the Obama administration.
The American main stream media are the biggest culprits in “Israel can do not wrong.” It goes beyond the Israel firsters and the Murdoch controlled reporting. Supposedly reliable news sources are calling this an Israeli “raid.” What? Is this an Entebbe? The wanton attack on ships in international waters, the forceful entry of armed soldiers and sailors and helicopters, the slaughter of reportedly 19 people are portrayed as a “raid” against “pro-Palestinian” agitators. In what universe has pro-Palestinian become a pejorative? Israel? The US? Western Europe?
I am believe that there is absolutely nothing Israel can do that would end the unprecedented and unwarranted support the US gives it. The human tragedy that is Gaza is as much of a making of the US as it is Israel’s. The blank check we give Israel only emboldens them to greater deeds. I can see Israel committing ethnic cleansing, and the US calling it “population exchange.”
Its up to us.
There are elections coming. We can make being tied to AIPAC and a murderous Israel the kiss of death. All we have to do is to be active and organize.
There's an amazing number of comments that just say "we are defeated", "we can't do anything", "Israel is all powerful", "Israel can't be defeated", "nothing can change".
Its easy to spot the obvious pro-Israel propaganda coming from the people who are obviously more racist than Bull Conner. But sometimes I wonder if this isn't a more subtle version of the same. Why is it that there are people who seem to be outraged, but who also seem to be saying that its futile to try to do anything?
We can send back a new Congress next year. One that doesn't bow down to AIPAC and Israel.
That's because the WALLSTREETGANGSTA s are embedded in the congresscritters. I think, unless Diebold does this 'selection' ………….I think most incumbents are toast!
"I think most incumbents are toast! "
That is not a sure thing because the gerrymandering was so intensive during the Rove blitz that many of them are in save havens.
Jane of Jerusalem Harman has mobilized all the AIPAC crowd in and out of Congress to nuke Winograd in Ca.
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.
"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."
–Zahir Muhsein (P.L.O. executive)
Tell that to the starving Gazans! Nobody here is going to believe your Israeli propoganda.
dont pay that little coward any mind…he is determined to follow his fascist masters right down the toilet into Hell if need be
what's in a name?
So, playing sophistry with names gives Israel a right to murder? If they are called Palestinian or Jordanian, don't they still have a right to live. Don't they still have a right not to have their land and their water stolen.
Its Israel that's obsessed with racism. Like the Nazis they learned from, they want to identify everyone's genealogy so they know how to classify everyone with regard to their own assumed role as master race and God's favorites and rulers of all they see.
But no matter what name, no matter what race, you can't starve people. You can't bomb people and then refuse to let the rebuild. You can't steal their land. And no matter what name you assign, you sure as heck can't murder people.
The world is very sick and tired of this Israeli nonsense.
I never thought I'd say this, but its starting to look like a world without an Israel might be a better place. I'd hope Israel starts acting in a peaceful and responsible fashion so that feeling doesn't grow. But, at some point its a legitimate question for the world to answer.
ROFL! "Israeli propaganda" that's what a leader on the terrorist PLO executive committee said! Go drink more koolaid
Yes, yes. Palestinians aren't real. They're figments of our imagination. Undigested bits of beef, blots of mustard, crumbs of cheese. And you can do silly things with words to show that this is so. *Yawn.* This is one out of the five or so flaccid talking points—and slurs, let's not forget the tired slurs (especially the *anti-you-know-what* chestnut)—that comprise the entire repertoire of your standard hasbarah-bot.
Actually, for people who deploy so much of it, the Israelis are astoundingly lousy at propaganda. Only a halfwit or a true believer would buy the sort of sophomoric drivel that has been advanced in defense of this and other Israeli outrages.
Once again Israel will get away with murder, there will be no consequences and no justice.
such defeatism.
If you admit defeat at the start of the fight, you most surely will be defeated.
Israel is always backed in her actions. by white house no matter what it happened. US has willingly become a partner-in-crime in dispossessing native Palestinians from their ancestral hearth and home. US administration just gives lips service for human rights. When Israel is involved in Palestinian,s genocide the whole West has blind eye.
The fact that Egypt has so gleefully taken part in this years-long blockade of Gaza makes it just as guilty as Israel. The fact that the people of Egypt haven't overthrown their pro-Israeli government shows the dictatorial control held by Mubarak.
Since Egypt is number two in amount of US aid, I would imagine they were just dancing to the tune called by Foggy Bottom. Egypt has opened the border for the time being. The Israeli attack must have been a bit too much.
That, and there have been protests all over Egypt in support of Gaza and the aid flotilla, but you wouldn't know it from the western media's coverage.
