ALL ABOUT THE JACKPOT: Romney's trip to Israel was to court donations
SINCE United States presidential
candidate Mitt Romney's whole trip was about how to satisfy the right-wing,
super pro-Bibi Netanyahu, American Jewish casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, why
didn't they just do the whole thing in Las Vegas?
It was all about how much Romney
would say whatever the Israeli right wanted to hear and how big a jackpot of
donations Adelson would shower on the Romney campaign in return.
Much of what is wrong with the
US-Israel relationship today can be found in that Romney trip.
In recent years, to garner more
Jewish (and evangelical) votes and money, the Republican party decided to
"out-pro-Israel" the Democrats by being even more unquestioning of
Israel. This arms race has pulled the Democratic Party to the right on the
Middle East and has basically forced the Obama team to shut down the peace
process and drop any demands that Israel freeze settlements.
State Department officials, not to
mention politicians, are reluctant to even state publicly what is US policy --
that settlements are "an obstacle to peace" -- for fear of being
denounced as anti-Israel.
Add to that the importance of
single donors who can write mega cheques to "super Political Action
Committees" -- and the fact that the main Israel lobby, Aipac, has made
itself the feared arbiter of which lawmakers are "pro" and which are
"anti-Israel" and, therefore, who should get donations and who should
not -- and you have a situation in which there are almost no brakes around
Israel coming from America anymore.
Into this environment, Romney
wandered to declare how he will be so much nicer to Israel than big, bad Obama.
But on what matters to Israel's
survival -- advanced weaponry and intelligence -- Defence Minister Ehud Barak
told CNN: "This administration under President Obama is doing, in regard
to our security, more than anything that I can remember in the past."
While Romney had time for a
US$50,000-(RM155,000)-a-plate breakfast with American Jewish donors in
Jerusalem, with Adelson at his elbow, he did not have two hours to go to
Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, to meet with its president,
Mahmoud Abbas, or to share publicly any ideas on how he would advance the peace
process.
He did have time, though, to point
out to his Jewish hosts that Israelis are clearly more culturally
entrepreneurial than Palestinians. Israel today is an amazing beehive of
innovation -- thanks, in part, to an influx of Russian brainpower, massive US
aid and smart policies.
It's something Jews should be proud
of. But had Romney gone to Ramallah, he would have seen a Palestinian beehive
of entrepreneurship, too, albeit small, but not bad for a people living under
occupation.
Palestinian business talent also
built the Persian Gulf states. Romney didn't know what he was talking about. On peace, the Palestinians'
diplomacy has been a fractured mess. It is in Israel's overwhelming interest to
test and have the US keep testing creative ideas for a two-state solution.
That is what a real US friend would
promise to do. Otherwise, Israel could be doomed to become a kind of apartheid
South Africa.The three US statesmen who have
done the most to make Israel more secure and accepted in the region all told
blunt truths to every Israeli or Arab leader: Jimmy Carter, who helped forge a
lasting peace between Israel and Egypt; Henry Kissinger, who built the
post-1973 war disengagement agreements with Syria, Israel and Egypt; and James
Baker, who engineered the Madrid peace conference.
All of them knew that to make
progress in this region you have to get in the face of both sides. They both
need the excuse at times that "the Americans made me do it", because
their own politics are too knotted to move on their own.
So how about all you US politicians
-- Republicans and Democrats -- stop feeding off this conflict for political
gain. Stop using this conflict as a backdrop for campaign photo-ops and
fund-raisers.Stop making things even worse by
telling the most hard-line Israelis everything that they want to hear, just to
grovel for Jewish votes and money, while blatantly ignoring the other side.
There are real lives at stake out there.
If you're not going to do something
constructive, stay away. They can make enough trouble for themselves on their
own. NYT
No comments:
Post a Comment