[Marxism] Rice Compares Israeli Occupation to Infamous US Segregation

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Rice Compares Israeli Occupation to Infamous US Segregation
By Lenni Brenner

Can anyone be more defensive of Zionism's reputation than Israel's Prime 
Minister? Therefore many people wondered why Ehud Olmert suddenly 
announced after Annapolis that "if the day comes when the two-state 
solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal 
voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is 
finished." (news.bbc.co.uk - 11/29/07)

Apparently he was reacting to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's 
blunt statements to him. Haaretz, Israel's most prestigious newspaper, 
tells us that

"In private conversations - and as she said in Annapolis - Rice tends to 
compare the Israeli occupation in the territories to the racial 
segregation that used to be the norm in the American South. The Israel 
Defense Forces checkpoints where Palestinians are detained remind her of 
the buses she rode as a child in Alabama, which had separate seats for 
blacks and whites. This is an uncomfortable comparison, of course, for 
the Israelis, who view it as "over-identification" on her part with 
Palestinian suffering." - (Aluf Benn, "What's the hurry?" 
(www.haaretz.com - 12/27/07)

Abe Foxman of America's Anti-Defamation League and other apologists for 
Israel scream at ex-President Jimmy Carter for attacking West Bank 
Israeli apartheid. And Haaretz says that American Zionist ultras are 
dumping on Rice for using the s-word, which, if it sticks to Israel, 
will ultimately be fatal for Zionism in the US. Now these fanatics ar 
ranting at Olmert for his statement. But he is smarter than them. When 
Carter and Rice say what they say, Israel must make a deal with the 
Palestine Authority and the Arab states backing it, or face growing 
opposition within American imperialism from those more concerned about 
Arab oil than Zionist campaign contributions. Olmert knows that growing 
divisions between Israel and its patron will inevitably inspire many 
Palestinians to continue to fight Zionism until it is defeated like the 
apartheid regime that even he says it resembles.

Of course Olment isn't abandoning Israel's 'right' to exist as a Jewish 
state within borders recognized by the Authority and the Arab world. 
Ditto Carter and Rice. But if a Jewish state is legitimate in principle, 
how and why did "the only democracy in the Middle East," as Israel 
proclaims itself, end up looking like apartheid South Africa and the 
segregated American south, even in the eyes of its own PM and Bush's 
international motor-mouth? Be sure that we will never get honest answers 
to that query from Olmert, much less from Rice, who shows zero signs of 
in-depth knowledge of Zionist history. But there is indeed an 
intelligent explanation, and we can find it in "The Iron Wall (We and 
the Arabs)," written in 1923 by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940), the 
founder of the "Zionist -Revisionist" movement which Olmert grew up in.

Altho he was born in what is now Ukrainia, Jabotinsky was 
Russian-speaking and a gifted writer in that language and many others. 
Indeed his talents were so extraordinary that he soon became a leading 
international Zionist figure and was instrumental in getting London to 
establish a "Jewish Legion" in 1917 to help Britain take Palestine from 
the Ottoman empire.

Zionism, like any ideology, has writers who don't do and doers who don't 
write. But fighting in the imperial army made Jabotinsky the writer into 
a realistic doer. Read him on "colonisation," his c-word. You will 
understand exactly why Israel, regardless of all the monkey-chatter 
about it being "the only democracy in the Middle East," inexorably came 
to be the discriminatory regime summed up so well by Rice's 
"segregation" and Olmert's "apartheid."

They each, in different voices, call for a "2-state solution." But 
Olmert wants as big a Zionist state as he can keep with minimal Israeli 
casualties, with the Palestinians confined in a Bantustine no bigger 
than a broom-closet. Rice is prepared to be a tad more generous. But 
segregation or apartheid, religious or ethnic, has no right to exist on 
even one inch of our planet. After decades of struggle, American legal 
segregation and South African apartheid are dead and gone and we all say 
good riddance to them. In time, when progressive Palestinians and 
Israelis get their act together and set up their equivalent of the 
American civil rights movement and the African National Congress, 
Zionism will join segregation and apartheid in the cemetary reserved for 
discredited and defeated colonial regimes.

