by James M. Wall
Tuesday was a dark day. The US House of Representatives passed Resolution 867, 344-36. HR 867 is an AIPAC-driven bill which is a litmus test for hard-core Zionist supporters.
Ha’aretz had the story Wednesday morning.
The resolution is co-sponsored by the two senior members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.).
The resolution calls on the President and the Secretary of State:
. . . to continue to strongly and unequivocally oppose any endorsement of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in multilateral fora, including through leading opposition to any United Nations General Assembly resolution and through vetoing, if necessary, any United Nations Security Council resolution that endorses the contents of this report, seeks to act upon the recommendations contained in this report, or calls on any other international body to take further action regarding this report.
Chairman Berman has been in the Congress since 1982. He became chair of Foreign Affairs in 2008. When he became chairman, Rep. Berman told the Jewish publication, Forward, “Even before I was a Democrat, I was a Zionist.”
Rep. Ros-Lehtinen, who was elected to her House seat from the Miami area in 1989, was the first Cuban American and the first Hispanic woman elected to the Congress.
The language of the resolution describes the report of the UN Human Rights Council, headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, as “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.”
Looking for a sign of hope in this dark moment in congressional history? Here’s one:
Congressman Brian Baird (D-Washington) was one of the 36 House members who voted against the resolution. Baird is one of the few members of the House who has actually visited Gaza, which he did on a recent fact-finding trip following the Gaza invasion.
On his Web site, he asks his colleagues a series of questions:
Why are we bringing this resolution to the floor without ever giving former South African Constitutional Court Justice Richard Goldstone a hearing to explain his findings? Have those who will vote on H.Res. 867 actually read the resolution? Have they read the Goldstone report?
Are they aware that Justice Goldstone has issued a paragraph by paragraph response to H.Res. 867, available (click here) on my web site, pointing out that many of its assertions are factually inaccurate or deeply misleading? . . .
What will it say about this Congress and our country if we so readily seek to block “any further consideration” of a human rights investigation produced by one of the most respected jurists in the world today, a man who led the investigations of abuses in South Africa, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Kosovo and worked to identify and prosecute Nazi war criminals as a member of the Panel of the Commission of Enquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina?
Rarely has an AIPAC-supported resolution in support of Israel been so openly denounced by a member of the House.
Philip Weiss has posted the names of the 36 no voters. This list is an honor roll of wisdom and courage of those House members who refused to be blindly led by AIPAC down a path that is harmful both to Israel and to people of Gaza. (For a complete list of the votes by states, click here.)
There are no corresponding signs of hope emanating from the White House. Is there a connection here?
This is a White House with a domestic agenda (starting with health care) which will go nowhere without strong Congressional support.
Obama was elected on a promise of change. What he has discovered is that the Congress remains in the iron grip of a a congressional majority that is not interested in change.
While George Bush is no longer in the White House, his conservative policies remain, because a congressional majority pays greater homage to the insurance industry and AIPAC, than it does to universal health care and human rights.
President Obama began his engagement with Bibi Netanyahu after a dramatic election victory which should have allowed him to break the control Israel maintained over American policy.
Instead, Obama looked over his shoulder at the Congress, a more formidable opponent than any Israeli prime minister.
He saw the Israeli-dominated US Congress, which he needed on his side to make any progress in either health care or peace making. Instead of confronting Bibi with demands that would have reversed Bush policies, he asked Bibi, politely, to please “freeze” settlement construction.
Bibi agreed, with the usual Israeli caveat that he would continue “natural growth” construction. This was an insult to President Obama and to the Palestinian people who had looked to the new American leader to break the oppression of occupation.
Obama took the insult and then dispatched his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to persuade Netanyahu to reconsider the freeze request as a gesture Obama could use to persuade Israel’s Arab neighbors to take diplomatic steps that would “bolster Israel’s confidence in its security”.
Bibi took a signal from AIPAC and refused even that polite request. Obama’s plan to exert leadership in the region, had failed.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton retreated to a meeting of Arab leaders in Marrakesh, Morocco, where, the New York Times reported, she began “setting the stage for a new phase of Middle East diplomacy, with a more modest goal. She is trying to get the parties talking at any level to avoid a dangerous vacuum until a Plan B emerges.”
Clinton arrived in Morocco and ran into a firestorm caused by what has to be described as ill-chosen praise for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “reasonable compromise” in which the Israeli leader “has proposed a moratorium on new housing units in the West Bank, but would allow building or finishing about 3,000 more units and would exclude East Jerusalem from any building limits.”
Praising Netanyahu to Arab leaders for being “reasonable” with Israel’s settlement projects, was hardly a Clintonian diplomatic high point.
Tony Karon, writing for Time, renders this harsh judgment on the Obama-Clinton duo’s latest Middle East misadventure:
The Obama Administration’s bid to relaunch an Israeli-Palestinian peace process is falling apart faster than you can say settlement freeze — in no small part because President Obama began his effort by saying “settlement freeze.” . . . .
Asking the Arab states to accept Israel’s offer to simply slow down construction in the West Bank and its refusal to stop building and demolishing Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem — after President Obama publicly and repeatedly demanded it — has battered the Administration’s credibility in Arab capitals.
With the Palestinian January elections looming, this was not a good time for the US to deliver twin blows to Abbas’ public image before and after he met with Secretary of State Clinton in Abu Dhabi, just before her meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
The first blow came from what Politico’s Lauren Rozen described as the “US flip-flop on the settlements freeze issue”. That blow was coupled with the public humiliation Abbas suffered after he initially blocked further consideration by the UN Human Rights Council of the Goldstone Report.
