The Re-election of Bebe Netanyahu in Israel and Its Grave Implications for the Middle East and Palestinian-Israeli relations

http://www.nytimes.com/…/israel-election-netanyahu-herzog.h…

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Panopticon-Review/342702882479366
 

All,

In an extremely violent, turbulent, and contentious region of the world characterized by and teeming with relentlessly dogmatic and wildly irresponsible political, religious, and ideological demagogues posing as "leaders" and "statesmen"--from Saudi Arabia to Iran, and from Egypt to Iraq, one of the worst and most opportunist in this explosive part of the world is the current prime minister of Israel Bebe Netanyahu who was shamelessly--and tragically-- re-elected to a fourth term yesterday.

A pompous overbearing rightwing hack and loudmouthed hypocritical bully (from the United States!) who thrives on blatant fear mongering within Israel itself and the overt and covert xenophobic use of the open intimidation of the Palestinian people via the cruel and oppressive expansion of Israeli settlements and propping up the apartheid like structural and institutional system "governing" Gaza and the West Bank,  Netanyahu and the Zionist rightwingers of the Likud party that Netanyahu leads are only arrogantly interested--like far too many of their authoritarian Arab counterparts and enemies in the region-- in endlessly pouring gasoline on a massive raging fire in the 'Middle East' that can only end in total mutual destruction for them all.

That no good can or will come of Netanyahu's rhetorical insistence and corresponding vicious threats that only he and his rightwing and neoliberal supporters within Israel and the rest of the world can and will determine the ultimate political, economic, social, and cultural "fate"  of the Palestinians, while they simply remain in cowed abject colonial subjugation to the Israeli righwing rulers with the even more comprehensive and oppressive support of the United States (who we should NEVER FORGET also fully backed the fascist South African regime throughout its entire history of Apartheid) is a huge understatement.

But as we all know from history-- or should know by this very late date-- political demagoguery on this scale-- no matter how it is defended or justified by its users--can only lead to not only the destruction of others but to the destruction of oneself as well. This deadend cul-de-sac is absolutely assured no matter who tries to evade it because no one ultimately escapes History--even or most especially the most powerful...Stay tuned...

Kofi

Netanyahu Soundly Defeats Chief Rival in Israeli Elections
By JODI RUDOREN
MARCH 17, 2015
NEW YORK TIMES

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel celebrated with supporters in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. Credit Amir Cohen/Reuters 
     
TEL AVIV — After a bruising campaign focused on his failings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel won a clear victory in Tuesday’s elections and seemed all but certain to form a new government and serve a fourth term, though he offended many voters and alienated allies in the process.

With 99.5 percent of the ballots counted, the YNet news site reported Wednesday morning that Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party had captured 29 or 30 of the 120 seats in Parliament, sweeping past his chief rival, the center-left Zionist Union alliance, which got 24 seats.

Mr. Netanyahu and his allies had seized on earlier exit polls that showed a slimmer Likud lead to create an aura of inevitability, and celebrated with singing and dancing. While his opponents vowed a fight, Israeli political analysts agreed even before most of the ballots were counted that he had the advantage, with more seats having gone to the right-leaning parties likely to support him.

Related Coverage:
 
Supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election celebrated on Tuesday night as results came in at his campaign headquarters in Tel Aviv.

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MARCH 17, 2015

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Netanyahu Says No to Statehood for Palestinians
MARCH 16, 2015

It was a stunning turnabout from the last pre-election polls published Friday, which showed the Zionist Union, led by Isaac Herzog, with a four- or five-seat lead and building momentum, and the Likud polling close to 20 seats. To bridge the gap, Mr. Netanyahu embarked on a last-minute scorched-earth campaign, promising that no Palestinian state would be established as long as he remained in office and insulting Arab citizens.

Mr. Netanyahu, who served as prime minister for three years in the 1990s and returned to office in 2009, exulted in what he called “a huge victory” and said he had spoken to the heads of all the parties “in the national camp” and urged them to help him form a government “without any further ado.”

“I am proud of the Israeli people that, in the moment of truth, knew how to separate between what’s important or what’s not and to stand up for what’s important,” he told an exuberant crowd early Wednesday morning at Likud’s election party at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds. “For the most important thing for all of us, which is real security, social economy and strong leadership.”

But it remained to be seen how his divisive — some said racist — campaign tactics would affect his ability to govern a fractured Israel.

Mr. Herzog also called the election “an incredible achievement.” He said he had formed a negotiating team and still hoped to lead “a real social government in Israel” that “aspires to peace with our neighbors.”

“The public wants a change,” he said at an election-night party in Tel Aviv, before the Likud’s large margin of victory was revealed by the actual vote count. “We will do everything in our power, given the reality, to reach this. In any case, I can tell you that there will be no decisions tonight.”

Based on the results reported on YNet, Mr. Netanyahu could form a narrow coalition of nationalist and religious parties free of the ideological divisions that stymied his last government. That was what he intended when he called early elections in December. President Reuven Rivlin, who in coming days must charge Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Herzog with trying to forge a coalition based on his poll of party leaders’ preferences , said shortly after the polls closed that he would suggest they join forces instead.

“I am convinced that only a unity government can prevent the rapid disintegration of Israel’s democracy and new elections in the near future,” he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Both camps rejected that option publicly, saying the gaps between their world views were too large. Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Herzog started working the phones immediately after the polls closed, calling party heads to begin the horse-trading and deal-making in hopes of lining up a majority of lawmakers behind them.

The biggest prize may be Moshe Kahlon, a popular former Likud minister who broke away — in part out of frustration with Mr. Netanyahu — to form Kulanu, which focused on pocketbook issues. Mr. Kahlon leans to the right but has issues with the prime minister, and he said Tuesday night that he would not reveal his recommendation until the final results were tallied.

Kulanu — Hebrew for “All of Us” — won 10 seats , according to the tally YNet reported Wednesday based on 99.5 percent of ballots counted. That is enough to put either side’s basic ideological alliance over the magic number of 61 if they also win the backing of two ultra-Orthodox parties that won a total of 14 seats.

“The clearest political outcome is that Kahlon is going to be the kingmaker, and it really depends on how he is going to play his cards,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “It very much depends on Kahlon.”

