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In another piece for the LRB, Henry Siegman sets things straight in terms of Israel/Palestine, discussing the truce (rather than ease restrictions in Gaza during the truce, he explains, Israel tightened its hold on the city, while Hamas was acknowledged to be quite effective in preventing rocketfire, including from groups like Islamic Jihad); Hamas on the terrorist list (Siegman reminds us that when it became a political party, Hamas publicly ended its suicide bombings and kassam fire, until the blockade); and the conception that Israel is acting as part of a widespread "war on terror" (as he writes, "It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions").

In other news, the NYT reports today that layoffs are expanding to sectors of the economy such as manufacturing, retailing and information technology. To this end, we have a piece from NE favorite Paul Craig Roberts on the next real estate crisis, which, he argues, will hit commercial real estate. His answer to the question of the hour--who will finance the next wave of debt in the US, once Obama brings the deficit to the $3 trillion mark?--is Americans, via inflation.

Tariq Ali on Gaza, Boycotts, and the One-state Solution in the LRB

Below you can find the full text of Tariq Ali's recent comments on Gaza for the LRB--one point of interest in particular is his mention of the US Army's recently published document on "Hamas and Israel" (Ali links to it as well), which notes that Hamas seemed ready to alter their position on Israel's 'right to exist' even before the blockade. Ali also refers to a recent call by 500 Israelis to Western Embassies in support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions:

A few weeks before the assault on Gaza, the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army published a levelheaded document on ‘Hamas and Israel’, which argued that ‘Israel’s stance towards the democratically-elected Palestinian government headed by Hamas in 2006, and towards Palestinian national coherence – legal, territorial, political and economic – has been a major obstacle to substantive peacemaking.’ Whatever their reservations about the organisation, the authors of the paper detected signs that Hamas was considering a shift of position even before the blockade:

It is frequently stated that Israel or the United States cannot ‘meet’ with Hamas (although meeting is not illegal; materially aiding terrorism is, if proven) because the latter will not ‘recognise Israel’. In contrast, the PLO has ‘recognised’ Israel’s right to exist and agreed in principle to bargain for significantly less land than the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, and it is not clear that Israel has ever agreed to accept a Palestinian state. The recognition of Israel did not bring an end to violence, as wings of various factions of the PLO did fight Israelis, especially at the height of the Second (al- Aqsa) Intifada. Recognition of Israel by Hamas, in the way that it is described in the Western media, cannot serve as a formula for peace. Hamas moderates have, however, signaled that it implicitly recognises Israel, and that even a tahdiya (calming, minor truce) or a hudna, a longer-term truce, obviously implies recognition. Khalid Mish’al states: ‘We are realists,’ and there is ‘an entity called Israel,’ but ‘realism does not mean that you have to recognise the legitimacy of the occupation.’

The war on Gaza has killed the two-state solution by making it clear to Palestinians that the only acceptable Palestine would have fewer rights than the Bantustans created by apartheid South Africa. The alternative, clearly, is a single state for Jews and Palestinians with equal rights for all. Certainly it seems utopian at the moment with the two Palestinian parties in Israel – Balad and the United Arab List – both barred from contesting the February elections. Avigdor Lieberman, the chairman of Yisrael Beiteinu, has breathed a sigh of satisfaction: ‘Now that it has been decided that the Balad terrorist organisation will not be able to run, the first battle is over.’ But even victory has its drawbacks. After the Six-Day War in 1967, Isaac Deutscher warned his one-time friend Ben Gurion: ‘The Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase “Mann kann sich totseigen!” — you can triumph yourself to death. This is what the Israelis have been doing. They have bitten off much more than they can swallow.’

Five hundred courageous Israelis have sent a letter to Western embassies calling for sanctions and other measures to be applied against their country, echoing the 2005 call by numerous Palestinian organisations for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the South African model. This will not happen overnight but it is the only non-violent way to help the struggle for freedom and equality in Israel-Palestine.

