19 Comments so far

1. corvo February 9th, 2007 3:44 pm

   Oh, how nice, it’s all our fault, as if the Israeli leadership weren’t eagerly playing along with this.

2. Bandjineer February 9th, 2007 4:39 pm

   This article fully supports my long-held contention that the only way to win the war against terrorism is to impeach the President Bush and the VP. We have a crisis of confidence in the White House and GOP leadership. To leave unchecked the abject failures of Bush administration is to compound its disaster. George W Bush is insane!

3. namvet67 February 9th, 2007 4:47 pm

   Great article. I’ve read McGovern’s stuff for a couple of years and greatly admire his honest insight.  Now he makes me afraid.  An attack against Iran will have far more consequences than just impacting on Israel.  We are being led by a White House that is home to a couple of fanatics who are actually the ones threatening America.  Their foreign policy attracts terrorism and their decisions concerning the Middle East are creating the suicide bombers who won’t stop at Israel.
   Hoa Binh

4. opeluboy February 9th, 2007 6:57 pm

   Sane people in Israel and the US watch helplessly as their leaders speed towards Armageddon, erroneously believing they are ensuring Israeli hegemony.

   What do we do?

   In Israel, discussion of the topic is considered normal, whereas here in the US it is tantamount to treason to even mention Israel in a negative way.

   But we had better start talking about it, and demand from those we put in office an end to Tel Aviv dictating American foreign policy. This will be tough, because every politician knows that taking a stand against Israel can be a career-ender. It will take some real heroes, people unafraid to be called ant-Semites and unafraid of the smearing they will receive in the Zionist-controlled media and of course the loss of donations from wealthy Jewish contributors.

   But it must happen. We must stop these people, for our sake.

   If Israel disappeared tomorrow, I couldn’t care less. But I don’t want them taking my country with them.

5. saphne February 9th, 2007 7:52 pm

   so true Opeluboy. Can’t discuss it. My boss wrote a couple of letters to our local paper critical of Israel. A few people came by quietly to talk to him. He said they told him to please not write anymore letters — and he hasn’t, which is really strange if you knew the guy,that’s all he would tell me but I know there is more. It’s like the Mafia only instead of violence it’s economic and political pressure.

6. iammyself February 10th, 2007 8:03 am

   In order to stop the arms flow and fanatical support for Israel, the U.S. must purge itself of Israeli operatives in high governmental positions. Wolfowitz, Perl, Feith, and other lesser-knowns have been stirring the pot of pro-Israeli sentiments (at any cost) in the U.S. for years.

   The first thing we should do in the U.S. is to disallow dual-citizenship people from working in government. The second thing we should do is to attack extremism (including Christian fundamentalist end-timers and Zionists) in every form.

   The government officials are the generals, the extremists are the foot soldiers, and the rest of the world is the war zone. Unless we stop them, they will kill us all!

7. valehope35 February 10th, 2007 11:56 am

   I don’t know where to start with this. It will sound anti-isreal, and maybe it is. Zionism was the worst idea of the last century, but as long as the US stayed mainly out of these issues, there was something of a self-regulatory aspect to it. Isreal was not in the headlines everyday prior to 1967. When they captured all that land, isreali exceptionalism kicked into high gear, colonizing captured land. What the israelis are doing is NO DIFFERENT than what milosovic tried to do Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo–yet we intervened, mecifully, to stop it. In isreal, we facilitate it.

   If we had vision, if we had a sense of justice we’d admit to ourselves that isreal is undertaking ethnic cleansing on territory that is not theirs. We’d realize that they are doing it with dollars that have our faces on them, with weapons and bombs made in the USA. Your tax dollars at work. With that kind of backup, why should isreal make the slightest concession to the reality of their situation? Why seek accomodation with their neighbors? Why make arabs and palestinians citizens with equal rights? If isreal is an example of democracy in the middle east, no wonder they want to kill us! Democracy as a 40′ concrete wall winding through what once was your orchard–how would you feel? You want to see the face of isreali democracy? Google Rachel Corrie. You can see what an american who gets in the way of zionism looks like after being run over by an isreali bulldozer. Our congress looks little better, metaphorically, after the isreali lobby is done with them. The Arab world sees us as the bulldozer, with an isreali soldier at the controls.
   There’s all sorts of names for what’s happening right now–blowback, whatever. We get so righteous about Iraq ignoring UN resolutions, and now, Iran. How many resolutions has isreal ignored? How pompous, how arrogant, how unjust of us! Is there no way that we can assure isreal’s existence without perpetrating the monstrous injustice taking place on palestine? Is there no way we couldn’t do this cooperatively with the world? There is, but one country would object–and that country, even with the guarantee of peace and security, would be isreal. So, where does the real threat to “shrivelization” lie? It lies in our dishonesty.

   I heard Rabin speak once–on the car radio, going to a job interview. It brought tears to my eyes. The hope, the desperation, the futility in his voice, “Enough of Blood…

8. buber202 February 10th, 2007 12:54 pm

   What this essay tells us is to read more of Martin Buber(1878-1965), the father of the Philosophy of Dialogue. Just one quote might do for the moment. A quote that and reflects the role of CommonDreams as well as speaking the truth.

   “And wherever truth is spoken, even in a small circle of friends, it must be uttered as if addressing the nation. And what needs to be said is this: murder and attempted murder will never produce life, never produce rebirth. He who dares to murder in the name of his people kills the bud of the future of that people. And he kills more than those buds to the extent that people confirm him by not repudiating him. What is of real importance is what is said in private conversations; what is of real importance is what beats in people’s hearts; what is of real importance is what is genuine public opinion.”
   (Written in 1949 on the assassination of Count Bernadotte,the Swedish diplomat killed on a peace mission to Palestine.

