MJ Rosenberg is known to regulars of this blog for his 2006 statement openly endorsing dictatorships for over 100 million non-Jewish people in Israel's region to protect Israel.
Jordan, for instance, is not a democracy in the western sense but it is precisely the kind of neighbor Israel needs. Egypt is not a democracy but is at peace with Israel. A democratic Egypt probably would not be.His original statement is no longer linkable. He was quite proud of the statement at the time.
Arnold, you are right. I think that a democratic Egypt could very well repudiate the peace treaty with Israel leading to war, major Israeli (and potentially American) losses and even the end of the Jewish state. Sorry, that is too high a price to pay.In a new article, he describes a legislative process where mostly unconcerned US congresspeople endorse whatever they are told to endorse by AIPAC because the alternative would be to lose campaign financing at best or to have an opponent funded sufficiently to remove them from office.
Posted by M.J. Rosenberg
January 3, 2007 9:34 AM
Besides, and I say this with two decades of experience working on Capitol Hill, very few senators or House members care very much about Israel (or the Palestinians) one way or another. Why stick your neck out over an issue that is not very important to you?There are certainly US congresspeople who are as sure that Netanyahu's vision for Israel is correct as Netanyahu is. Netanyahu's vision is basically that the United States suppress the hundreds of millions of of people of Israel's region who are not Jewish on Israel's behalf forever.
This indifference to Israel (and the Palestinians) is one of the secrets of the lobby's success. It is also one of the reason J Street has had such a hard time making inroads on the Hill. The J Street approach requires actually caring about Israel and crafting a U.S. strategy that help would ensure its survival. The lobby approach requires reading AIPAC talking points into the Congressional Record and voting "aye" every time an AIPAC bill comes up. If one does not care much one way or another, why stand up against one of the most powerful interest groups Washington has ever known?
Think of it this way. If you had a sibling or a child in Congress and he or she asked you if he should just go along with AIPAC or bravely resist (risking campaign donations), what would you say?
Netanyahu's vision is kind of Israel's only hope. Rosenberg's and Obama's idea that once there are two states, the colonial structure that now includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, Kuwait and others will either be unnecessary or easier to maintain is very likely to prove false if the people of the region ever get to vote on their government's policies.
The Palestinian people are clearly being put under duress. They are being told that if they do not vote the way Israel and the United States prefer, they will go hungry as is happening in Gaza. If a vote is ever reached, and the people of Palestine under those terms vote to accept reservations more onerous than those Nelson Mandela and the ANC rejected, the result of that vote likely will not be considered valid and therefore will still require the same colonial structure to enforce it that the US is expending a tremendous amount of resources holding in place today.
The two state solution doesn't really make sense, and its job is not really to make sense. The purpose of the peace process and the two state is to shield people like MJ Rosenberg and Barack Obama from the implications of the reality that pro-Israel US Congresswoman Illeana Ros-Lehtinen - one of many US congresspeople who clearly are familiar with and directly concerned about Israel - and Benjamin Netanyahu intend for the US to hold the colonial structure that Rosenberg approves of forever.
Barack Obama claims to see the Rosenberg's approved colonial structure that the US has held in place for the last 60 years as a temporary situation that does not align perfectly with the US' long term values.
There will be times when our short-term interests do not align perfectly with our long-term vision of the regionThis is what Barack Obama needs to believe to continue to support Israel and the dictatorships Israel needs to remain viable while at the same time believing that he is not just a black-skinned Bill Clinton, Cecil Rhodes or Winston Churchill.
Rosenberg is right. Netanyahu's path will lead to the end of Zionism's viability. Ros-Lehtinen is also right. Rosenberg's path would lead to the end of Zionism's viability. If the United States is unwilling or unable to be a permanent Middle East colonial power, then Israel, or Zionism is not viable.