Inauguration Day News

Watching TV in a hotel room in Chicago this weekend, No Empires learned from a scroll on CNN that "History Will Happen in 48 Hours." Ok. But now that it's happened (and yes, Michelle Obama donned a yellow Isabel Toledo number, while Aretha wore a sort of fantastic hat), we can point you to Kevin Alexander Gray's piece on Obama, black American national heros, and the US, the country that Martin Luther King Jr once called the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world." Reminding us of King's rising unpopularity towards the end of his life due in part to his outspoken opposition to the war in Vietnam, Gray suggests that we remember King for something more than "I have a dream", particularly in light of the Gaza massacres. Certainly something to keep in mind while dancing to Beyonce and U2/reading Maureen Dowd.

And speaking of Gaza: Israel's High Court of Justice lifted the ban on Arab parties in the Knesset today; Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN, as well as about 300 other human rights groups, are claiming that Israel used white phosphorous in its attacks on Gaza and are calling for war crimes investigations.

Despite all of the "victory" talk by supporters of the Gaza massacres, Joseph Massad questions Israel's "right to defend itself", just as Khalid Mish'al and Bashir Abu-Manneh explain that the massacres will not weaken Hamas.

Gaza Massacres

As Western media outlets talk about hopes for a cease-fire in Gaza, we at No Empires thought we'd direct your attention to something that's been getting a bit less attention in Western media: Israel's surprising decision to bar Arab political parties from the Knesset this week, citing their support of a "terrorist organization" as well as violations of a 2002 law that would require them to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Here's Jonathan Cook on the issue for Electronic Intifada.

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Thanks to our friend John and Jewish Peace News for another couple of links on Gaza:

First, Gush Shalom tells us about a 1000-person spontaneous demonstration outside of the defense ministry in Tel Aviv on Saturday. Next, The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) take the Israeli government at their word that the attack is an immediate response to Quassam attacks, but also discuss the ways in which Israel is unwilling to address the root of such problems--the fact that they are fight "a besieged and starving Gaza" after "41 years of increasingly oppressive Israeli Occupation without a hint that a sovereign and viable Palestinian state will ever emerge."

Next, Ravid Barak focuses on the planning of Operation "Cast Lead," a plan that dates back more than 6 months, but started coming to fruition over a month ago after dozens of Qassam rockets exploded in Israel.

Finally, we'll leave you with an excerpt from Zvi Barel's latest for Haaretz. Here, Barel delves a bit into the relationship between Israel's attack on a tunnel between Gaza and Egypt on November 6, killing at least six and violating the ceasefire. Increased rocket attacks after that date, Barel notes, were a result of this Israeli breach. According to Barel, Israel:

unilaterally violated [the cease-fire] when it blew up a tunnel, while still asking Egypt to get the Islamic group to hold its fire. Are conditions enabling the return of a ceasefire no longer available? Hamas has clear conditions for its extension: The opening of the border crossings for goods and cessation of IDF attacks in Gaza, as outlined in the original agreement. Later, Hamas wants the cease-fire to be extended to the West Bank. Israel, for its part, is justifiably demanding a real calm in Gaza; that no Qassam or mortar shell be fired by either Hamas, Islamic Jihad or any other group.

Essentially, Israel is telling Hamas it is willing to recognize its control of Gaza on the condition that it assumes responsibility for the security of the territory, like Hezbollah controls southern Lebanon. It is likely that this will be the outcome of a wide-scale operation in the Gaza Strip if Israel decides it does not want to rule Gaza directly. Why, then, not forgo the war and agree to these conditions now?

On the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time

By now, we've all heard about the recent attacks on Gaza, but just to re-cap: on Saturday at about 11:20am (when children were at school, employees were in offices, and aspiring police officers were in the middle of training), 60 Israeli F-16 fighter jets bombed 50 different sites in Gaza. This first bombardment took 3 minutes and 40 seconds, killed over 200 Palestinians, and injured nearly an additional 1,000. By Monday morning, several buildings at the Islamic University in Gaza had been leveled, tunnels between Gaza and Egypt were no longer functional, and more than 325 Palestinians were dead (as well as 2 Israelis since Saturday). At this point, as Gaza hospitals are running out of supplies and room for corpses (which they are forced to pile up on morgue floors right now), Israel is poised to embark on a ground invasion: tanks are lined up near the Gaza border and journalists have been forced to leave the area.