9. writer2 February 10th, 2007 1:46 pm

   I can’t believe there are so many people who see what is going on, who can write so eloquently, who even have such concern for justice and still it seems as if the stranglehold by the insanely injust and greedy cannot be shaken.

   But maybe it is likely the Berlin wall, all of a sudden it falls.

10. RGuile February 10th, 2007 3:29 pm

    The Palestinians have been Pan Arabia’s refugees in the middle east. The various fundamentalist powers of the region have made them pawns in the greater war of ideas in the area.

    Without support of Iran, would Hamas wield any power at all? Israel has done what it has done to try to insure it’s existence. Much of it has been wrong, especially with respect to allowing settlements in land that was not part of the originally declared 1948 Israel.

    In almost 60 years, Israel has built modern 21st century infrastructure that looks to improve human life thru education and technology.

    In the same time what has Pan-Arabia done except buy modernity where petro-dollars happened to be.

    If the Palestinians were not just expendable foot soldiers of the atavistic goal of much of the middle east, they too could have been neighborly partners in Israel’s moves toward the future.

11. colleen February 10th, 2007 5:28 pm

    writer2

    Yes why has there not been more of a confrontation with the Bush administration? The answer I come up with is that this group must be very dangerous.

    There are enough questions that there should have been impeachment proceedings.

    But I like your analogy to the Berlin Wall and I hope it holds true.

    My view of my own nation has changed dramatically because of the policies of the Bush Administration and the pathetic inaction of people who should be resisting those policies.

12. kitty_tc February 10th, 2007 11:59 pm

    RGuile:

    What part of the fact that Palestinians live on conquered land do you not understand? The Israeli government does not allow them citizenship or equal rights. They live under very harsh restrictions and suffer attacks and collective punishments and repression from a government that wants the land they live on but not the people that came with it. Please, try to put yourself in their place. Their only crime was to live on land someone else wanted. They didn’t cause the Holocaust. They didn’t attack anyone until after they were conquered.

    And before you rush to the defense of the Israeli government, ask yourself this:

    Is denying voting and other citizenship rights to a group of people based on their race and religion the action of a just government? Were it, say, whites doing this to blacks, you’d call it apartheid. Does changing the races to jews against arabs truly make it any different?

13. Marc Gregory February 11th, 2007 1:27 am

    Brilliant analysis. It makes it clear all over again, as if it were necessary, that Neocon policy is an unqualified failure and disaster on every front, and must go.

14. truthteller February 11th, 2007 5:56 pm

    So let them help Israel commit suicide. Although it would be a war crime of the first order for us to invade or attack Iran, a Country whose internal affairs we have meddled in for far too long, provoking an all-out attack on Israel may finally get us and the rest of the World beyond the selfish interests of a small group of religious zealots who believe they are devinely entitled to a certain part of the World’s real estate.

    I concluded awhile back that most of our problems in that part of the World come from two things, our need for oil and our irrational support for a Zionist state in the Middle East. We should NEVER have supported the establishment of Israel, and as taxpayers, we should demand that the Federal government stop all financial and military support for Israel and let nature take it’s course.

    I’m not anti-Semitic (really meaning anti-Jewish, since Palestinians are a Semitic people as well). I’m sick of being called something I’m not, and know I’m not, as a diversion from the real issues. As an Atheist, I have no dog in the religious fight. I see this as a property rights fight, and the Palestinians have been the most wronged ethnic group since Native Americans and Armenians. If a majority of the Palestinians decide they want to live in peace with their Zionist oppressors, then so be it. If they want to throw them out, I’m with them. The violent taking of property should not be rewarded, which is what we have done with the Zionist takeover of Palestine. The entire region understands what a gross injustice this has been and it has upset the balance in the region for 60 years and needs to be ended. (And if anybody wants to get picky about grammer, spelling and syntax in an on-line comments forum, you’re just contributing to obscuring the real argument.) Refute my argument, but don’t engage in smoke-screen name-calling. I’m sick of that tactic, and that’s all it is.

    And, in case anybody is wondering, I’m the same “truthteller” from Alternet.

15. justice2008 February 11th, 2007 9:30 pm

    The war in Iraq is for the benefit of, and by pro Israel interests. Kissinger, Perle, Wolowitz, Feith, etc. Deport them…..
    These guys will also get the USA involved in Iran, to benefit Israel. American young men and women, dying for Israel.
    When will The real AMERICANS say enough is enough>

16. Julianna February 15th, 2007 10:14 pm

    I am far from being pro-Bush on foreign policy. However the degree of hatred for Israel masquerading as truth on this site and the comments following this article just make me feel sick at heart.
    Incidently the Bush war on Iraq did nothing to make Israel safer; and very many of us who do care about Israel did not want to see the US go there because we knew that no good could come of it.
    Julianna

17. bncycaxociwo December 11th, 2007 11:31 pm

    titxozaxicate…

    excohyzyhyru…

18. bnkocywanaru December 12th, 2007 9:13 am

    titzazexenihi…

    exxexahukuni…

19. bnzypynakexy January 1st, 2008 6:19 am

    titxyzihutuna…

    excyhepukapi…

Join the discussion:

You must be logged in to post a comment. If you haven't registered yet, click here to register. (It's quick, easy and free. And we won't give your email address to anyone.)