reprinted from The Arab American News, March 21, 2009 Dearborn, Michigan:http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=OtherOpinions&article=2049President Obama has ridden in on the winds of change, promising diplomacy rather than belligerence as U.S. foreign policy; but he has yet to speak clearly against the policy of underdevelopment and "removal" Israel deploys against Palestinians living under occupation.Unfortunately, Obama's voice overseas, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is mouthing policies nearly identical to those of the Bush White House; so much so that the Palestinian newspaper, Al Quds, has editorialized against her, calling her "‘Condoleezza Clinton," a reference to Bush's Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. In her recent trip to the Middle East Clinton offered Israel only words of appeasement even as the ominous figure of an incoming Israeli prime minister who loudly opposes Palestinian statehood — Bebe Netanyahu — is making it clear that more conflict and less diplomacy will likely be Israel'’s course. What are we to call Israel's policy? We ought to call it what it is: Palestinian Removal.The violence carried out by Israeli forces against Gaza in December has yet to be condemned by the Obama administration. Meanwhile, Israel has stepped up the frequency of evictions carried out against Palestinian families and the razing of Arab homes in occupied East Jerusalem while building new settlements there.Clinton's clear message at a Gaza reconstruction conference in Sharm el Shiek, Egypt, on March 12, was not a repudiation of Palestinian Removal, but an announcement that the U.S. will withhold recognition and support for the democratically elected Hamas. In the face of Israel's continued strangulation of Arab civilian society by encroachment in Jerusalem, by embargo against Gaza, and by the use of bulldozers and tanks rather than diplomacy to settle Arab/Israeli conflict, Clinton clarified American foreign policy in the Middle East now that Obama is in the saddle: a promise of $900 million, "not a dime" of which will go to Hamas, so as to ensure the eventual creation of a Palestinian state that will be "peaceful and responsible."Is this Orwellian doublespeak Obama's "change we can believe in?"Even as Gaza's survivors digest the devastation of, in approximate numbers, 22,000 buildings destroyed, 1,300 dead, 500 or more injured, and 300 or more Palestinian children killed by Israel's planned, mechanized, and targeted attack in December upon civilians and upon civil infrastructure, it seems that yet another American administration rears up in the White House and in Congress to turn a blind eye toward huge sums of our tax dollars funding Israel's Removal Program against Arabs in the West Bank, Golan, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. With Netanyahu's ascension to power, increased Israeli hostility against Lebanon and Syria seems likely, despite Clinton's overtures toward dialogue with Syria. Netanyahu's track record as a hawk doesn't suggest he will support the U.S. in unilateral dialogue with his Arab neighbors. Does Obama plan to continue the U.S. policy of supporting Israel's "security" through direct weapons sales, huge subsidies and favored nation trade status, and by providing billions of U.S. dollars in aid to Israel? In 2008, Israel received $2.4 billion in military financing, according to The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), which dwarfs the $900 million promised to Palestine on March 12. The Congress has averaged the (comparatively paltry) figure of 100 million U.S. dollars annually in aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA); the new pledge of money to rebuild Gaza and cover budget shortfalls for the PA will be controlled by the U.S. Agency for International Development, earmarked for what Clinton called "institutional reforms and economic development."Such a statement seems outlandish; as if American foreign policy is, as it has always been where Palestine is concerned, detached from reality: infrastructure projects, the meat and bread of any "economic development" and now necessary to rebuild Gaza, funded by the U.S. while far more USAID dollars continue to go to funding Israeli destruction of that same infrastructure, is not the diplomacy Obama promised but merely the continuation of the mendacity that U.S. policy toward Arab-Israeli peace has always shown itself to be.Unless Obama changes irrational expenditures of monies said to "secure" Israel, and favors instead a sane, diplomatic approach to peace that includes rather than excludes parties at ground level, not only will Israel continue to be less secure, but Palestinian lives will continue to be sacrificed. Destruction of cohesive Palestinian daily life and culture is Israeli policy. Israeli bulldozers wreck homes rather than building this "economic development" Clinton speaks of. The Removal Policy will only pick up speed and funding from soon-to-be Prime Minister Netanyahu. The reigns of American foreign policy now belong to Obama.If he chooses to ride the same old nag of Bush's policies, he will be riding not the winds of change but a whirlwind into continued conflict and bloodshed, and the blood will now be on his hands.