The US government has voiced near-unequivocal support of Israel's actions (actions which the UN called "disproportionate" in a frustratingly weak call for a cease-fire). In a statement on the situation in Gaza, Nancy Pelosi wrote: "When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally." And on Meet the Press, Barack Obama's chief political strategist, David Axelrod, avoided anything like condemnation of the Israeli attacks as well, telling viewers: “There’s only one president at a time...The president speaks for the United States of America. We will honor that.”

On December 27, Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories, issued a statement outlining Israel's war crimes in Gaza on Saturday, which include collective punshment, targeting civilians, and disproportionate military response.

Israel has called this an all-out war against Hamas because of quassam attacks that have killed about 18 people in 8 years, but as Neve Gordon writes in the Guardian, this attack has nothing to do with rocket attacks, which Israel could have prevented long ago. Instead, it has to do with a) the destruction of Hamas as a political entity (which, Gordon notes, is not going to happen, at least not through military means); b) to help Kadima and Labour defeat Likud and the abominable Netanyahu; c) to re-establish the Israeli military in the eyes of the world after its performance two summers ago; and d) to keep Abbas in power for a bit longer after his term ends on January 9. In Syria, the exiled political leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, is calling for a 3rd intifada, a call which the Fatah leader clearly has no mind to heed. Meshaal said on Al Jazeera that Hamas had tried "all the peaceful options, but without results;" he is now pushing for more rocket attacks and considering the reinstitution of suicide bombings in Israel (which would be the first since 2005).

For more information on whats going on in Gaza, please see this article by Jennifer Loewenstein in Counterpunch, Hassan Haidar's piece for Dar Al Hayat on the timing and pre-meditation of the attacks, this first person account of the bombing on Saturday by Dr Eyad Al Serraj, a psychologist in Gaza City, this episode of Democracy Now, which features NE favorite Gideon Levy as well as an phenomenal discussion with one-state solution advocate Ali Abunimah. We'll leave you with an excerpt:

We have to go back to the Warsaw Ghetto or Guernica to find crimes in the modern era of the scale of the viciousness and of the deliberateness of what Israel is committing with the full support of the United States, not just the Bush administration, but apparently as well the incoming Obama administration. We have to recognize the complicity not just of the so-called international community, but also of the Arab regimes, Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak, the Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit of Egypt. Tzipi Livni, when she issued her threats against Gaza, was in Cairo in the biggest Arab capital, and Aboul Gheit stood next to her silently.

Mahmoud Abbas is not a bystander, the so-called president of the Palestinian Authority. For two years since the elections, which Hamas won, he and his coterie have been collaborating with Israel and the United States, first to overthrow the election result and then to besiege Gaza. We have talked before of the Palestinian Contras, funded and armed by the United States, which sought to overthrow Hamas in June 2007 and had the tables turned on them. And now this. The complicity of Mahmoud Abbas is very clear and must be clearly stated. He does not have the authority, moral or otherwise, to call together the Palestinian people for anything. He has gone over to the other side. He has joined the Israeli war against the Palestinian people, and I choose my words very carefully.

And let me say this, as well, Amy, that Israel is trying to produce and promote the fiction that it is engaged in a war with a so-called enemy entity. What Israel is doing is massacring a captive population. You heard—you said in the headlines how Nancy Pelosi, our so-called progressive, liberal, antiwar Speaker of the House, gave her full support to these crimes. Obama has done the same through a spokesman. And that will not change. The United Nations issued a weak statement aimed at covering the backsides, let me say, of those who issued it, not aimed at changing the situation.

What are Palestinians calling for today? Yesterday, the Palestinian National Committee for the Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions reissued and reaffirmed its call on all international civil society in the United States, in North America, in Europe, everywhere, to redouble the efforts for boycott, divestment and sanctions modeled on the anti-apartheid movement. This is necessary. This is moral. This is the nonviolent resistance we can all participate in. And it is more urgent than ever. Let’s not look back at these crimes like we look at the Warsaw Ghetto and like we look at Guernica and we look at the other atrocities of the twentieth century and say, “We had the chance to act, but we chose silence and complicity.” The time to stop this is now.

