- On the 4th of June in 2009, President Barack Hussein Obama stood strong before the world in the Levant and declared “Israel must live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society…we should choose the right path, not just the easy path… we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples…”
Today he is a humiliated, downtrodden, whipped slave of the Congress and its Overseer, Bibi Netanyahu, who wheels Resolution 1734 above his head like Overseer Covey held aloft his hickory slat as he drove it into Douglass’ head. Covey’s greatest asset was his ability to deceive, to creep up on his slaves stealthily, and lash his savage wrath on the shackled slaves. Yet he was but a lackey to the plantation owners that used his services to force recalcitrant slaves into submission, a paid torturer of men. Thus do our Congressmen, the likes of Howard Berman from California, cater to their owners that stuff their political coffers to ensure return on their investments. Berman, after all, is a Zionist first and a Democratic Representative second; his words, his proud patriotic protestation of his loyalty to Bibi’s regime and its supporters that drafted the resolution, AIPAC. What a difference a year makes!
Resolution 1734 demonstrates conclusively who governs U.S. policy regarding the Middle East, and it’s not the President, nor is it the U.S. Congress; it’s AIPAC, the foreign lobby of Israel that wrote the resolution and its stooge, Howard Berman, the professed Zionist working on behalf of Israel that engineered it to a unanimous vote. That resolution dictates how the President must act relative to any action taken by the nations of the United Nations as they may seek acceptance of a Palestinian State. Israel in fact, with 1734 in place and forced into practice, dictates how all nations can or cannot act concerning acceptance of a new state by controlling the U.S Congress. Consider this response to a recent interview with Ambassador Yoram Ettinger of Israel:
So you think it comes down to Congress offsetting pressure from the Obama administration?
“Well, it comes down to Israel approaching Congress and leveraging its support because certainly we cannot count on the current White House. This is a White House that, from the beginning, has sent messages that it doesn't want to confront the bad guys; they want to engage bad guys. They don't want to follow unilateral action; they want to follow multilateral action. This administration views the UN as the quarterback of international relations, wants to be more European, succumbs to the whims of the State Department, and claims Islam has always been a part of the American story. All of this is not good for U.S.-Israel relations or for American interests. (Israel needs to free itself from the Oslo state of mind,” 12-19-2010)
Notice that nothing supersedes Israel’s needs: not U.S. policies that engage other nations, not deliberations beyond Israel and the U.S, not the concerns of the Palestinian people or the desires of the nations of the world to further the potential for peace in the mid-east by resolving the crisis that exists between Israel and Palestine. Multilateral talks are denigrated, recognition of the U.N. as a beneficial world body capable of decisive action is ridiculed, and the Europeans and the State department cast aside as proffering whimsical nonsense. All of this touted as “not good for American interests.”
What are America’s interests according to the good Ambassador?
“A Palestinian state would doom the existence of the pro-American Hashemite regime in Jordan (translated, the American paid for non-democratic pro-Israel regime), constitute a tailwind to the pro-Saddam elements in Iraq (elements that are no longer in power since our preemptive invasion resulted in a Shiite government supported by Iran and decidedly anti-Zionist), provide a foothold for the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans and Iranians (all competitors to Israeli policy against Palestinians and Arabs generally), and add another anti-American vote at the UN (but not anti-American if America were to abstain at the UNSC and let that body determine the acceptance of a Palestinian state).”
Clearly, what the Ambassador wants and what Berman wants are the same: Israeli policy will dominate regardless of the desires of the nations that constitute the United Nations. But what Israel wants does not include peace with Palestine, indeed it does not even include a viable land mass for a Palestinian state; it does provide walled off compounds where the Palestinians can live under the thumb and the boots of Israeli power. Yet what Israel wants is and has been destructive to America’s interests. Our “unconditional support” of Israel puts our military at risk since the preemptive strike Ettinger calls for by America against Iran would result in America’s troops being engaged, not Israel’s. “The entire Israeli effort has to be focused only on one option - and that is preemption, assuming America will not preempt. The Obama worldview does not lend itself to preemption.” Hence the need to control the Congress.
What can Obama do? It appears to me that he is in the death grip of AIPAC and its U.S. Knesset in much the same way that Douglass was grabbed by Covey and sent sprawling on the stable floor. Douglass had had enough; “I resolved to fight…I seized Covey hard by the throat; and, as I did so, I rose…He trembled like a leaf…He only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before…my long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place…the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.”
Perhaps Obama has no other choice. Perhaps a brilliant one term is enough if it results in this one defiant act, to let the world communities address what America has been unable to address since 1948, the establishment and recognition of the Palestinian people by a world frustrated by decades of inaction. Perhaps it’s time for America to get out from under the heal of a foreign nation that will go to any length to drain America of its wealth while it luxuriates in prosperity. Perhaps it’s time for Israel to put aside the sword and turn its attention to plowshares that it might live in peace and justice with its neighbors rather than dominate them with the military might they’ve acquired from their American hosts. Perhaps the biblical injunction is worth noting once again: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.”
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In addition to his polemics, he writes plays (The Unreasoning Mask, co-authored with his wife, D’Arcy, and The Agony of Colin Powell), satires (see “Advancing the Civilized State: Inch by Bloody Inch” in The Rape), and poetry (Psalms for the 21st Century). His most recent fictional work creates a morality tale based upon real life figures that haunt our lives, The Chronicles of Nefaria He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com.
The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction is a collection of voices from around the world that establishes in both theoretical and graphic terms the slow, methodical genocide taking place in Palestine beginning in the 1940s, as revealed in the Introduction. From Dr. Francis A. Boyle’s detailed legal case against the state of Israel, to Uri Avnery’s “Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing,” to Richard Falk’s “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” to Ilan Pappe’s “Genocide in Gaza,” these voices decry in startling, vivid, and forceful language the calculated atrocities taking place, the inhumane conditions inflicted on the people, and the silence that exists despite the crimes, nothing short of state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians.
Uprooted Palestinian
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