Silvan Shalom, a Likud minister, told reporters that the prime minister would reach out first to Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party and to Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu, two archconservatives, and “of course Moshe Kahlon,” predicting a coalition “within the next few days” of 63 or 64 seats.

“Israel said today a very clear ‘yes’ to Prime Minister Netanyahu and to the Likud to continue leading the State of Israel,” Mr. Shalom said. “We’ll do it with our allies. We’ll have a strong coalition that is able to deal with all the important issues.”

The Zionist Union said, essentially, not so fast.

Nachman Shai, a senior lawmaker from the Labor Party, which joined with the smaller Hatnua to form the new slate, said Mr. Herzog could still form a coalition, thought he did not specify how, and advised the public to “wait and see.” “They’re trying to cash the check and create a  certain atmosphere of victory," Mr. Shai told reporters. “We’ll do the same.”

The murky exit-poll predictions led to a murky reaction from the White House, where a spokesman said that President Obama remained “committed to working very closely with the winner of the ongoing elections to cement and further deepen the strong relationship between the United States and Israel, and the president is confident that he can do that with whomever the Israeli people choose.”

The Joint List of Arab parties won 13 seats, making it the third-largest parliamentary faction. Its four component parties previously had 11.

The unity seems to have lifted turnout among Arab voters to its highest level since 1969, said the list’s leader, Ayman Odeh. Arab parties have never joined an Israeli coalition, but Mr. Odeh has indicated that he would try to help Mr. Herzog in other ways in hopes of ending Mr. Netanyahu’s tenure.

Yesh Atid, a centrist party that won a surprising 19 seats in the 2013 election, its first, earned 11 this time. The Jewish Home lost votes to Mr. Netanyahu’s swing to the right and ended up with eight, according to YNet, down from its current 12. The ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu had six, and the leftist Meretz four.

A new ultra-Orthodox breakaway faction apparently failed to pass the raised electoral threshold to enter Parliament, which means its votes will be discarded, costing the right-wing bloc.

As the results of Israel’s tight election roll in, Israelis reflect on the issues they hope the next prime minister will make priorities.

Turnout was near 72 percent, four percentage points higher than in 2013, which analysts attributed to the surprisingly close contest between the Likud and Zionist Union.

“For the first time in many years, we see a serious strengthening in the two major parties,” said Yehuda Ben Meir of the Institute for National Security Studies. “Both parties are higher up at the expense of the smaller parties, which is good for stability, and it’s a move to the center. The larger parties are always more to the center than the satellite parties.”

But Mr. Plesner of the Democracy Institute said the results showed the need for electoral reform because Israel’s “system is so fragmented, so unstable, so difficult to govern.”

Tuesday’s balloting came just 26 months after Israel’s last election, but the dynamic was entirely different. In 2013, there was no serious challenge to Mr. Netanyahu. This time, Mr. Herzog teamed up with Tzipi Livni to form the Zionist Union, an effort to reclaim the state’s founding pioneer philosophy from a right-wing that increasingly defines it in opposition to Palestinian national aspirations.

They promised to stop construction in isolated Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, to try to renew negotiations with the Palestinians, and to restore relations Mr. Netanyahu had frayed with the White House. Mostly, though, they — along with Yesh Atid and Kulanu — hammered the prime minister on kitchen-table concerns like the high cost of housing and food.

Mr. Netanyahu talked mainly about the threats of an Iranian nuclear weapon and Islamic terrorism, addressing economics only in the final days. That was also when he made a sharp turn to the right, backing away from his 2009 endorsement of a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict and sounding an alarm Tuesday morning that Arabs were voting “in droves.”

Many voters complained about a bitter campaign of ugly attacks and a lack of inspiring choices.

“I am happy today to be able to vote, but I know I’ll be unhappy with the result, no matter who wins,” said Elad Grafi, 29, who lives in Rehovot, a large city south of Tel Aviv. Sneering at the likelihood of any candidate being able to form a coalition stable enough to last a full term, he added, “Anyway, I’ll see you here again in two years, right?”

In the Jerusalem suburb of Tzur Hadassah, Eli Paniri, 54, a longtime Likud supporter, said he “voted for the only person who should be prime minister: Netanyahu.”

“I am not ashamed of this,” Mr. Paniri said after weeks of Netanyahu-bashing from all sides. “He is a strong man and, most important, he stood up to President Obama.”

Reporting was contributed by Irit Pazner Garshowitz from Tzur Hadassah, Israel, and Tel Aviv; Isabel Kershner, Myra Noveck and Carol Sutherland from Jerusalem; Michael D. Shear from Washington; Diaa Hadid from the West Bank; Rina Castelnuovo from Beit Zayit, Israel; and Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel.

A version of this article appears in print on March 18, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Netanyahu Soundly Defeats Chief Rival.

Robin D. G. Kelley On Gaza, U.S. Foreign Policy, President Obama, and the Historical Necessity of Moral and Political courage

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/29/gaza-what-would-lincoln-do/

All,

This is a great and typically very informative piece by the renowned historian, scholar, teacher, and activist Robin Kelley on the ongoing Gaza crisis and the woefully inadequate response of the Obama administration to the carnage.  Please read it carefully and pass the word.  Thanks...

Kofi


Sasha, Malia: Tell Your Parents About Sara al-Dalou!
Gaza: What Would Lincoln Do?
by ROBIN D. G. KELLEY

Most American media have praised President Obama’s handling of the Gaza crisis. It is certainly a relief that Operation Pillar of Defense produced about one-tenth the casualties of Operation Cast Lead four years earlier, though it is small comfort to the 168 Palestinians and 6 Israelis who died, or the nearly 1,600 injured, or the thousands left homeless. Palestinian civilians, about one-fifth of whom were children, were the war’s main victims. Careful observers know that the Egyptian brokered cease-fire is but a stop-gap measure. If anything, the war heightened insecurity in the region, strengthened Hamas’s legitimacy among Palestinians, and, as Israeli journalist Amira Hass recently put it, cemented Israel’s self-image as the victim.

The conflict did not begin with indiscriminate rocket fire from Hamas militants, or the assassination of Ahmed Jabari, or the IDF killing of 13-year-old Ahmad Abu Daqqa. It dates back to 1967 and the occupation—and even that’s not the whole story. A permanent solution will require nothing short of ending the occupation and securing real Palestinian sovereignty or extending full citizenship rights in a single, democratic state.