And we also have to be clear that those who are accountable—Ehud Barak, his orders over the past few months to withhold insulin, chemotherapy drugs, dialysis supplies, all forms of medicine from the people of Gaza, were just as lethal and just as murderous as the orders to send in the bombers and warplanes to attack mosques, to attack universities. The Islamic University in Gaza is not a military site. It is a university with 18,000 students, 60 percent of them women. Last night, Israeli warplanes attacked a female dormitory in the Islamic University. This is what Israel is attacking. They attacked the fishing port. No food gets into Gaza. People can barely fish enough to sustain them, and Israel has attacked the fishing boats that sustains them. These are historic crimes, and we cannot be silent about them.

Gone so long

As you may have noticed, early this fall No Empires went into retirement. But now, faced with the devastation of Gaza, we've decided to decided to start writing again. So stay tuned for a long piece on the Gaza massacre as well as a round-up of some of the best news and opinion pieces on the subject.

But for now--for all New Yorkers, please head out to Herald Square this evening to protest Israel's actions in Gaza.

PAKISTAN

Today, as the American campaign in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province continues despite continued protests in Pakistan (protests which started after last Wednesday’s first publicly-acknowledged ground raid by American forces on Pakistani soil), a few notes on the current political situation in that country:

After some under-the-table dealings with the always-intrigue-inclined US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, has been sworn in as president of Pakistan. As Tariq Ali noted recently in an article for Comment is free, Zardari is poised to be a particularly pliant leader, the Pakistani equivalent of neocon favorite Hamid Karzai. Zardari is indebted, after all, to American neoconservatives (most notably, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad) not just for his new position as president but also for reversing the freeze on his Swiss bank accounts (the second richest person in Pakistan, Zardari’s accounts had been frozen due to pending corruption charges).

To be fair, as Graham Usher points out in this week’s Al-Ahram, none of the charges leveled against Zardari by Pakistani intelligence agencies (for which the new president spent eleven years in jail) have managed to stick in court, and moreover, following Benazir’s death last winter, Zardari did managed to form the largest coalition in the history of Pakistan, unseating a military ruler in the process. But Zardari’s shady financial dealings, not to mention his disdain for Pakistani lawyers and his reluctance to restore the country’s judiciary—his fear of the rule of law, as Usher calls it—still leave him one of the most loathed figures in Pakistan, particularly among intellectuals and the urban middle class.

***

At a talk given on 11 September at the London Review Bookshop--coinciding with the release of his latest book, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (Simon & Schuster, 2008), Tariq Ali offered a brief political history of Pakistan, as well as an analysis of the most recent developments--some, according to Ali, quite unprecedented--in Pakistani politics: last year's "forced arranged marriage" between Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf; Bhutto's assassination; the election of her widower (and current head of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party), Asif Ali Zardari, as Pakistan's president; and the raids carried out in recent weeks by US Special Ops in the border regions of Pakistan, unsanctioned by the Pakistani government. Pakistan's dependence on the United States (coming mostly in the form of military aid) and the US's "partial dependence" on Pakistan as a regional ally dates back, Ali says, to the early 1950s, when the US was appealed to by Pakistani political elites to fill the vacuum left by the British on the eve of the creation of the Pakistani state. The US's interest in the region lay primarily in India, according to Ali, until India become a major player in the non-Aligned movement and the US, fearing a Vietnam-style "domino effect" in the region, began assembling a network of security pacts, including the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the Central Asian Trade Organization, and the Baghdad pact, all of which were buttressed by the United States and Great Britain. The years 1958-1969 saw a military dictatorship (that of Ayub), backed by Washington, until mass mobilizations in October 1968--calling for Pakistan's withdrawal from all security pacts with the West--toppled the regime, and eventually led to the secessionist movement in East Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. Ali was quick to point out that the 1968 insurrection in Pakistan was the only one of the fabled mass movements of '68 that actually succeeded. The dictatorship of Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, from 1977-1988 was, according to Ali, the darkest period of Pakistan's history to date; it "brutalized" the political culture of Pakistan, and brought religion to the forefront of Pakistani politics in a way that was unprecedented in the history of the state. During the Zia dictatorship, the state poured money into Islamic organizations, giving them control of education and communication ministries, which facilitated the spread of their anti-secularist and anti-radical messages. Mass purges of these elements in the country's political establishments ensued. As in Afghanistan, the money Washington gave to Pakistan's leadership during this time went toward funding those who are now denounced as terrorists, and Pakistan during this period (particuarly during the Afghan-Soviet war) was conceived of in Washington as a frontline in the war not on terror, but on communism.

