COMMENT ON THE GOLDSTONE REPORT

COMMENT ON THE GOLDSTONE REPORT            23 Oct. 2009


Tags: Goldstone report, Russia and Goldstone, Israel Palestine, Afganistan,
Obama & public option health, Obama and cessation settlement constuction


It is entirely the fault of the West for having allowed tiny Israel to become the tail that wags not just the US but the whole Western dog. Russia at least recognises its own self-interest. 


Most of us Europeans have immense sympathy for the Jews after WWII. But we failed to give the Jewish survivors the welcome they desperately needed. Hence the very size of the desperate rush to Palestine and the determination of the Jewish terrorists in forcing the UK to abandon the Mandate. 


The West then utterly failed in the basic humanitarian duty to look after the Palestinian victims of the establishment of Israel. 


That the West helped Israel survive the Arab wars in no way required permitting a resurgent Israel to dominate our foreign policies in the Middle East and beyond. 


But we did. And we let Israel/Palestine became an ever-worsening running sore on world affairs - the key focus of Arab and Muslim resentment and hatred against the West. 


Well we knew this but - apart from a little palliative aid - we did nothing effective until Al Qaeda woke us up. We know that Al Qaeda & Co. derived (and still does) more support and recruitment from the oppression of the Palestinians than from anything else. 


Yet we are STILL doing nothing to enforce a solution of Israel/Palestine even though the shape of a workable, fairly just, settlement has been clear for years. 


An invasion of Afghanistan may have been politically inevitable after "9/11" but it was quite obvious, as many of us pointed out, that the essential corollary was to move quickly to a solution of Israel/Palestine (which was then more attainable than ever). 


To win against Al Qaeda and Arab and Muslim resentment - the "War on Terror" syndrome - troops to Afghanistan will be far less effective than standing up to the present extremist Israeli government, AIPAC, Mossad, and its other foreign agents and force that indispensable Israel/Palestine settlement. All the powers that count know this full well.


Given the political power of Israel in the US, President Obama needs the help of all those countries and most of all Europe and Russia. 


Two litmus tests: will Obama get that public option on US health care? That would mark a major victory towards ending financiers and corporate control of US society. And will he oblige Israel genuinely to stop all further settlement in the occupied territories and in E Jerusalem? That would mark the beginning of US recovering control from Israel of large areas of its foreign policy. 


The outcome of those two political battles may well determine the Obama presidency - for the American people themselves, for US success in opening a new era of international cooperation after the catastrophe of the G W Bush years. Those were a doomed armed search for a uni-polar world - the Cheney/neo-conservative hegemonic dream set out in their Project for a New American Century. 


Final thought - it hardly needs saying (and a great many Jews are saying) that the establishment of a Palestinian state will do more for the security of Israel than any number of wars and bombs.