30 thoughts on “Israel to Obama: Be Gentle With Me – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. Thanks for the clear eyed analysis in which you pull no punches.

    I’m afraid that the now complete takeover of the latest Israeli Government by ultra nationalists, coupled with the majority of IDF positions filled by like-minded military senior personnel, is a pathway to disaster in the Middle East.

  2. Israelis are anxious, so they kill people, feel some guilt and wait for the anxiety about who they are to build up again. They do not “mow the lawn,” they mow their conscience.

    You lay bare the tragedy of Obama and, yet again, I have to think kindly, even gently of ole Tricky Dick Nixon, one of the least admirable of Presidents in my lifetime. What’s the point of Obama, anyway? I just don’t “get it.” I want to believe he has a stash of surprising decency somewhere just waiting for the proper moment. I should know better.

  3. Heartbreaking video, I stopped motion several times and saw the fear in the children’s eyes.

    As far as Obama going to Israel, the reason is simple; he wants the support from the most powerful pro-Israeli Jewish Lobbies (that do NOT exist!) and thus, garner extra support for Democratic Party in the upcoming and future elections. Obama is promising more and more dollars and material aid to Israel that no US politician dares to vote against because they all want to be seen as more Israeli than the Israelis…so they can be re-elected.
    $200 million for the Gold Dome boondoggle and not a word about allowing free Palestinian exports to Europe.

    It is nothing new, take a look at the British Prime Ministers who coincidentally pay a state visit to Indian where they say all the things Indians want to hear because a large part of the British voters, come from South Asia…they vote and they work for candidates. The British PMs then go across the borders to Pakistan and slap them, demanding Pakistan “do more”, although, sometimes they just say it from Indian.
    Watch, Obama will be telling Palestinians to guarantee Israel’s security with not a word about Palestinians’ security.

    I know many of your readers will disagree, but as long as there is no talk of a SINGLE state (from both sides), all the talk about “negotiations” is hogwash. In my opinion, all so-called “Two-State Solutions” are doomed before the ink ever dries on such an “Agreement”.

    1. Agree 100% re the 2 State solution..it was never going to happen. I conten d that there’s never beena peace process, only Israeli posturing that one actually exists.

      The One State solution is clearly the best option, but the race supremacist Israeli political establishment will not consider it…thus, a regional war will occur in 3 years, after particularly the next US President removes US military support for Israel.

      And who will that person be?…Rand Paul of course.

  4. Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned

    The poem,composed in 1919 amidst the Irish War of Independence and so soon after the senseless slaughter of WWI (which marked the beginning of the end of the genteel old order of the British Empire) was an attempt by Yeats to come to terms with a newly emerging and terrifying world.
    The sense of things senselessly spinning out of control with ever increasing centrifugal acceleration was in Yeats’s case somewhat misplaced, soon afterwards things settled down both in Ireland (bar a Civil War) and in Europe but the analogy to the present day Middle East is apt. The turmoil in Lebanon, Iraq and now Syria,the instability in Egypt, the potential for instability in Jordan, the previously unimaginable Arab Spring and the rise of Iran as a regional power, is all frightening but hopefully is only the friction caused by the transition to a newer more egalitarian Middle East.

    “They want the land. They want the native Palestinians gone. They want dominance. They won’t share.”

    The current Settlement policy is clearly unjust, is out of step with the emerging new Middle East, is not sustainable and can only cause irrevocable damage to Israel. As time goes by the compromises Israel must make for peace can only increase and the illusion that Israel can continue without peace will be increasingly expensive to maintain.

  5. What a great analysis. Your comparison of “Grossman’s dithering with the brutal certainty of the settlers” is revealing, and the combination with Yeats poem superb.

  6. Public diplomacy is not diplomacy. Why go to Israel except to make those demonstrations that help the “goer”.
    OK, clear.

    Private diplomacy (aka “diplomacy”) is private, secret generally unless wikileaks intervene). It is time for this president to tell the world that he will not interfere with, and will support, their efforts to put the “S” into “BDS” for the purpose of ending the settlement project, the wall, and the siege.

    He could do it. Nothing much suggests that he IS doing it or WILL do it.

    For that matter, he has done precisous little about CLIMATE CHANGE which is overwhelmingly more important, and importan to the whole world, a disaster in formation and “in train”, that is, to a degree unavoidable after 25 years of dithering, FAR WORSE than 100 “Holocausts”. Just to put our beloved I/P in persoective.

    Maybe those who predicted Armeggedon (and the end of the calendar) were essentially right?

  7. It’s very simple
    This is an arrest
    It’s being made with extreme respect to the public present and with minimal force
    The reason for the arrest is explained, as you can hear on the video
    The “boy” is dangerous , according to the soldiers, because he has thrown stones in the past and was probably doing the same prior to the arrest, but of course THAT part o the video is not shown…

    stones kill.
    If you question that, just throw a stone the size of your first high into the sky and attempt to stand under it as it falls back down.