Are you confusing me with Brother Mickel? Or confusing him with me? You seem to be addressing aspects of what both he and I have written, but mostly you are responding to HIS words, not mine ('niggas', and 'violence'). I definitely have NOT argued that "a bunch of stupid thugs (such as the thugs who refuse to accept the peace offers of the Government of Sudan) can somehow destroy everything and diss everybody and call it "revolution". " That sounds like Brother Mickel.
If you are in any way implying that the Palestinians are not justified in the violent resistance they have offered for all these years against Israel, I respectfully disagree with you. They live under fascist occupation in a militarized confinement, as refugees, deprived of food, potable water, utilities, and medical care in some of the occupied territories (Gaza, most obviously), and have lost thousands of civilians to attacks, home invasions, and bombardment by the IDF, and to trauma and disease. I respectfully submit that you are wrong to say the period of violent resistance is over in Africa, and certainly the situation in Palestine is far more dire than simply having 'mopping up to do'.
I also take exception to your describing me as critisizing Obama who is Black but not critisizing 'a white woman.' What difference does it make what color Obama is? He is president, and so far he is acting in acordance with a violent, criminal foreign policy supporting atrocity, a policy that many progressives AND revolutionaries--including myself--feel he should be eliminating. If he continues to do so he WILL have blood on his hands, just as every other president who has given in to the Israeli lobby has had Palestinian blood on their hands. I should think that Black people would demand all the more forcefully that Obama behave in a humane and just way toward the rest of the world BECAUSE he is Black, like us. In fact, that is just what I plan to do, loudly and clearly, just as King and Malcolm would have, and DID do (King's address on Vietnam at the Riverside Baptist Church in 1967, for example) where American foreign policy is concerned. I will not even mention what CLR James would say about Obama and the issue of Palestine.
But if you read CLR's books, "Facing Reality" and "Beyond a Boundary," I think you will see why I claim that CLR would be far more harsh toward Obama than I have been. As for Secretary of State Clinton, I assume--I hope--she is on a short leash. If she is not, well, that has to be lain at Obama's doorstep. He is the president, after all. SHE works for HIM. Or do you argue a version of the sexist 'Jezabel' myth: that a woman is capable of casting a spell of evil over far more powerful men? Obama is no longer a candidate, but is the man who is supposed to be stopping the bucks.
Please read my writing a bit more closely in the future. Give me the same consideration I give to your writing, Brother.
Keep a closer eye on Miss Hilary. While Obama is distracted with economic worries, there is no telling what little tricks she will pull. I always knew it was a mistake to put her at State in the first place. Look what happened Zimbabwe. So, with all due respect, I think our focus needs to be more on the Clintonites than on Obama. Do you have the guts to criticize a white woman as harshly as you so eagerly criticize a brother while calling us "niggas" and reminding us, the masses, "that most black folk aren't able to handle the truth..."?
Yeah. I understand this nonsense well enough. You seem to think that a bunch of stupid thugs (such as the thugs who refuse to accept the peace offers of the Government of Sudan) can somehow destroy everything and diss everybody and call it "revolution". Well, let me enlighten you some. The violent phase of the African Revolution was just about over with the liberation of South Africa. We still have some mopping up to do in Palestine. But, hopefully, we will find a peaceful solution to that one. Now, is a time for building, a period of African Reconstruction. Let me enlighten you that Reconstruction is an integral part of the overall revolution; it just is not quite as violent. Now is a time of Economic and Social Development.
In this sense, this endless talk of violence is most reactionary. It is nothing more than an attempt to avoid responsibility, and divert attention, for what true African patriots must do at this time, in this new phase of the African Revolution. This insanity has gotten so bad that so-called revolutionaries, who prefer talk of violence to hard work for the African Nation, that they must insult the African mases at every opportunity. If the truth be told, they go beyond insults to actually threatening and violating innocent African civilians, women and children. So, tell me: who is the real cowards?
if i were in their clique, i'd do the same damn thang too. i'd be pro-israeli, anti-palestinian, pro-bush policy continuator, because it would be insane or irrational for me to go against the same moneychangers that made it possible for me to rise and live the life or riley, in exchange for loyalty to the new world order propagators. how else would you expect obama to operate or conduct presidential business? it's past time that we stop expecting the powers-that-be to give us a break, by taking their feet off of our necks without bloodshed. even cynthia mckinney once said that those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable. and that's a fact, not a theory.
