As President Obama heads to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan on what seems mainly to be presidential tourism, Rashid Khalidi at Democracy Now! explains how the United States is undermining Mideast peace and harming the Palestinian population.
Meanwhile, some Palestinians are protesting Obama’s visit. The USG Open Source Center translates a report from the Ma’an News Agency:
“Palestinians Protest Near US Consulate in Jerusalem in Rejection of Obama Visit
Ma’an News Agency
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Document Type: OSC SummaryA report posted at 1927 GMT says that the Palestinian Prisoner Club organized a rally opposed the US Consulate in Jerusalem in the afternoon of 19 March. The report notes that the demonstration was held under the slogan “We Are All Samir,” in honor of Samir al-Isawi, Palestinian prisoner held in Israel. The report further cites Prisoner Club Director Nasir Qaws saying: “We reject Obama’s visit, which makes Jerusalem the capital of Israel. We are demonstrating to show that this city is the capital of the Palestinian state.”
(Description of Source: Bethlehem Ma’an News Agency in Arabic — Website of independent, leading Palestinian news agency; funded by the Dutch and Danish Foreign Ministries; URL: http://www.maannews.net/) “
What the gang that’s shorthanded as “Obama” knows, which is what Cheney and the various Pentagon and Foggy Bottom “war leaders” also understood just fine, is that the thing called “war,” being all institutionalized and industrialized and with all the logistics and planning bureaucracy being operational and in place and the media being so well under control, it does not matter what “the citizens” think, say or do when it comes to “opening these proceedings.” The machinery of “war” is a JOBS PROGRAM, the machines themselves have “constituencies,” and as with the “drone program,” and after several generations of life and economy under the Imperial executive, the “deciders” don’t even have to ask, or persuade, or badger any more. Consent to fire up the Grand Racket does not have to even be presumed; it’s irrelevant, as irrelevant as the opinions of the barista on the employment policies of Starbucks, or of the part-timer stocking shelves at Walmart. Sort of like what obtains in “the only democracy in the Middle East,” where the industrial entity that sits on 400 nuclear weapons and runs an apartheid state can pretty much do what it wants, with maybe a little more political shenanigans thanks to the parliamentary system than our own “captured or wholly owned subsidiary” legislature.
What’s the endpoint, and what’s the object of the Game, again?
This trip to Israel is a monumental waste of of time and money..much like in America, the word occupation will never be uttered…settlements either..Nothing more consequential than the tired expressions of the USA’s slavish and uncritical
devotion to that barbaric little apartheid state.
that barbaric little apartheid
I don’t really see how Obama’s visit undermines the “Peace Process” more than it has already been undermined. Years of failure, mutual recrimination, violence, killings and most of all the continued Israeli seizure of the land supposedly being negotiated over has done a pretty good job of undermining it whether or no Obama sets foot with 10000km of the place. The fact that he is showing up without even pretending to try does pretty well highlight that failure though.
You could have shortened your lede to “Obama Undermines Peace” and saved a few keystrokes.
Reading this post after Obama’s Jerusalem speech and his remarks with President Abbas is wryly ironic.
That Obama, undermining peace!