Things to read if you're suffering from misplaced optimism

Why is Obama's Mideast policy in a state of disastrous collapse? Netanyahu and Likud enjoy the support of many operatives and sympathizers (neoliberals, neoconservatives on the left) in control of key levers of power within the Democratic Party and the Obama administration. End of story. His stated policy objectives are being systematically undercut by members of his own administration and by the AIPAC-controlled Congress.

I think it is far too early for such thoughts. Obama started by laying out a rational policy and that he did this at the start of his presidency is the good news. Clearly he has had to make a tactical withdrawal and the bold start was perhaps not so wise, but he is a strategic operator.

If he does nothing for 7 years lets Bibi destroy any prospects for a Palestinian state then for sure it would look worse than 43's peace efforts, but we are a long way from that.

chrisdornan -- It is unlikely that Obama will be able to regain his balance on Mideast politics, since he continues to come under heavy and often vicious attack for pressing the Mideast peace process from so many neoconservative voices in the mainstream media -- including The Washington Post as well as Fox News. American interests are heading towards a catastrophe in the region. Likud and AIPAC are in the driver's seat in American politics and in the Obama administration, and they are working to ignite a global conflagration between the United States and the entire Muslim world (World IV, or, in Christian Zionist parlance, Armageddon). There is no political force on the American scene strong enough to stop them.

I know what one is saying here, is very similar to what I said on the commentary of Marc Lynch, but I don't really think that, President Obama's strategy regarding the peace process is incoherent, nor believe that, he caved in very quickly to Israel.

In this context, the President's strategy was coherent but wrong right from the start. He manipulated his Cairo outreech speech to the Muslims, to become a leaning instrument on the Arab and Muslim side, so that they can lean in turn, on the Palesitnians to start talking to the government of Bibi Netanyahu. President Obama did say the right things such as, the settlements being illegal, but then again, we have all heard that since the days of the Presidency of Mr. Carter. He re-iterated his belief also, in the two-state solution to the Palestinian problem, yet here again he seems to have forgotten that, we have already heard that, this is the goal, since the days of the Madrid Conference 1991. I say, No. His policy is coherent but totally wrong, because he was leaning on the wrong side, and, added nothing to the needed credibility of an honest US peace broker.

As for caving in to Israel, well, how could that be, when he really never intended to lean on Israel in any case in the first place.

Regarding Abu Mazen, if indeed he is indulging in theatrics, then I wonder if he has reached the stage of megalomania, to believe that he is bigger than his own people, and consequently indispensable to them !!. In my books at least, no one is bigger than his/her own people, and therefore, no one is indispensable; especially if they are insecure enough as leaders, to indulge in theatrics.

khairi janbek.paris/france

Even if we had the best of intentions and the most brilliant strategy for resolving the crisis, he's run out of the pull necessary to get anything done here. The unemployment rate is up around 50% on his watch, we've lost millions of jobs, and we're still bleeding them like crazy; a 10% unemployment rate is generally considered political death for a president. ANd what pull he has left he clearly wants to put into domestic policies, such as health care, and very likely a second stimulus.

He no longer has the pull for this fight, so it's better he just move on. Like you said, because he put the Palestinians' hopes up, there's a real danger of an explosion in violence if they are let down, so he'll have to try and control that somehow, or he could end up being much worse than Bush on the issue.

Nathan Guttman is (almost) always right!

Prof. Walt: While it's early yet and Obama can, with some but not total ease turn it around given his terrible betrayal of his Cairo talk, I think one does have to admit objectively speaking that at least so far he *has* been worse than Bush.

How? Well at least Bush never so clearly cut the legs out from under the Palestinian moderates the way Obama has with Abbas and the PA. Going back on his Cairo statement opposing all further Israeli settlement growth and then getting the PA to back away from the Goldstone report: If it didn't have such effects one could only say Obama deserved the difficulties he'll now get by those less-than-clever bits of castration.

And given his blatant betrayal of his Cairo speech what also of the diminution this means for the credibility of the U.S. in the future as well?

So far at least, he has been worse. The only thing saving us from saying it is the belief that he can hardly continue to do so, which I too believe, but wouldn't bet the farm on. Certainly I don't think we can count on Mrs. Clinton to be providing any deep wise counsel to him.

"is it possible that Obama's handling of the I-P peace process might actually end up being worse than George Bush's?"

Obama's moronic call to stop contruction within settlements was a non-starter from the begining for the Israelis (whether you think it is a the "right" thing to do is irrelevent--are you listening Professor "Realist"?) and was a demand even the Palestinians had never made before. Once he had made it, no Palestinian leader could accept anything less or end up looking weak and probably dead. Obama pretty much ruined any chance for the peace process to start up again anytime soon.

It is sad indeed that the first African-American president of the United States defends in Israel exactly the kind of institutionalized bigotry, apartheid oppression, and racism in Israel the civil rights movement defeated in this country, a victory that made his election possible.

George H.W. Bush forced a showdown with Yitzhak Shamir over Israel's West Bank settlements by threatening to link $10 billion in loan guarantees to Israel's compliance with a settlement freeze. Why can't Obama do this?