***

Vladimir Jabotinsky, "The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)," Rassvyet 
(Berlin), November 4, 1923

[Note: The article 1st appeared in English, captioned as below, in South 
Africa's 11/26/37 Jewish Herald. - LB]

The Iron Wall Colonisation of Palestine Agreement with Arabs Impossible 
at Present Zionism Must Go Forward     By Vladimir Jabotinsky

It is an excellent rule to begin an article with the most important 
point. But this time, I find it necessary to begin with an introduction, 
and, moreover, with a personal introduction.

I am reputed to be an enemy of the Arabs, who wants to have them ejected 
from Palestine, and so forth. It is not true.

Emotionally, my attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other 
nations – polite indifference. Politically, my attitude is determined by 
two principles. First of all, I consider it utterly impossible to eject 
the Arabs from Palestine. There will always be two nations in Palestine 
– which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority. 
And secondly, I belong to the group that once drew up the Helsingfors 
Programme, the programme of national rights for all nationalities living 
in the same State. In drawing up that programme, we had in mind not only 
the Jews, but all nations everywhere, and its basis is equality of rights.

I am prepared to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that 
we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, 
and that we shall never try to eject anyone. This seems to me a fairly 
peaceful credo.

But it is quite another question whether it is always possible to 
realise a peaceful aim by peaceful means. For the answer to this 
question does not depend on our attitude to the Arabs; but entirely on 
the attitude of the Arabs to us and to Zionism.

Now, after this introduction, we may proceed to the subject.

Voluntary Agreement Not Possible

There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine 
Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such 
conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not 
believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, 
they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the 
voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from 
an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.

My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other 
countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which 
they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of 
any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native 
population. There is no such precedent.

The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly 
resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or 
savage.

And it made no difference whatever whether the colonists behaved 
decently or not. The companions of Cortez and Pizzaro or (as some people 
will remind us) our own ancestors under Joshua Ben Nun, behaved like 
brigands; but the Pilgrim Fathers, the first real pioneers of North 
America, were people of the highest morality, who did not want to do 
harm to anyone, least of all to the Red Indians; and they honestly 
believed that there was room enough in the prairies both for the 
Paleface and the Redskin. Yet the native population fought with the same 
ferocity against the good colonists as against the bad.

Every native population, civilised or not, regards its land as its 
national home, of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain 
that mastery always; it will refuse to admit not only new masters but, 
even new partners or collaborators.

Arabs Not Fools

This is equally true of the Arabs. Our peace-mongers are trying to 
persuade us that the Arabs are either fools, whom we can deceive by 
masking our real aims, or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to 
abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine, in return for 
cultural and economic advantages. I repudiate this conception of the 
Palestinian Arabs. Culturally they are five hundred years behind us; 
they have neither our endurance nor our determination; but they are just 
as good psychologists as we are, and their minds have been sharpened 
like ours by centuries of fine-spun logomachy. We may tell them whatever 
we like about the innocence of our aims, watering them down and 
sweetening them with honeyed words to make them palatable, but they know 
what we want, as well as we know what they do not want. They feel at 
least the same instinctive jealous love of Palestine, as the old Aztecs 
felt for ancient Mexico, and the Sioux for their rolling Prairies.

To imagine, as our Arabophiles do, that they will voluntarily consent to 
the realisation of Zionism. In return for the moral and material 
conveniences which the Jewish colonist brings with him, is a childish 
notion, which has at bottom a kind of contempt for the Arab people; it 
means that they despise the Arab race, which they regard as a corrupt 
mob that can be bought and sold, and are willing to give up their 
fatherland for a good railway system.

All Natives Resist Colonists

There is no justification for such a belief. It may be that some 
individual Arabs take bribes. But that does not mean that the Arab 
people of Palestine as a whole will sell that fervent patriotism that 
they guard so jealously, and which even the Papuans will never sell. 
Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has 
the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being 
colonised.

That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will 
persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that 
they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the 
"Land of Israel."

Arab Comprehension

Some of us have induced ourselves to believe that all the trouble is due 
to misunderstanding –- the Arabs have not understood us, and that is the 
only reason why they resist us; if we can only make it clear to them how 
moderate our intentions really are, they will immediately extend to us 
their hand in friendship.

This belief is utterly unfounded and it has been exploded again and 
again. I shall recall only one instance of many. A few years ago, when 
the late Mr. Sokolow was on one of his periodic visits to Palestine, he 
addressed a meeting on this very question of the "misunderstanding." He 
demonstrated lucidly and convincingly that the Arabs are terribly 
mistaken if they think that we have any desire to deprive them of their 
possessions or to drive them our of the country, or that we want to 
oppress them. We do not even ask for a Jewish Government to hold the 
Mandate of the League of Nations.

