Yesterday, I and other members of the DKos community were rather taken aback – and a bit furious – at the spectacle of Ellen Degeneres endorsing Hillary as the “best qualified” candidate for the Presidency. Why would Ellen, who has been a pioneer in the promotion of gay rights, endorse a candidate who took most of her life to “evolve” to support of gay marriage, when the sterling Bernie Sanders has been advocating for this for over 40 years?
On looking into Ellen’s views, I now think I know why Hillary and Ellen are made for each other: they’re both big supporters of apartheid Israel.
Ellen has made a point of putting an eco-friendly face on Sodastream, the Israeli West Bank company that has been targeted by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.: http://www.israellycool.com/....
Hillary, for her part, recently sent a letter to her mega-rich Likudnik donor Haim Saban pledging that if elected President she would do whatever she could to crush the BDS movement: http://www.politico.com/.... And in her recent foreign policy speech at Brookings Institute, Hillary promised that Netanyahu – whom President Obama has the good taste to utterly despise – would be a guest at the White House within the first month of her administration. Netanyahu, as you will recall, has recently made it clear that his participation in the “peace process” over the years has been a total charade, and that he has no intention of ever allowing an independent Palestinian state.
Bernie, who spent part of his young life on a kibbutz, and is firmly committed to Israel’s security, has at the same time insisted that the Palestinians should have a viable West Bank state, along the lines mandated by the UN and the U.S. for decades. (Of course, Hillary also still claims that is what she wants – she supports the indefinite continuance of charade negotiations - but it seems likely that Bernie actually means it, because that’s the way Bernie is.) And the fact that Bernie is not beholden to Likudnik donors makes him a wildcard that could threaten the domination of American politics by Israel – particularly because a President can often act in foreign policy independent of Congress. Bernie has a distressing tendency to care about people who are being screwed, whoever or wherever they might be, often in defiance of political self-interest.
As an interesting side note – the European Parliament has just approved, by an overwhelming margin, a resolution supporting the labeling of products manufactured in the illegal West Bank settlements (not in Israel proper).: http://forward.com/.... Good on them!
And an additional postscript – I want to apologize to Hillary supporters for an HR’d comment I made in a blog thread discussing Ellen yesterday; it was cruel and accomplished nothing. Will try to do better.