Course Change?
Zero finally did something useful and vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline bill that the Republican rushed through Congress. That doesn’t mean that the pipeline is dead, only that the ‘process will continue’.
The voters in Chicago have figured out that Rahm Emanuel is not what he appeared to be four years ago and a majority of them voted against him in the recent election. As no one won a majority of the vote, he has been forced into a run-off election.
The BBC has a nice little article, Netanyahu row with Obama administration deepens. I wonder how the Israeli election would go if the US ambassador to Israel was recalled for consultation?
4 comments
I think it would be more pointed and perhaps more humanitarian if we took a billion in Isreali foreign aid and awarded it to the Gaza Inhabitants.
This “http://graphics.wsj.com/gaza-before-after/” is intolerable. Gaza is not the domestic abattoir of isreal It’s well past time to start withdrawing isreali aid when
It took 13 years to settle the USS Liberty claims and they are our alies?
When you realize that the US Congress increased Israeli aid to cover the costs of the USS Liberty claims, it becomes obvious that Congress would never go along with reducing funding to Israel no matter what the Likudniks do short of declaring war on the US, and that would be a close vote.
AIPAC ‘owns’ a significant number of US politicians.
When I think of my own support for Israel in my youth, I can only shake my head at what a damned fool I was. It is scant comfort that other respected liberals, e.g., the late great Molly Ivins, were similarly deceived.
But it all really happened, and Israel has really changed. Stella’s ex, an Israel backer so aggressive that he wrote and published a book on the subject suitable for doorstopping the entrance to a large mansion, now scares me; I decline even to talk about Israel with him… this is a man who in his own youth marched with MLK into some of the signature civil rights confrontations. But I suppose whatever good thing you accomplish in your young adult years, you can count on joining battle for the same cause fifty years later, or else abandoning it altogether.
AIPAC is the NRA of its central cause.
The Six Day War and the attack on the USS Liberty was end of my warm regard for Israel. It was an offensive war against their neighbors who were all engaged in dealing with a civil war in Yemen. With the best of their military forces tied up in Yemen, it only took Israel 6 days to wipe up the forces left behind.
As a result, those nations retaliated with the Yom Kippur War because they felt that Israel was going to attack them again, and it was a close fought thing. Of course, the civil war still continues in Yemen and the US has been sucked into it.
Israeli forces have never fought beside US forces, so calling them an ally is a bit of a stretch. The US feels obliged to defend Israel, but there is no commitment on the part of Israel to reciprocate. There is no quid pro quo – the US gives and Israel takes.