[A-List] Fwd: A glimpse of the future

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

I assume that another light will shine on the brutal use that the
United Sates has used Israeli Zionism for, to cause such turmoil in
all the Middle East that the U.S. with it's blood brother Israel's
gory spear of genocidal occupation, can take over the Middle East and
all it's countries in order to own the world's biggest pools of
natural energy.    The added sanction on Iran is the proof that that
is how the U.S uses Israel.   It is gored by horns of it's own
dilemma.   From what I can see, America will not allow Israel to save
itself by giving up the Gaza occupation and becoming Internationally
legal.     Rational decision by America is as difficult for them as
such have been previously to Israel.  Trouble is U.S foreign policy
has been Zionist Israeli foreign policy for years.   U.S. Military
Industrial Complex is based on that shared identity.     Suzanne

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 6:35 PM
Subject: A glimpse of the future
To:
Cc: Palestine-l <palestine-l at googlegroups.com>, Philip Weiss
<weissphilip at yahoo.com>, SR <SOCIALIST-REGISTER at yorku.ca>, Sid-l
<sid-l at googlegroups.com>, Chloe Shantz-Hilkes
<chloe.shantz-hilkes at cbc.ca>, Michael Enright
<michael_enright at cbc.ca>, Natasha Sweeney <natasha.sweeney at cbc.ca>,
Quade Hermann <quade.hermann at cbc.ca>, Wendy Mesley
<Wendy.Mesley at cbc.ca>


http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/a-glimpse-of-the-future-1.295524

Haaretz
                                           11.06.10

A glimpse of the future

The game is up. It cannot be reversed by doubling PR budgets or
endlessly cloning Shimon Peres or even Mark Regev. It cannot be
reversed by allowing coriander into Gaza, by another photo-op with our
friend President Mubarak, or even by enthusiastically supporting the
creation of a new Palestinian town (ship ) in Rawabi. An occupation
that just entered its 44th year and entails denying basic rights to
millions of Palestinians can no longer be sanitized. As long as Israel
maintains that occupation, the costs will become increasingly
burdensome.

By Daniel Levy

Israelis might consider sending thank-you bouquets today to the
national soccer teams of Switzerland and Greece. It is thanks to them
that Israelis will have to choose between getting behind Brazil,
England, Ghana or whomever, as the World Cup kicks off.

Of course, it would be nice to wrap ourselves in blue and white, and
cheer on the likes of Yossi, Guy and Ben. But on this occasion, one
should probably be thankful that we didn't make it. Hence, those
flowers.

There were large demonstrations in Cape Town last week following the
Mavi Marmara incident. For now, South Africa has recalled its
ambassador, Ismail Coovadia, from Israel. An Israeli presence at this
greatest of global sporting spectacles would have been guaranteed to
attract an unrelenting wave of protests, PR stunts and bad publicity.

Unfortunately, South Africa is not the outlier - Israel is. In the
days since Operation Sky Winds, Israel has been able to get a glimpse
of the future and into the abyss that awaits if we continue on our
current course. It is a future replete with both insecurity and the
indignity of global opprobrium and sanctions.

Even or perhaps especially in our hyper-connected world, it seems only
a finite number of truly global causes can be sustained at any one
time. Palestine is now irrefutably on that list. That is certainly
inconvenient for Israel and maybe unfair. We do, though, appear to be
locked into a dramatic acceleration of this phenomenon and - in the
absence of something resembling a credible peace or de-occupation
effort - the global Palestinian solidarity movement is now competing
to set the agenda.

In the last two weeks alone, two of Italy's largest supermarket chains
have stopped carrying Israeli products; Swedish dockworkers have
refused to unload goods from Israeli ships; Britain's largest trade
union, Unite, unanimously voted to boycott Israeli items; and Elvis
Costello and the Pixies have both canceled shows in Israel. Meanwhile,
the latest debate raging in the United States is over how much of a
strategic burden Israel has become.

The logic of the kind of unarmed resistance represented by flotillas
to Gaza is to shine a light on the wrongdoings of an offending party.
Ideally, one will succeed in appealing to the better nature, to the
humanity, of the offending party, and its behavior (in this case, the
blockade on Gaza ) will be corrected. If not, then one may seek to
shame that party in the court of global public opinion. Any
over-reaction or additional offensive behavior will only serve to
strengthen the case of the light-shiner and "prove" the original
premise of wrongdoing.

In this instance, Israel's leadership played its role with Lionel
Messi-like perfection. It's true that Israel's official PR response
was ill-conceived, while its "army" of citizen advocates indulged in
the use of racist stereotypes on YouTube videos, doing more harm than
good. But Israel's predicament goes far deeper than the embarrassment
of having Avigdor Lieberman head this country's diplomatic corps: It
has become structural and therefore far more worrying. The gap between
Israel's self-perception and global perceptions of the country has
taken on Grand Canyon-like proportions.

In short, the game is up. This is not defeatism - it's an
acknowledgment of a reality that, by ignoring, causes Israel to
imperil itself. It cannot be reversed by doubling PR budgets or
endlessly cloning Shimon Peres or even Mark Regev. It cannot be
reversed by allowing coriander into Gaza, by another photo-op with our
friend President Mubarak, or even by enthusiastically supporting the
creation of a new Palestinian town (ship ) in Rawabi. An occupation
that just entered its 44th year and entails denying basic rights to
millions of Palestinians can no longer be sanitized. As long as Israel
maintains that occupation, the costs will become increasingly
burdensome.

Having lost the world, Israel's focus turns in on itself. The
country's leadership has to work harder to keep its own public on
board for the occupation project. This requires a growing suppression
of dissent, further ostracizing Israel's Palestinian minority, and
ever-more aggressive appeals to Jewish national pride. Democratic
norms are thereby eroded, further feeding the tarnishing of Israel's
image. This is the vicious cycle in which Israel is embroiled.

It is true that there will almost certainly always be unjustified
prejudice toward Israel. Whatever it does, some people will always be
out to get us. But prejudice is not what motivates the vast majority
of those mobilizing in solidarity with the Palestinians. The
occupation is the oxygen of their campaign, and the vast majority seek
an end to it - not to Israel itself. An Israel that fails to
appreciate this and which sustains the occupation is the single most
proximate cause of its own delegitimization.

It is still in our power, however, to change all of this. We can end
the 1967 occupation in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan
Heights and its remnants in Gaza, and achieve recognition for minor
border modifications to the '67 line with one-for-one land swaps and
support for reasonable arrangements on security. Israel could
implement such a de-occupation with the Palestinians and Arab states
directly, or with the U.S. and the Quartet - and have them deliver the
Palestinian and Arab side of the bargain.

But if Israel does not take the lead, then let us at least hope that
our remaining friends in the world will step forward with their own
proposals and that we in turn will have the wisdom to say yes to them.

Enjoy the World Cup, and let's look forward to Israel's qualification
in 2014 being all about soccer and blissfully devoid of politics.

Daniel Levy is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and
editor of the Middle East Channel at foreignpolicy.com