Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has reaffirmed his determination to seek a vote in the United Nations General Assembly to establish a Palestinian state.
In California the other day, US Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton cautioned Palestine to forego that strategy, in favor of continuing "face to face negotiations," pursuing the "peace process" according to the roadmap laid out by President Barack Obama several months ago -- a return to 1967 borders, with some agreed-upon swaps.
In the midst of this contentious situation, Tunisia and Egypt have unburdened themselves of the dictators who had ruled them, and Libya's autocratic leader, Muamar Qaddafi, has been replaced in a NATO-assisted rebellion.
The newly-forming Egypt's relationship with Israel is volatile. Recently, Egyptian demonstrators breached the Israeli embassy in Cairo and replaced Israel's flag with the flag of Egypt. Israel's ambassador to Egypt fled Cairo and returned to Israel.
On another front, when Israeli authorities refused to acquiesce to Turkey's demand for an apology for the execution-like slaying of nine Turkish citizens aboard the Mavi Marmara, relations between Turkey and Israel cooled precipitously, with Turkey ejecting Israel's ambassador in Ankara.
Amid these tensions with Israel's neighbors, Benjamin Netanyahu's government is also coping with internal dissatisfactions, expressed in the form of "Tent Protests," as middle-class as well as lower-class and impoverished Jewish Israelis demand more housing subsidies and greater social benefits from their government.
Several powerful voices have analyzed the internal dynamics of Israel's stresses and strains.
The purpose of this diary is merely to present those voices and views, for the most part without comment, so that American Democrats can inform themselves, struggle to interrelate the conflicting points of view, and attempt to arrive at that goal that Bill Clinton reminds us of frequently, "A more perfect union."
Those voices and views are presented, in alphabetical order, below the fold.
UPDATE
Several comments have pointed out that Gilad Atzmon is "not an acceptable source." I thank those commenters for their advice and warnings.
Rather than delete Atzmon's observations on the intricacies underlying the possible declaration of a Palestinian state, I have moved them to a different category of information -- I have called Atzmon "The Enemy," and moved his comment to a category called, "Enemy Intelligence."
Several days ago, Maryland Democratic Representative from Maryland
Dutch Ruppersberger, the ranking member on the House Select Intelligence Committee, discussed the central nature of intelligence gathering in the war against Al Qaeda. Without disclosing the very large amounts spent on intelligence gathering, other than to indicate that they have increased geometrically over the past ten years, Dutch argued that the amounts spent to gain knowledge about the Enemy is an essential expenditure, to ensure the security of the American people.
Similarly, Sun Tzu wrote that knowledge of the enemy (and of oneself) is essential if victory is to be achieved:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
“If you know neither the enemy nor yourself you will succumb in every battle. . . Knowing the enemy enables you to take the offensive, knowing yourself enables you to stand on the defensive.” The Art of War, Sun Tzu pdf
So it seems reasonable to arm fellow Democrats with intelligence as to what the enemy is thinking.
Max Ajl
Social Origins of the Tent Protests in Israel
Max Ajl studies development sociology at Cornell and blogs at . An earlier version of this article was published in TruthOut on 13 August 2011.
Ajl viewed the Tent Protests through a sociologist's lens, but one with an all-encompassing focus. He explains how the Tent Protests do not only NOT include protests for greater rights for Palestinian Arabs in occupied territories, but how the tensions demonstrated by the protests within the Jewish Israeli community are structural in Israeli society and have, in the past, been resolved only by further disempowering Palestinian Arabs, if not actually waging war on Palestinians, as occurred in 1967 and 2009.
Ajl writes:
Calls to end the occupation have thus far been mostly absent, a silence that speaks eloquently to the composition of Israeli society, in which a call to end the occupation or dismantle the racist juridical structure is perceived as an attack on the state religion -- militarist nationalism. Such a call would be "political," as opposed to the current protests, merely "social" in nature.
Jeremy Ben-Ami
Jeremy Ben-Ami founded J-Street, the "pro-peace pro-Israel" lobby alternative to AIPAC, with the goal of shoring up support among the Jewish diaspora in the United States for a two-state solution, and providing American Jewish support to Obama and the US Congress to stand behind Two States.