President Obama knows this, but his decision to unconditionally support Israel’s latest siege reveals a lack of political will and imagination. “There is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” the President announced during his Asia tour (ignoring U.S. drones strikes on other countries). Even if one believes these principles apply to Gaza, the analogy masks the fact that Gaza is not a sovereign state but under occupation since Israel controls its borders, air space, and sea-lanes—a fact confirmed by our own State Department. He knows that Israel’s blockade of Gaza, the source of the region’s immense poverty, is a clear violation of Articles 33, 55, and 56 of the 4th Geneva Convention prohibiting the collective punishment of civilians and requiring an occupying power to ensure access to food, medical supplies, hospitals and public health facilities.

Although President Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu insist that the bombing of Gaza was merely a necessary security measure, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai was more forthright when he declared that the “goal of [Operation Pillar of Defense] is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages.” Obama also knows that these intermittent wars, not to mention IDF attacks and home demolitions in the West Bank, violate our own Arms Export Control Act, which prohibits the use of U.S. weapons against civilians. And as Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights has argued, civilians in Gaza are denied the fundamental right to flee the conflict and become refugees.  They end up like sitting ducks crowded into one of the most densely populated regions on earth, or as some critics described Gaza, the largest open-air prison in the world.

As the crisis in Gaza unfolded, Abraham Lincoln’s looming presence was unavoidable, especially as Daniel Day-Lewis’s bearded, contemplative profile dominates billboards everywhere, and President Obama continues to fashion himself in the mold of the Great Emancipator—an intelligent and fair-minded executive who believes in the rule of law, willing to reach across the aisle, and committed to a “smart” realpolitik guided by a moral compass.

The point of invoking Lincoln is not to guess what he might do in Obama’s shoes, but to reflect on what he did when forced to balance political calculus, the rule of law, and moral and humanitarian considerations. Lincoln was our first anti-slavery president, but at the onset of the war he thought complete abolition was unimaginable and a multiracial America based on full citizenship rights for all was unthinkable. He first hoped to contain slavery in the South, backed targeted emancipation as a military strategy to win the war, and supported deporting free black people to Africa or South America—a “humane” strategy of ethnic cleansing. Then unexpected things began to happen. The “property” over which Southerners waged war began to flee to Union lines, emancipating themselves, undermining the Confederacy, and forcing the nation—the president included—to reckon with their humanity. The gross stereotypes of black indolence, ignorance, and violence did not disappear, but they were dealt a mighty blow, especially after 186,000 black men joined the Union Army and 40,000 gave their lives for a “new birth of freedom.”

Midway into the war, Lincoln proposed gradual, compensated emancipation (though it was the slaveholders, not the enslaved, who were to be compensated) and continued to support deportation schemes, but black abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass persuaded him that one multiracial democracy is not only possible, but the only viable path forward. By the war’s end (and by the time Spielberg’s hero enters the frame) black struggles for freedom, the exigencies of war, and a burgeoning, militant abolitionist movement had transformed A. Lincoln. Indeed, abolitionism had grown from a radical fringe movement in the 1840s and ‘50s to a legitimate, powerful force during the war.  This gale force gave Lincoln strength to stand up to pro-slavery Democrats, even as he sought compromise and reconciliation.  In his second inaugural, he acknowledged that the men and women once thought of as chattel were on the road to citizenship, and that the men who had taken up arms against the nation were to be welcomed back with dignity and respect.

President Obama has the same capacity for growth as our 16th president, and he has shown some mettle in the past, particularly when pressured by movements. In 2010, he supported easing the blockade following the international condemnation of the IDF’s attack on the Mavi Marmara (part of the Free Gaza flotilla), and his short-lived stand against the expansion of West Bank settlements earned him the ire of Israeli officials—forcing him to retreat. Arguably, the Islamophobic attacks on President Obama accusing him of being a closeted Muslim harboring plans to impose Shari’ah law has compelled him to work harder to demonstrate his support for Israel and fealty to the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Then again, Lincoln had to fend off accusations of “favoring Negro equality” and being part Negro, often arguing—as he had in his famous debates with Stephen Douglass—that blacks were morally and intellectually inferior and ought not be granted social and political equality. I do believe both men were sincere—Obama in his unwavering support for Israel, and Lincoln’s initial belief in black inferiority. However, on the question of slavery, Lincoln revealed a level of consistent moral courage that Obama has not shown in his advocacy of human rights. In those same debates with Stephen Douglass, he declared, “I hate [slavery] because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.” President Obama, on the other hand, has been accused of hypocrisy by speaking out against the Assad regime’s murderous attacks on the Syrian opposition, and acting on behalf of Libyans struggling against Muammar Gadaffi, but doing nothing on behalf of Palestinian human rights.

And yet, I am hopeful that President Obama may have his Lincolnesque moment, when the inexorable force of history will push him beyond political expediency into the realm of moral courage. Only then will he be able to imagine a truly democratic, just solution to the question of Palestine. For Lincoln, that inexorable force was the movement—the abolitionists and their allies demanding freedom, the ex-slaves demanding justice, the changing course of world opinion.  Absent a powerful movement to end the occupation, for broad-based support for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, to counter the media whitewash of Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations, it is unlikely Obama will make that Lincolnesque leap.  Like Lincoln, Obama requires more than political pressure. He needs to come face to face with Palestinian activists, critics, and intellectuals; he needs to visit a West Bank refugee camp or walk the streets of Gaza City and talk to the children. By opening up to other perspectives and discovering what is already happening on the ground, Obama will discover what Lincoln recognized: emancipation had already begun without him, in the development of a rich civil society forged in a bloody war. Palestinians do not need a US- imposed peace process.  What they do need is a US willing to stand up to Israel and enforce international law, defend human rights for all, and recognize that the status quo is unsustainable and the source of violence and instability in the region. And that takes enormous courage.

I wonder if things would be different if Sasha was obsessed with photos of Palestinian children, or if Malia begged her mom and dad to spend the summer working in a refugee camp in the West Bank. But that’s just a Hollywood fantasy.

Robin D. G. Kelley, who teaches at UCLA, is the author of the remarkable biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009) and most recently Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012).