Rosenberg's dispute with AIPAC is over the proposition that Israel's supporters should at least lie to Israel's American sponsors. At least let them think wrongly that they aren't working to permanently keep the region politically in the 1800s. Netanyahu believes that Israel's supporters have the votes that they don't need the lie of a peace process. Netanyahu expects the United States, on Israel's behalf, to permanently suppress the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Barack Obama is acting like he is stupid enough to continue to fall for this lie. Maybe he thinks it would be anti-Semitic to do otherwise. Or maybe he really is stupid enough. There is no indication that he examined these issues closely before he ran for president and he is now surrounded by true believers.
AIPAC and J-Street, are both ultimately betting that the US will never lose the ability and capacity to shield Israel from its region that does not believe it is legitimate. I don't think that is a safe bet for the long term.
On the other hand, but Rosenberg and Netanyahu would rather see the US/Zionist colonial structure last for as long as possible. Even when it eventually fails, the 5.7 million Jews of Palestine would have gotten more years out of the Zionist enterprise, at the expense of the non-Jews of the region, than they could have hoped for without pliable US leaders.
11 comments:
The two state solution doesn't really make sense, and its job is not really to make sense. The purpose of the peace process and the two state is to shield people like MJ Rosenberg and Barack Obama from the implications of the reality that pro-Israel US Congresswoman Illeana Ros-Lehtinen - one of many US congresspeople who clearly are familiar with and directly concerned about Israel - and Benjamin Netanyahu intend for the US to hold the colonial structure that Rosenberg approves of forever.
This is one of the reasons I find debating Mideast issues with liberals so incredibly frustrating.
Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that liberals are the most misinformed bunch when it comes to anything related to the Middle East. On the surface this may come across as a bit strange, considering that most liberals are better educated than the average person on the street. But after reading this article, it now dawns on me that these guys are not necessarily misinformed, but most likely engaging in self-deception.
In many ways, the concept of supporting a majority Jewish state in Palestine, requires one to engage in actions that are contradictory to core liberal values. Such as suppressing millions of down rotten 3rd worlders and engaging in endless armed conflicts. At the same time, supporting Jewish causes itself is a core liberal value. One cannot be considered a liberal in America if he/she is accused of being insensitive to Jewish sensibilities. Simply not being supportive enough for Jewish causes is now considered a form of anti-Semitism.
So an average liberal is torn between these two contradictory forces and have come up with theory to solve this dilemma. Most of them cling on to the two-state solution as an answer, because it sounds nice. The two-state solution promises democracy and beautiful rainbows at the end of the tunnel. This is the stuff liberals die for. But what the two-state solution will not solve is what Israel would have to do to pacify another 100 million people outside its border. To accomplish that, Israel and its American supporters need to act like 18th century colonialists (and they are doing a fine job so far). The question is how long can this last?
Arnold, do you know that there was another Rozenberg - the "expert" of Hitler on the Slavic untermensch and the ways to treat them for the good of the Reich? They both do not differ all that much, I suppose. Racism is always racism and always serves the robbery of non-Jews/non-Arians and so on...
I think a comment from Scottish socialist sci-fi author Ken MacLeod is apposite here:
The argument that Israel has a right to self-defence but that its present actions are disproportionate leads nowhere. Sometimes, disproportionate response is exactly right and, for the state of Israel, disproportionate response will always seem right.
What is wrong is the existence of a state that can exist in no other way. Its only hope of survival, spelled out more than 80 years ago by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, is to reduce the millions of people it has wronged to utter despair.
george, exactly. I always prefer "honest" Zionists who do not mince words - Zionism could not stay without every imaginable crime against native population of the ME - and some unimaginable. "left" Zionist usually full themselves and others trying to argue that there is possibility for "Jewish state" in Palestine without dispossession of Palestinians - there is not such thing.
Another factor which makes a two-state solution impossible is the existence of half a million West Bank settlers, many of which are fanatic Greater Israel expansionists armed to the teeth. Even if an Israeli government was willing to fight a civil war against the settlers in order to make peace with the Palestinians, there is no guarantee that the settlers would not actually win that war...
the factor that is the only which matters - Zionism is not about "2 states". It is about colonization of all Palestine and beyond, while ethnic cleansing the natives. Anything else is just hot air. .