One of the Arab papers, "El Carmel," replied at the time, in an 
editorial article, the purport of which was this :

The Zionists are making a fuss about nothing. There is no 
misunderstanding. All that Mr. Sokolow says about the Zionist intentions 
is true, but the Arabs know that without him. Of course, the Zionists 
cannot now be thinking of driving the Arabs out of the country, or 
oppressing them, not do they contemplate a Jewish Government. Quite 
obviously, they are now concerned with one thing only -- that the Arabs 
should not hinder their immigration. The Zionists assure us that even 
immigration will be regulated strictly according to the economic needs 
of Palestine. The Arabs have never doubted that: it is a truism, for 
otherwise there can be no immigration.

No "Misunderstanding"

This Arab editor was actually willing to agree that Palestine has a very 
large potential absorptive capacity, meaning that there is room for a 
great many Jews in the country without displacing a single Arab. There 
is only one thing the Zionists want, and it is that one thing that the 
Arabs do not want, for that is the way by which the Jews would gradually 
become the majority, and then a Jewish Government would follow 
automatically; and the future of the Arab minority would depend on the 
goodwill of the Jews; and a minority status is not a good thing, as the 
Jews themselves are never tired of pointing out. So there is no 
"misunderstanding."

The Zionists want only one thing, Jewish immigration; and this Jewish 
immigration is what the Arabs do not want.

This statement of the position by the Arab editor is so logical, so 
obvious, so indisputable, that everyone ought to know it by heart, and 
it should be made the basis of all our future discussions on the Arab 
question. It does not matter at all which phraseology we employ in 
explaining our colonising aims, Herzl's or Sir Herbert Samuel's.

Colonisation carries its own explanation, the only possible explanation, 
unalterable and as clear as daylight to every ordinary Jew and every 
ordinary Arab.

Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept 
this aim. It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular 
regard nature cannot be changed.

The Iron Wall

We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in 
return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any 
voluntary agreement being reached. So that all those who regard such an 
agreement as a condition sine qua non for Zionism may as well say "non" 
and withdraw from Zionism.

Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the 
native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only 
under the protection of a power that is independent of the native 
population –- behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot 
breach.

That is our Arab policy; not what we should be, but what it actually is, 
whether we admit it or not. What need, otherwise, of the Balfour 
Declaration? Or of the Mandate? Their value to us is that an outside 
Power has undertaken to create in the country such conditions of 
administration and security that if the native population should desire 
to hinder our work, they will find it impossible.

And we are all of us ,without any exception, demanding day after day 
that this outside Power should carry out this task vigorously and with 
determination.

In this matter there is no difference between our "militarists" and our 
"vegetarians". Except that the first prefer that the iron wall should 
consist of Jewish soldiers, and the others are content that they should 
be British.

We all demand that there should be an iron wall. Yet we keep spoiling 
our own case, by talking about "agreement," which means telling the 
Mandatory Government that the important thing is not the iron wall, but 
discussions. Empty rhetoric of this kind is dangerous. And that is why 
itis not only a pleasure but a duty to discredit it and to demonstrate 
that it is both fantastic and dishonest.

Zionism Moral and Just

Two brief remarks:

In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is 
immoral, I answer: It is not true; either Zionism is moral and just ,or 
it is immoral and unjust. But that is a question that we should have 
settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that 
question, and in the affirmative.

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, 
justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or 
Achmet agree with it or not.

There is no other morality.

Eventual Agreement

In the second place, this does not mean that there cannot be any 
agreement with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary 
agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of 
getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for 
either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a 
rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters 
of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of 
getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not 
till then will they drop their extremist leaders whose watchword is 
"Never!" And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will 
approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual 
concessions. Then we may expect them to discuss honestly practical 
questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal 
rights for Arab citizens, or Arab national integrity.

And when that happens, I am convinced that we Jews will be found ready 
to give them satisfactory guarantees, so that both peoples can live 
together in peace, like good neighbours.

But the only way to obtain such an agreement, is the iron wall, which is 
to say a strong power in Palestine that is not amenable to any Arab 
pressure. In other words, the only way to reach an agreement in the 
future is to abandon all ideas of seeking an agreement at present.

