Hat tip to Anonymous for sending me this link.
"Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell during his tenure as secretary of State, led the charge: “Since the end of the Cold War, Israel has become more of a liability than an asset to the U.S.,” he said to nods of agreement."
A few days ago, I posted an article on J Street to make the point that this organization is anything but pro-Israel-as they call themselves. The George Soros-funded group had its annual conference this past week Tabletmag.com filed the below report.
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/95050/j-street-dispatch-sunday/
Any questions?
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7 comments:
These are nobodies from the fringe that have caught the anti-Israel ear of the top advisor of the anti-Israel President. Like some of our local "leaders" who have such an enlightened view of how the Israeli/Arab conflict should be resolved that they invite a jihad against their brethren.
We all have our bad apples, our oppositional defiant ones who are smarter than anyone in history, but these guys are a disgrace to their heritage.
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/j-street-is-like-the-bizarro-world-of-aipac-1.420968
I have watched maybe 14 talks (I am not talking about the one or two minute videos without an audience) and I agree with a lot what is in this article above.
The people who get the loudest crowd support are the speakers who say the most far left stuff. If J Street wants to gain more support, they will have to try to appeal to more of the center or center left than just the people who attend their conference. The founder and head guy, Jeremy Ben Ami, seems much more to the center than most of the speakers who get the most applause.
I guess it is a case that if you are motivated to attend a conference like this, you have stronger views that come from one side or the other.
J.K.
There was nothing really wrong with Ilyse Hogue's talk.
I saw two talks where Barghouti was on a panel. One of them he threatened that the one state solution is on its way. The other was a panel of three Palestinians where they can share their views. He played the happy uncle type character.
Things got tense in the question and answer part when someone asked him his position on "Right of Return" and he tweaked and tried to turn the question around but the person asking the question kept the pressure on and then he said it had to be admitted and how it was implemented was up to the two parties. I don't have a problem with having a Palestinian panel at the event but how the audience gushed over them was a bit odd.
I didn't like the attitude that its us vs AIPAC that some of the speakers displayed . Ideally, I would like J Street main focus to be advocating a two state solution and AIPAC be the big tent that is a lobby for Israel as a whole. But that didn't come off in many of the talks.
I guess J Street is trying to form a coalition of as many far left and left people as possible to try to gain increase their membership.
I would have liked to seen some of the people they had several in one minute clips that look like they were produced before the conference give talks. The most enthusastic people at the event may have not liked them as much but they would appeal more to the youtube watchers of the event like me.
J.K.
Israel is definitely more of a liability than an asset to the United States.
This leaves several unanswered questions.
Did we first support Israel because is was an asset?
If not, is the more altruistic reason we did support Israel still valid?
Do we, as Kissinger said, have no principles, only interests?
If we have principles, do they provide a basis to support Israel? Does Israel provide a principled basis to give it support?
Was the Irgun leader in the movie "Exodus" correct when he said, there is as much justice on the Arab side as on the Jewish side -- let someone else take the injustice for a change?
Siarlys Jenkins, if the J Street Conference made you start thinking about those types of quesitons and without answers, the conference was a complete and utter failure.
Obama got into some political hot water for his ocmments to Medevev. You should also be asking, why is the US paying money for a missle defense system to protect Europe?
I haven't looked into this much but I would guess a good portion of the funding for these programs ends up being welfare to engineering companies in the US.
J.K.
J.K. Anonymous, you seem to have come down on all sides of every question all at once. I'm not sure Gary could make any better sense of your last comment.
J-Street, and its conference(s) haven't made me think about anything. I've been thinking for years that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a case of two rights make a wrong.
The original UN resolution called for partitioning the former British Mandate of Palestine. Instead, the Jordanian and Egyptian monarchies grabbed most of the land that Israel didn't hang on to.
Israel should long since have made itself the champion of the rights of Palestinian Arabs, against the greedy usurpers who have tried to take and annex their land.
Sorry, I realized my last response didn’t make sense right after I sent it.
“The original UN resolution called for partitioning the former British Mandate of Palestine. Instead, the Jordanian and Egyptian monarchies grabbed most of the land that Israel didn't hang on to. Israel should long since have made itself the champion of the rights of Palestinian Arabs, against the greedy usurpers who have tried to take and annex their land.”
In the 1940s the Jews accepted the partition plan that would have created an Arab state and a Jewish state.
Jordan controlled the West Bank and attacked Israel in 1967 after being told by Israel that it didn't want to get involved with a war with Jordan.
After the 1967 war, the Arabs said no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.
When Israel made a peace deal with Egypt in the 1970s, the Israelis tried to negotiate an agreement with the Palestinians that would have called for an autonomous areas that would have developed into a Palestinian state. The Palestinians weren’t interested in negotiations.
In the 1990s the Israelis worked for a peace agreement culminating in December 2000. The Israelis accepted the Clinton Parameters where 97% of the West Bank, 100% of Gaza and East Jerusalem would have been the Palestinian state and the Palestinian refugees would be compensated and a limited number of Palestinians would be able to live out their remaining years in Israel. Arafat rejected it.
See what Clinton thought of this in his book, “My Life” - someone put the reading on youtube –
http://youtu.be/4UJamyuv_3Y
In 2008, the Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert made a proposal based upon the 1967 lines with some swaps and safe passage from the West Bank to Gaza. Abbas did not refuse it but walked away without an answer.
It hasn’t been lack of effort on the Israelis part to try to get an agreement. Granted, the Israelis are not perfect and have made mistakes along the way. But the Palestinians have had offers and opportunities for the creation of a state. But when it came down to a decision, they have not been able to sign on to an agreement.
If you want to stop funding Israel's defense (they don't get any other aid for a number of years now), I am fine with that because Israel can support itself and people will then no longer be able to complain about US funding of Israel.
The current government in Israel is not one I support and I don't think the current gov't is serious in reaching an agreement with the Palestinians. They have other issues on their minds and the Palestinian conflict is secondary to Iran.
I agree with J Street that the current gov't is moving away from the liberal democratic principals Israel was founded. I can be against the current leadership but still support Israel.
The Palestinians get somewhere around 600 million a year from the US. Do you want to cut that too?
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