Joyce Chedia – On Obama's speech in Cairo
By Guest Post • Jun 13th, 2009 at 19:52 • Category: Analysis, Features, Israel, Newswire, Opinions and Letters, Palestine, Religion, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, War, Zionism
On June 4 U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama gave a much-heralded speech addressed to the Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt. The commentary below is based on a comment Chediac, a Lebanese-American, made at a June 5 Workers World Forum in New York City.
Obama made a speech. It was called “bold” and “tough on Israel” because it called for no new Israeli settlements in the West Bank. But Israel does not have to start new settlements to continue the strangulation of the West Bank. It merely has to expand the huge high-rise settlements ringing East Jerusalem, which have virtually sealed off the West Bank. And many of these are not even considered settlements anymore, so their expansion is not even monitored.
Obama made a speech. It was hailed as “evenhanded” because for the first time a U.S. president mentioned the word “Palestine,” and said Palestinians have a right to a state. But he called on Palestinians defending their right to a state, and on Hamas by name, to “renounce violence” while never calling on Israelis to renounce violence and the more than 60 years of state terrorism Israel has perpetrated against the Palestinian people, made possible with U.S. aid and U.S. weapons.
Obama made a speech, which will surely lead to another round of peace talks. Since talks began in 2000, they have been used by Israel not to bring peace, but as a cover for unprecedented violence against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. In the name of peace Israel has been building the apartheid wall, riddled the West Bank with checkpoints, demolished homes and stolen land, tortured and arrested youth so that the West Bank is now one big jail. Meanwhile, Gaza is under siege.
The time for such talks is long past. Action is needed to give the Palestinians some relief. But Obama did not take action. He did not demand disassembling the apartheid wall on the West Bank. He did not demand lifting the siege of Gaza, where 10 percent of Gaza’s children are now growth-stunted from the long-term effects of malnutrition. Instead, Obama made a speech.
Obama made a speech that was much heralded in the U.S. media, but U.S. troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and U.S. drone planes are still bombing Pakistani villages.
Obama made a speech, but the Sixth Fleet is still in the Mediterranean Sea; U.S. bases are still in Egypt, Israel, the Gulf States and the Indian Ocean. U.S. bases in Europe are still within striking distance of the Middle East.
Obama made a speech but the U.S. Navy still has a huge nuclear-armed armada in the Persian Gulf, with guns aimed at Iran. It is well known that the U.S. military threatens the Middle East in order to keep Middle Eastern oil in Wall Street’s hands. Yet Obama’s speech, which was called “insightful,” never once mentioned “oil.”
Obama made a speech in Cairo, the largest city in Africa. In order for Obama to make his speech there, the largest security force in the history of Egypt was assembled. The people of Cairo were confined to their homes and told to keep their windows shuttered. In order for Obama to make his speech, a city of 7.5 million was put on lockdown.
Obama said, “No government should be imposed by one nation on another,” and praised democracy. Yet Obama pointedly criticized Hamas, voted into office in a Palestinian election which Jimmy Carter and other observers called one the best examples of participatory democracy in the world. But Obama had no words of criticism for U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s head of state, who severely represses all political opposition, and is about to run in an election where he will once again be virtually unopposed.
Obama spoke in Egypt, the second largest recipient of U.S. aid. But Obama did not address the plight of the Egyptian people who, despite this influx of aid, have been steadily impoverished since their government came into the U.S. orbit.
Today, 70 percent of the Egyptian diet is bread. Over a million people live in Cairo’s cemeteries because there is no housing. Two years ago, one in five Egyptians couldn’t meet their basic living needs (Reuters, Oct. 17). Conditions now are surely worse as millions of Egyptians who worked abroad and sent money to families at home have lost their jobs due to the worldwide economic crisis begun on Wall Street. Obama certainly did not say that Egypt’s relationship with the U.S. has brought its people only poverty and desperation.
Obama made a speech. But nothing changed.
The fundamental relationship between the U.S. government and the Muslim and other people of that region remains one of exploiter and exploited. Despite Obama’s speech, U.S. imperialism still has nothing to offer working people in the Middle East, and only seeks to take more from them. It is truer today than ever that any gains made by Muslim and other oppressed peoples are won by their own independent struggles, and the solidarity they win from progressives abroad.
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(thanks John!)
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[...] Bay had been transferred back to Saudi Arabia. The transfers are part of US President Barack Joyce Chedia – On Obama's speech in Cairo – palestinethinktank.com 06/13/2009 On June 4 U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama gave a [...]
The well-known Israeli columnist, Gideon Levy, understood the true agenda behind Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo – "A true friend of Israel":
“Obama remained Obama. Only the Israeli analysts tried to diminish the speech’s importance (”not terrible”), to spread fear (”he mentioned the Holocaust and the Nakba in a single breath”), or were insulted on our behalf (”he did not mention our right to the land as promised in the Bible”). All these were redundant and unnecessary. Obama emerged Thursday as a true friend of Israel. …..”
