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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27147 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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former humanitarian diplomacy consultant, National Security Council member and deputy director of the US State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs,

This is it in a nutshell. People wonder why the US has been so incapable of resolving this conflict (that causes huge and direct costs to US interests regarding relations with the Arab, oil-producing world, a conflict that has motivated substantial anti-US terrorism, including Osama Bin Laden). Could it be that the Palestinians just really hate negotiating? That millions of Arabs just mysteriously hate the US, for no reason at all?

No, the US has never made a genuine effort to solve the conflict because it is so heavily influenced by extremely partisan Israel-lovers, both of Jewish and evangelical backgrounds. It's insane, the US could dictate terms to Israel on this matter tomorrow! In theory, the US has all this leverage as military supplier, donor of billions every year, source of loan guarantees, superpower sponsor, UN veto provider... The US just showed up in Taiwan and shut down their nuclear weapons program (twice). The US has great latent power over their smallest, most dependant clients.

But in practice, there are people like Mr Seldowitz deeply integrated in the US diplomatic machinery, presumably doing as much as they can to sabotage Palestine without it being totally, overtly obvious. The US is incapable of rationally managing its Israel policy, they get sucked into conflicts and end up haemorrhaging money and blood to advance Israeli interests. My primary example is the Iraq War.

Everyone and their dog admitted the real cause was the US looking out for Israeli interests:

In January 2003, a German journalist asked Ruth Wedgwood, a prominent neoconservative academic and a member of the influential Defense Policy Board (chaired by Richard Perle), why the journalist should support the war. I could "be impolite," Wedgwood said, "and remind Germany of its special relationship with Israel. Saddam presents an existential threat to Israel. That is simply true." Wedgwood did not justify the war by saying that Iraq posed a direct threat to Germany or the United States.

Philip Zelikow, a member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-03), executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (2005-06), told a University of Virginia audience on September 10, 2002, that Saddam was not a direct threat to the United States. "The real threat," he argued, is "the threat against Israel." He went on to say, "And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat . . . And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.

General Wesley Clark, the retired NATO commander and former presidential candidate, said in August 2002 that "those who favor this attack now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid that at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel."

The Israelis themselves were also begging for a US war, everyone from Netanyahu to Peres and Sharon was fearmongering about weapons of mass destruction - they also sent some false intelligence about WMDs: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/feb/04/iraq.israel

If Israel and the Israel lobby have the power to encourage the US into a full-scale war, they absolutely have the power and the motivation to get the US to help them suppress the Palestinians. Sure enough, billions in military aid was rushed off to Israel the moment they suffer a small reverse. I have plenty of quotes for that point directly (that Israel was undermining US peace efforts) but this post is already quite long. My broad point is that we should not do anything to help Israel ever, they are a colossal drain and possess unhealthy amounts of influence.

Israel is the kind of ally that makes you prefer your enemies, it's an incredible deadweight dragging the West down. About a third of the world absolutely hates them and us by extension, they delegitimate the NPT, they drive oil-producers towards China/Russia, they sell US military tech to China, eat up billions in military aid and they get us bogged down in disastrous Middle East wars. And yet there are still loads of people who reflexively support Israel, even in this thread. Forget 'apartheid state' and 'human rights abuses', we should be dishing out the same selfish contempt for Israeli interests that they have for ours. Let them handle their own problems.

No, the US has never made a genuine effort to solve the conflict because it is so heavily influenced by extremely partisan Israel-lovers ...

Didn't his happen in NY? Not one mention of 9/11?

Why was Osama Bin Laden so angry with the US? Palestine was a primary concern of his, albeit not his sole motivation.

According to Michael Scheuer, who directed the CIA's intelligence unit on al Qaeda and its founder, the young bin Laden was for the most part gentle and well behaved, but "an exception to Osama's well-mannered, nonconfrontational demeanor was his support for the Palestinians and negative attitude towards the United States and Israel." After September 11, bin Laden's mother told an interviewer that "in his teenage years he was the same nice kid . . . but he was more concerned, sad, and frustrated about the situation in Palestine in particular, and the Arab and Muslim world in general.

Moreover, bin Laden's first public statement intended for a wider audience—released December 29, 1994—directly addressed the Palestinian issue. As Bruce Lawrence, compiler of bin Laden's public statements, explains, "The letter makes it plain that Palestine, far from being a late addition to bin Laden's agenda, was at the centre of it from the start."

When the CNN reporter Peter Arnett asked him in March 1997 why he had declared jihad against the United States, bin Laden replied, "We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal, and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous, and criminal, whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of the Land of the Prophet's Night Journey [Palestine]. And we believe the US is directly responsible for those who were killed in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq."