Palestinians Seek United Nations Vote On National Statehood As U.S. Government Tries To Stop Them

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/world/middleeast/04mideast.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

All,

The sheer boneheaded ineptitude, brazen cluelessness, and rank STUPIDITY of the Obama administration's dismal attempts to control, manipulate, and hamper the present struggle for Palestinian self determination and full national sovereignty is only equal to its embarassingly inept and obviously wrongheaded attempts to slavishly cater to the endless bullying demands and apartheid-like actions and policies of the openly reactionary Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. But this is what the White House gets--and deserves!-- for absurdly pretending that they were simultaneously both FOR AND AGAINST BOTH SIDES OF THIS CONFLICT in order to avoid the moral and political responsiblity of defending and protecting the overriding and eminently just demands of the Palestinian people for national independence and a complete end to all remaining forms of colonial and neocolonial oppression and exploitation in the West Bank, Gaza. and Israel itself. These crucial concerns and issues of the Palestinians are now properly being pursued in the United Nations and are NOT under the opportunist control of the U.S. government or subject to the tyranny and cruel capriciousness of the Likkud dominated Israeli government...This is what real Justice and self determination is all about...Let's all fervently hope that Mr. Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian semi-governmental authority and political leadership can withstand the massive political pressures of both the Obama administration and the rightwing forces of the Israeli government, and fight for independent recognition of national statehood in the global context of the UN and not the U.S. State Department...

Kofi


U.S. Appeals to Palestinians to Stall U.N. Vote on Statehood
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and MARK LANDLER
September 3, 2011
New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has initiated a last-ditch diplomatic campaign to avert a confrontation this month over a plan by Palestinians to seek recognition as a state at the United Nations, but it may already be too late, according to senior American officials and foreign diplomats.

The administration has circulated a proposal for renewed peace talks with the Israelis in the hopes of persuading the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to abandon the bid for recognition at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly beginning Sept. 20.

The administration has made it clear to Mr. Abbas that it will veto any request presented to the United Nations Security Council to make a Palestinian state a new member outright.

But the United States does not have enough support to block a vote by the General Assembly to elevate the status of the Palestinians’ nonvoting observer “entity” to that of a nonvoting observer state. The change would pave the way for the Palestinians to join dozens of United Nations bodies and conventions, and it could strengthen their ability to pursue cases against Israel at the International Criminal Court.

Senior officials said the administration wanted to avoid not only a veto but also the more symbolic and potent General Assembly vote that would leave the United States and only a handful of other nations in the opposition. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic maneuverings, said they feared that in either case a wave of anger could sweep the Palestinian territories and the wider Arab world at a time when the region is already in tumult. President Obama would be put in the position of threatening to veto recognition of the aspirations of most Palestinians or risk alienating Israel and its political supporters in the United States.

“If you put the alternative out there, then you’ve suddenly just changed the circumstances and changed the dynamic,” a senior administration official involved in the flurry of diplomacy said Thursday. “And that’s what we’re trying very much to do.”

Efforts to head off the Palestinian diplomatic drive have percolated all summer but have taken on urgency as the vote looms in the coming weeks. “It’s not clear to me how it can be avoided at the moment,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian negotiator who is now executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine in Washington. “An American veto could inflame emotions and bring anti-American sentiment to the forefront across the region.”

While some officials remain optimistic that a compromise can be found, the administration has simultaneously begun planning to limit the fallout of a statehood vote. A primary focus is to ensure the Israelis and Palestinians continue to cooperate on security matters in the West Bank and along Israel’s borders, administration officials said.

“We’re still focused on Plan A,” another senior administration official said, referring to the diplomatic efforts by the administration’s new special envoy, David M. Hale, and the president’s Middle East adviser on the National Security Council, Dennis B. Ross. Mr. Hale replaced the more prominent George J. Mitchell Jr., who resigned in May after two years of frustrated efforts to make progress on a peace deal.

The State Department late last month issued a formal diplomatic message to more than 70 countries urging them to oppose any unilateral moves by the Palestinians at the United Nations. The message, delivered by American ambassadors to their diplomatic counterparts in those countries, argued that a vote would destabilize the region and undermine peace efforts, though those are, at least for now, moribund.

Two administration officials said that the intent of the message was to narrow the majority the Palestinians are expected to have in the General Assembly. They said that and the new peace proposal — to be issued in a statement by the Quartet, the diplomatic group focused on the Middle East comprising the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — could persuade potential supporters to step back from a vote on recognition, and thus force Mr. Abbas to have second thoughts.

“The fact is there are countries who would choose not to do that vote if there was an alternative,” the first senior administration official said.

In essence, the administration is trying to translate the broad principles Mr. Obama outlined in May into a concrete road map for talks that would succeed where past efforts have failed: satisfy Israel, give the Palestinians an alternative to going to the United Nations and win the endorsement of the Europeans.

Diplomats are laboring to formulate language that would bridge stubborn differences over how to treat Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and over Israel’s demand for recognition of its status as a Jewish state. A statement by the Quartet would be more than a symbolic gesture. It would outline a series of meetings and actions to resume talks to create a Palestinian state.

The Quartet’s members are divided over the proposal’s terms and continue to negotiate them among themselves, and with the Palestinians and Israelis.

Among the issues still on the table are how explicitly to account for the growing settlements in the West Bank. The question of Israel’s status is also opposed by Russia and viewed warily by some European countries. The Palestinians have never acceded to a formal recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, in deference at least in part to the Palestinians who live in Israel.

The Quartet’s envoy, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, visited Jerusalem on Tuesday to negotiate the terms of the proposal with the Israelis. He is expected to discuss it with the Palestinians soon.

The Israelis have so far responded positively to the draft, but the Palestinian position remains unclear.

Two administration officials said that Mr. Abbas had recently indicated that he would forgo a United Nations vote in favor of real talks. But a senior Palestinian official, Nabil Shaath, angrily dismissed the American proposal as inadequate and said a vote would go ahead regardless.

“Whoever wrote this thought we are so weak that we cannot even wiggle or that we are stupid,” he said in a telephone interview from Ramallah in the West Bank. He added, “Whatever is to be offered, it is too late.”

