Obama and Change

It is no coincidence that the first policy speech that Obama choose to made after clinching the Democratic Party nomination was to the Israeli lobby to assure them that he would be a good friend of Israel. It makes you wonder how much “Change” we can hope to get from any American politician. And this is no small matter, because of the major problems facing the United States, the blind support for Israel is surely one of the largest. The inability of U.S. politicians to see Israel as the militaristic expansionist state that it is makes it impossible for the U.S. to genuinely pursue peace and create a healthy relationship with people not only in the Middle East but all over the globe. Until the U.S. faces up to the fact that Israel is not some poor, isolated, weak victim of foreign aggression, but is an expansionist state with one of the most powerful militaries in the world that blatantly flouts UN directives and has slowly but intentionally chipped away at Palestinian lands with the clear intention of eventually taking most, if not all, of the Occupied territory for itself, then the US will continue to face aggression from all corners of the world. Everyone knows the way to peace. Israel must pull back to the original UN boarders and properly deal with the right of return. The West must also take an active role in establishing a viable state for Palestinians in those boarders in much the same way that it did when it established the economic viability of Israel. It is no more complicated than that. But the US (and, by the way, the Harper Government) will not face up to this simple truth that the vast majority of the world’s population takes for granted. And for all his talk of change, Mr. Obama is part of this collective blindness.