The US only matters in that it is the cracking dam that is keeping Israel from being flooded away. The end is near. Reality will have to be faced. The Apartheid state has shown its true face to the world. It will not be supported. It will be shunned. As the USA withdraws from trying to force its will on the world…due to bankruptcy.. There will be nothing left to prop it up. Like the South African government before it… They will have to turn over power to the local arabs… Maybe if they don't set nukes off the arabs will let them stay and they can reach some kind of liveable situation under arab rule
what do expect from united states of israel
I wonder how long before the United States Of America BECOMES THE SECOND STATE OF ISREAL?
Rather than worry about how to look on the bright side of everything Israel does, perhaps it would behoove us to express our own "core values". We are, number one, not a religious state with an agenda of taking in all co-religionists who come knocking at the expense of those already living in the place. We are not a musical chairs society, in which people keep being kicked out because they are not of our faith and heritage. If some members of an ethnic group commit atrocities, we do not then decide to discriminate on the basis of membership in that ethnic group.
In previous decades, we gave the white cops free reign in the inner city, Whatever they did was automatically right. People like Nixon (who didn't mind clawing his way to power and then subverting the Constitution) always appealed to notions of law and order which they themselves felt were theirs to bend.
Israel seemed like a great idea to some, but America was always a better refuge for everyone. It has constantly broken down the barriers of exclusive clubs, and one of its best poets, who spoke at Kennedy's one and only Inauguration (reading "The Gift Outright") had earlier written "Something There is that Does Not Love a Wall." "Tear down this wall" is another American cry.
If we stop being what we are and imitate Israel, we'll die inside. Let us leave Israel to face the consequences of its own actions, without praise or encouragement when they are as foolish as the killings which just happened. And let us have the courage to remember the Liberty and to call their bluff on it, frequently.
It is irrelevant at this point that US-Israeli relations might somehow suffer on account of the Zionist blood frenzy. What matters is that the Turks are taking steps to give the Zionists a fight the next time around, and this will hopefully open up some fissures in NATO. As other NATO members witness how utterly WORTHLESS the alliance is, perhaps they will start to question – at long last! – why their soldiers are dying in Afghanistan for US interests. They might even get the bright idea that NATO is an idea whose time is long past. The dissolution of NATO would also set Europe on its own path and free it – at long last! – from the stranglehold of US influence and domination.
Short answer to your question. No!
Peace talks?
The most peaceful people are the DEAD.
Shame on Isreal
Shame on America.
Shame on ALL THE WORLD – for standing by and letting this happen.
At what point must violence be met with violence?
If the people who want peace are murdered. If people who try to make a point with non-violence are attacked and murdered, is there a limit to non-violence.
Its up to the rest of the world to react before that point. Its time for the rest of the world, including the US gov, although I'm not holding my breath, ifs time for them to support non-violence against Israeli violence.
Because if they don't, then the only alternative they leave is a violent response to Israel. If the rest of the world ignores justice and ignores the non-violent actions of those who want change, if the rest of the world ignores the murder of non-violent activists, all that's left is violence.
The world speaks, and Uncle Tom remains silent. This is not meant as a racist remark, but an attack on Obama's integrity. A racist remark is meaningless, but an attack on one's honor is the most grave insult. We knew Bush was an idiot, but we know Obama knows better. He used to be involved with the Palestinian cause long ago, before he sold out. That makes him worse than Bush in this regard. He's a total Israeli tool.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1376.htm
Obama responded to this massacre by looking down at his shoelaces. In other words American presidents are not allowed to look Israeli officials in the eye. No, it will not hurt relations since the news media will keep the American public occupied with other matters until time diminishes the impact. They will even present the case as if Israel itself is the injured party. Even John Stewart will make a joke about what a cute nickname Bibi has and that's about it. That's all we can expect. No sympathy, no outrage, no truth.
Really, Shlomo? I'm pretty sure you'd see that this site has a lot of reports on Algeria, Congo, Sudan etc if you cared to read it. I don't recall anyone calling for the extermination of Israel either. The site is called antiwar.com. Which would imply that the authors and intelligent posters are against state violence, right?
I don't think anyone here would question that it's wrong for people not to care that innocent people are killed every day in the Congo or Sudan. Most here find it a fucking obscenity, in fact. That innocent people are killed in these places does not make it OK for Israel to kill civilians on a ship on the high seas.
Call me a starry-eyed Pollyanna, but I would hope that the developed world would be a little more concerned about human rights violations than the likes of Robert Mugabe and Charles Taylor. Remember, kiddo, two wrongs don't make a right. Maybe sinking to to the level of the world's biggest assholes is not the best course of action?