==

PLO Mission@xxxxxxx

www.haaretz.com Last update - 20:59 27/12/2007 What's the hurry? By Aluf 
Benn [mailto:aluf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] (Jerusalem) & Shmuel Rosner 
[mailto:rosner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

(Washington)

The Annapolis summit and the efforts to revive the peace process have 
exacerbated the tension that already existed between Prime Minister Ehud 
Olmert and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Olmert's personal 
charm doesn't work on Rice, and the Prime Minister's Office is anxious 
about her tendency to push ahead too quickly  with political contacts.

The latest point of friction had to do with the conference of donor 
countries to the Palestinians that took place in Paris last week. Rice 
wanted to proceed from the conference to Jerusalem, to make sure that 
the political process hadn't withered and died after the fanfare in 
Annapolis. There was a decision already. What made her change her mind 
and not come? One version has it that she received a message from the 
White House not to rush things, to give the Israelis and Palestinians 
some time to work things out without her.

Olmert's bureau denies that Israel intervened to block Rice's visit. 
David Welch, her aide on Middle East affairs, who had visited Israel a 
few days before that, felt that in any event, she wouldn't be able to 
achieve much with a lightning visit so soon after Annapolis. The 
Americans say they don't want Rice's visits to become just a worthless 
routine. It was clear that this time, nothing much could come of it.

In private conversations - and as she said in Annapolis - Rice tends to 
compare the Israeli occupation in the territories to the racial 
segregation that used to be the norm in the American South. The Israel 
Defense Forces checkpoints where Palestinians are detained remind her of 
the buses she rode as a child in Alabama, which had separate seats for 
blacks and whites. This is an uncomfortable comparison, of course, for 
the Israelis, who view it as "over-identification" on her part with 
Palestinian suffering. For some leaders of American Jewish 
organizations, who weren't all that fond of Rice to begin with, her use 
of this image was the last straw. Rice is now marked as an enemy. It's 
also easier for them to blame her, rather than the president, for an 
approach that's not to their liking.

But Rice's anger at Israel really derives from more current events: She 
was deeply offended at the height of the Second Lebanon War, while 
preparing to leave for Beirut to pull together a cease-fire, when the 
IDF killed Lebanese civilians during the bombing of Kafr Kana. Her trip 
was canceled at the last minute, the war went on  for more than another 
two weeks, and some who know her say that Rice never forgave Israel for 
this slap in the face.

In recent months, she's been heard grumbling about Israel's 
foot-dragging in carrying out good-will gestures toward Palestinian 
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The tension became more open in 
connection with the Annapolis summit, say Israeli sources.

Rice changed the title of the event from "an international meeting" to a 
"summit," despite Israel's express objections. She supported the 
Palestinian position, which called for the establishment of a 
Palestinian state in tandem with the implementation of the road map. 
Israel balked, and managed to win consent for "sequential" 
implementation - that is, first a war on terror and then a Palestinian 
state.

When the leaders met with President George W. Bush prior to the official 
start of the summit, Olmert said that if he had any disagreements with 
Rice, he would turn to the president. "You'll get the same answer from 
him," Rice said. Olmert insisted on his right to appeal to the White 
House. Bush listened and didn't say anything, but officials in 
Washington advise that one shouldn't attach too much importance to this 
silence. Bush likes Olmert, but he likes Rice a lot more. Something very 
serious would have to happen for the president to override her 
authority. And she's smart enough not to clash with Israel without first 
checking with the president just how far she can go.

Israel needs an unofficial channel of communication, a "Rice bypass 
road," to the White House. Steve Hadley, the national security advisor, 
who was Rice's deputy during Bush's first term, is very close to her and 
wouldn't operate behind her back.

And there is no Jewish leader in the Republican Party who, like Max 
Fisher in the past, has sufficient enough influence to just phone up the 
president and quietlytake care of things. Most Jewish Republicans who 
have a degree of access to the

  White House are not fans of the political process, and some are busy 
promoting the campaign against a division of Jerusalem, an effort that 
Olmert perceives as a personal campaign against him and in favor of 
Benjamin Netanyahu. Which basically leaves Olmert as the guy who can 
communicate with Bush.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is maintaining her own channel of 
communication with her American counterpart, even if it appears that 
their initial mutual infatuation has faded. At the Prime Minister's 
Office, the focus is now on Bush's January 9th visit. Expected to top 
the agenda is the Iranian threat and the ramifications of the American 
intelligence report that said Iran is not planning to develop a military 
nuclear capability. On the Palestinian issue, those in Olmert's circle 
believe that Bush will make do with some nice words and not bug his 
hosts with demands to evacuate outposts and remove checkpoints. Rice 
will have to deal with these troubles after Bush goes back home. And she 
apparently has every intention of doing so.

