Discussion: Obama Just Made Israeli Settlement Boycotts Kosher

I was such an ignoramus I never knew how different it could have been. I’m afraid I took him for granted. My parents’ having pretty much the same beliefs reinforced that. I never understood families that didn’t have impassioned beliefs and didn’t discuss politics and social justice at the dinner table. I had no idea Eleanor Roosevelt wasn’t revered in every home.

All this was before I was ten, so I guess I can be forgiven for not being aware there was no Santa Claus, so to speak. (Of that, taken literally, I was always aware.)

I have been extremely lucky, apparently. My first religious experience was Rabbi Beerman’s teachings at Leo Beck; one of the first things I remember watching on television was the Army-McCarthy hearings (although the bulletin about the end of the Korean War also stays with me; I was five at the time).

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Plitnick’s gleefulness is exactly what turns off mainstream American jews who also loath Netanyahu. He roots for causes advanced by people who will hold Israel to a higher standard than any other country with real enemies on its borders who have never wanted to make peace. (The enemies have changed over the past three decades, but they are there, like Hezbollah and Hamas.) All the Moslem refugees flooding Europe now are from Islamic countries, and not Palestine. Platonic validates Oren’s comments, making convincing Israelis who vote in these awful governments even more resentful of American Jews. However much I resent what Netanyahu does, I have to remember that Israelis get rockets from territories they abandoned, and can expect the same if the leave more.

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hear, hear!

Heh; my mom watched the Army-McCarthy hearings while she was pregnant with me, and always said I’d absorbed her politics in utero. Though the indoctrination hardly stopped at birth – your family dinners sound a lot like mine (as does your surprise at the discovery that not everyone sees the world the same way). The absence of a Rabbi Beerman in my life aside, I, too, feel very lucky: I had parents whose own parents gave them the gift of social consciousness, which gift they passed along to me before I even understood what it was.

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If this is at all possible, could the author clarify some language?

The resolution, which the influential American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) pushed hard for, was a transparent attempt to blur the lines between Israel and the settlements. However, now that the administration has made it clear it does not accept the conflation of Israel and the settlements, the effect of the action is precisely the opposite. The United States has now clarified that distinction and made it clear that, while it will enthusiastically defend Israel’s security, it will not extend that protection to the settlements.

The language in question is referred to as a “resolution”, “amendment”, and a “provision”. Which is it?

Also, I’m unclear how the State Department can wiggle out of legislation that was just signed. I’m not opposed to boycotts of settlements, either.

I found this post confusing, nonetheless.

Catchy headline, though.

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Ditto here on membership.

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Haven’t bothered to research the amendment/resolution/provision issue (though I think an amendment could also be either or both of the other two); but since it only says the trade rep must “discourage” such boycotts and has no enforcement mechanism, it’s probably no more problematic for the administration to qualify its execution of it than the typical (not the W-style) presidential signing statement, especially given the long history of US opposition to the settlements. But IANAL, so take my take for what it’s worth…

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Thanks, arrrrrj. My quibble is not with the substance of the legislation (I think). It’s with the author’s use of “amendment/resolution/provision” interchangeably.

An amendment is not a resolution; it’s an amendment to the legislation. Making it a part of the legislation. A resolution might precede that, but doesn’t have legislative authority.

Again, not objecting to the substance of the Administration position on this, but I do wonder whether this post clarified it properly.

Oh, come on! To say the US has always opposed settlements is ridiculous. The US has expressed its opposition through weak, impotent statements (settlements are “unhelpful to the peace process”) and has otherwise backed Israel unconditionally in the UN and in other contexts, while continuing to give Israel unconditional billions every year along with other aid. This has been going on for decades. Get a clue.

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Every settlement home for the past 30 years or more has been an act of terrorism.

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Bingo! “Mr. Sharon, don’t you think parading around the al-Aqsa mosque with an entourage of security thugs in tow might be a little, how should I say, provocative?”

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Call them what they really are, colonies, much like China is building on the Spratly Islands right now.

I would love to see a member of congress introduce a bill that would divert a few hundred million from the $3 billion that Israel receives every year for productive humanitarian measures aka. Soft power. Measures such as educating youth as a counterweight to hate filled madrasah 's, fighting infectious diseases or clean water projects. Elected officials who would oppose this modest measure don’t have their priorities straight.

Uh, no.
I’m not going to congratulate him for pushing for something, insulting its opponents, signing on to it and then saying “but we really don’t agree with this part of the thing we just signed on to.”

Really, headline writer? Really fellow commenters? You’re really going to fall for “we don’t mean THIS part of what we made law” again?

Again?

“flooding”?

Did Obama seek provisions in Fast Track/TPP to protect workers? No.
Did Obama seek provisions in the Fast Track?TPP to set livable wages? No.
Did Obama seek provisions in Fast Track/TPP to protect the environment? No.
Did Obama seek provisions in Fast Track/TPP to limit green house gases? No.

Obama knew what he was signing. Obama knew he did not dare risk the Fast Track?TPP windfall for corporations by standing up for America’s middle class.

But Obama was happy to protect Zionist expansion.

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I am glad your finger is no longer on the trigger, Harry.

So “nobody advocates eliminating all aid to Israel.” Really? Please reread the comments in this stream. As to “apartheid”, at best you are using the term inappropriately. At worst, you are buying into the effort to delegitimize Israel-- whether or not you intend to do so. The situation in the Occupied Territories is the result of war between Israel and its Arab enemies, which the Arabs initiated and then got their ears boxed. Like some other TPM commenters, you may not like the way that war came out and wish that Israel’s Arab enemies had won and had eliminated Israel and the Jews. But that’s not what happened. Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians follows the way that losers are treated in war, and that treatment is certainly subject to examination and criticism. But it is not apartheid. Apartheid is not that; apartheid is the harsh separate and discriminatory treatment of some of a country’s citizens by that country’s dominant citizens. It’s an odious practice, which is the antithesis of Israel’s raision d’être; Israel’s effort to live up to its founding principle has been imperfect, but closer to perfection than almost any other country.

Well said, Mr. Truman. Your comments are much closer to those of a great majority of Americans than are most of the comments on this thread. And thank you for having the courage- and taking the time - to set them out.

I am an American Jewish atheist (how I explain that is too long to be included here). If i had had a rabbi like Beerman around, I would have enthusiastically joined his congregation.

As to the substance of the article: I have had many Israeli friends and associates, including one who would qualify as a war hero in the IDF. He has refused to live in Israel for decades out of deep moral outrage at the settlement policy and the increasing domination of the ultra-Orthodox (who IMHO are different from our own christo-fascists only in the particulars of their belief system — in behavior they are blood brothers). It is a horrifying irony that a nation founded to give refuge from the blood-bath of the Holocaust should be transforming into a state dominated by racists and religious fanatics.

Yes, there is deadly hostility to Israel from certain surrounding movements, but I sense that they are no more monolithic than the citizenry of Israel itself. Since killing them (as in Gaza) only seems to produce more enmity, what is the future to be? Are you going to kill them all? Or might it be possible to find allies on the other side and work to encourage them? My understanding of Jewish ethics (with which I am entirely in accord philosophically) suggests the latter. The former has no other end but mutual assured destruction.