Within the administration, there are different views of the situation’s urgency. Some officials believe that the United States can weather a veto diplomatically, as it has before, and politically at home because of the strong support for Israel in Congress. But others view the Palestinian push for recognition as deeply alarming, raising the specter of new instability and violence in the West Bank and Gaza.

“The most powerful argument is that this will provoke a Palestinian awakening, that there will be a new violence and that we’ll be blamed,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel.


Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.

Alice Walker Stands Up In Support of the Palestinian People in the Gaza

Alice Walker

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/28/it_takes_people_on_the_outside

All,

As I've said many times it takes genuine courage, vision, and moral independence to lead and it's inspiring to see the legendary author Alice Walker assert real leadership in this struggle and willingly challenge and go up against both the U.S. and Israeli governments alike in the universal name of Justice and Freedom to openly help and support the oppressed people of the Gaza and affirm and uphold the fundamental human and civil rights of the Palestinian people. It's also equally inspiring and far more than a little ironic that the name of the Gazan aid ship that Alice and her fellow "freedom passengers" are sailing on is called "The Audacity of Hope." Let that be an eternal lesson to and glorious rebuke of the failed foreign policies and cowardly actions of the Obama administration in the ongoing historical struggle of the Palestinians for full sovereignty, self determination, and independence in the Middle East.

Kofi



"I am going to Gaza because my government has failed, it has failed us, it has failed to understand or to care about the Gazan people. But worse than that, our government is ignorant of our own history in the United States. For instance, when black people were enslaved for 300 years, it took a lot of people from outside of our communities to come to help free us. And also, during the period of the civil rights movement, which was 19—in the 1960s, again, it took people from outside of our own communities to come and help us free ourselves. This is a fine tradition of going to people who need us wherever they exist on the planet. This is our responsibility. This is what we are here for as human beings...I also feel that when our government, in the person of our president, can make a speech about this area, and really speak only to the Israelis and not to the Palestinians, this is unacceptable. We cannot accept this. I mean, we look at what has happened to the Palestinian people for all of these decades, and it is insufferable. We will not accept it. We will not. As Americans, with our history of enslavement of people, of segregation, of apartheid, of brutalization, of lynching, we will not accept this. We will not. So, Gazans, and especially the children, we are on our way. We are coming. We hear you. We are coming."

--Alice Walker, June 27, 2011

It Takes People on the Outside: Prestigious Author Alice Walker to Confront Israeli Naval Blockade of Gaza on U.S. Aid Ship
June 28, 2011
Democracy Now!

Israel continues to threaten a group of international activists planning to sail to Gaza this week with humanitarian aid. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said participants in the 10-boat flotilla are seeking "confrontation and blood." Last year, Israeli forces killed nine people aboard the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara. Meanwhile, activists say one of the 10 boats scheduled to sail to Gaza has been sabotaged in a Greek port. Saboteurs reportedly cut off the propeller shaft of a ship shared by Swedish, Norwegian and Greek activists. Organizers say the boat will be repaired in time to sail to Gaza. One of the other ships that will try to reach Gaza from Greece is the "Audacity of Hope." It’s set to carry up to 50 U.S. citizens carrying letters to Gaza residents. One of the ship’s passengers is the acclaimed author, poet and activist Alice Walker. She has written many books, including “The Color Purple,” for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. On Monday, Alice Walker spoke at a Freedom Flotilla news conference in the Greek capital of Athens. “I am going to Gaza because my government has failed, it has failed us, it has failed to understand or to care about the Gazan people. But worse than that, our government is ignorant of our own history in the United States,” Walker said. “For instance, when black people were enslaved for 300 years, it took a lot of people in the outside of our communities to help free us.”

Filed under Gaza Flotilla, Gaza, Israel & Palestine

Alice Walker, acclaimed author, poet and activist. She has written many books, including The Color Purple, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She plans to join the U.S.-flagged ship Audacity of Hope in the humanitarian aid flotilla that aims to sail to Gaza this week, despite the Israeli naval blockade.

AMY GOODMAN: Israel continues to threaten a group of international activists planning to sail to Gaza this week with humanitarian aid. The Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said participants in the 10-boat flotilla are seeking, quote, "confrontation and blood." Last year Israeli forces killed nine people aboard the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara. One of them was a U.S. citizen.

Meanwhile, activists say one of the 10 boats scheduled to set sail to Gaza has been sabotaged in a Greek port. Saboteurs reportedly cut off the propeller shaft of a ship shared by Swedish, Norwegian and Greek activists. Organizers say the boat will be repaired in time to sail to Gaza.

One of the other ships that will try to reach Gaza from Greece is The Audacity of Hope. It’s set to carry up to 50 U.S. citizens carrying letters to Gaza residents. One of the ship’s passengers is the acclaimed author, the poet, the activist, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker. She’s written many books, among them, The Color Purple. On Monday, Alice Walker spoke at a Freedom Flotilla news conference in the Greek capital of Athens.

ALICE WALKER: My name is Alice Walker, and I am with the U.S. boat to Gaza and very happy to be a part of our delegation, which is very soulful and making wonderful sounds. And thank you very much. I am going to Gaza because my government has failed, it has failed us, it has failed to understand or to care about the Gazan people. But worse than that, our government is ignorant of our own history in the United States. For instance, when black people were enslaved for 300 years, it took a lot of people from outside of our communities to come to help free us. And also, during the period of the civil rights movement, which was 19—in the 1960s, again, it took people from outside of our own communities to come and help us free ourselves. This is a fine tradition of going to people who need us wherever they exist on the planet. This is our responsibility. This is what we are here for as human beings.

And so, I just would like to say that we are on our way, that Hillary Clinton may put up all of the protests that she likes, and she may say that we should not travel, that it is dangerous. We know it is dangerous. We know, for instance, that climate change is probably just as dangerous as getting on a boat to Gaza and that people should be paying attention to that, too.

I also feel that when our government, in the person of our president, can make a speech about this area, and really speak only to the Israelis and not to the Palestinians, this is unacceptable. We cannot accept this. I mean, we look at what has happened to the Palestinian people for all of these decades, and it is insufferable. We will not accept it. We will not. As Americans, with our history of enslavement of people, of segregation, of apartheid, of brutalization, of lynching, we will not accept this. We will not.

So, Gazans, and especially the children, we are on our way. We are coming. We hear you. We are coming.