As far as recent developments go, Ali finds that the mobilizations in favor of the embattled judiciary that consumed Pakistan during the last 18 or so months of Musharraf's rule as the most pivotal, and heartening, events in recent memory in Pakistan--though notes that these were so little reported on in the Western press because of Pakistan (and Musharraf's) perceived status as allies of Washington and Britain. He laments the ease with which the PPP accepted that Benazir's son should inherit leadership of the party, with her widower at the helm until her son comes of age. Calling Asif Ali Zardari "the most corrupt politician even in Pakistan's chequered history", he notes that if it comes out that Zardari had prior knowledge of Bush's secret order authorizing raids into Pakistan, his time as President will surely be cut short. Ali also remarked on the unpredecented warning the head of Pakistan's military gave to Washington, saying that if American forces do mount an invasion into the sovereign territory of Pakistan, they will be resisted. And though he is loath of conspiracy theorizing, Ali did wonder whether or not the recent raids, aimed at creating a "mini-war" situation in Pakistan, were designed to bolster the campaign of John McCain. Ali ultimately finds an "incredibly grim situation" in Pakistan at the current moment, with little to no alternative for a population caught between the military and political corruption that have been part and parcel of Pakistan virtually from its founding. With the war in Afghanistan going horribly (and with the vast majority of the Pakistani population being fundamentally opposed to NATO actions in the region), Ali says that the next weeks and months in Pakistan are critical; yet he admits that more innocent people can be expected to die as Washington toys with the idea of opening a new front in its sorrowful "war on terror". The solutions for Pakistan are land reforms, to modernize the countryside and bring the poor peasantry of Pakistan into a national political dialogue, as well as a regional solution involving India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia (because NATO and the West are so completely mistrusted), aimed at bringing about at least twenty years of peace so that the Pakistani population might have time to psychologically recover, and so that social reconstruction might be given a chance.

Works Consulted #12

• Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language (University of California Press, 1989)

• David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Penguin, 1985)

• Michael Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics (Palgrave, 2008)

• Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge, 1996)

Check back soon for a long overdue follow-up post on PAKISTAN.

G-E-O-R-G-I-A

This has been an especially tough situation to get a hold of for those of us (read: most of the American media, as well as the authors of this blog) who have not spent the last twenty years studying the former Eastern Bloc, the Balkans, the National Endowment for Democracy, post-Soviet Russian politics, etc. A few simple facts: In 2003, the US and the National Endowment for Democracy backed the so-called Rose Revolution in Georgia, ousting Eduard Shevardnadze and installing current Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Saakashvili committed 2,000 Georgian troops to Iraq, wants in on NATO and the US design for a missile defense shield over Eastern Europe, along with Poland and the Czech Republic. Georgia hosts a stretch of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, which runs (as its name suggests) through Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, connecting the Mediterranean and Caspian Seas--which is co-owned by BP, Chevron, and others (though no Russian oil companies), and is a concentrated attempt to subvert Russian influence in the region by having a major pipeline that lies in no Russian soil and over which the Russians have no control. Georgia is, in short, of great 'strategic interest' to the United States, with the added bonus of being a former Soviet satellite, so that a cozy political relationship that benefits largely only the US can be presented as the triumph of "democracy" over authoritarianism.

