When Obama leaves office after eight years as U.S. president, signs point to either an oligarch-approved Republican, or a cautious, hawkish Clinton, assuming office after promising to restore our military commitment to make the world safe for democracy.
These two years will be a time for Obama to act in his executive capacity. It will also be a time for the American public to reflect on the thinking of such Israeli Jewish scholars as David Shulman, the Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In an essay on the website of the New York Review of Books, Schulman considered the campaign just waged by Netanyahu:
"Imagine a white American president calling on whites to vote because 'blacks are voting in large numbers.' If there's a choice to be made between democratic values and fierce Jewish tribalism, there's no doubt what the present and future prime minister of Israel would choose."
Schulman, who in addition to his academic post is an activist with the Ta'ayush Arab-Jewish Partnership, has a bleak view of the current Israeli mood. He writes:
"...the Israeli electorate is still dominated by hypernationalist, in some cases proto-fascist, figures. It is in no way inclined to make peace. It has given a clear mandate for policies that preclude any possibility of moving toward a settlement with the Palestinians and that will further deepen Israel's colonial venture in the Palestinian territories, probably irreversibly."Netanyahu's shrill public statements during the last two or three days before the vote may account in part for Likud's startling margin of victory. For the first time since his Bar Ilan speech in 2009, he explicitly renounced a two-state solution and swore that no Palestinian state would come into existence on his watch.
"He promised vast new [Israeli] building projects in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. He made it clear that Israel would make no further territorial concessions, anywhere, since any land that would be relinquished would, in his view, immediately be taken over by Muslim terrorists.
"And then there was his truly astonishing, by now notorious statement on election day itself, in which he urged Jewish voters to rush to the polls because 'the Arabs are voting in droves.'"
Thomas Friedman provides the necessary data to refute Netanyahu's deceitful effort to say he did not really mean what he said about a future Palestinian state. Friedman writes:
"In the days before Israelis went to the polls, Netanyahu was asked by the Israeli news site, NRG, if it was true that a Palestinian state would never be formed on his watch as prime minister, Netanyahu replied, 'Indeed,' adding: 'Anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state, anyone who is going to evacuate territories today, is simply giving a base for attacks to the radical Islam against Israel.'"
Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian, (above, left) wrote a post-election guest column in the New York Times which must have startled a few Times readers with this headline: "Netanyahu's Win is Good for Palestine." His column begins:
"As a Palestinian, I breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear that [Netanyahu's] Likud Party had won the largest number of seats in the Knesset.
"This might seem counterintuitive, but the political dynamics in Israel and internationally mean that another term with Mr. Netanyahu at the helm could actually hasten the end of Israel's apartheid policies. The biggest losers in this election were those who made the argument that change could come from within Israel. It can't and it won't.
"Israelis have grown very comfortable with the status quo. In a country that oversees a military occupation that affects millions of people, the biggest scandals aren't about settlements, civilian deaths or hate crimes but rather mundane things like the price of cottage cheese and whether the prime minister's wife embezzled bottle refunds.
"For Israelis, there's currently little cost to maintaining the occupation and re-electing leaders like Mr. Netanyahu. Raising the price of occupation is therefore the only hope of changing Israeli decision making. Economic sanctions against South Africa in the 1980s increased its international isolation and put pressure on the apartheid regime to negotiate."
Munayyer, born in Lod, Israel, is a citizen of both the U.S. and Israel. He is a Palestinian American writer and political analyst who is the new Executive Director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, based in Washington, D.C. He was previously Executive Director of the The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development and its educational program, the Palestine Center.
Raising the "price of occupation," as Munayyer counsels, will, indeed, hit Israelis where it hurts, their pride and their economic well-being. though, based on past decisions, not their consciences.
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