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by James Cross / March 4th 2007

Barack Obama's Middle East surge

In Chicago on Friday, the charismatic newcomer who is challenging Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic Party’s candidate for US President in 2008, proclaimed “total commitment” to the USA’s diplomatic and financial support for Israeli military actions. He also pledged to redeploy US troops from Iraq to other Middle East states, rather than bringing them home.

Describing Iran as “one of the greatest threats to the United States, to Israel, and world peace,” Senator Barack Obama said that in dealing with Iran, “no option, including military action, [should be taken] off the table”.

Obama skilfully distanced himself from the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, a decision that still haunts the Democratic Party which supported the attack at the time:  

“This war has fueled terrorism and helped galvanize terrorist organizations. And it has made the world less safe.”

He then managed to advocate a full withdrawal of US “combat forces” from Iraq, while at the same time proposing that enough US troops should stay in Iraq indefinitely to determine the course of events there:

“That is why I advocate a phased redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq to begin no later than May first with the goal of removing all combat forces from Iraq by March 2008. In a civil war where no military solution exists, this redeployment remains our best leverage to pressure the Iraqi government to achieve the political settlement between its warring factions that can slow the bloodshed and promote stability.

“My plan also allows for a limited number of U.S. troops to remain and prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for international terrorism and reduce the risk of all-out chaos. In addition, we will redeploy our troops to other locations in the region, reassuring our allies that we will stay engaged in the Middle East.”

It is notable that he called, not for American soldiers to be brought back to the USA, but for them to be posted in other Middle Eastern countries in order to increase US domination over the region.

Beyond criticism

Obama’s audience was a meeting of the powerful pro-zionist lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). His remarks are particularly significant because he has previously expressed some sympathy with the Palestinian cause.

At the AIPAC meeting, Barack Obama, who represents Illinois in the US Senate, claimed that Israel’s invasion and bombing of civilians in Lebanon last year, (in which nearly 1,000 Lebanese, one third of them children, were killed) was an example of Israel using its “legitimate right to defend itself”.

Obama commented:

“In moments like these, true allies do not walk away. For six years, the administration has missed opportunities to increase the United States’ influence in the region and help Israel achieve the peace she wants and the security she needs. The time has come for us to seize those opportunities.”

The senator made it clear that this should not include any criticism of Israel, or any pressure on the Zionist state to negotiate with the Palestinians:

“But in the end, we also know that we should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests. No Israeli prime minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States.”

Barack Obama also told the AIPAC lobbyists that if he is elected president, the USA will continue subsidising the Israeli military forces and supplying them with advanced US technology:

 “We must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs. This would help Israel maintain its military edge and deter and repel attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza.”

No rights for Palestinians

In contrast, Senator Obama argued that the Palestinians should not even have the right to choose their own government. He condemned the agreement between Fatah and Hamas to form a coalition government (which has, at least for now, reduced the internecine bloodshed in Gaza and the West Bank), and he insisted that the United States must dictate to the Palestinians that this coalition is unacceptable:

“This should concern us all because it suggests that Mahmoud Abbas, who is a Palestinian leader I believe is committed to peace, felt forced to compromise with Hamas. However, if we are serious about the Quartet's conditions, we must tell the Palestinians this is not good enough.”

The senator omitted to mention that among the reasons which made Abbas feel “forced” to compromise with Hamas is the fact that Hamas was the party which won the Palestinian general election. 

In a commentary published today on the Electronic Intifada website, writer and activist Ali Abunimah remarked:

“Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians.

”There was no comfort for the hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza who live in the dark, or the patients who cannot get dialysis, because of what Israeli human rights group B'Tselem termed ‘one cold, calculated decision, made by Israel's prime minister, defense minister, and IDF chief of staff’ last summer to bomb the only power plant in Gaza,’ a decision that ‘had nothing to do with the attempts to achieve [the] release [of a captured soldier] nor any other military need.’ It was a gratuitous war crime, one of many condemned by human rights organizations, against an occupied civilian population who under the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel is obligated to protect.