    1. What I love about Hasbara like this is that stones, in the hands of Palestinians, kill. But nuclear weapons, cluster and bunker buster bombs, helicopter gunships and F-16s in the hands of Israelis are solely defensive instruments which only hurt bad guys. The hypocrisy is self-evident, along with the self-delusion.

      Can you tell me the last Israeli soldier killed at a Wall protest?

      1. You know very well there have been (not recently thank god) soldiers killed from stones.
        sadly, the jews in palesine became better and better at defending themselves. To a point where boys throwing stones at soldeirs and civilians are arrested PRIOR to performing their first kill.
        If only the world was fair then the UN would surely intervene and prevent the arrest of anyone until they have succeeded in killing at least one soldier.
        Jews defending themselves.
        pfft
        what HAS the world come to.

        1. The conquest of the West Bank through aggressive war was described as “Jews defending themselves.” Jews can attack civilian populations, police civilian populations, bomb civilians, imprison civilians and assault its neighbors all in the name of “defense.” Indeed, anything that Israel does is “defense” — it is a joke everywhere except in the US where Jews actually believe such nonsense.

          1. All you have in evidence is nothing
            All I have in evidence is every arab leader in the region swearing to wipe out jews from palestine prior to 1948
            except for abdallah who mercifuly suggested palestine be annexed to jordan
            I dont get history lessons from random people on the net. I have my own history to learn from. I know how my father died. How my grandfather died. Who they fought and that it was a yard away from where their family was hiding while arab terrorists rampaged through motherland “falastin”
            Go preach your lies somewhere else

          2. Comment rule violation. The purpose of this blog is not to argue Zionist history. Your job & responsibility as reader is to write comments that are on topic. Off topic comments are not permitted. Consider this a warning.

          3. Agreed 100% Richard re excluding the tyre kickers……claims without data may be rejected without data…..

          4. Without discussing “Zionist history” a solution is not possible.
            The opponents of Israel,which is almost the whole world ,know Zionist history.
            That’s why they are opposed to the Zionist entity.
            I consider the opinion of refusing to discuss Zionist history as an insult to the memory of my family that was wiped out in ww2.
            (Israeli) Jews that are ignorant of the Zionists behaviour before and during ww2 are the biggest “Holocaust deniers” imaginable.

          5. @Shachalnur: It really doesn’t interest me at all what you think should be acceptable subject matter for the comment threads nor what you consider an insult to your family’s memory. In fact, I thought that particular point was rather lame & melodramatic.

            You have the rules. Respect them. If you want other rules, create your own blog or website.

          6. When do you want “Zionist history” to start?
            From when is it allowed to discuss Zionist history?
            or Zionist history is not an issue.
            Two posts down ,there’s more where this came from.

          7. Also, you can name it “west bank” as much as you (and the rest of the short-term memory world) want.
            Its judea and samaria. in any official map and document ever prior to the occupation of judea and samaria by jordan in 1948.
            But hey, for palestine-narative sympethizer, thats when history began , so i understand why thats the name you chose for the “palestinian mother land”. A name that was used to describe it by the occupying jordanian king.

        2. Israeliboy:

          you should grow up sometime soon…and join the adults globally who see your remarks as those of a bigot.

          1. Your “father” and “grandfather” == were they busy kicking Palestinians out of their homes and lands and appropriating their rights? If they died, they fell to the right of self-defense. I mean Charles Manson had a mother and father. What history is that?

        3. You know very well there have been (not recently thank god) soldiers killed from stones.

          I know very well that you’re lying through your teeth. Comment rules demand facts and proof of claims. Therefore, you will be moderated until you provide credible proof of this claim. Comments you attempt to publish will only be published by me if you provide such proof and these comments respect the rules. If you violate them further you may lose these privileges.

    2. Doesn’t Israel have a Stone Dome for taking out these lethal stones? Where is the list of stone fatalities? Does it come close to, say, 1400 — the number slaughtered in Gaza without a single stone?

    3. Your defense of the poor, embatled Israeli soldiers would carry MUCH more conviction if you could show similar treatments of the Jews (Orthodox) who routinely throw “rocks” at people breaking the sabbath or women wearing “unseemly” clothing.
      Israel and its defensive Jews have all the right to kill Arabs (in self-defense, of course) and demolish homes and harass Palestinian men, women and children, when they mete out the same punishments to Jews, for the same “crimes”.
      Until then, what Israel and its Jewish citizens are doing to Palestinians is simply genocide…look up the definition of “genocide” in the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of Genocide http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html. I draw oyur attention particularly to Article 2, sections a, b & c.

    1. You claimed soldiers were killed with stones. I asked you to show that stones in & and of themselves have killed IDF soldiers. Pay close attention to what you wrote & I wrote and respond to it, & not to what you imagine I wrote or wanted me to write.

      1. I guess i was wrong. no soldier ever was killed from stones. ony severel wounded.
        Civilians however, have been killed.

        1. @israeliboy: Thanks for your honesty. I knew no soldier had been killed by stones. Yes, some have been wounded. But I assure the number of wounded soldiers is dwarfed by a factor of 100 or more to 1 by the dead and maimed Palestinian & international activists.

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