Thanks for dinner

On Wednesday afternoon, Olmert bid farewell to his spokesperson to the 
foreign press, Miri Eisen, and as usual, peppered his talk with plenty 
of jokes and soccer anecdotes.

He patted the head of Yiftah, Eisen's oldest child, and described how he 
showed him the autographed shirt he received from Ronaldinho, the 
Brazilian soccer star.

Afterward, he met with the five members of the Meretz Knesset faction. 
It's hard to believe that on the same day, the 2008 state budget was 
passed in the Knesset, five days before the deadline, without creating 
any political noise or revolts within the coalition.

"The days of the budget" used to be a synonym for crisis. Not with 
Olmert: This is the second year in a row that the budget has quietly 
slipped through the political system. Before the good-bye party for 
Eisen, the prime minister sat down with Finance Minister Roni Bar-On, 
Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit and budget director Kobi Haber.

No tension or stress was evident on their faces when they emerged from 
their meeting.

The vote in the Knesset plenum at the end of the evening was postponed 
by an hour, so Olmert would have time to attend the conference of the Or 
Yarok (Green Light) road safety organization. Obviously, he didn't feel 
any pressure to be present beforehand to iron out any last-minute problems.

"You see, there is a functioning government," Olmert boasts. It's 
certainly easier to get a budget passed when the economy is booming and 
the state is collecting a lot of taxes. And there's a personal aspect, 
too: Olmert, the "professor of politics," as Meretz members called him 
at the start of their meeting, is more skilled than his predecessors at 
managing his relations with the coalition and the opposition.

He doesn't portray his ministers as a bunch of honor-obsessed idiots, as 
previous prime ministers have done, and the ministers don't complain 
about his insensitivity and arrogance. Nor do they have any reason to. 
Cabinet secretary Oved Yehezkel, the coalition's maintenance man, is 
always at their disposal. Any time a minister wishes to speak to or meet 
with the prime minister, he can expect an immediate response.

One minister from Labor, who was invited with his wife to have dinner 
with Ehud and Aliza Olmert, received the following treatment: The prime 
minister showed up right on time, even though he was busy with security 
matters (of which the minister was aware). Earlier that evening, there'd 
been an unflattering report about Olmert on television, but the prime 
minister ignored it and chatted with his guests as if nothing had 
happened. He even declined to take a call from his media advisor. The 
next day, Olmert phoned the minister and told him that he'd had a 
wonderful evening. Another day passed, and Aliza Olmert called the 
minister's wife to thank her for the lovely evening. And as if that 
weren't enough, on Sunday Yehezkel caught up with the minister as he was 
on his way to the cabinet meeting and said something like: I don't know 
what you two did, but he (Olmert) hasn't stopped talking about you for 
the past three days.

Instead of speaking to the public and granting interviews to the press - 
an approach that proved detrimental to Barak and Netanyahu as prime 
ministers - Olmert invests his time in the "100 most influential people" 
who will affect his political survival.

He knows how to talk to win their sympathy. True, Olmert isn't yet 
popular in the polls, but his government is showing some impressive 
political stability - so much so that the looming Winograd report 
doesn't even seem that threatening. The threat of early elections is 
also fading, as Minister Haim Ramon proudly noted this week.

Who is weak?

Rice's exasperation with Israel's behavior stems primarily from the gap 
between expectations and results, and from the fast-dwindling time she 
has left on the seventh floor of the U.S. State Department. Rice thinks 
that Israel received a lot and didn't give anything in return. As she 
sees it, the Bush administration gave Israel two important gifts in the 
president's April, 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon: implied recognition of 
the settlement blocs, and a demand that the refugees return to the 
Palestinian state and not to Israel. But Israel isn't responding with 
the proper counter-gestures. Here, however, they say that Rice received 
plenty and that she ought to be more patient. After all, within a month, 
Israel went to the major political event in Annapolis, and then the 
donor countries agreed to give the PA even more than she asked for. 
That's not bad for such a short time. What's her big rush?