And I look at you in this room, and I realize that this is what—you know, if we have a salvation as human kind, it is in this room. It is the people who have gathered here for what is one of the hardest tasks for us. This situation is one of the hardest on the planet, and it is up to us to try to solve it, to bring some comfort, to bring some light, because, otherwise, what chance do we have with all the other problems? I mean, we now have tornadoes that are a mile wide. There has to be somebody to help take care of things like Gaza, so that we will be strong enough to deal with tornadoes, earthquakes, floods. You know, this is our future. This is our present. This is our future. So, in a sense, if we work on these issues, you know, that we are beginning to see, I mean, we are freeing ourselves of the myths that have crippled us, but we’re beginning to see what is the truth. And if we can see what is the truth about this situation, we will free ourselves to work on the real issue for humanity, which is protecting earth. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, speaking Monday in Athens, Greece, at a Freedom Flotilla news conference. She is part of the delegation, the group of up to 50 passengers who hope to board the ship they have called The Audacity of Hope, named after President Obama’s famous book, the ship that they hope to sail to challenge the Israeli embargo of Gaza.

The Current National Crisis and the Ongoing Failure of the Democratic Party

http://www.solidarity-us.org/yearofobama

All,

The following article was written exactly 6 months ago by David Finkel who is a prominent Detroit-based community organizer, writer, and editor of the socialist political magazine Solidarity. David's prescient analysis is right on target and of course the general political and economic situation in this country as well as the overall response of Obama's seriously misguided and inept administration has only gotten worse since these remarks were made in February. Check it out...

Kofi


One Year of Obama and the Democrats’ Debacle

by David Finkel


Delivered to the Solidarity National Committee in February 2010

WHEN BARACK OBAMA was elected in November 2008, we understood that he was propelled both from below, by mass revulsion against the disasters of the Bush regime, and from above, by the corporate elites’ fears that a continuation of Bush-Cheney policies under McCain and Palin would produce a global financial meltdown and a collapse of U.S. prestige and power.

Last fall, in the NC discussion that produced our analysis of “Obama After 200 Days,” we said it would be premature to speak of a “crisis” for the administration. A year after the euphoric 2009 inauguration, it no longer looks premature. People who looked to Obama and the Democrats for leadership are bitterly disappointed, and a very peculiar brand of rightwing politics has seized the initiative. It doesn’t have an enormous mass base – a turnout of 500 people to the Tea Party Convention, with all the funding and advance publicity it received, is not overwhelming – but it has the power to set much of the agenda. It has particularly succeeded in branding Barack Obama and his policies as radical leftist – while the real Obama, as we know, is far from the “left wing” of the Democratic Party let alone the socialist left.

The Massachusetts voters weren’t necessarily thinking Scripturally on January 19, but they certainly acted out the meaning of that Biblical verse: “Because you are lukewarm I will vomit you from my mouth.” (Thanks to Dianne for reminding me.) We’ve all seen the various polls and analyses: The Democrats lost their safest Senate seat because the Democratic campaign was complacent and arrogant, and more broadly because people are demoralized and sickened by the vacuum of the “change” they voted for, by the bank and Wall Street bailouts while unemployment grows, and by their general sense that their own lives as well as the country are stuck in the mud, from the economy to health care to Afghanistan.

The electorate hasn’t turned dramatically right, hence a resurgence of the Republicans doesn’t imply a huge wave of social reaction. But it’s a serious mistake to understate the significance of this event and other recent developments. There is a new political situation, and it’s not a favorable one. We don’t want to project a sense of unrelieved pessimism, obviously – the eruption of activism around the California education crisis, for example, is hugely significant. There’s also, if less visible, reform and rank and file labor activism we need to closely follow. The focus here, however, will be how and why the administration and Congressional Democrats fumbled so badly.

What follows is a preliminary view of the elements of the new political situation, in which I’ll try to address the Democrats’ failures, the monstrous growth of corporate power, and the politics of fear. There’s another issue I want to raise, which I certainly don’t want to over-theorize but I think we should think about, having to do with the nature of “capitalist discipline” over politics.

How Democrats’ Agenda Failed

To start with what’s most visible, the Democrats as presently constituted have proven to be the most bumbling and incompetent governing party in the recent history of any major bourgeois democracy. It’s not that the Democratic Congress and Obama administration failed to implement a genuinely progressive social agenda – to end the current imperialist wars, fight for single-payer national health insurance, implement the Employee Free Choice Act, etc. The Democrats never had such an agenda, of course, and the notion that they had any serious elements of one is part of the left’s self-delusion.

The point, rather, is that the Democrats’ own centrist corporate agenda has blown up in their face: They succeeded in the bailouts and subsidies to corporate America and the financial sector – the ruling class’s option for stopping a complete economic meltdown – but failed to deliver changes that would give people hope for improvements in their own lives, especially jobs. (When president Obama came out with his too-late quasi-populist rhetoric demanding major banking reform – which from the beginning obviously should have been tied to the emergency bailouts – the stock market responded with a 500-point decline, which probably dooms that effort.)

The Democrats deserve all the contempt and ridicule they get, but we should try to go a little deeper. Part of their crisis, I think, relates to a peculiar and ironic weakening of the “capitalist discipline” I just mentioned, the discipline that safeguards the interests of capital – at least, U.S. capital – as a whole. As examples of this discipline, recall the North American Free Trade debate of 1993. NAFTA was very unpopular with the voting base of Republicans and Democrats, and disliked by most of the Congressional politicians, but it was pushed through by overwhelming ruling class pressure. More recently of course there was the Wall Street and banking bailout – “we all hated it but we voted for it,” as the president reminded Congress in the recent State of the Union speech.

A really good example is Bernanke’s reappointment as Federal Reserve chair. There were rumblings against him from both right and left, but when the possibility arose that he might be defeated led to severe tremors in the European banks and in the markets, the opposition to Bernanke quickly receded. In the end 30 Senators could vote against him, perfectly confident that the confirmation was safe.

Despite these examples, however, it strikes me that the spectacular power of corporate money in politics – now ratified and accelerated by the Supreme Court – may actually be weakening the systemic “capitalist discipline.” The Democrats’ success as a governing party depends on channeling the aspirations of their voting base, especially of course labor, into policies that protect the system as a whole. The Democrats are trying to act out that script (that’s the appeal for “bipartisanship”) but the Republicans currently are not.

