Israel Acts Appallingly Again
Whether Obama wants to do anything about Israel is one question. Whether he would ever be allowed to do anything about Israel is another question. I suspect the answer to both is negative. I am more certain about the second question than the first.
At the moment Israel is putting two fingers up to him by spurring ahead with new illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. I thought this was a grimly amusing piece from Sky News:
Under international law they are illegal, though Israel disputes this.
They are also a major obstacle to peace because they are spread out across the land that Palestinians want for their own state.
There are almost 500,000 Israeli settlers now living on occupied land.
Last year, their numbers grew three times as fast as that of the general population in Israel.
The Israelis say they have the right to continue what they call the “natural growth” of settlements, to allow for the increase in population.
A bit like “Murder is illegal, though Jack the Ripper disputes this. He says culling is required to reduce the female population.”
With bombing stepped up in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US withdrawal from Iraq an obvious fake which sees weekly increments in plans for the number of US troops to remain, and detention without trial for Guanatanamo internees to continue indefinitely – somewhere – behind a smokescreen of rhetoric, I am struggling to think of anything Obama does better, other than not look a complete arsehole.
You would hope that the combination of a rhetorically liberal US Administration with the most openly vicious of Israeli regimes might lead to some change in the massive supply of US money and weapons that keeps Israel viable for all those irreligious ex-Soviets who moved there for an easy high standard of living.
But I fear you would be very disappointed.