-Caveat Lector-
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2568.shtml
Kerry Indicates He Would Continue Bush's Pro-Sharon Policy
Ira Glunts, The Electronic Intifada, 6 April 2004
Lately, Senator John Kerry has been reassuring voters that he will be as pro-Israel as President Bush. He has expressed his support for Sharon's policy of unilateral disengagement, building of the so-called security barrier and the political isolation of Yasser Arafat. The candidate's present position toward Middle East peace contradicts his past support of the Oslo peace process and provides a surprising contrast to his views when he was a young anti-war leader in the early '70s.
In April 1971 young John Kerry, a war hero, who was a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War went to Washington to protest the American military presence in Southeast Asia. In what is considered the beginning of Kerry's public career, the handsome decorated officer testified before the the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was interviewed extensively in the national media. The young Kerry shocked the nation when he related that war crimes and atrocities were being routinely committed by American soldiers in an unjust war. Like the Americans in Vietnam, now Israeli soldiers are being sent by their government to battle against an indigenous population that is attempting to rid themselves of a foreign invasion force.
The organization, Courage to Refuse, whose members are Israeli army reservists that refuse to participate in their country's war of occupation are reminiscent of the members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Like John Kerry in the early 70s, these reserve soldiers are telling the Israeli public about the war crimes, atrocities and violations of the Geneva Conventions that the Israeli army is committing routinely in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli refusers are saying that Sharon's war in the territories is not a just war of defense, but a unjust war of occupation and oppression. They are saying, as John Kerry said to US Senators in 1971, that what the soldiers are doing is not accomplishing any lofty goals, but are destroying the moral fabric of their own society.
More than 30 years later, Senator John Kerry has been defining himself as a Presidential candidate who would, if elected, continue the Bush foreign policy in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If you listen to what he is currently saying, you get a feeling that he wants voters (especially Jewish voters) to believe that a Kerry presidency would be even more supportive of the Sharon government, and actually less even-handed in its dealings with the Palestinians than the current administration. This is his present position despite some previous statements Kerry made fairly recently which indicate that he may have supported a more open-minded US policy toward the region.
Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League's national director, who was present at a recent meeting in New York City between Kerry and 40 Jewish leaders, reported that Kerry laid "to rest a nagging concern - that relentless Democratic criticism of Bush's foreign policy implied criticism of Bush's closeness to Israel." This is according to Ron Kampeas in a column published in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. The article further quotes Foxman as saying that Kerry "tried to exempt Israel from the [Democrat's] critique of Bush's foreign policy." According to Kampeas, Foxman characterized Kerry as "agree[ing] with administration policy on isolating Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, [and] supporting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and on the security fence."
In a March 8 interview with the Associated Press, Kerry stated that Yasser Arafat was an "outlaw" who "has been an impediment to the peace process." Further, Kerry opines that Arafat "blew his opportunity" to be effective in 1999 and 2000. In stating that Arafat missed his opportunity in 2000, the Massachusetts Senator is alluding to the pro-Israeli position that then Prime Minister Ehud Barak made the Palestinians the most generous possible offer at Camp David, a wonderful deal which Arafat irrationally refused without making any counteroffer. Thus this proves, according to the above version of events, that there is no Palestinian peace partner with which the Israeli side can speak. This is simply not true, although it has been repeated so often in the American press that I imagine it forms the basis of most Americans' opinions about Yasser Arafat and of the Oslo peace talks.
Actually, after the failure of the July 2000 Camp David Summit, the negotiations continued through January 2001 when they were suspended by the Israeli Prime Minister Barak, not anyone on the Palestinian side. (For a good account of the failure of the Camp David Summit and its aftermath see Deborah Sontag, "The Quest for Peace in the Middle East: How and Why It Failed," New York Times, July 26, 2001.)