Of course that is true of the Likud hardliners, but my point is that even if Peace Now types were in charge of Israel, they couldn't actually make peace with the Palestinians unless they had both the will and the power to militarily crush the settlers.
Pre-WWI Britain had the same issue re Irish Home Rule – it couldn't be done because it would be violently resisted by the Ulster Protestants – and Charles de Gaulle was extremely fortunate in being able to avoid a French Civil War as a result of withdrawal from Algeria.
Peace Now are very marginal Zionists, because they lie to themselves much more than Likud. Israel could not have real borders, and without West Bank Zionists could not live, really - they rob land, water and so on, and are not going to stop.
At least Britain had its own land and the same was true regarding France. Zionists have only colonized Palestine, so why give up a part of it if anyway another part is not theirs?
I appear to have been blocked by wsw :/, shame. No doubt you will be unhappy by this censorship.
Anyway in response to your previous comments
I appear to have been blocked by wsw :/, shame. No doubt you will be unhappy by this censorship.
Anyway in response to your previous comments
>in which USA imperialism played its usual dirty part too.
As did the russian empire.
>and then promptly took USA to the war.
After Zimmerman.
>how fare Libyans who by the poll tom likes to cite, were happy with NATO bombs aka liberation
Better than they would be if gaddafi was allowed to commit mass violence against them.
> mean, the Libyans who are still living?
They'd be less living if you had your way. But you dont care< most libyans say the intervention was right, but lidia flicks there opinion aside, for it isnt her opinion.
>And what is IS if NOT Wahhabi
I told you already.
>IS is the same Wahhabi as Saudi royals
This doesnt seem to be true.
As pointed out before they appear to be kharijites.
https://twitter.com/joshua_lan...
>o Nazis are used instead)
Actually it was the majority of ukranians themselves to overthrew the leader which was killing them.
>By the way, tom also thinks that blowing up hotel owned by Israelis mean "fight Zionism".
It is, the are opposed to israel so they were attacking israeli targets such as the hotel and the plane. They have also vocally pledged that israel should be removed.
I appear to have been blocked by wsw :/, shame. No doubt you will be unhappy by this censorship.
Anyway in response to your previous comments
>in which USA imperialism played its usual dirty part too.
As did the russian empire.
>and then promptly took USA to the war.
After Zimmerman.
>how fare Libyans who by the poll tom likes to cite, were happy with NATO bombs aka liberation
Better than they would be if gaddafi was allowed to commit mass violence against them.
> mean, the Libyans who are still living?
They'd be less living if you had your way. But you dont care< most libyans say the intervention was right, but lidia flicks there opinion aside, for it isnt her opinion.
>And what is IS if NOT Wahhabi
I told you already.
>IS is the same Wahhabi as Saudi royals
This doesnt seem to be true.
As pointed out before they appear to be kharijites.
https://twitter.com/joshua_lan...
>o Nazis are used instead)
Actually it was the majority of ukranians themselves to overthrew the leader which was killing them.
>By the way, tom also thinks that blowing up hotel owned by Israelis mean "fight Zionism".
It is, the are opposed to israel so they were attacking israeli targets such as the hotel and the plane. They have also vocally pledged that israel should be removed.
As i was saying elsewhere:
>in which USA imperialism played its usual dirty part too.
As did the russian empire.
>and then promptly took USA to the war.
After Zimmerman.
>how fare Libyans who by the poll tom likes to cite, were happy with NATO bombs aka liberation
Better than they would be if gaddafi was allowed to commit mass violence against them.
> mean, the Libyans who are still living?
They'd be less living if you had your way. But you dont care< most libyans say the intervention was right, but lidia flicks there opinion aside, for it isnt her opinion.
>And what is IS if NOT Wahhabi
I told you already.
>but because of Saudi royals' Wahhbism (not different from IS
https://twitter.com/joshua_lan...
> Saudi royals do anything to oppress anti-Zionist feelings of the majority of natives in the ME
Hardly.
http://antisemitism.org.il/art...
Saudi arabia even sent troops against israel in the past.
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