I don’t want to overstate the case. There is bipartisanship on some issues, such as the drive to charterize public education and cripple teacher unionism. On Iraq, Afghanistan and the Iranian nuclear issue, Obama is pursuing the same goals as Bush with less foolish reliance on overwhelming U.S. firepower alone. (A few remarks on Palestine will be offered in conclusion below.) We will see “consensus” manufactured in the next few years on cuts in social security and other social programs.

But the current crisis of the U.S. political system is not just normal “partisanship.”

The gridlock of the health care bill illustrates both the Democrats’ disaster and the growing dysfunction of the political system.The congressional Democrats as well as president Obama obviously have a huge crisis on the health care bill, largely of their own making – and neither the House or Senate bills are remotely supportable from the standpoint of what people really need. The insurance industry, knowing after all how “insurance” works, simultaneously financed the Tea Party town hall mobs and wrote the “reform” bills in the Congress. Call this an “inside-outside” strategy that works.

But U.S. capitalism needs reform of some sort, to prevent health care costs from virtually eating up the economy all by themselves. There’s been an absence of “discipline” to put the needs of the system ahead of the sectoral greed of the insurance industry. It’s true that there is an alternative for capitalism, as some comrades have pointed out here – to let employer-covered health care erode so that people are pretty much on their own and those without money simply go uncovered – but the potential public health implications are fairly catastrophic. The combination of the Republican filibuster and the power of the insurance lobby over both parties (and the “independent” Senator Joseph Lieberman) has created a total blockage.

Because of the enormous stakes that the administration and the Congressional Democrats put on the health care effort, and because of what it portends for any other initiatives, this has become a monumental debacle for the Democrats and Obama. It has helped trigger a rush for the exits by some cowardly Democratic politicians who see a possible midterm election bloodbath. The possible maneuvers that were floated to bypass the Republican Senate filibuster – trying to get the House to pass the Senate bill, or using the “budget reconciliation” ploy to force a vote on whatever emerges from the House-Senate conference – are in the former case politically very risky, and in the latter of dubious legality, and anyway seem to be off the table.

(Speaking of legality, I suspect that the Senate bill’s “individual mandate” requiring people to purchase private insurance may be subject to Constitutional challenges from both the right and left, but leave that aside here.)

The Pelosi-Reid leadership has been strong and resolute only when it comes to suppressing their left wing, such as it is. Advocates of single-payer national health insurance were pretty much blocked from even presenting their case. Rather than waging and losing an honorable fight for real health reform, thus possibly leaving some mark on the legislative end product and certainly building potential for future struggle, they were mostly forced to shut up in the name of “political realism” (with some honorable but maverick exceptions like Dennis Kucinich). The result of all this is only to empower the mangy “Blue Dog” rightwing Democrats who oppose everything from the public option to women’s right to abortion -- many of whom were recruited to run by the miserable party chairman Howard Dean in what was thought to be a clever political move at the time.

Problematic Implications

However, this gridlock is not only a Democratic disaster. A severely weakened presidency, just one year in, cannot be a good thing for U.S. capitalism as a whole, at a time when the economic recovery and the global financial system are still extremely fragile, when the budget deficits of the next two decades look terrifying, when the country’s physical infrastructure is severely deteriorated and when there are major international challenges -- relations with China and Russia, multiple ongoing wars, the scale of the environmental crisis which is recognized almost everywhere except in the USA -- that threaten U.S. supremacy and “leadership.” (Various political commentators – Paul Krugman on economic policy, Bob Herbert on the social catastrophe, Thomas Friedman in his own dishonest and sleazy fashion – are pointing to the crisis caused by the political system being overwhelmed by short-term narrow interests. The rightwing pundits like to spin vapid theories that it’s some kind of cultural problem, generally tracing back to the fact that WASP males aren’t in charge anymore. That’s for another discussion.)

There are serious international implications if the weakening of Obama develops into a full-fledged crisis of his presidency. Before turning to those, it’s important even though obvious that the shattered state of organized labor is a big factor in politics. Juxtaposed with of overwhelming corporate influence, the Bureau of Labor Statistics just reported that for the first time, a majority of unionized workers are in the public sector – so great is the decline in manufacturing and other private-sector unionism. And as one comrade has put it in this discussion – contrary to our previous assumptions – “facing the choice between struggle and going out of existence, much of the top labor leadership will choose nonexistence, at least if their own retirement is preserved.”

A positive though limited sign of hope is that the Congressional Black Caucus is finally showing some serious anger over how little has trickled down for African Americans from the Obama presidency – not because they expected the president to be a crusader for Black Power or anything of the sort, but simply because the African American economic and social emergency is so terrifying. The reality of “race matters” is as powerful as ever in American politics today. While the official ideology of white supremacy is gone, and African Americans have obviously made huge advances in various professions, the bedrock of Black economic progress has always been in two key areas: manufacturing and public employment. Those are the sectors hit most severely by the Great Recession and the fiscal crisis of the state. (The Post Office wasn’t getting downsized when it employed almost all white people.) And at the same time, substantial layers of white people hit by the crisis, the failure of reform and the nearly-jobless “recovery” are turning toward the kind of lunatic rightwing answers that they rejected in the 2008 election – not all white people, obviously, but enough to change the political momentum.

At the January 23 national autoworker gathering in Detroit, John Conyers requested to speak and told the meeting that he would continue the single-payer struggle, even though president Obama had personally lobbied him to get on board with the administration’s program. All this categorically does not mean that the Caucus or the African American community will “break with Obama.” They will remain fiercely loyal, but will no longer remain silent and subordinate.

Politics of Fear

Another major factor in the political climate is a kind of generalized insecurity that amalgamates the fear of joblessness, decay, decline – and yes, the fear of a Black president whose father was (nominally) Muslim – that contributes to what is mainly a white flight to irrational reactionary politics.

Suppose we pose the following question. There are now 45-50 million people in the United States who lack health insurance. Millions more will lose their insurance through job loss. What is the greater threat to them: a medical crisis that financially wipes out them and their families – or being hit by a terrorist attack?

