Obama takes hypocrisy to new high levels
In laying out his plans to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS, President Obama said this: “America, our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden. But as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead. From Europe to Asia, from the far reaches of Africa to war-torn capitals of the Middle East, we stand for freedom, for justice, for dignity. These are values that have guided our nation since its founding.”
There’s an old English, somewhat vulgar, four-letter word which in my view sums up that statement. CRAP. (The dictionary definition of it is “excrement, rubbish, dirt, worthless nonsense.”)
An informed visitor from another planet who listened to Obama would scratch his head and say, “Has the president not heard about the occupied and oppressed Palestinians and their long struggle for freedom, justice and dignity?”
In a recent Guardian article Avi Shlaim, one of the leading Israeli “revisionist” (meaning honest) historians, asked what Israel should do given its failure to break the spirit of Palestinian resistance. His answer was that “The beginning of wisdom is to admit mistakes and stop adding fuel to the fire.”
He concluded that Israel’s leaders are unlikely to adopt a desperately needed constructive policy “without strong external pressure.” And he added: “This is where the international community comes in. It must begin to hold Israel to account in a way that it has so far shamefully failed to.”
I agree 100 percent and then some. That is what the international community led by America should do, but as things are there’s no reason to believe that any American president will ever summon up the will and the courage to confront those in Congress, the majority, who do the bidding of the Zionist lobby and its so-called Christian evangelical allies – even when doing so would be in America’s own best interests.
So in my view THE question is this.
Is there anything that could be done to change the dynamics of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel in order to improve the prospects for America taking the lead in calling Israel to account for its defiance of international law and crimes?
My answer, which I have offered in previous posts, is that there’s only one way to change the dynamics of the conflict. It requires the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, joined by those in the Palestinian diaspora who are not too frightened to become politically engaged, to demand the dissolution of the impotent and corrupt Palestinian Authority and handing back to Israel complete and full responsibility and accountability for its occupation.
That development would impose significant security, economic and other burdens on Israel but, more to the point, it would make it much more difficult, and perhaps even impossible, for the major powers led by America to go on allowing Israel to defy international law in general and UN Security Council resolutions in particular.
Who would represent and speak for the occupied and oppressed Palestinians in the event of the PA being dissolved?
Initially it would have to be the PLO, preferably with new elections to its executive committee. But that would be only a first step.
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