Roger Cohen of the NYT:
Israel Isolates Itself
Here’s what the United Nations report on Israel’s raid last year on the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara had to say about the killing of a 19-year-old U.S. citizen on board:
“At least one of those killed, Furkan Dogan, was shot at extremely close range. Mr. Dogan sustained wounds to the face, back of the skull, back and left leg. That suggests he may already have been lying wounded when the fatal shot was delivered, as suggested by witness accounts to that effect.”
The four-member panel, led by Sir Geoffrey Palmer, a former prime minister of New Zealand, appears with these words to raise the possibility of an execution or something close.
Dogan, born in upstate New York, was an aspiring doctor. Little interested in politics, he’d won a lottery to travel on the Gaza-bound vessel. The report says of him and the other eight people killed that, “No evidence has been provided to establish that any of the deceased were armed with lethal weapons.”
I met Dogan’s father, Ahmet, a professor at Erciyes University in Kayseri, last year in Ankara: His grief was as deep as his dismay at U.S. evasiveness. It’s hard to imagine any other circumstances in which the slaying in international waters, at point-blank range, of a U.S. citizen by forces of a foreign power would prompt such a singular American silence...
At what point does American foreign policy revolve around its own interests and not the interests of Israel? At what point does the merciless killing of an American citizen by IDF soldiers draw greater interest from the American public than the obfuscations and lies of that unholy alliance between AIPAC and the Evangelical community?
There is a group of Israel supporters that claim to support a two state solution, but they will also claim that Israel's intentions are good and that the radical Likud led government genuinely wants a two state solution.
Problem with their twisted logic is that it is abundantly clear Bibi doesn't. Israel will say they support a Palestinian state, but then at the same time pour money and resources into expanding settlements, forcibly remove Palestinians from their homes, restrict their rights to go and do what they please, and cut them off from their farmland and livelihoods thereby sending them into abject poverty. Are these the actions of a country that desires a two state solution?
And yet America pours billions of dollars of aid into Israel every year, so they can maintain a situation that borders on apartheid (if it is not already apartheid).
So now at the first opportunity to prove that Israel really is for a two state solution, what is Bibi begging for Obama to do? Vote against a Palestinian state in the U.N. later this month, so they can maintain the status quo of gradually colonizing Palestine. How can anyone in their right mind think that supporting such a state that is so hell bent on creating strife in the Middle East is in America's interest?
Disclaimer: I'm not saying that the Palestinians are better than Israelis. In fact they can be just as bad or worse, but our country doesn't kowtow to the interests of the Palestinians. America sets asides its own interests for the interests of another country - Israel - because of the power religious interest groups hold over our politicians.