Both threats exist, including the “terrorist” one so long as it is kept in proper perspective. But no rational person will seriously think that terrorism is the greater threat to people who don’t have or may lose health insurance. For that matter, no informed person will rationally calculate that terrorism is a greater danger to her/himself than driving over thousands of bridges in this country that are in urgent or critical need of repair. (And the incidence of “international terrorism” on U.S. soil is considerably lower than that of violent assaults on abortion clinics and providers, hate crimes against gay and transgendered people, and racially motivated murders.)

But such questions are hardly ever posed in rational real-life terms. Quite the contrary, the “threat of extremist attacks on America” is the Obama team’s pretext for escalating the war in Afghanistan, which no serious person – military or civilian, whether left, right or center – thinks can be “won;” for launching a new military intervention in the three-way civil war in Yemen; for declaring permanent detention without trial of 47 prisoners at the Guantanamo prison that the new president had boldly promised would be closed by now, not to mention others held beyond the reach of law at Bagram and other semi-secret facilities; and for continuing the cynical and criminal siege of Gaza and the brutalities of the Israeli occupation.

Close to 90 Yemeni prisoners, already checked and cleared for release from Guantanamo, have had their release suspended because of the alleged that some “might return to the battlefield.” So much for “restoring human rights and the rule of law.” All these policies simply embolden the militarist right wing, while demoralizing the Democrats’ popular base and especially Obama’s army of young supporters in particular, and generally weaken the administration both morally and politically.

As suggested above, a weakened or crippled Obama presidency has global implications that feed back into the U.S. political system as well. From the outset, much of the elite support for Obama came because the Bush gang had been so completely discredited in the world. Obama came in with such enormous international authority and credibility that he received the Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing at all.

Obama’s weakened position at home certainly affects the chances of strongarming allies into extending their commitments in Afghanistan. It affects the complex problems of relations with China, where U.S. imperialism simultaneously needs to enlist Chinese assistance in dealing with Iran, pressure the Chinese to revalue their currency, but also resist domestic U.S. pressure for protectionist measures that would have disastrous consequences. Obama’s standing also affects U.S. dealings with Russia and Iran. The U.S. ruling class cannot afford a crippled presidency, but at the same time it will withdraw its support if his position seems to be unsalvageable.

Implications for 2010

Leaving aside unpredictable events such as a major terrorist attack, a Middle East or India-Pakistan war, a sudden massive economic shock, etc. – any of which are possible but not calculable in advance – we can broadly guess where the political situation will lead The Democrats’ hopes for the midterm election depend first and foremost on the economic recovery, but the change in political momentum makes it very difficult to enact the second stimulus that’s needed to avert the double-dip-recession danger and particularly to prop up public employment by helping stabilize many states’ budget crises.

Obama’s initial response to the Massachusetts defeat was to “promise to fight” for this, that and the other (health care, banking reform, etc.) This has come across as stilted and forced, but the president can probably improve his rhetorical delivery. What he can’t improve are the prospects for political success: The threat of a market meltdown or bankers’ strike in response to reform legislation is terrifying to the Democrats. The bankers could have been forced to accept reform and re-regulation when they were on government life support, but that opportunity was essentially lost.

Obama’s other response has been a “bipartisan commission” (seeing how well that approach has worked already) to tackle the budget deficit. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong priority: This process is likely to reopen corporate America’s dream of killing social security by privatizing much of it and leaving behind a weak means-tested public system that can then be destroyed. This can only be done through “bipartisanship,” as any political party killing social security on its own would be finished. In any case, the real budget crisis cannot be seriously addressed without restoring a progressive tax system and slashing military spending – neither of which are remotely contemplated.

It’s also difficult to see how meaningful climate change or “green jobs” stimulus legislation can be advanced now – not because the Democrats don’t have a big majority, but because they are afraid to use it (not to mention how many of them depend on the existing petro-industrial complex). This, however, is not only a domestic issue but also has global political implications, to say nothing of the threat to the survival of human civilization. President Obama’s international standing depends on the perception that he can meet the commitments (weak as they are) that he made at Copenhagen. Failure to do so will damage the administration’s global credibility -- which is, at the same time, a big part of his political value to domestic elites.

The Republican party at this point is not exactly “fit to rule” for the ruling class – but it doesn’t yet need to be. A tea-party takeover with unpredictable policies isn’t the kind of political dispensation that’s useful at a time of continuing deep uncertainty in the global financial system. But if the irrationalist-populist fuel at the base can be contained with a leadership that’s ultimately “responsible” to the economic powers that really run the world, the Republicans might be rehabilitated as a party of savage budget-cutting sooner than we had anticipated.

The Democrats’ legislative emphasis is likely to be on a second jobs-and-stimulus bill – inadequate, but a political necessity – and salvaging some kind of stripped-down health insurance reform. There is no reason to expect the Republicans to suddenly become all reasonable, compromising and bipartisan now (except when the ruling class speaks really loudly, as on the Bernanke renomination). If the Democrats are not prepared to wage real political war against the Senate filibuster, they will suffer one blockage after another – with devastating consequences for them in November, and just possibly, a real backlash among African Americans who see the white Democratic leadership feeding Obama to the Blue Dogs and the wolves.

Socialists of course already knew that real answers will not come from the morass of the two capitalist parties. Our challenge is to help the movements at large face that reality and its implications.

I wanted to say a few concluding words on Palestine, because it’s an issue that matters intensely to us. It’s clear that the fate of Palestine matters very little to the ruling class except as it may relate to incorporating Arab regimes into the anti-Iran coalition. We can see here an example of true bipartisanship at its most destructive – on condemning the Goldstone Report, on the starvation of Gaza and authorizing the Egyptian regime’s blockage of the Gaza Freedom March.

Whether the Obama administration’s early, feeble attempts to stop Israeli settlement construction and demolition of Palestinian homes were intended seriously is not clear, but it no longer matters – it is now too weakened at home to exert real pressure on Israel even if it wanted to. The policy on Palestine now is simply the Iron Fist, made worse by the cynical cover of meaningless rhetoric about “renewing the peace process.” Nothing of substance will change until Israel’s status as an imperial asset is degraded by international isolation. This is why the BDS (“boycott/divestment/sanctions”) campaign in all its diversity, internationally and here, is now so important as a focus for Palestine solidarity activism.