A Cry for Help from Jerusalem

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I have just received a desperatee call for help from a very good Christian Palestinian friend. It is related to the implications of the recent decision of the American president to move their embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

My friend is telling me that more and more of the evangelical churches in Palestine (representing something like 1% of the Palestinian Christians, who are, themselves, about 1% of the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank) are adopting a Zionist theology, in an attempt to schmooze American churches to support them financially (you may rightly call it ecclesial prostitution). This is, of course, a luxury that historical churches in Palestine (not only Greek Orthodox, Melkite, and Latin churches, but also Anglicans and Lutherans) do not have.

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Romney Defeats Netanyahu | Political Correction

Romney Defeats Netanyahu | Political Correction.

This article is really worth reading. Here is the beginning of it.

We have one person to thank for the fact that President Barack Obama successfully let Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu know ‘who’s the boss’ both at the AIPAC conference and at a meeting between the two at the White House on Monday.

Thank you, Mitt Romney.

Imagine if things had worked out the way Netanyahu wanted them to: Romney would have turned out to be an excellent candidate who crushed his opponents with dispatch. He would not only have the Republican nomination sewn up by now, but he would be the frontrunner to win in November (especially if the economy was trending down and not up).

MJ Rosenberg – If Tom Friedman Can Say It, You Can, Too

Here is the first part of this very strong critical article of MJ Rosenberg on the American policy of unlimited and indiscriminate support of the state of Israel.

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One can respond: So what else is new? But that is only if you get your information from some place other than the electronic or print mainstream media. There, due to a decades-long campaign of intimidation, the lobby’s actions are rarely reported.

That is because the organizations that compose the lobby — including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League — have demonstrated that even mentioning the lobby’s excessive power will lead to being smeared with the label of “anti-Israel” or “anti-Semitic.”

Thomas Friedman – The Arab Awakening and Israel

Here are some quotes from Friedman’s latest article in The New York Times on Israel and the Arab spring:

Israel is facing the biggest erosion of its strategic environment since its founding. It is alienated from its longtime ally Turkey. Its archenemy Iran is suspected of developing a nuclear bomb. The two strongest states on its border — Syria and Egypt — are being convulsed by revolutions. The two weakest states on its border — Gaza and Lebanon — are controlled by Hamas and Hezbollah.

It was in this context that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went before the Knesset last Wednesday and argued that the Arab awakening was moving the Arab world “backward” and turning into an “Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli, undemocratic wave.” Ceding territory to the Palestinians was unwise at such a time, he said: “We can’t know who will end up with any piece of territory we give up.”

Ehud Barak: Iranian Nuclear Program Not Really About Israel

The classic definition of a campaign gaffe is when a politician inadvertently speaks a truth that will hurt him politically. The first George Bush committed a gaffe when he said that the idea that cutting taxes would increase government revenue was “voodoo economics.” Similarly, it was a gaffe when Barack Obama said that insecure right-wingers “cling” to religion and guns. In other words, a gaffe is a politically inconvenient truth.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak gaffed big time this week. In fact, this gaffe is even more colossal than when he said back in 1999 that if he were a stateless young Palestinian, he would “have joined one of the terror organizations.”

James Baker blasts Obama as ‘shortsighted’ on settlements, on 20th anniversary of Madrid

James Baker blasts Obama as ‘shortsighted’ on settlements, on 20th anniversary of Madrid.

Obama’s lending himself to the manipulation of Netanyahu in terms of accepting the Jewish settlements in Palestine is my greatest disappointment with the current American president. And, unfortunately, with elections coming up, and the overwhelming power of the Jewish lobby in the US, I am afraid things will only get worse.

May God have mercy!

Thomas Friedman – Israel: Adrift at Sea Alone

II

I’ve never been more worried about Israel’s future. The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation.

This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.

Israel is not responsible for the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or for the uprising in Syria or for Turkey’s decision to seek regional leadership by cynically trashing Israel or for the fracturing of the Palestinian national movement between the West Bank and Gaza. What Israel’s prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, is responsible for is failing to put forth a strategy to respond to all of these in a way that protects Israel’s long-term interests.