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Comments
Abdurrahman,
Are you confusing me with Brother Mickel? Or confusing him with me? You seem to be addressing aspects of what both he and I have written, but mostly you are responding to HIS words, not mine ('niggas', and 'violence'). I definitely have NOT argued that "a bunch of stupid thugs (such as the thugs who refuse to accept the peace offers of the Government of Sudan) can somehow destroy everything and diss everybody and call it "revolution". " That sounds like Brother Mickel.
If you are in any way implying that the Palestinians are not justified in the violent resistance they have offered for all these years against Israel, I respectfully disagree with you. They live under fascist occupation in a militarized confinement, as refugees, deprived of food, potable water, utilities, and medical care in some of the occupied territories (Gaza, most obviously), and have lost thousands of civilians to attacks, home invasions, and bombardment by the IDF, and to trauma and disease. I respectfully submit that you are wrong to say the period of violent resistance is over in Africa, and certainly the situation in Palestine is far more dire than simply having 'mopping up to do'.
I also take exception to your describing me as critisizing Obama who is Black but not critisizing 'a white woman.' What difference does it make what color Obama is? He is president, and so far he is acting in acordance with a violent, criminal foreign policy supporting atrocity, a policy that many progressives AND revolutionaries--including myself--feel he should be eliminating. If he continues to do so he WILL have blood on his hands, just as every other president who has given in to the Israeli lobby has had Palestinian blood on their hands. I should think that Black people would demand all the more forcefully that Obama behave in a humane and just way toward the rest of the world BECAUSE he is Black, like us. In fact, that is just what I plan to do, loudly and clearly, just as King and Malcolm would have, and DID do (King's address on Vietnam at the Riverside Baptist Church in 1967, for example) where American foreign policy is concerned. I will not even mention what CLR James would say about Obama and the issue of Palestine.
But if you read CLR's books, "Facing Reality" and "Beyond a Boundary," I think you will see why I claim that CLR would be far more harsh toward Obama than I have been. As for Secretary of State Clinton, I assume--I hope--she is on a short leash. If she is not, well, that has to be lain at Obama's doorstep. He is the president, after all. SHE works for HIM. Or do you argue a version of the sexist 'Jezabel' myth: that a woman is capable of casting a spell of evil over far more powerful men? Obama is no longer a candidate, but is the man who is supposed to be stopping the bucks.
Please read my writing a bit more closely in the future. Give me the same consideration I give to your writing, Brother.
Peace.
Rayfield A. Waller
Yeah. I understand this nonsense well enough. You seem to think that a bunch of stupid thugs (such as the thugs who refuse to accept the peace offers of the Government of Sudan) can somehow destroy everything and diss everybody and call it "revolution". Well, let me enlighten you some. The violent phase of the African Revolution was just about over with the liberation of South Africa. We still have some mopping up to do in Palestine. But, hopefully, we will find a peaceful solution to that one. Now, is a time for building, a period of African Reconstruction. Let me enlighten you that Reconstruction is an integral part of the overall revolution; it just is not quite as violent. Now is a time of Economic and Social Development.
In this sense, this endless talk of violence is most reactionary. It is nothing more than an attempt to avoid responsibility, and divert attention, for what true African patriots must do at this time, in this new phase of the African Revolution. This insanity has gotten so bad that so-called revolutionaries, who prefer talk of violence to hard work for the African Nation, that they must insult the African mases at every opportunity. If the truth be told, they go beyond insults to actually threatening and violating innocent African civilians, women and children. So, tell me: who is the real cowards?
if i were in their clique, i'd do the same damn thang too. i'd be pro-israeli, anti-palestinian, pro-bush policy continuator, because it would be insane or irrational for me to go against the same moneychangers that made it possible for me to rise and live the life or riley, in exchange for loyalty to the new world order propagators. how else would you expect obama to operate or conduct presidential business? it's past time that we stop expecting the powers-that-be to give us a break, by taking their feet off of our necks without bloodshed. even cynthia mckinney once said that those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable. and that's a fact, not a theory.
uhuru!