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Obama

  • JOURNALS OF ECSTATIC HATE

    Sometimes in the construction of a better world, it is necessary to go into the heart of darkness, to quote Conrad. Sometimes it is only in exploring our heart of darkness that we can figure out where we are, so that we know how to get beyond our current fallen state. I am drunk with blood these days, thoughts of blood, fear of blood, the rage of boiling blood, and so is anyone for whom  Palestine and Israel are a fixation.

    This report of carnage in a Gaza hospital in all its horrifying details is typical of the innocents who are being cut to pieces. What stands out is the report of the impatient, smiling Islamic Jihad fighter who is just thrilled with the blood of his own people. New recruits to his cause. He sees around him a man with his

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  • Radwan Masmoudi on Urgent Questions about Gaza and Global Demonstrations

    Radwan is one of the most passionate voices for Islam and democracy in the world today. He is an important force for change in Washington. He wrote this letter to me:

    Dear Marc:

    I just participated in a conference call, organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, with Shibley Telhami on the situation in Gaza. I took a lot of notes, and wanted to ask several questions, but unfortunately did not have an opportunity to ask them. So, I wanted to share my comments and questions with you in the hope that they may help us to find the right solution to this very dangerous situation in Gaza and in the Middle East.

    First some important comments:

    1. It is very dangerous and counter-productive for the US to be always siding “unconditionally” with Israel. Yes, of course, Israel has “the right to respond”. To be fair and balanced, and therefore …

  • In the Land of Hayal’s and Shahids

    Writing from Jerusalem

    No one knows whether the Middle East is at the dawn of a new era with the accession of President Obama to leadership, whether between Obama, the new Saudi king’s very serious Peace Proposal, and President Assad’s keen interest in a peace process, that we are at the dawn of a strong consensus to finally resolve the central conflict of the region, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. We could also be at the beginning of a downward spiral of hatred, revenge, populist rage, military force, fanatical manipulation, and zero sum desperate final measures of power and destruction that will yield unprecedented human misery in the region. I cannot tell, honestly.

    But I do know that we are all responsible for this. We are responsible in everything we say and do, and in every action that we support. The nonsense that corrupt

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  • Election Promises in Israel and Fantasy Politics

    Reporting from Jerusalem this month:

    An astonishing statement from Benjamin Netanyahu. Not only does he have a plan to topple Hamas in Gaza through assassinations (as if that was not already tried and aborted by warriors more talented and experienced than he), but he also plans to proceed with diplomacy in his region by making clear to President Assad that the Golan will stay in Jewish hands:

    “It should be clear to the Syrians and to the world, the Golan Heights will stay in our hands,” Netanyahu said.

    This is a fascinating position. Either Mr. Netanyahu is delusional in terms of his understanding of Syria and the political realities of the moment, or he holds the Israeli right-wing voting public in contempt. My hunch is the latter, and I felt the same way about McCain’s contempt for his right wing in the United States. Everyone knew that ‘time was up’ …

  • Who is the Real Domestic Terrorist? Bill Ayers Finally Speaks

    I was impressed by Bill Ayers’ recent public disclosure. His anguished re-reading of the Vietnam Era, his desperate attempt to stop a war that killed millions of Vietnamese people and 60,000 Americans, his remorse over some of the more extreme efforts he made, and his explanation of the principled violent and illegal stands that he took, all suggest a person of conscience and subtlety. I would not have done what he did in those buildings, and I would not demonize a military or country that way his group did, but only because of what I now know about the poison of demonization. In fact the radical right demonized and scapegoated Ayers in order to destroy the candidacy of Barack Obama. Demonization is a problematic domestic political form of terrorism that must resisted. I am both relieved by who is and horrified by what was done to him by this campaign.…

  • ACT NOW ON SYRIA, IRAN, ISRAEL AND PALESTINE

    A new report from the Saban Center emphasizes the critical opportunities and dangers right now in the Middle East. It recommends that President Obama acts now to open a channel without preconditions to Iran, as well as to Syria, engaging the Palestinian/Israeli peace track at the same time. It is vital that one track not be done without the other in order for there to be no spoilers. The prospects for peace should these tracks proceed is high, the prospects for war should they fail or languish is high in my opinion. Now is the time to send the signals. This is a broader reach than Miller’s position referred to below and emanates out of a broad realist consensus. I am persuaded that we have at this moment in history an interesting confluence at work of realist positions concerning the national interest and the work of conflict resolution and peacebuilding.…

  • The Road to the State of Palestine Through Syria

    Aaron Miller writes an extremely pessimistic piece of advice for President elect Obama on the impossibility of Israeli/Palestinian peace right now. I think that it is a very well written piece, and that anything Aaron writes should be studied carefully. But there are two responses that should soften his pessimism.

    There is a myth out there driven by the Clinton parameters of December 2000, the Taba talks in 2001, the Geneva accord a year later, and the hundreds of hours of post Annapolis talks between Israelis and Palestinians that the two sides are “this close” (thumb and index finger a sixteenth of an inch apart) to an agreement. The gaps have now narrowed, perhaps impressively, but closing them, particularly on the identity issues such as Jerusalem and refugees, is still beyond the reach of negotiators and leaders.

    The dysfunction and confusion in Palestine make a conflict-ending agreement almost impossible. The

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  • “You can be anybody you want to be!”

    Election Night

    I stood next to this family in the final moments when Obama was elected, right as they were announcing California and the West Coast. My Ruthie was capturing everything on film. We were in a room of over a thousand people all of whom had worked on the Washington regional campaign.

    Look at the eyes, look at the faces. I think I have waited forty years to see these eyes, these looks of wonder, pain and joy, all mixed, as if it were a hundred generations of ancestors in their eyes.

    I came of age and into political consciousness with the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The tragedy has weighed on me ever since, pretty heavily, for family reasons. It is they who were on my mind at that moment standing next to this lovely family all of us screaming at the top of our lungs!! I …

  • The Race Canard Put to Rest

    Many people I know said that America would never elect a black man President. Some were just plain racist, and some east coast liberal intellectual types who are scared of the other America.  They were all very wrong. Yesterday, 62,443,218 people burried that canard and voted for Barack Obama. This is more than a decisive victory, it is the most votes anyone has ever received in any election in American History.…

  • I MET JIM CROW AND SENATOR OBAMA IS LAYING HIM TO REST

    I was phoning somewhere in the American South for Obama the other day. What an education for me! There were simple, poor families that have been energized by the campaign, volunteering, excited. There were some angry independents, a completely nuts Nader person who hung up on me after screaming about women getting 93 cents on the dollar.

    And then there was “Jim Crow” himself, who I have always longed to meet. When I say “Jim Crow” I mean those people in the United States who have actively supported racial segregation their whole lives. They actively ensured through legislation in the late nineteenth century, referred to as the “Jim Crow Laws”, that blacks would remain segregated and unequal in the United States, in a steady reversal of the gains made by victory in the Civil War over slavery. The great President Woodrow Wilson was actually the first Southern Democrat to …

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