The problem is that Rice embarked on this campaign in the belief that 
she would succeed in cutting the Gordian knot of the Israeli-Palestinian 
conflict. She hoped that in Annapolis principles would be set down for a 
final-status accord, but Israel told her that wasn't going to happen. 
She thinks that the PA is making satisfactory progress with the reform 
of its security forces, while officials in Israel say she's exaggerating 
and that the reform is still very far from accomplishing anything.

She wanted to Israel to make more good-will gestures, but the Israelis 
remind here that this will be hard to do as long as Qassam rockets 
continue to fall on Sderot.

She wanted to see outposts evacuated, and in Israel they blew her off, 
citing the danger it would pose to the coalition.

Whether Israel likes it or not, it has been cast in the role of the 
obstacle, as the one putting the brakes on - while Abbas and his prime 
minister Salam Fayyad are seen as the ones who want to make progress. 
Rice, too, wants things to move.

The brakes bother her. Though there are times when she's convinced that 
it's appropriate, lately it's been ticking her off more.

Israel shouldn't be surprised by Rice's irritation. Rice can see just as 
well as the next person how easily the budget was passed in Israel, and 
has to be asking herself whether the cliche about "a weak Olmert" isn't 
just an excuse for more foot-dragging.

This is where the difference between her and Bush is most noticeable. 
She's not a politician; he is. Even those of her disciples who believe 
she has a good grasp of strategy in the Middle East - and there are many 
- will also admit that the political arena is foreign to her. Certainly 
the complex Israeli political arena with its myriad players, big and 
small. And still, Rice's people ask: Not even one outpost?

One little pre-fab?

Rice is right in saying that Israel is not making good on its commitment 
on this matter, but in Israel they say that fulfilling the obligation 
would sabotage more important moves. Will the coalition's stability 
endure when the government tries to evacuate outposts, or to make 
serious progress in the negotiations with the Palestinians? Rice wants 
to believe that the answer is yes, but no one in Israel is willing to 
bet on it. The word in Olmert's bureau is that the coalition relies on 
the distinction between "theory and deed." As long as we're only talking 
with the Palestinians, everyone can sit comfortably in their cabinet 
seats. But a forceful evacuation of settlers, or far-reaching 
understandings with Abbas, could upset the partnership with Lieberman 
and Shas. Olmert is well aware of this, and prefers to maintain the 
coalition and the government over making any serious moves in the 
territories.

For Rice to understand this too, however, she'll have to be convinced 
each time anew.

***

Lenni Brenner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. He became an 
atheist at 10, and a left political activist at 15, in 1952. He was 
arrested 3 times during 1960s Black civil rights sit-ins in the San 
Francisco Bay Area. He spent 39 months in prison when a court revoked 
his probation for marijuana possession, because of his activities during 
the Berkeley Free Speech Movement at the University of California in 1964.

Immediately on imprisonment, he spent 4 days in intense discussion with 
Huey Newton, later founder of the Black Panther Party, whom he 
encountered in the court holding tank. Later he worked with Stokely 
Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), the legendary "Black Power" leader of the 
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in the Committee against 
Zionism and Racism, from 1985 until Ture's death in 1998.

Brenner is the author of 4 books, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, 
The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, Jews in 
America Today, and The Lesser Evil, a study of the Democratic Party. His 
books have been favorably reviewed in 11 languages by prominent 
publications, including the London Times, The London Review of Books, 
Moscow's Izvestia and the Jerusalem Post.

He has written over 120 articles for many publications, including the 
American Atheist, New York's Amsterdam News, the Anderson Valley 
Advertiser, The Atlanta Constitution, CounterPunch, The Jewish Guardian, 
The Nation, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East 
Policy, Middle East International, The Journal of Palestine Studies, The 
New Statesman of London, Al-Fajr in Jerusalem and Dublin's United Irishman.

In 2002 he edited 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis. It 
contains complete translations of many of the documents quoted in 
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators and The Iron Wall.

In 2004 he edited Jefferson & Madison On Separation of Church and State: 
Writings on Religion and Secularism.

He blogs at

www.smithbowen.net/linfame/brenner

He can be reached at

BrennerL21@xxxxxxx<BR>

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism