5 thoughts on “Chas. Freeman: Aipac Smells Blood in the Water – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. I could be wrong, but I think the significance of the position is in making sure the president is fully and objectively informed rather than determining policy. This is a stark contrast with the previous administration where people were employed to make sure the president was fully misunderinformed. Freeman would be much more than a political loss for Obama, he has rare, relevant and valuable expertise on perhaps the most difficult areas for the US to navigate.

  2. And this from today’s (3/6) McClatchy:

    ”JERUSALEM — A day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gently chastised Israeli officials for demolishing Arab homes in East Jerusalem, the city’s new mayor pushed back Thursday and suggested that America’s top diplomat had been the victim of a disinformation campaign.

    “During her first visit to the region as secretary of state, Clinton criticized the unfolding home demolitions as “unhelpful” to tenuous Israel-Palestinian peace talks and a violation of Israel’s commitment to the diplomatic process.”

    Not a moment, not a day passes that some representative of Israel, official or otherwise, does not demonstrate that this state, so often declared bold and wise and good, has no intention of seriously pursuing a just peace and a valid two-state solution to the conflict. It’s all the way or nothing, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, and I suspect that this has always been at the very least a Zionist subtext. “Next year in Jerusalem,” indeed. Do The New Israel Fund, The Abraham Fund, Peace Now, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom even exist anymore?

    Israel has become such a far-right, militarized, ossified society (80 – 85 % of its population supporting the Gazan atrocity), and its powerful patron now also so steadily right of center in this and numerous other instances, that one naive enough to want to apply some fundamental decency and simple intelligence to this tragic and dangerous continuation of injustice can only despair.

  3. One can imagine this site’s response if a Republican administration nominated a candidate for an intelligence position who had defended the Chinese reponse to Tiannamen Square and had been on the Board of the chinese National Offshore Oil Company which has extensive business in Sudan and Burma; had stoutly defended Saudi Arabia, a client, etc. Note Farenheit 9/11’s emphasis on collusion between the Bush Administration and the Saudis to get Saudi nationals out of the county after 9/11.

    In arguing that the world’s greatest problem in the world is Israeli brutality (to use Freeman’s adjective) your compromise your goal of healing the world.

    What you also are impliedly stating is that the vast majority of Israeli Jews have lost their “Jewish values” which only diaspora Jews, with elevated moral sensitivity, possess.

    1. In arguing that the world’s greatest problem in the world is Israeli brutality (to use Freeman’s adjective) your compromise your goal of healing the world.

      Where on earth has anybody made the arguement that this is the “world’s greatest problem” What an odd statement.

  4. Spephen Walt in defense of Chas Freeman:
    (via Juan Cole’s column)

    http://www.juancole.com/2009/03/walt-in-defense-of-chas-freeman-why-we.html

    Includes some comments of Cole on Zionist nationalism:

    “Zionism is a form of nationalism centered on the necessity of turning Judaism into a base for a nation-state. Probably a majority of Jews, and virtually all American Jews, were offended by this notion before WW II”

    “Nationalism where healthy can be a sane form of patriotism and pride in the achievements of a people,and many Zionists fit that description (though more Jewish Zionists than Christian Zionists are humane in my experience). But nationalism can also easily turn pathological.”

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