29 thoughts on “Democrat’s Shameful “Cave” on Jerusalem – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. Richard, I can feel your pain, but before passing such a harsh judgment you need to be fair and accept that while a blogger can elect to be a moral purist the US President can`t afford this luxury. He has a world to run and in particular need to be concerned with outcomes. As an example, if you abandon Bahrain because pro-Iranian Shiites have a nominal majority there (the population is so small that just tens of thousands can shift the democratic balance) and as a consequence the pro-Western Gulf states weaken while a rogue Iran strengthens, shifting the power balance in the region, and also oil routes become endangered with meaningful implications for the world economy, then… for a purist blogger that is OK but not so for the person who is responsible for the well-being of very many people across the world.

    1. We’re not talking Bahrain, Tibor, we’re talking of the decay of democracy in the USA due to the bullying tactics of the pro-Israeli lobby. That is the over-riding issue now.

      1. Castellio, I keep reading this type of claim with disbelief. The Jewish lobby affects the US democracy? This is not just a wrong accusation – all lobbies affect US Congress acts and while AIPAC attracts a lot of attention, because Israel is in the news, there are many other pro-nation lobbies – but also a fantasy. AIPAC may have influence on how Israel-related matters are handled, that`s its declared mission, but any impact on the US democracy itself? – excuse me. Besides, the pro-Israeli Evangelic churches are many times more powerful than the Jewish lobby and they are so for their own reasons and own convictions.

        1. Your “disbelief” is unbelievable. It was recently demonstrated on the floor of the Democratic Convention.

          As a hasbarist you know that the Israeli government’s actions are frequently against the will and interests of the majority of Americans – most essentially, accepting and promoting race/religion as a suitable demarcation for recognizing different rights for different humans.

    2. The US president is responsible for running the USA, nothing more nothing less. The entire problem is the belief that they have a ‘world’ to run.

    3. How is Barack Obama being “responsible for the well being of very many people across the world?” I don’t see it or accept that this is true. He is sowing dissension with his drone, targeted killing & counter terror policy. He is destroying the U.S. consitutiton. That doesn’t help my well being or that of the rest of my fellow citizens.

  2. Richard, sorry to tell you but Jerusalem was (for 3000 years) are and will be the capital of the Jewish people (I do not know if you are one of it or not) and it is the capital of the state of Israel, whether you, Obama, Camron, the BBC, CNN or the Terrorist Abu-Mazen (yes, that one that denies the Holocaust) like it or not. This is a fact you will have to learn to live with it and the Palestinians will have to accept at the final peace agreement.

    Second, the fact that presidents and prime ministers are implementing other policy after election is very common. you said the word politician it is like saying a liar. I think that PM Sharon said in respond for same allegation that “what you see from here you cannot see from there”. Before election a lot of promises is being spread, this is marketing, we know that most of it will not come true. Sorry your expectation was not fulfilled, but you cannot change the history just by changing the heading of the letters.

    1. That’s not just a personal insult, but a personal insult against your host.

      Nobody is going to mistake you for an Arab, you may even be pleased to learn.

    2. Jerusalem was (for 3000 years) are and will be the capital of the Jewish people

      I do so hate this sanctimonious nationalist claptrap. Jerusalem was not the capital of anything after the last rebellion against the Romans. It was merely a small town with some religious significance. Since 1948 Israel has considered it its capital but only 2 other nations in the world agree. The bottom line is you can call yourself Martians for all the world cares, but no one in the rest of the world will call you that.

      Don’t tell me what I need to live with. I don’t give a fig for what you think I need to learn to live with. You’ll have to learn to live with the fact that you are the only people in the entire world who recognize your capital. If the rest of the world refused to recognize Washington DC as my nation’s capital because I was occupying half of Canada against its will I’d be mighty concerned. But no one says you should be. You can ignore the rest of world if you wish. It won’t reflect well on you. But you don’t give a damn about what anyone else thinks anyway, do you??!

      1. Having some interest in rebelling against “Roman” rule myself (at least as far as the Treaty of Rome goes) was the rebellion the work of “JewKIP” by any chance?

    3. Ilan, I am an Israeli. I consider Jerusalem as capital of Israel. That is, West Jerusalem. East Jerusalem should be the capital of a future Palestinian state, if the Palestinian people wish so. It can under no circumstance be that an undivided Jerusalem will be capital of Israel. The Palestinians in East Jerusalem have the democratic right to decide otherwise. After all, we Israelis (citizens of the “only democracy” in the Middle East) believe in and act according to democratic principles, or don’t we, Ilan?

  3. Dear Richard.
    If servitude to a foreign power is what America actually wanted all along, why did you fight so hard in 1776 and 1812? A British Governor General would always have been politer to the American people than your new Israeli one is likely to be.

  4. Why are they voting in this manner?
    I mean, “ayes and nays”? wouldn’t it be more accurate to use more modern methods, like SMS votes?

  5. Unbelievable szenes! This should’nt have happened. The matter of the location of the capital of another state belongs to this state and the other affected parties (unfortunatelly still without their own state), but definitely not on the election agenda of the democrats.

  6. No one seems to be able to give a straight answer in the DNC, but the theory of Occam’s Razor suggests that this was simply an oversight, not a willful omission, and I will continue to believe that until a senior official says, point blank, on the record, that the omission was willful. The rest of the platform was strongly pro-Israel, and no one, including AIPAC, had any problem with it until the GOP raised the issue. There is no rule, Richard, that a convention platform must strictly reflect American policy. Past platforms of both parties have called for Jerusalem to be recognized as Israel’s undivided capital. It has never translated into policy. Like many platform paragraphs, it’s a sop to an interest group, not a restatement of American policy or law.