There was also the other guy who tried bombing the WTC, who was also angry about Palestine.

According to the transcript of his trial, Yousef hoped that his explosion would topple Tower 1 which would fall into Tower 2, killing the occupants of both buildings, which he estimated to be about 250,000 people[11] in revenge for U.S. support for Israel against Palestine.[12]

The US alliance with Israel has caused huge problems for America and the rest of the West.

What's the obvious deal that America should dictate to Israel that'd solve the I/P conflict? The only thing I can think of is 'actually occupy, subdue, and govern Palestine', but that's less pro-palestine than US policy currently is.

The US could adopt all kinds of approaches. They could tell the Israelis to quit settling Palestinian land, they could recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, they could tell the Israelis to conduct good-faith negotiations instead of unilaterally invading or withdrawing from various parts of the occupied territories as they like...

Take the 2002 peace proposal for instance, the US could work from there:

The new proposal, like the original one, offered Israel peace and normal relations not just with the Palestinians but with all twenty-two members of the Arab League. In return, Israel would have to withdraw from all of the Occupied Territories and the Golan Heights, accept the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories with East Jerusalem as its capital, and negotiate a "just solution" to the Palestinian refugee problem that was "agreed upon" by the relevant parties. The Saudis made it clear that the proposal was a basis for negotiation, not a take-it-or-leave-it deal.

The Israeli prime minister was unhappy with some parts of the proposal, such as the stipulation that Israel would have to withdraw from all of the Occupied Territories. He also rejected any compromise on the issue of a Palestinian "right of return," telling the Jerusalem Post in March 2007, "I will not agree to any kind of Israeli responsibility for this problem. Full stop." He went on to say that the return of even one Palestinian refugee to Israel was "out of the question.

The US could do almost anything except what they actually did and do, which is facade-negotiations organized by people like Mr Seldowitz. All prior negotiations have been fundamentally unserious, since the Israelis know that they have such great influence in Washington that they can derail negotiations at their leisure without risk to their military and diplomatic aid.

During this entire period, the Israelis continued building settlements in the West Bank, despite American protests and despite the fact that the Road Map explicitly calls upon Israel to "freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)." They also continued assassinating Palestinian leaders, sometimes at the most unhelpful moments—at least from a U.S. perspective. For example, the IDF scuttled a proposed Palestinian cease-fire on July 22, 2002, when it killed Sheik Salah Shehada, a prominent Hamas leader, and fourteen others (including nine children). The White House denounced the attack as "heavy handed" but did not force Israel to end its targeted assassinations policy. As noted previously, the IDF undermined another emerging cease-fire in June 2003, when it tried but failed to kill Rantisi, another Hamas leader. On March 22, 2004, Israel assassinated Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin with American-made Hellfire missiles. This move was generally perceived as a serious blow to America's position in the Middle East, not only because U.S. weapons were used but also because many in the Arab world believed that the Bush administration had given Israel the green light to kill a paraplegic in a wheelchair.

All the US has to do is start trying and they could swiftly impose a peace deal. Israel would quickly fold since it's a small country and can't sustain itself in the face of South-Africa style economic and diplomatic suppression. The credible threat alone would almost certainly be enough to achieve a two-state solution.

Bullying the Israelis into giving up what they've taken would give the US a lot more moral weight in opposing Russian annexation of Ukrainian provinces, it would greatly diminish anti-Western sentiment in the oily lands, free up resources to confront China and would be just deserts for the Iraq War, amongst other Israeli perfidies. It's also totally impossible for the US in its current political environment.

All the US has to do is start trying and they could swiftly impose a peace deal. Israel would quickly fold since it's a small country and can't sustain itself in the face of South-Africa style economic and diplomatic suppression. The credible threat alone would almost certainly be enough to achieve a two-state solution.

Yes, but the US doesn't want the two states to be Hamas and Fatah.

The US could propose making Palestine a UN protectorate that will gradually democratize (taking many decades), similar to how Palestine was a League of Nations protectorate in the past or how Kosovo was a UN protectorate. Then poor in lots of money, open up the borders to Egypt, give them a sea harbor, etc.

Then the support for Hamas and other radicals should dry up as the Palestinians can then get (real) jobs and are mostly safe from IDF and colonist attacks.

Support for Hamas and other radicals is not a result of their material conditions. Their material conditions are largely a result of their support for Hamas and other radicals.

Nonsense, they only started to support Hamas after the deradicalized PLO was unable to offer meaningful improvement to their lives, which was in no small part due to Israel losing even a modest will to find a real solution after the killing of Rabin.

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