On 2010-03-16, at 7:33 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > Robert Naiman wrote: >> But he is challenging Israel. > > ...Israel, like all shitty racist countries, only understands force. ========================== Or as Frederick Douglas famously and non-scatalogically put it: "If there is no struggle there is no progress...Â…Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Such power as the Palestinians have been able to muster is what has always concentrated minds and reawakened US and Israeli interest in disengagement from the occupied territories. Today we learn: "Rising political and religious tensions in Jerusalem spilled into the streets Tuesday with a string of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police that left more than 100 people injured. "In scenes reminiscent of past uprisings, dozens of Palestinian youths, some with scarves masking their faces, pelted police with rocks, blocked roads and burned tires in half a dozen neighborhoods around East Jerusalem." Full: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-palestinian-protests16-2010mar17,0,428951.story This is good news. May it continue. Palestinian demonstrators and their sympathizers in the "Arab street" have been relatively quiescent for some time now - mirrored in the complacent attitude of the Israelis towards even a token settlement with the PA. More "scenes reminiscent of past uprisings" in Palestine and throughout the Middle East would do more to stimulate the Obama administration's interest in a solution than a thousand public slights from their Israeli allies. By the same token, an Iranian nuclear deterrent, despite all the horror which such weapons invoke, would do more to dissuade the Israelis from acting with impunity in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and elsewhere in the neighbourhood than a thousand UN resolutions condemning their aggressions. I suspect it is this potential constraint to its military freedom of action, rather more than an existential fear of an Iranian strike by mad mullahs, which concerns the Israeli high command and lies at the heart of Israeli efforts to quash Iran's nuclear program. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