By not standing in support of the Goldstone Report with Hamas and the Gazans who had suffered great losses in life and property, Abbas was immediately subjected to swift and angry reaction from his own Palestinian public.
This reaction forced him to reverse the Goldstone decision and endorse its further consideration.
Rozen quotes one Middle East authority (unnamed), who told her that “There is no strong, capable person navigating this ship. It all seems unprofessional, a policy drifting in different directions, thus projecting weakness to a savvy and cynical region that studies and looks for signs of strength and weakness. Very dangerous and full of implications for Iran and Af-Pak policy.”
This is a harsh indictment, which most likely comes from a “Middle East authority” who is unfriendly to both Obama and Clinton. But the point is undeniable that “signs of strength and weakness” are watched closely in the region.
The Obama-Clinton team has been no help in recent weeks to a battered President Abbas. Praising Bibi for his settlement rigidity, while giving Abbas bad advice on Goldstone, is no way to run a tough-minded foreign policy.
Picture above is by Abdeljalil Bounhar, of the Associated Press.
Wallwritings 
It is the American government’s double standards and blind allegiance to Israel’s negation of international law, UN resolutions, and denial of equal human rights for Palestinians which are at the root of instability in the Middle East.
Harvard economist Thomas Stauffer noted, the total cost of [the] prolonged conflict in the Middle East at $3 trillion [in 2002 USA dollars and he] lays a good deal of the blame for this at the doorstep of AIPAC.”
Nearly two-trillion American dollars have reaped “special trade advantages, and preferential contracts. U.S. aid to Israel cost some 275,000 American jobs each year…Additional known items include loan guarantees-which the U.S. most probably will be forced to cover-special contracts for Israeli firms, legal and illegal transfers of marketable U.S. military technology, de facto exemption from U.S. trade protection provisions, and discounted sales or free transfers of U.S. military equipment…net purchases by U.S. parties of Israel Bonds, adds at least $40 billion to the total…U.S. jobs and exports have been affected, adding to costs and losses…As U.S. relations with Mid East countries deteriorated, trade was lost. Worsening political relations resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs…thanks to the Israel lobby.”
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1477&Itemid=226
Jim, the most disappointing thing about the lopsided vote on HR 867 is that progressive legislators like Jan Schakowsky did not take the relatively safe route of adopting J Street’s position on Goldstone, neither condemning nor condoning the report but taking its findings seriously and calling for independent investigations by both Hamas and the Israeli government. Our pleas to her office were apparently not enough to persuade her to withhold her “yea”.
After a full day of lobbying last week in Washington in connection with J Street’s national conference, I am sobered by the extent of AIPAC’s reach. J Street’s growing power is hopeful, but we have a long way to go.
Cotton
If one metamorphosed into a fly on the wall and followed Hillary around from Israel to Marrakech to Cairo, all the while listening to the hoodwinking, convoluted, labyrinthine verbiage issuing forth from her two faces, one would conclude that here is one slippery dude-ess. She is about as plain speaking a straight shooter as that drug-dealing pimp that used to hang out at Gertie’s Do-Drop-Inn until being sent to the slammer for pocket picking senior citizens as they left the welfare agency. With Secretaries of State like Schultz, Kissinger, Albright, Rice and now Hillary, the toast of Tel Aviv, one can be forgiven for believing that the days of our beloved Republic are waning fast.
Gene Fitzpatrick
Please make certain your Congress[wo]man knows EXACTLY how you feel about his/her vote:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-hr867/show
I called to ask my congressman’s office if Dennis Moore believed in burning children from the inside out, and the aide sort of snorted and said, “Ma’am” as if that was out of the question, and I said, “Well, that’s what white phosphorus does, and that’s what Israel dropped on the children of Gaza. Dennis voted to suppress the detailed, fair report by Jewish Judge Richard Goldstone.” The aide said he didn’t know anything about that. I said, “You don’t know who Richard Goldstone is?” and he said no. I explained. He said he’d look into it. I said, politely, please do–you’ll be horrified at how Dennis just voted–he’s not representing the United States, but is instead representing Israeli war crimes. The young man promised to look into it. But imagine! The staffer didn’t even know who Richard Goldstone is. Has Dennis Moore even read the report? Heaven help us.
The US has been a rejectionist state in regard to the Palestinians, an endorser of Israel since 1948, with one brief 1956 exception. Israel is the US’s military base (note that US military train in Israel and vice-versa) for the extension of its empire in this oil-soaked region. Israel and the US have tight economic relations in the area of sophisticated security systems, electronics, and weapons. The Palestinians are weak and helpless. Force rules. Thucydides: “The strong do what they can, and the weak do what they must.” Obama has always and will forever be a corporate conservative. He was bankrolled by the banks, the health-insurance oligopoly, and underwritten by AIPAC. I differ with those who believe he is kowtowing to, or intimidated by, Congress. He is simply the latest head of the US empire. And you know, we own the world.
It is sad…no, not sad…deplorable…no, not deplorable…hypocritical. Now, what will the Muslim world think about Obama’s (America’s) “new” effort to include them into a cooperative discussion on the issues of justice, human rights and telling the truth? Or did I misunderstand Obama’s intentions?
The result of our representatives voting on the Goldstone report is a disgrace. I have become very cynical about their capacity to make decisions based on human dignity and compassion, rather than what is good for their own pockets. As an american I am terribly disheartened and embarrassed. How arrogant can we get to treat Justice Goldstone is such an offhanded way. It is simply beyond my understanding.