A November 2006 referendum in South Ossetia, with 91% of the population participating, voted in a 99% majority for union with North Ossetia and Russia. The US and Russia ignore the results of the referendum. In July of this year (July 15-31), Georgia and the US hold the "Georgian-US Immediate Response 2008" military exercises in Georgia. During the first week of August, Saakashvili moves into the South Ossetian capital, Tshinkavali, killing several Russian peacekeepers (there under international agreements) and displacing upwards of 35,000 civilians, who flee across the border into North Ossetia, where they are welcomed by the Russian government. Russia sees the Georgian military move as a deliberate provocation.

We in no way wish to even appear to condone the deliberate use of violence against civilians, and it would be difficult to argue that the Russian response has not been disconcertingly aggressive. But the hypocrisy of American politicians and media has been in full swing. It's almost laughable to hear John McCain say that "in the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations." It's similarly ridiculous for Zbigniew Brzezinski to compare Putin to Hitler--the same Brzezinski who, as Jimmy Carter's National Security advisor, helped the CIA develop its Afghanistan policy and fund Osama bin Laden's jihadis against the Russians in Afghanistan in 1979. A Cold War mentality still infects the US media's perception of Russia's every move, as Seamus Milne shows in today's Guardian.

Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out a few facts that would be germane to any nuanced understanding of an immensely complicated situation. And, as Foreign Policy in Focus's Michael Klare points out, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceylan oil pipeline that runs through Georgia (owned and operated by, among others, Texaco and Chevron) is a crucial "fact on the ground".

Stay tuned...

Works Consulted #11

rosemary ashton- george eliot: a life. london: penguin, 1998.

samuel beckett - the unnamable. new york: grove press, 1958; l'innomable. paris: les editions de minuit, 1953; disjecta: miscellaneous writings and a dramatic fragment. london: john calder, 1983

lauren berlant - the anatomy of national fantasy: hawthorne, utopia, and everyday life. chicago: u chicago press, 1991.

robin blackburn - the overthrow of colonial slavery. london: verso, 1988.

maurice blanchot - the infinite conversation (trans. susan hanson) minneapolis: univ of minnesota press, 1993.

pascale casanova - samuel beckett: anatomy of a literary revolution. london: verso 2006.

anthony cronin - samuel beckett: the last modernist. london: harper collins, 1996.

charles dickens- our mutual friend. new york: penguin, 1997.

frederick engels- socialism: utopian and scientific. new york: international publishers, 1989.

fredric jameson - a singular modernity: essay on the ontology of the present. london: verso 2002.

james knowlson - damned to fame: the authorized biography of samuel beckett. london: bloomsbury, 1996.

jenny uglow- george eliot. london: virago, 2008.

raymond williams- marxism and literature. new york: oxford university press, 1977.

Obama in Jerusalem

On the occasion of Senator Barack Obama's recent world travels (which brought him to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied West Bank, and Germany, and will soon see him in Britain and France), we point you to an editorial written for the Guardian by the Electronic Intifada's Ali Abunimah. Pressure from the Israel lobby (in the form, as always, of Alan Fucking Dershowitz) has caused Obama to distance himself even from someone as "establishment" as Zbigniew Brzezinski--do we detect the long arm of a rejuvenated (and sadly ignored) Jimmy Carter and his calls for a "new role" in the world for America? On his visit to Israel--which included the better part of one hour spent with Mahmoud Abbas in occupied Ramallah--Obama sought to reassure Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres and the Israeli public that his commitment to the safety, security, and right to "self-defense" (that old reality-twisting litany) of the State of Israel ought not to be doubted. The obligatory references to the dangers of a nuclear Iran (despite a recent "slap in the face" of Israel delivered by America) were also made. Nothing, as Abunimah points out, about a freeze on settlements, dialogue with Hamas, or negotiation of the refugee problem.

In a separate editorial, the Guardian points out that while Obama's visit may have done some good for his shaky reputation as "friend of Israel," it did nothing nothing for peace in Israel/Palestine. And, as the New York Times reports, not many people in the Arab World expect this to change.

