Time To Get Real With Israel

galway | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Friday June 04, 2010 09:30 by donkylemore

ISRAEL IS REAL - a slogan from a holiday brochure Israel- mid 80's

Obama , crippled with an unfortunate triple legacy must make reality of his Cairo Rhetoric to sustain any Arab credibility.
- Israel bites the Hand that Fed

Obama's Cairo speech was an inspiration to the free world - it threatened only those states still under the oppression of dictators and oligarchs and religious fanatics .( Christian Right - Jewish Ultra Orthodox, Iranian secularism; Islamic Fundamentalism)
The speech awakened the Arab mind to the notion of amity ; a the new understating and respectful relationship with the West. It brought hope to the subjugated particularly in Palestine .Could they be released from the shackles of Israel domination at last. ?They waited as the soaring rhetoric rose up.. and up.. and soared into oblivion over the desert air , only to be remembered for its craftsmanship and the sublime elegance of its author.
But the words were a mirage . The Ideology faded all too soon.The President is now preoccupied in regaining some lost credibility over his management of 2 wars and one disaster. His approach to each seems to have been too restrained - timid even. The US now wonder about its relationship with her adopted ally in the Middle East ; Israel - has it been wise ?

Yes . Israel has become a liability to the USA . As the free world looked once more for a 'fair cop' to intervene in Israel/ Palestine and as we were buoyed up with hope ( the audacity of hope even !) when Obama sent G. Mitchell to the region followed by his Sect of State H. Clinton we waited to see what the ever enduring and avuncular Mr Mitchell could extract from the quagmire.
Then the Biden slap in the face
That would have been sufficient to enrage ambassadors ( lets use the term '' exercise '' instead?) had it happened in another host country to the US. VP .
But Israel is different ; it is forgiven like an errant child .Why ? Is it the legions of Laywers ?; the Hollywood Industry ?; Wall St. ?- all of these lobbyists have a robust Israeli component among their ranks. Why does the USA keep sending on the annual- bi/. tri -annual cheques to Israel.
The US relationship with Israel was always a little like Oscar Wilde's marriage to poverty '' the relationship was an unhappy one - It was doomed to failure from the start ''
Obama must reassert himself as a world statesman ; the rhetoric must be made real. The promises must at least be striven for and the endurance must persevere.
Would Jack Kennedy have waited and endured one test of friendship after another from a delinquent state such as Israel ? Would Eisenhower ?
What would Mr Mc Cain have done ?
And even setting all these aside - What would Mr Lincoln have done .?
Is that not the litmus test. for USA citizens?
We here Ireland are watching with bated breath this morning as the Irish Aid Supply ship steams towards Gaza . It is scheduled to arrive there tomorrow; The Israelis have determined already that it will not arrive there, but will be diverted to an Israeli post for '' inspection''- where the cargo , if to their satisfaction will be truck loaded to Gaza.

As I watch this I reflect that I spent 6 tours of duty as a doctor with the Irish forces in Lebanon (' 80-98) We lost some soldiers in UNIFIL as peacekeepers at the hands of Israel or its surrogate army the SLA.
My late father fought in WW2 as a dentist .. from El Alemain.. through Italy , the D Day landings .- He later was sent into Dachau to try to estimate the burned , the mutilated , the murdered Jews .
I wonder ; what was it all for. My paltry contribution pales in comparison to anyone's.But what was the point of the UNIFIL mission.
Like WW2 it was vile and viscous and bloody..
Unlike WW2 it was largely unsuccessful ; and equally unlike WW2 it lacked the nobility of total commitment. . We peacekeepers couldn't keep the peace . We had no armaments sufficient to stay Israels hand . They crossed the ''Blue Line '' when they choose .They bombed villages , mosques ; left a countryside splattered strategically with cluster bombs around schools particularly - colored ones at that , presumably to entice children to pick them up.
And we took note of every incursion ; every shooting incident and tickertaped them off to some office in New York and another in Geneva.

But from all this vileness of WW2 emerged a world free of Nazism , and from the still glowing embers emerged an Israeli State.
But it was a birth born from the wrong side of the sheets - It did not have the blessing of all the participants to the conflagration .Very few.She t declared herself a state as an unmarried girl announces her pregnancy with a macabre triumph to her shocked parents.
The child has grown to manhood , through middle age and as he approaches mid 60's , he has never forgiven ; he has ndever mellowed ; he is more belligerent now than as he was a juvenile delinquent.
And now he mocks the hand that has fed him so tenderly all his years.

I remember seeing on an Israeli tourist brochure during the 80's , the slogan - '' Israel Is Real '' !!
The slogan said more than a seductive enticement to lure you to the Promised Land .
There was something brash and overstated about it , which I appreciated more than most as enfeebled in my bunker I watched the Israeli real hardware rained down regularly .Sometimes they had the curtesy to warn us they were about to shell a village - just sometimes!

It is time for us all to Get Real With Israel.