    I’ve written extensively on what happened yesterday and day before on facebook, and I am unhappy that Obama took the bait and changed something that didn’t need to be changed in the first place. Republicans have been playing politics with the recognition of Jerusalem issue for months now, and they’ll continue to do it, by sending up conservative hacks in the press corp to bother Jay Carney and State Department officials with questions about it.

    There is nothing opaque and vague about the DNC statement. It’s exactly the right thing to say. US policy on final status and negotiation hasn’t changed in four decades; i.e., the US does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and follows UNSC 242 as the basis for resolving the conflict. And there’s little wrong with putting Jerusalem in the platform; presumably, West Jerusalem will be recognized as Israel’s capital if there is a two-state solution, unless you believe that Jerusalem should be wholly internationalized.

    Moreover, yesterday’s dissension over the DNC’s badly-managed amendment was not necessarily because of Israel. David Gergen opined that it could well have been an objection to the ad-hoc process itself, which was sprung on the delegates unexpectedly. Ted Strickland’s religion-tinged speech in favor of adding references to G-d to the platform likely ticked off anyone who favors a strong church-state separation. In addition, the hall seemed to be half-full during the vote.

  7. >In for what? For pandering to the Israel lobby? For a do-nothing Middle East policy for the next four years? For hundreds more targeted killings in Muslim lands ( civilians killed in Drone attacks had to be terrorists!! )? For wholesale violations of the Constitution? For witch hunts against whistleblowers and leakers ?<
    I ask the same questions…… and will add….. For wholesale SURVEILLANCE on law abiding American citizens….monitoring phone calls and emails and tracking their movement by their cellphones and GPS????
    Should I hold my breath waiting for answers??

  8. very well written! Love it Richard,
    Last paragraph portrays perfectly what I think.
    unfortunately, if on has to choose
    Between him and Romney ….

    1. Yes, if it gets close between the two (will it?) just hold your nose and vote for Obama anyway… Do we need to see another country destroyed by a disastrous war?

  9. Correction?

    currently reads “upstanding Mr. Hyde to the monstrous Dr. Jekyll’ –

    Dr Jekyll was the good doctor – Mr Hyde was the werewolfish psycho.
    I know, I know – the only way I can mneomnically remember it is by the “werewolf has a hairy hyde” / (hide)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3M1wEe3hUs
    Jekyll always sounded like a good name for a crazy – I think that is what always got me

  10. “I hate the Israeli Lobby.”

    Wasted hate. Hate the sham system the U.S. calls “democracy.” I called both my democrat senators and told them it was a shame and a sham.

    I also posed the question of whether or not they would “cave” this easily when the insurance companies and Wall Street come after Medicare and Social Security. Have you any doubt?

    I will either boycott this presidential election or vote for Jill Stein, who is a real candidate. Statement in Israel Palestine: http://www.jillstein.org/palestine_israel_statement

  11. What if there were “targeted killings” in France? What if the intended target was a perfectly respectable software engineer at a British satellite builder and there were several collateral victims as well? What if the killings were so brutal that all of France was outraged? What if the circumstances of one victim’s survival were sufficiently harrowing as to turn even the Murdoch empire aside from its usual position of unqualified support for Israel?

    Would the Hasbara possess the arrogance to write to the Daily Mail, of Le Monde, justifying it all?

    Richard, you will probably moderate this one out. But even if you do, you need to think about the “what if?” because there’s a distinct absence of other credible explanations and suspects at the moment.

    1. Thinking back to the Dubai assassination and Mossad’s embarrassment at the speed with which the Dubai police were able to use face recognition software to identify and retrospectively track every move of, the entire murder squad, could Mossad have thought that Saad Al Hilli was one of the software developers?

      He wasn’t: his forte was fitting boxes together in the most efficient way possible, which is something Surrey Satellite and Airbus blessed him for. But the people who did develop that system for the Customer of Dubai were mainly based in the same county, Surrey. (Thank heavens they weren’t looking to murder stockbrokers!)

  12. I specifically told you 4 years ago that ALL Presidents of the United States end up following the same policies regarding the Arab/Israeli conflict……pushing for an agreement, whining about settlements but then realizing the ulimately nothing changes and then simply attempting to manage the conflict as best as possible. If Romney wins, no matter what he may promise, he will still continue the same policy. However, you, MJ Rosenberg and other “progressives” all assured us that with Obama’s election and a (then) Democratic majority in both houses of Congress,things were gong to change. The settlers were finished, AIPAC’s influence was finished, the US would push for an agreement and Professor Dr Bernard Avishai even assured us that since Obama was the most popular and powerful President since Eisenhower in 1957, and just like Eisenhower was powerful enough to force Israel to unlaterally withdraw from the Sinai then, without at peace agreement, Obama was now in a position to do the same.
    Now, since I am a stupid right-winger, Richard, and you and the others I mentioned are a intelligent “progressives”, why were all of you so wrong and I was right?

    1. You were no more right than a broken clock. That is, twice a day you have the right time. The rest of the time you’re nothing more than a broken right wing time-piece. I expressed hopefulness about Obama for the first few months of his presidency. For the past 3 yrs my views have been uniformly harsh & far more accuarate than yours. That’s because I recognize that the current policies are a recipe for disaster. Not just for U.S. policy, but for Israel as well. In fact, I’m beginning to believe that current Israeli policy will lead to the end of the Israeli state as we know it. That may not happen for 10 or 20 yrs. But eventually there will be one state and Jews are very likely to be a minority. They will be screaming at how unjust this is. But the rest of the world won’t care. Not a bit. Because you had your chance to compromise & chose extremism & rejectionism. YOU’ll have made your bed and then you’ll have to lie in it.

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