Late add: Nicholas Kristof offers this uncharacteristically lucid, accurate, and politically practical editorial in today's New York Times, saying that what Israel needs from Obama is "tough love."

2008

As the Senate passes George Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, 2+ years after it was introduced, and with the new-found support of Senator Barack Obama--who had once claimed he fully intended to vote against it, rejecting the false dualities of the "strong on terror" discourse--we'd like to take a minute to reiterate something we've found that the ultra-left in America has failed repeatedly to understand. We do understand ("appreciate" is not the best word) that, in running a national campaign, Obama ought to be expected to hover somewhere around the center. Any policy statement that radically breaks from the mainstream would torpedo his candidacy months before the general election. And Obama does represent a yearning among the bulk of American voters for radical change. That he will inevitably disappoint those blindly expecting a radical transformation is also something that must be accepted. However, in supporting an unprecedented expansion in the Executive's spying capabilities, as in, for example, calling for East Jerusalem to remain the undivided capital of the State of Israel (to take examples from Obama's recent domestic and foreign policy stances), Obama seems to go above and beyond the call of a mediocre "centrist" politics. And his going out of his way yesterday to remind his supporters--who are increasingly uneasy with his recent moves--that he is "no doubt" a "progressive"--is simply no consolation whatsoever.

Aijaz Ahmad: What Would a Rational U.S. Foreign Policy Look Like?

In a two-part analysis for The Real News, Aijaz Ahmad considers the working assumptions behind U.S. foreign policy decisions, assumptions that can often seem intractable, the unchangeable "way of the world." Starting with "the most basic assumption of U.S. foreign policy...that the United States is, and must remain, the world's most powerful, preeminent country," and moving to the question of why the U.S. finds it unquestionable that it have military bases around the world, Aijaz offers a concise and coherent projection for what a "rational" American foreign policy just might look like.

Part I



Part II

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al-Ahram's Khaled Amayreh reports on the impending reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah, preparations for which have seen the previously-unlikely release of a number of Hamas supporters from Palestinian jails or the custody of Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority. Most significant in this attempted rapprochement is the likelihood that any joint statement of agreement issued by the two factions will be based on the so-called Prisoners' Statement of 2006, which originally called for a release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and Israel's full retreat from lands occupied in 1967.

Ilan Pappe, now at Exeter, offers to the Inter-Press service some general thoughts on the current state of Israeli-Palestinian affairs, the 2008 election in the US, and the prospective role of Islam in the daily lives of Palestinians.

Patrick Cockburn fills in some details of a new Iraqi-American security agreement. George Bush wants it signed by 31 July; Moqtada al-Sadr sees in it a ploy to put "an American in every house."

As reported earlier this week, John McCain and Barack Obama find themselves both supporting the FISA amendment, which would not only legalize the Bush administrations warrantless wiretaps but would obscure entirely the breadth and scope of the program since it was instituted after 11 September. This constitutes a stark reversal of position for both men. Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, speaks to The Real News's Zaa Nkweta.

'The presumptive Democratic candidate for President, Barack Obama'

More than the disingenuousness of his previous foreign policy statements, Barack Obama's speech at this year's AIPAC conference the day after securing the Democratic nomination for President highlights the inevitable rightward shift that his campaign, at least in tone, will continue to make as November approaches. Below, in two parts, Aijaz Ahmad unpacks Obama's statements to the Israel lobby.

No one ought to be surprised by Obama's unequivocal stance; as even Jon Stewart points out, "you can't say anything remotely critical of Israel and still be elected president." Of particular interest for us is the reaction of the Palestinian leadership to Obama's speech, notably that of Fatah negotiator Saeb Erekat. Erekat has the audacity to say that Obama's speech was "the worst thing to happen to Palestinians" since the Six Day War, thus completely obscuring his own Fatah party's comprador role in the years since Oslo, not to the deepening political and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Moreoever, as Aijaz notes, Gaza is likely to be conveniently forgotten when the borders of the putative "cohesive and contiguous" Palestinian state are drawn.

