Nader On Obama's
Subservience To AIPAC
11-5-8
Open Letter To Barack Obama
Uri Avnery described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke
all records for obsequiousness and fawning"...adding that Obama "is prepared to
sacrifice the most basic American interests (to Zionism)."
Between Hope And Reality
By Ralph Nader
Dear Senator Obama:
In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and
change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is
an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that
succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the
continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.
Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented
contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most
interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic
nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart.
Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street
bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator
Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record
and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants,
offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and
avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave
and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you
are their man?
To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires
character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range
opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender
of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an
acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the
militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water
seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken
territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls
in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are
opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.
You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the
Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed
two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and
Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year
plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in
your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained
the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem,"
and opposed negotiations with Hamas--the elected government in Gaza. Once
again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll
by the respected news- paper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored
"direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one
of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli
people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of
Palestinian society by the Israeli state."
During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45
minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to
Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the
brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel
blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations
charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year
have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the
Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its
replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a
viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic
and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role
of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of
much shock and little awe.
David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip
succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact
that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate,
but not as a President."
Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did
not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall
construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of
Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use
of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration].
But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its
'legitimate right to defend itself.'"
In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly
criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including
attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in
early 2008.
Israeli writer and peace advocate--Uri Avnery--described Obama's
appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and
fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American
interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an
Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the
Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim
world and mortgaged his future -- if and when he is elected president," he
said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC
conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for
Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."
A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you
turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send
surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches
and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W.
Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after9/11 to express proper
sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.
Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008
titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing
examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life,
who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three
days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger
Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque."
None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry
against Muslim-Americans -- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.
Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or
even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the
hard-liners to prohibit former presidentJimmy Carter from speaking at the
Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and
one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.
Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but
his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of
the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead
of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical
international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to
"tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's
post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!
But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of
American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on
www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans
composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention
helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in
America.
Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented
upward career move follow-ing a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke
"change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the
"corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to
the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not
turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of
greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the
militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming
of American politics--opening it up to the public funding of elections (through
voluntary approaches) -- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be
heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties.
Call it a competitive democracy.
Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly
stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it
daily.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
November 3, 2008
The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"_______________________________________________
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