Goodbye to Peace

Obama Speaks at the UN

by Alan Hart / September 24th, 2010

On marks out of ten for his speech to the UN on the subject of ending the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, I’d give President Obama minus five.

Earlier this month (on 4 September) I wrote a piece with the headline “Obama has signalled his coming complete surrender to Zionism and its lobby”. That surrender, it seems to me, is now effectively a fait accompli.

“After 60 years in the community of nations, Israel’s existence must not be a subject for debate,” Obama proclaimed. “It should be clear to all that efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of the United States.”

Leaving aside the matter of whether Zionism’s monster child is legitimate or not (I say it’s not), only a complete idiot would deny that Israel exists. The question is – WHICH Israel must not have its existence debated? Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war or the greater Israel of today? That’s not a question Obama is prepared to ask let alone answer.

In my view the most appropriate response to Obama from the Arab and wider Muslim would be something this: All American presidents who refuse to demand (with the promise of sanctions if necessary) that Israel end its occupation of all Arab land grabbed in 1967 will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of all Arabs and other Muslims everywhere.

We now know what Obama himself expects of those Arabs who “count themselves as friends of the Palestinians”. They “must seize the opportunity for a peace agreement that will lead to a Palestinian state.” They can do that, Obama added, “by supporting the Palestinian Authority financially and politically and by coming to terms with Israel’s existence.”

Again the question — the existence of WHICH Israel must the Arabs come to terms with? To Obama I say, “Mr. President, until you are prepared to answer this question, you will have no credibility whatsoever in the Arab and wider Muslim world, at least far as ‘the street’ (the masses) is concerned.”

Obama’s notion that there is an opportunity for a peace agreement to be seized can only be the product of desperate and deluded wishful thinking on his part unless he believes that he can bribe and bully the discredited Palestinian Authority into accepting crumbs from Zionism’s table. It’s not totally impossible that he might be able to do so, but that would only provoke a Palestinian civil war. Could that be what Zionism really wants, in order to have a pretext for completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine?

Perhaps most depressing of all was Obama’s statement about the need for an independent Palestinian state. It is required, he said, to provide Israel with “true security”. No mention of it being needed to go some way to righting the terrible wrong done to the Palestinians in Zionism’s name.

Yes, President Obama did call on Israel to continue its moratorium on new settlement activity. The question is — What is he going to do when, in a few days or three months from now, Israel defies him?

We know the answer. Nothing.

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and globally as a researcher, author, and a correspondent for ITN and the BBC. Read other articles by Alan, or visit Alan's website.

This article was posted on Friday, September 24th, 2010 at 7:00am and is filed under Israel, The Lobby, United Nations.

3 comments on this article so far ...

Comments RSS feed

  1. wjmartin said on September 24th, 2010 at 9:41am #

    As I see it the question of ‘which Israel’ is to be left to negotiations, that is, the borders of Israel. that is Obama’s view. There is a core Israel independent of borders just as there is a core US imndependent of whether Hawaii or Alaska or Pueto Ricois included.

    Obama has caved in to Netanyahu’s argument that the occupied territories are ‘disputed territory’ subject to negotiations, as if a man can steal someone’s wallet and then assert that it is disputed property to be settled by discussion.The provisions of UN Res 242, the basic of the Camp David Accords of 1978, and of the American position up until George W Bush haave been thrown in the garbage.

    Obama said that Israel is” the homeland of the Jewish people”. He is either lying or ignorant.
    wjm

  2. Ismail Zayid said on September 24th, 2010 at 11:55am #

    I think Alan Hart is over generous by giving Obama minus 5, on his UN speech! In that speech, Obama was merely reproducing Netanyahu’s views, as directed.
    The question of which Israel are the Palestinians required to recognise remains a mystery. At the inception of the state of Israel, on May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion, its first prime minister, refused to define its borders. By the end of 1948, Israel had conquered 78% of the land of historic Palestine, well beyond the over geneous, and unjustified, 56% of Palestine, that the UNGA resolution #181, of Nov. 29, 1947, apporioned for the Jews, who constituted 31% of the population and owned 5.6% of the land.

    The expansionist Zionist designs were expressed clearly by Ben Gurion who, not content with 78% of Palestine, stated in 1954, in dis diaries: ” The status quo will not do. We have created a dynamic state bent on expansion.” Accordingly, the expansion was continued in 1967, by going beyond Palestine and extending into Syria and beyond, and it is not over yet. It is worth remembring that the World Zionist Congress submitted, at Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, its plan for a Jewish state in the Middle East, the map of which included the entire area of Palestine, the Golan Heights, South Lebanon to the Litani River and parts of Transjordan to the railway line. Thus, the expansionist programme is not yet fully secured.
    It should be remebered that Israel is the only state in the world that remains without defined borders.

    As to the legitimacy of the state of Israel, it should be remembered that Israel was admitted to the UN, on the basis of UNGA Resolution, #273, of May 11, 1949, which made its admission conditional on its implimentation of UNGA Resolution, #181 [the Partition resolution] and UNGA resolution #194, of Dec. 11, 1948 [ stipulating the Right of Return for the Palestinian refugees.] Israel continues to defy both of these resolutions. Thus it can be reasonably argued that Israel’s UN membership lacks legitimacy.

  3. teafoe2 said on September 24th, 2010 at 12:37pm #

    what a bore, all the Liberal-speak. Obomber “signaling his intention to surrender” to the Izzy lobby. What nonsense.
    Obama surrendered to the Zionist Power Apparatus long long ago, or he’d never have been elected to the Senate.