In the second video below, Aijaz further analyzes Obama's language at the AIPAC conference, which includes the suggestion that Iran, not Iraq, would have been the 'right war,' and a call for greater unilateral action, 'outside of the United Nations,' on the part of the United States. As Aijaz tells us, 'with liberalism like this, no one needs the neo-cons.' Videos are below.

AS the transformation of Barack Obama nears its completion, Uri Avnery finds that last week's AIPAC spectacle confirms in full even the most "extreme" conclusions drawn by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their seminal The Israel Lobby, published late last year--a book that Obama had already denounced for its critique of the increasingly "special" relationship between the State of Israel and the US.
Part I


Part II

Return of the Rat

The weather's getting warmer and it's made us inattentive! At least that's the official excuse we'll give.

Gilbert Achcar has voiced his recent thoughts on the longer history/effectiveness of the 'surge' in US troops in Iraq over the last eighteen months. Achcar not only locates a great deal of support for the surge in the Baker-Hamilton report, but finds that the US's greatest success has not been a reduction in violence, but a classic colonial power play that has torn the fabric of Iraqi Sunni society.

Franklin Lamb offers a street-level report from West Beirut, currently under Hezbollah and Amal control. What the next move might be for Lebanon's deeply besieged government is unclear; what is clear is the necessity of Hezbollah's involvement in any dialogue meant to bring an end to the crisis of leadership in Lebanon.

Over at Supervalent Thought, her very own 'research blog,' the University of Chicago's Lauren Berlant is putting up some really interesting short pieces on love, queerness, detachment, and (in)fidelity to the political in America. A recent two-parter--"Other People's Optimism" and "Looking For Mr. (W)Right)--laments the unbridled cynicism and fear of the political as evidenced by the 'noise' surrounding the 2008 Elections.

Close to home

Counterpunch's lead article today concerns protests in Queens after Friday's verdict in the Sean Bell killing reached New Yorkers. Interspersed with chants from Friday's march, JoAnn Wypijewski's piece touches on the horror of the incident and other racially-motivated killings by police officers, noting that no matter who is running for president in this country, racism and the oppression like this is as prevalent and dangerous as ever.

Carter in Israel/Palestine

A brief post about recent happenings in Israel/Palestine. Carter's trip to Palestine continues to make headlines as Israel's ambassador to the UN calls Carter a "bigot" for meeting with Khaled Meshal in Syria. Also an editorial from Haaretz from two weeks ago on Israel's "debt" to Carter.

And finally, just to keep things in perspective, is an article by Khaled Amayreh for Al-Ahram detailing once again the continued suffering on the part of Palestinians in the West Bank under blockade, just in time for Israel's dismissal of Hamas's proposed 6-month truce in Gaza. Israel's reasoning? A truce, the Israeli government claims, would do "nothing more" than allow Hamas to recover from recent Israeli attacks.

Well-Made World 35

As you may have noticed, we've decided to embed daily video updates from the Real News Network. The RNN has an intrinsic value as a serious non-corporate journalism service, their editorializing is top-notch, and they generate a ceaseless amount of new multimedia content. (They'd insert their pitch for monetary contributions here). We go to their video updates with such frequency that we thought to just cut out the middle man. The video updates are always good. Watch them!

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As you can see, to the right, Jimmy Carter is in the Middle East and scheduled to meet with Hamas's Khaled Meshal. Ignoring displeased voices in Washington and Tel Aviv, Carter aims to facilitate negotiation between the Hamas leadership and both Israel and Fatah.
This concludes Azmi Bishara's three-part analysis of the present conjuncture of Israeli statehood and the Palestinian right to self-determination.

Uri Avnery sees no small amount of hypocrisy in recent flame-centric conflagrations over Tibet--no matter how justified Tibetan grievances are--and this year's Olympics in Beijing. Once you get past his assertion that the CIA is without a doubt coordinating anti-torch protests, Avnery points out how appeals to freedom in Tibet shows up the highly selective nature of Western governments' support for national liberation struggles.

Ryan Crocker and the New York Times continue to fuel the Bush administration's eagerness to go to war with Iran.