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/obama-a-jew-hater-or-friend-of-israel/
BEWARE OF THE ZIONIST FAKE LEFTIST SITE http://www.revleft.com WHICH IS A ZIONIST-CIA LEFT-GATE-KEEPER WEBSITE SET UP BY CAPITALISTS !!
beware of the website http://www.Revleft.com which is supposed to be a forum and board about socialism and leftist ideology. But it’s not really about socialism and left ideology. That site is a left-gatekeeper, fake-leftist site which is funded by The World Bank, AIPAC and corporate lobbies
The website http://www.revleft.com is very dangerous to the world socialist movements. They are set up by capitalists and by Israel. The members of Revleft are a bunch of retarded liberal kids with an anti-capitalist fetish. They spend a lot more time getting into mischief like doing drugs and going to heavy metal and punk-rock concerts than actually fighting capitalism. Revleft was set up by the ruling classes in order to discredit genuine left-wing organizations.
one can easily espy the purpose of what O said in cairo: to obtain as many muslims onside as possible for further slaughter of muslims O's muslims and O don't approve.
and that is realistic and obtainable goal.
emirates, s.arabia, oman, yemen, jordan, morocco, egypt; and parts of lebanon, iraq, and afgh'n hav e turned against other muslims long time ago.
new beginings= variants of old endings. tnx
Israel might have played a role on behalf of the US empire during the cold war against the USSR but now it clearly does look like it's the tail that wags the dog. Wouldn't the US be quite able to buy oil from the Middle East without the expense and the diplomatic/ ideological albatros of Israel around its neck?
Jewish elites are important and influential parts of the US elite (and they've got a numerically significant cohort of "Christian zionist" helpers who are very strong electorally too) and Israel is very important to these folks and to their status.
I may be hogging this comment section but I thought that a more complete response to the piece might be of help. I won't be angry if you moderate it out.
I was a member of Workers World for many years. I cannot say just when I joined because there was no application or acceptance process. One fine day I was referred to as "comrade" during a meeting, I did not object to that, I continued being active with the group and so I was a member, I suppose. Around 1980 I had some disagreements with them. I have to say that for the most part I was on the wrong side of things because I was really still much more Jewish than one can be and still be a real internationalist and communist, though I did not realize this. Anyhow, I also had a valid dispute, which was over their connection with Mr. Ramsey Clark. Now, I know that Clark is taken to task for his connection with Workers World. I look at it from the reverse side of the mirror. Clark was, lest we forget, Lyndon B. Johnson's Attorney General, that is to say, chief law enforcement officer of the United States during a time when the Black Panther Party was under sustained and coordinated attack nationwide, he was nominally at least J. Edgar Hoover's boss when Hoover was harassing Martin Luther King, Jr., and he went public to say that there was no conspiracy responsible for murdering King. As chief law enforcement officer when he said that this was not just an opinion he held, it was the official line of a war criminal regime.
Clark was Attorney General, just as Johnson was President, due to the assasination of John F. Kennedy, ie, he benefited from it.
Later Clark ran in the New York Democratic primary against Bella Abzug, who was at least unconditionally anti Vietnam war and against Patrick Moynihan, a Vietnam war supporter. He played "moderate" as being between two "extremes" (pro war criminal Moynihan on one extreme, not pro war criminal Abzug on the other extreme.) Probably due to his intervention Abzug was beat by Moynihan and we had one more pro Vietnam War Senator, one less anti Vietnam War Senator. So, I always held that it was not Clark who had to answer for being associated with Workers World, but rather They who had to answer for their association with him, as there never was an open, public renunciation of his past which, I forget to add, had included locking up young men who resisted being sent to murder in Vietnam.
Okay back to Joyce's piece here.
Worker's World has held the position that Israel functions as a US tool and that it advances US interests in the Middle East and in other places as well. While they do not beat the drum about it, they oppose "anti-semitism" and have said that "Israel is a deathtrap for the Jewish people," that is to say Israel is "bad for the Jews." Now it's true that at the end of WWII a lot of Jews in Europe wanted to go to the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa and not to the semi-arid Arab country of Palestine, and that there were limits on Jewish immigration to these places and so many Jews may have "ended up" in Palestine against their desires. Overall though, Jews were pro-zionist and this pro-zionism penetrated from the Communist movement all the way to mainstream US politics.
Now, one can make a case that during its confrontation with the USSR the US had a useful ally in Israel (one can also make a contrary case but I'll not try to settle that here and now). It is just about impossible though to make a case today that Israel serves US interests. There could be some inertia in a change of US policy but the USSR left the building quite a few years ago, and it has to be realized that the policy of unstinting support for Israel still lingers on. Obama's "attack" is really mild, his outreach to Islam is really limited, and Israel still is the ruler of the US Congress. In the mainstream media one finds criticism of Israel for instance on MSNBC (Rachel Maddow comes to mind) but this criticism is not of Israel itself. The Jews Only State is established on other people's land against their will. There is no mainstream criticism of the notion that Israel must always be a "Jews Only State" even though the number of non-Jews in Israhell continue to grow faster than the numbers of Jews, not even counting the Palestinians on the West Bank, in Jerusalem and in Gaza. In pre 1967 Israel (so-called "Israel proper") around a third of people under five years old are not Jewish. If you count in "the occupied territories" Jews are already a minority! How can there be a State there that gives Jews special rights and deprives all others of full participation and full citizenship?
Jews in the US and West are overall a privileged group (there are exceptions to every rule of course) and they are very highly represented among the elites in most important fields from "revolutionary politics" and trade union leaderships to Bilderberg. Their status comes in part from their mass rejection of communism that followed WWII (no longer so important) and Israel's "good guy" status in the Western world. Mix in the awe that the "chosen by God people" the "ever suffering people" the "most persecuted victims" people mythologies endow and you get what you have.
The US could procure oil and gas without Israel. It could advance its interests probably more easily were it not encumbered with the Israeli albatross. So I think people like Joyce should ask if the tail is wagging the dog. I think it is.