The Nation: A Memo to Obama on Israel by Uri Avnery

[flpoljunkie]

A Memo to Obama on Israel

December 29, 2008

Uri Avnery: The following humble suggestions are based on my 70 years of experience as an underground fighter, member of the Knesset and founding member of a peace movement in Israel.

1) As far as Israeli-Arab peace is concerned, you should act from Day One.

2) Israeli elections are due to take place in February 2009. You can have an indirect but important and constructive impact on the outcome, by announcing your unequivocal determination to achieve Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-all-Arab peace in 2009.

3) Unfortunately, all your predecessors since 1967 have played a double game. While paying lip service to peace, and sometimes going through the motions of making some effort for peace, they have in practice supported our governments in moving in the very opposite direction. In particular, they have given tacit approval to the building and enlargement of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories, each of which is a land mine on the road to peace.

4) All the settlements are illegal in international law. The distinction sometimes made between "illegal" outposts and the other settlements is a propaganda ploy designed to obscure this simple truth.

5) All the settlements since 1967 have been built with the express purpose of making a Palestinian state--and hence peace--impossible, by cutting the territory of the prospective State of Palestine into ribbons. Practically all our government departments and the army have openly or secretly helped to build, consolidate and enlarge the settlements--as confirmed by the 2005 report prepared for the government by lawyer Talia Sasson.

more...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090112/avnery/print

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Good points

Kicking so more can read.

[bunnies]

2. This should be delivered to Obama personally.

Thanks for posting.

[Thrill]

3. Funny everyone thinks they need to tell Obama what to do

like he's some wide eyed idiot. People in Hawaii trying to give him DVDs on the conflict, telling him to study up on it. unreal

[flpoljunkie]

8. Obama "wants the American people involved in this discussion." Axelrod on the economic stimulus plan

Should this involvement of the people not apply to foreign affairs, particularly the failed Middle East peace process?

[truth2power]

9. "telling Obama what to do"? ...

First of all, Mr. Avnery offered "humble suggestions" not demands.

Second, there seems to be the general impression that PE Obama is somehow omniscient, and that there's no subject on which he may be ignorant, in whole or in part. (I use the term "ignorant" in its dennotative sense of "lack of knowledge" rather than "stupid").

Obama has selected a number of people to be his advisors. If he didn't need advice he could just fire them all and save the govt. a significant amount of money. In my view, he's going to need a lot of input, from various sources, in order to get us out of the mess perpetrated by the Bush administration. We should resist the urge to put him on a pedestal.

[ginnyinWI]

4. One more mess Bush has gotten us into.

The U.S. has traditionally been a broker between Israel and its neighbors. But Bush didn't care.

Along with Iraq, Afghanistan, the economy, the climate, the infrastructure, education, Katrina, unregulated industry and the ire of the world, he's created a mess that Obama will be tasked with reversing. And just watch the righties complain if he can't do it all in 90 days!


My mother-in-law let her house go for 15 years. She was newly divorced and just ignored all the little things that go wrong with an older house. When we bought and moved into the family homestead, we found all these things wanting. It was a never-ending battle to save that house from all the ways it was trying to fall down around us. We weren't free of it until we finally moved out 12 years later!

This is what Obama faces. Hopefully he's got more grit and tenacity than we had and will get it done.

[Karenina]

5. Great analogy!

Guten Rutsch!!! :toast:

[nradisic]

6. K&R

Israelis are hostages to their own government just like us here in the old USA...I think they need their own Obama to get shit done...

[ginnyinWI]

7. toon

<img src="" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

[Peace Patriot]

10. I'd say start with the war profiteers--the licit and illicit weapons dealers,

the jet bomber manufacturers, the makers of bullets, rockets, rifles, nukes, gunboats, destroyers, missiles, handguns, helmets, bombs, prisons, uniforms, prosthetic devices, barracks, wheelchairs, military jeeps, helicopters, drones, high tech surveillance and targeting, bandages, med kits, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

The war profiteers are the drivers of every bloody conflict on earth. Stop them! STOP THEM! Then and only then will you start making progress with Israel/Palestine peace, and peace everywhere.

[Overseas]

11. K&R !! //nt

[invictus]

12. K&R