This is a battle that America and Obama can win at a stroke, without a single life being lost and within a matter of weeks or months.

Bring in legislation to ban all bilateral trade with Israel until its government complies with international law, the UNSC and the Geneva Conventions.

If Mr Obama is really interested in "change" we can believe in then he needs to "change" the same old rhetoric, and dogmatic, unquestioned, unconditional support of Israel. Level the playing field and be an honest broker of the "change" he is espousing. Obama is no fool but AIPAC, Rahm, and our useless Congress have done their their best to bias Obama to be an Israel firster. Shameful. Shameful.

Is it frustrating that Obama cannot make a decision and then see it through. But his strategy may be this...wait until the 2010 elections are over. Do not make waves with AIPAC until he has ensured a Dem majority then turn the screws on Israel and cut their aid if they still refuse to meet their roadmap obligations. Don't forget, the guy still has three years to go.

I will be proud of the day when the President can put the interest of America before the interest of Israel and not be crucified for it by AIPAC, Israel, the neocons, etc. The oath of allegiance that I said everyday in school was not to Israel, or any country but America.

My own theory for making sense of what seems, as a senseless
policy pursued by President Obama regarding the Palestinian-Israeli peace, the underlying cardinal tenet of this policy
would be, how to get Abu Mazen to talk without pre-conditions, and consequently without having to pressurise Bibi.

khairi janbek.paris/france

Actually it was an obligation not to built new settlements, which Israel has done, not to end natural growth of existing settlements. Which is why the issue of natural growth was never a Palestinian pre condition to negotiation until Obama made it one. On the other hand, the Palestinians never even attempted to meet their obligation to end terrorism and incitement.

It would be moronic to recognize a state that has never existed as opposed to recognizing the goal of a two state solution or even offering a state as the Israelis have done.

Our Arms Export Control Act _compels_ us to suspend military aid to Israel since it has been found to have committed WAR CRIMES with our arms and $$$$$$$

European Jewry is largely invented

http://inventionofthejewishpeople.com/

Converts to Colonizers?

By Gabriel Piterberg, in New Left Review 59 Sept/Oct 2009

The foundational myths of the state of Israel rest on the notion that, throughout history, the Jews have been descended from a single ethno-biological core of Judean exiles who had been removed from their ancestral lands in the first two centuries CE. Shlomo Sand’s [The Invention of the Jewish People] sets out to refute such claims of organic ethnic continuity, arguing that the idea that the Jews had been exiled across the Mediterranean world was a creation of the Christian Church—mass displacement as punishment and constant reminder of who is Israel Veritas—which was conveniently embraced by 19th-century Jewish scholars. Their narratives of a centuries-long Galut, ‘exile’, and by extension the Zionist project of ‘returning’ to reclaim ancient territories, are based on historical fictions.

Against these, Sand offers an alternative history in which the striking demographic growth of the Jews in the Hellenistic Mediterranean was the product not of mass exile, but of an energetic drive of proselytism and conversion that had begun under the Hasmonean Kingdom in the second century BCE and lasted till the fourth century CE. Conversions were also, Sand holds, the source of the large Jewish populations at the margins of the Hellenistic world—Arabia, North Africa and the area between the Black and Caspian Seas—as Judaizing currents met repression in Christian territories and fanned out into the largely pagan lands beyond. Sand offers a cautious endorsement to the thesis, earlier popularized by Arthur Koestler, that East European Jewry—what he and others call the Yiddish Nation—originated not from any eastward migration of ‘German’ Jews, themselves supposedly descended from pure Judean exiles, but from the Khazars, Jewish converts whose empire on the Volga–Don steppe disappears from the historical record in the 13th century. This contention has far-reaching implications, for it is the Yiddish Nation that is in many ways the real foundation for the two largest and most vociferous Jewish communities of the past half-century—the Israeli and the American. [click to read full article]

It will be interesting to see how the talks will go between them. Will they affirm to each other, the eternal friendship and alliance of both countries to each other?. Possible. Or, will they re-iterate their respective positions on the peace process and leave it at that?. Also possible. But also, will President Obama mention to Bibi, the Arab proposal, for avoiding the issue of settlements freeze, by going directly into final status talks, between the Palestinians and the Israelis?.

I must say, that when I first heard this proposal, I thought it would be a good idea, so that Abu Mazen can return to the negotiations without losing face, and Bibi likelwise can return to the table without seeming to have compromised his position. But almost immediately, I realised that, the Arab leaders want a written statement of guarantee, from both the US and the UN, for a time-line for the talks which should aim at creating a Palestinian state, after resolving the issues of the future of settlements, Jerusalm and the right of return.

Forgive me at this point if I am puzzled, but if Bibi has rejected a total freeze on the settlements now, is he likely to consider thinking about the future of those settlements?. Moreover, if the settlements are difficult enough an issue, is he likely to discuss the future status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees, when he himself rejected them outright in a similar fashion to other Israeli politicians?.

I think what is going on, is symptomatic of a deep crisis, which I personally have no idea how all this will end.

khairi janbek.paris/france

European Jewry is largely invented

http://inventionofthejewishpeople.com/

Converts to Colonizers?