After spending several weeks conferring with Israeli leaders in Israel earlier this year, Ben-Ami published a book encapsulating J-Street's agenda. He discussed his book, A New Voice for Israel, at a Washington, DC-area bookstore in July. In the course of his comments, he advocated for a two-state solution to the conflict, and urged the Obama administration to do all within its power to bring that about.
Toward the end of the Q&A session that was part of the book discussion, a man who is, apparently, a teacher in the religious school that Ben-Ami's children attend, asked Ben-Ami "what Jewish children should be taught" about Israeli-Palestinian relations.
"The truth," Ben-Ami responded; "We must teach our children the truth. If we do not, and they find out, there will be resentment. We must teach our children that there WERE Palestinians there, the land was not empty . . ."
Haim Bresheeth
A commenter to Max Ajl's essay posted a link to a video by Prof. Haim Bresheeth (below) that, in the commenter's words, "is an excellent companion pice to this essay by Max Ajl" [sic].
Professor Bresheeth, now resident in Great Britain, has committed forty years of his life to working for justice for the Palestinian people, a project he compares to the efforts of many people throughout the world to achieve justice for Blacks in South Africa.
TwoPeoplesOneFuture.org works to affirm the possibility that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have, do, and can live together in peace. Recently, the group rolled out its poster campaign on New York City's subway system. The tactical goal of this organization is to terminate US military support to Israel, with the view that a less militarized Israel will be more willing to make efforts toward peaceful coexistence. The NYC project met with disapproval by newspapers in Israel.
Mark Wallace,
a former ambassador to the United Nations, is president of a group called United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI).
Wallace sees Iran, and especially Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as the greatest threat to Israel's security, and, as AIPAC's director, Howard Kohr, wrote in a recent email threats to Israel's security are also threats to the security of the United States. Wallace's group is not concentrating on Palestinian activity at the United Nations, but on the scheduled visit of Ahmadinejad to the UN. Even as the Two Peoples One Future posted messages in New York City's underground, urging New Yorkers to consider how Israelis and Palestinians COULD live together in peace, UANI mounted billboards high above New York's streets that deride the Iranian president. UANI has mounted a successful campaign to close the doors of several New York City hotels to the Iranian delegation, and has arranged a blitz to pressure the Warwick Hotel to rescind its extension of hotel hospitality to the Iranians.
********
from the camp of the Enemy -- ENEMY INTELLIGENCE (see Update)
Gilad Atzmon
Obama, the Palestinian State, and Zionist Schizophrenia
Atzmon focuses on the disparity he perceives between the Israeli response to the proposed declaration of a Palestinian state, and the activity and reaction to that possibility that is taking place among diaspora Jews in the United States.
He writes:
What we see here in practice is a clear identity crisis or even a schizophrenic counter flow of aspirations between the Israeli and the Diaspora Zionist. While the Israelis are reverting to the old Jewish Ghetto attitude, they prefer to shrink, stay together and surround themselves with vast and impenetrable concrete walls, the Diaspora Zionist Jewish narrative is confrontational, belligerent, hawkish militant and expansionist. They want it all, with the Palestinians or without them.
Once again we notice that Israel and Zionism have evolved into two separate and opposing discourses. While Israel is seeking to maintain its racially oriented identity through politics of segregation, the Diaspora Zionist discourse is still insisting on solving the Jewish Question by the means of a conflict with no end.
Atzmon concludes that Obama and the United States are caught in the middle of those "opposing discourses," a situation that forces the US to rely on Mahmoud Abbas for an exit.
Atzmon's observations are amplified by a recent article in Haaretz, that reported that while the US Congress is considering suspending aid to Palestine, should Abbas proceed with his plans at the UN, Israelis and some Israeli lobbyists in the US advise against cutting off aid to Palestine, while still other Israel lobbyists in the US accuse Abbas of corruption and suggest a US Treasury Department investigation into Palestinian finances.
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There you have it; half-a-dozen examples of the good, the bad, the ugly.
We report. You decide.