”While constantly emphasizing his concern about the threat Israelis face from Palestinians, Obama said nothing about the exponentially more lethal threat Israelis present to Palestinians. In 2006, according to B'Tselem, Israeli occupation forces killed 660 Palestinians of whom 141 were children -- triple the death toll for 2005. In the same period, 23 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, half the number of 2005 (by contrast, 500 Israelis die each year in road accidents).”

Ali Abunimah, who has met with Barack Obama on several occasions, noted that several years ago the latter attended a number of Palestinian and Arab-American community events, at which:

“…Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

In good company: Barack Obama with a leading Palestinian intellectual, the late Edward Said, at an Arab-American community event in Chicago, May 1998.

Although Obama gradually began changing his position in 2002, Abunimah poignantly recalled a conversation which he had with the senator in 2004:

“As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, ‘Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.’ He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, ‘Keep up the good work!’ ”

Senator Obama’s decisive shift into the hawkish pro-Israel camp is related to the version of democracy which is practised in the USA, in which millions of dollars are required to become a credible nominee for presidential candidate, and many millions more for the presidential election campaign itself. While welcoming Obama’s declaration and believing it to be sincere, Schmuel Rosner, the chief US correspondent of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper discussed the Illinois senator’s move in terms of the ‘Jewish money’ which candidates for Democratic Party nomination need to get their hands on:

“It is no secret that Jewish money plays a big role in the Democratic Party. ‘They don't have the number [of voters], but have the means to get the voters," a prominent Democratic operative told me last week. That's why I told the told the NY Sun that ‘I don't think his real motive is to win votes. It's, of course, Jewish money.’ Will he get it? Here's one clue. Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida is going to co-chair Barack Obama's White House drive in the state. And why would Wexler do such thing? Because ‘I have spoken with Barack to discuss the dangers facing our ally Israel, and I am convinced there will be no stronger supporter of Israel than President Obama’, his statement says. It ‘appears as Obama plans a big day on March 25 of fundraising in Florida, where he will be looking for help from the Jewish Democratic donor community", writes Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times today.’

Ali Abunimah agrees on the importance of finance in buying policy and policymakers in the US democratic system:

“Money and votes, but especially money, channelled through sophisticated and coordinated networks that can ‘bundle’ small donations into million dollar chunks are what buy influence on policy.”

He is slightly mistaken here. Many of the most important donations are not so small.

Abunimah’s tone is one of sadness tinged with a scrap of hope. Having lost, to the lure and necessity for hard cash, a talented and rising politician who had been something of an ally, he believes that Palestinian- and Arab-Americans should seek to gain some influence by developing their own funding networks. In this endeavour one may wish him well.

Deeper than money

But the USA’s ‘unique defense relationship with Israel’ (in Barack Obama’s eloquent phrase) goes much deeper than campaign donations, important though these are. Domination over the Middle East is of huge strategic importance for the USA, so much so that a President Obama would divert American troops from Iraq to other Middle East locations rather than bring them home. Israel is a Western political, cultural and military outpost, which serves the US strategy of keeping the region locked in ethnic and territorial conflict.  

Obama has freshness, glamour, and now he will get some pro-zionist cash. He has also demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of the importance of military actions and alliances in maintaining the USA’s supremacy; this will earn him some credibility within the strategic policy elite of the Council on Foreign Relations.  His willingness to allow financial opportunism to alter his principles will make him appear a more trustworthy figure to the corporations. The latest polls show him overcoming some of the distrust which many US black people feel for him.

But it is early days in the USA’s presidential election race. Much of the money has not yet decided who to support. The final result could even depend on who counts the votes.

 

Sources:

US election 2000- Gore Vs Bush:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,414842,00.html
http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2000

Israeli reports and comments: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3371763,00.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=832667&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1

Ali Abunimah, comment and picture: Electronic Intifada : http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6619.shtml

Text of Obama’s speech to AIPAC: http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/mar/02/text_of_the_obama_speech_at_aipac_today