[Marxism] Obama's deadly silence

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

Obama's deadly silence 
Ali Abunimah, The  Electronic Intifada, 2 January 2009 
 
 
"I would like to ask President-elect Obama to say something please about  the 
humanitarian crisis that is being experienced right now by the people of  
Gaza." Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney made her plea after  
disembarking from the badly damaged SS Dignity that had limped to the Lebanese  
port 
of Tyre while taking on water.

The small boat, carrying McKinney,  the Green Party's recent presidential 
candidate, other volunteers, and several  tons of donated medical supplies, had 
been trying to reach the coast of Gaza  when it was rammed by an Israeli 
gunboat in international waters.

But as  more than 2,400 Palestinians have been killed or injured -- the 
majority  civilians -- since Israel began its savage bombardment of Gaza on 27 
December,  Obama has maintained his silence. "There is only one president at a 
time," his  spokesmen tell the media. This convenient excuse has not applied, 
say, to  Obama's detailed interventions on the economy, or his condemnation of 
the  "coordinated attacks on innocent civilians" in Mumbai in November.

The  Mumbai attacks were a clear-cut case of innocent people being 
slaughtered. The  situation in the Middle East however is seen as more 
"complicated" and 
so polite  opinion accepts Obama's silence not as the approval for Israel's 
actions that it  certainly is, but as responsible statesmanship.

It ought not to be  difficult to condemn Israel's murder of civilians and 
bombing of civilian  infrastructure including hundreds of private homes, 
universities, schools,  mosques, civil police stations and ministries, and the 
building housing the only  freely-elected Arab parliament.

It ought not to be risky or disruptive to  US foreign policy to say that 
Israel has an unconditional obligation under the  Fourth Geneva Convention to 
lift 
its lethal, months-old blockade preventing  adequate food, fuel, surgical 
supplies, medications and other basic necessities  from reaching Gaza.

But in the looking-glass world of American politics,  Israel, with its 
powerful first-world army, is the victim, and Gaza -- the  besieged and 
blockaded 
home to 1.5 million immiserated people, half of them  children and eighty 
percent refugees -- is the aggressor against whom no cruelty  is apparently too 
extreme.

While feigning restraint, Obama has  telegraphed where he really stands; 
senior adviser David Axelrod told CBS on 28  December that Obama understood 
Israel's urge to "respond" to attacks on its  citizens. Axelrod claimed that 
"this 
situation has become even more complicated  in the last couple of days and 
weeks as Hamas began its shelling [and] Israel  responded."

The truce Hamas had meticulously upheld was shattered when  Israel attacked 
Gaza, killing six Palestinians, as The Guardian  reported on 5 November. A 
blatant disregard for the facts, it seems, will not  leave the White House with 
George W. Bush on 20 January.

Axelrod also  recalled Obama's visit to Israel last July when he ignored 
Palestinians and  visited the Israeli town of Sderot. There, Obama declared: 
"If 
somebody was  sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at 
night, I'm going  to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect 
Israelis to do the  same thing."

This should not surprise anyone. Despite pervasive wishful  thinking that 
Obama would abandon America's pro-Israel bias, his approach has  been _almost  
indistinguishable from the Bush administration's_ 
(http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9969.shtml) .

Along with Tony  Blair and George W. Bush, Obama staunchly supported Israel's 
war against Lebanon  in July-August 2006, where it used cluster bombs on 
civilian areas, killing more  than 1,000 people.

Obama's comments in Sderot echoed what he said in a  speech to the powerful 
pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, in March 2007. He recalled an  earlier visit to the 
Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona near the border with Lebanon  which he said 
reminded him of an American suburb. There, he could imagine the  sounds of 
Israeli 
children at "joyful play just like my own daughters." He saw a  home the 
Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizballah rocket (no one had been  hurt in 
the 
incident).

Obama has identified his daughters repeatedly with  Israeli children, while 
never having uttered a word about the thousands --  thousands -- of Palestinian 
and Lebanese children killed and permanently maimed  by Israeli attacks just 
since 2006. This allegedly post-racial president appears  fully invested in 
the racist worldview that considers Arab lives to be worth  less than those of 
Israelis and in which Arabs are always  "terrorists."

The problem is much wider than Obama: American liberals in  general see no 
contradiction in espousing positions supporting Israel that they  would deem 
extremist and racist in any other context. The cream of America's  allegedly 
"progressive" Democratic party vanguard -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,  House 
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Howard Berman, New York Senator  Charles 
Schumer, among others -- have all offered unequivocal support for  Israel's 
massacres in Gaza, describing them as "self-defense."

And then  there's Hillary Clinton, the incoming secretary of state and 
self-styled  champion of women and the working classes, who won't let anyone 
outbid 
her  anti-Palestinian positions.

Democrats are not simply indifferent to  Palestinians. In the recent 
presidential election, their efforts to win swing  states like Florida often 
involved 
espousing positions dehumanizing to  Palestinians in particular and Arabs and 
Muslims in general. Many liberals know  this is wrong but tolerate it silently 
as a price worth paying (though not to be  paid by them) to see a Democrat in 
office.

Even those further to the left  implicitly accept Israel's logic. Matthew 
Rothschild, editor of The  Progressive, criticized Israel's attacks on Gaza as 
a 
"reckless" and  "disproportionate response" to Hamas rocket attacks that he 
deemed "immoral."  There are many others who do nothing to support nonviolent 
resistance to Israeli  occupation and colonization, such as boycott, divestment 
and sanctions but who  are quick to condemn any desperate Palestinian effort 
-- no matter how  ineffectual and symbolic -- to resist Israel's relentless  
aggression.

Similarly, we can expect that the American university  professors who have 
publicly opposed the academic boycott of Israel on grounds  of protecting 
"academic freedom" will remain just as silent about Israel's  bombing of the 
Islamic 
University of Gaza as they have about Israel's other  attacks on Palestinian 
academic institutions.

There is no silver lining  to Israel's slaughter in Gaza, but the reactions 
to it should at least serve as  a wake-up call: when it comes to the struggle 
for peace and justice in  Palestine, the American liberal elites who are about 
to assume power present as  formidable an obstacle as the outgoing Bush 
administration and its  neoconservative backers.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali  Abunimah is author of One 
Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian  Impasse (Metropolitan 
Books, 
2006). This essay was first published in The Guardian's Comment is Free and 
is republished with the author's  permission.
 
 
_http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10097.shtml_ 
(http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10097.shtml)  
 
 
 
 

**************New year...new news.  Be the first to know what is making 
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu