“I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.”

But I am also disappointed in his giving up without even a real fight…. After all, he was the one that withdrew. Obama did not advise or push him to it. And even if he did, he shouldn’t have give up so easily.

And so the fight goes on…

But the late unlamented Kyl Amendment was really just an extension of the anti Obama smearmongering fr. the election campaign. There never was a campaign to resettle any Palestinians here, let alone Hamasniks. But if the wingnut pro-Israel hoaxsters could spread a rumor that there WAS such a plan it would throw Obama off his game for a few moments. That’s all these people ever hope for–to throw a cog in the machine. And Kyl, Islamophobe that he is (having hosted a screening of Geert Wilders Fitna for Capitol Hill), was only too happy to be co opted into this.

Do people still think of Obama as some kind of a saviour, as some kind of a hero, as ethical and moral?

Obama is just PR.

Putting a good face (lipstick) on a bad game (pig).

Obama is an American politician, and there are rules that he and every one of his ilk follow, once they reach a position of power in the American so called “democracy”.

Rule number 1 is slavish obedience to the Israel Lobby.

Which Obama always followed, as my blog link and this Washington Post article prove:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/04/AR2008060403508.html

“A mere 12 hours after claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday — and changed himself into an Israel hard-liner.

He promised $30 billion in military assistance for Israel. He declared that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force has “rightly been labeled a terrorist organization.” He used terms such as “false prophets of extremism” and “corrupt” while discussing Palestinians. And he promised that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” ”

Please, look beyond the hype and open your eyes.

We do not need false saviours – we need an educated populace.

France had warmly approved the coming about of the Israeli State and though it was a partner, together with Britain and the USA, to a 1952 tripartite agreement banning arms sales to the Middle East, began secretly supplying arms (tanks and the Mirage and Mystere planes with which Israel fought the Six Day War) to Israel. In 1956 of course it was allied with Israel (and Britain) in the Suez campaign.

All this began to change when De Gaulle appeared on the scene. In his memoirs (Memoirs of Hope 1971) De Gaulle, after voicing his admiration for what the Israelis had achieved, wrote coldly “… I put a stop to irregular dealings which had developed between Tel Aviv and Paris on the military plane since the Suez expedition, whereby Israelis had become permanently attached at all levels to French military staffs and services. In particular, French co-operation in the construction of a factory near Beersheba for the transformation of uranium into plutonium – from which, one fine day, atomic bombs might emerge – was brought to an end.”

It was, I think, a matter of “raison d’etat”. After the war within Algeria which De Gaulle had managed to extricate France from he judged improvement in the relations with the Arab world through a more evenhanded approach to Israel in the interest of the state.

De Gaulle warned Israel before the Six Day War of being the first to attack and stopped arms supplies a few days before the war, with the exception of spare parts for material already in Israeli possession.

When Israel turned out, in De Gaulle’s view, to be the aggressor and, against his advice, occupied Arab lands, the friendship came to an end. At a notorious press conference, held on 27th November 1968, where he described “le peuple juif” as “an elite people, self-assured and domineering”, he again condemned Israel’s occupation of Arab lands and the subjugation of local populations. He predicted there that Israel could not carry out a long term occupation “without oppression, repression, expulsions and resistance, which Israel, in its turn, calls terrorism.”

What seems to be mainly remembered about that press conference is De Gaulle’s remark about “le peuple juif”. Raymond Aron, the political scientist/sociologist, accused him in a well known essay, not of personal anti-semitism, but of seemingly having conflated diaspora jews with Israelis and having made anti-semitic utterances once more respectable.

De Gaulle resisted that interpretation in an exchange of letters with Ben Gurion with whom he seems to have had a rather warm personal relation (in his memoirs he professes his admiration for him saying that he “developed an immediate liking and respect for this doughty warrior and champion”). De Gaulle wrote: “Some people claim to see this assessment as derogatory, whereas in fact there cannot be anything disparaging in underlining the character thanks to which this strong people was able to survive and remain itself after 19 centuries spent under incredible conditions.”

In the same letter De Gaulle repeated his warnings about the unavoidable consequences of an “occupation which has all the aspects of an annexation” and by which Israel was “overstepping the bounds of necessary moderation.”

We know the rest of the story: the US took over the role of France with a vengeance (is it coincidence that during the same period the American contempt for and dislike of France seems to have increased?).

At this stage it doesn’t seem likely that President Obama will do a De Gaulle, that is judge American ties with Israel by the cool light of “raison d’etat”. But then De Gaulle was of course not bound hand and foot by an Israel lobby.