By Gabriel Piterberg, in New Left Review 59 Sept/Oct 2009

The foundational myths of the state of Israel rest on the notion that, throughout history, the Jews have been descended from a single ethno-biological core of Judean exiles who had been removed from their ancestral lands in the first two centuries CE. Shlomo Sand’s [The Invention of the Jewish People] sets out to refute such claims of organic ethnic continuity, arguing that the idea that the Jews had been exiled across the Mediterranean world was a creation of the Christian Church—mass displacement as punishment and constant reminder of who is Israel Veritas—which was conveniently embraced by 19th-century Jewish scholars. Their narratives of a centuries-long Galut, ‘exile’, and by extension the Zionist project of ‘returning’ to reclaim ancient territories, are based on historical fictions.

Against these, Sand offers an alternative history in which the striking demographic growth of the Jews in the Hellenistic Mediterranean was the product not of mass exile, but of an energetic drive of proselytism and conversion that had begun under the Hasmonean Kingdom in the second century BCE and lasted till the fourth century CE. Conversions were also, Sand holds, the source of the large Jewish populations at the margins of the Hellenistic world—Arabia, North Africa and the area between the Black and Caspian Seas—as Judaizing currents met repression in Christian territories and fanned out into the largely pagan lands beyond. Sand offers a cautious endorsement to the thesis, earlier popularized by Arthur Koestler, that East European Jewry—what he and others call the Yiddish Nation—originated not from any eastward migration of ‘German’ Jews, themselves supposedly descended from pure Judean exiles, but from the Khazars, Jewish converts whose empire on the Volga–Don steppe disappears from the historical record in the 13th century. This contention has far-reaching implications, for it is the Yiddish Nation that is in many,...............

The sephardic Jews (the only Jews with some viable claim to land in the Levant -- the rest were converts -- see above), are genetically the same as Arabs.

There are no chosen people.

Jewish women and Arab men and Arab women and Jewish men have been cross breading to such an extent that they are the same people.

Thus the one state solution is sensible.

Don't believe me? Read the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/25/medicalscience.genetics

Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians

* Robin McKie, science editor

A keynote research paper showing that Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical has been pulled from a leading journal.

Academics who have already received copies of Human Immunology have been urged to rip out the offending pages and throw them away.

Such a drastic act of self-censorship is unprecedented in research publishing and has created widespread disquiet, generating fears that it may involve the suppression of scientific work that questions Biblical dogma.

'I have authored several hundred scientific papers, some for Nature and Science, and this has never happened to me before,' said the article's lead author, Spanish geneticist Professor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena, of Complutense University in Madrid. 'I am stunned.'

British geneticist Sir Walter Bodmer added: 'If the journal didn't like the paper, they shouldn't have published it in the first place. Why wait until it has appeared before acting like this?'

The journal's editor, Nicole Sucio-Foca, of Columbia University, New York, claims the article provoked such a welter of complaints over its extreme political writing that she was forced to repudiate it. The article has been removed from Human Immunology's website, while letters have been written to libraries and universities throughout the world asking them to ignore or 'preferably to physically remove the relevant pages'. Arnaiz-Villena has been sacked from the journal's editorial board.

Dolly Tyan, president of the American Society of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, which runs the journal, told subscribers that the society is 'offended and embarrassed'.

The paper, 'The Origin of Palestinians and their Genetic Relatedness with other Mediterranean Populations', involved studying genetic variations in immune system genes among people in the Middle East.

In common with earlier studies, the team found no data to support the idea that Jewish people were genetically distinct from other people in the region. In doing so, the team's research challenges claims that Jews are a special, chosen people and that Judaism can only be inherited.

Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East share a very similar gene pool and must be considered closely related and not genetically separate, the authors state. Rivalry between the two races is therefore based 'in cultural and religious, but not in genetic differences', they conclude.

But the journal, having accepted the paper earlier this year, now claims the article was politically biased and was written using 'inappropriate' remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its editor told the journal Nature last week that she was threatened by mass resignations from members if she did not retract the article.

Arnaiz-Villena says he has not seen a single one of the accusations made against him, despite being promised the opportunity to look at the letters sent to the journal.

He accepts he used terms in the article that laid him open to criticism. There is one reference to Jewish 'colonists' living in the Gaza strip, and another that refers to Palestinian people living in 'concentration' camps.

'Perhaps I should have used the words settlers instead of colonists, but really, what is the difference?' he said.

'And clearly, I should have said refugee, not concentration, camps, but given that I was referring to settlements outside of Israel - in Syria and Lebanon - that scarcely makes me anti-Jewish. References to the history of the region, the ones that are supposed to be politically offensive, were taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and other text books.'

In the wake of the journal's actions, and claims of mass protests about the article, several scientists have now written to the society to support Arnaiz-Villena and to protest about their heavy-handedness.

One of them said: 'If Arnaiz-Villena had found evidence that Jewish people were genetically very special, instead of ordinary, you can be sure no one would have objected to the phrases he used in his article. This is a very sad business.'

Jews and arabs same:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/25/medicalscience.genetics