All Predators "Smile"

John Pilger, the British pundit and fierce critic of USer imperialism, examines the spin on Obama's Cairo speech in the context of Israeli intransigence on civil and human rights for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, at Information Clearinghouse. The take-away:

Obama offered no change, no plan, only a “tired, morally bankrupt American mantra [which] essentially argues that only the rich, the strong, the oppressors and the enforcers of injustice (notably the Americans and Israelis) have the right to use violence, while the poor, the weak, the oppressed and the victims of oppression must . . . submit to their fate and accept whatever crumbs their betters may magnanimously deign suitable to let fall from their table”. And he offered not the slightest recognition that the world’s most numerous victims of terrorism are people of Muslim faith – a terrorism of western origin that dares not speak its name.

In his “reaching out” in Cairo, as in his “anti-nuclear” speech in Berlin, as in the “hope” he spun at his inauguration, this clever young politician is playing the part for which he was drafted and promoted. This is to present a benign, seductive, even celebrity face to American power, which can then proceed towards its strategic goal of dominance, regardless of the wishes of the rest of humanity and the rights and lives of our children.

Israel CANNOT accept an equal, sovereign, independent, free Palestinian state WITHIN its borders. It is un-possible, in even the most benign sense of 'real-politik.' Israel's real-politik future CANNOT tolerate the existence of an equal, sovereign, independent Palestinian state. To acknowledge the existence of such a state would require the Israelis to negotiate in good faith on matters of shared resources, especially water. There is absolutely NO WAY that any Israeli politician could face the Israeli electorate having handed back to a Palestinian State water which the kibbutzim needed to make the desert bloom.

There is no way Israel can tolerate any arrangement for the Palestinians in Israel which is NOT fundamentally an apartheid regime of bantustans such as those the white South Africans set up for the pesky blacks; or, at best, reservations like those on which USers isolate and disempower those from whom WE stole "our" country.