JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MICHAEL BELL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

A message for Israel?

Yes, but far more importantly, the incident provides a message for the rest of the world.
When have we ever had such stunning first-hand evidence of Israel’s inappropriate access to the President of the United States?

Obama, leader of the free world and a man with the immense burdens of a country of more than 300 million people, has to give time, “every day,” to the the querulous leader of a country of 7 million people, about one-third of the population of Madagascar or one-half the population of Ecuador?

I’d bet Obama hears far less frequently from the governor of California, a vitally important part of his own country and a state with nearly five times the population of Israel.

This is the mouse that roared indeed.

And there can be only one reason why the president must give this huge portion of his precious time to the leader of almost exactly 1/1000th of the world’s people: the Lobby for Israel and the political need to keep them happy, that is if you expect the campaign contributions and favorable press it can deliver going into an election.

Any informed and critical-minded person knows there will only be peace in Israel’s region when the United States stops extending unheard-of privileges to this belligerent and demanding state puts genuine pressure on it to settle fairly.

You will never see peace if you must pick up the phone every day to speak politely and attentively to the likes of Netanyahu.

Netanyahu and most of his predecessors – killers and terrorists like Begin or Olmert or Sharon – do not want peace as almost anyone on earth understands the word. They have always wanted more land – that’s what the 1967 War was really about – and they want the land without its people. How on earth do you ever get peace out of that? You don’t.

So American pressure becomes essential, but America’s debased system of campaign financing – which sees people in high office scrabbling for money throughout their terms of office – makes it impossible to apply that pressure without serious political damage.

But when more people understand how bizarre the relationship between Israel and the United States truly is perhaps there will be a re-balancing of political forces.

Either that or we all must wait the two decades the CIA estimates have given the current state of Israel, enduring all the brutality and misery entailed, before all the dual-passport holders from America and Europe tire of the mess they’ve made and go home, leaving the true residents, both Jewish and Palestinian, to work out the details of single state, the only long-term settlement which can possibly succeed.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MICHAEL BELL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

The American campaign-finance system keeps the Congress tied up in knots by special interests.

No special interest has a better organized and intensely systematic approach to Congress than America’s apologists for Israel’s excesses.

Your views as a Congressperson are tracked and tested.

If your views are considered not sufficiently in Israel’s interests, your opponent receives contributions and help.

If your views are acceptable, you receive contributions and help.

It is all extremely focused, and it is all extremely effective.

Favored Congresspeople even receive goodies like deluxe vacations in Israel under the guise of studying aspects of society there.

The terrible problem is that the only power which can push Israel to a fair and decent settlement is, unfortunately, the United States.

And it is incapable of exercising its strength for good precisely because of the effects of the campaign-finance system.

Obama started by seeming determined to a fresh start. He was encouraging for those wanting to see fairness done, but The Lobby has already worn him down to an ineffectual voice on this great issue of our time.