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obtained of an interview that was to be broadcast Wednesday evening on the Charlie Rose show on Bloomberg TV.
Gaza flotilla: What should Obama do? | Michael Tomasky
“‘It’s legitimate for Israel to say, “I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight – 3,000 rockets on my people,”‘ Biden said.”
Jun 3, 2010 02:00PM
The current administration has a very different Middle East policy from its predecessor. But there is one constant, like it or not. The United States is not going to denounce Israel’s actions in starkly moral terms. That just isn’t its role.
It is tempting to say the US should express furious moral outrage over Israel’s raid of the Gaza flotilla – but that is not its role What should the United States be doing in response to Israel’s flotilla raid? It’s tempting to say that it should be expressing furious moral outrage. If it can’t express outrage at Israel over this, then when will it, Arabs and others might ask. It’s a fair question.
What is? Keeping the recently started proximity talks going, and retaining the credibility to try to push both parties (we should really say all three parties, since Fatah and Hamas are so dramatically divergent now) toward more reasonable positions. On the first point, so far so good. Despite all the incendiary rhetoric flying around, the talks are continuing. Mahmoud Abbas met with George Mitchell yesterday, and Netanyahu will see him today. Abbas will be in Washington next week, and all signs are that Netanyahu will soon reschedule the visit with Obama that he cancelled in the wake of the raid.
The Obama administration certainly pays a price for not doing that – with Turkey particularly in this instance, since (at least) four citizens of this also-crucial ally were slain by the IDF, and across the region more generally. I’d have little doubt that from Istanbul and Damascus and Riyadh and Hezbollah’s south Lebanon stronghold, Obama appears weak and unfair. And it’s not just that the administration has lacked outrage. Let’s be plain. It has defended Israel in ways no other country would right now. At the UN security council, the US blocked a forceful anti-Israel resolution and shepherded the passage of one that ambiguously condemned the “acts” (by unidentified parties) that led to the nine deaths. Even this wasn’t really enough by the standards of powerful American Jewish interest groups. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, always worth reading during times like this, reported yesterday that Aipac and other groups were pushing for a more pro-Israel line from the administration (“Groups want stronger US defense of Israel, Obama not obliging,” ran the headline). The piece also quoted Elliott Abrams, the hard-line Israel hawk who was in the previous administration, as saying that the Obama team should have blocked any resolution at all. The administration was undoubtedly getting these messages, because last night, Joe Biden defended Bibi Netanyahu. Again from the JTA:
On the second point, well, as usual, who knows. The administration has now, as of this morning, stepped out more publicly (albeit on background in the New York Times) as saying that the blockade has to end. As Martin Indyk notes in this Time magazine column, the first order of business here for Obama, Mitchell and Hillary Clinton would be to try and strike a deal to make that happen: lifting the siege in return for agreed-upon inspection regimes and the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. It just might be (emphasis on might) that the flotilla incident, so widely questioned and denounced within Israel, has perversely given new life to that possibility. Diplomacy is at best unsexy and slow. At its worst, involving intransigent forces such as Likud and Hamas, it has all the allure of watching slugs mate. But diplomacy is the US’s job here. The high moral outrage is necessary, but it’s the job of others. • Comments on this article will remain open for 24 hours from the time of publication but may be closed overnight
“Biden said Israel has an ‘absolute right’ to defend its security interests, according to a transcript Politico
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Gaza Protest Palestinian territories Turkey Middle East Obama administration Joe Biden Barack Obama US politics United States US foreign policy Michael Tomasky guardian.co.uk Š Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Mixing the Personal and the National Narratives Oct 28, 2009 09:35AM
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in a ghetto where she was born to loving parents who were forced to part from her, to a new and loving Catholic family, to an aunt and uncle who brought her to Israel where they found difficulty and hardship, and then to a fourth family in the U.S. where she grew into a mature woman. This is a story of heroism, drama, and the remarkable ability to overcome adversity. My Sister Tikva is available from Go2Films. Original post source> QR Code You can read this post online by scanning this barcode (or visiting http://paraisrael.com/2009/10/idf/holocaust/mixing-the-personal-a nd-the-national-narratives/)
My Sister Tikva, directed by Vered Berman, is a different kind of Holocaust memoir. With much sensitivity and intimacy, it tells the story of a Holocaust survivor named Tikva, and leads the viewer on a journey, unraveling the details of her life. Born in 1943 in the Kovno ghetto, Tikva was moved from family to family, raised by four different sets of parents, until her journeys brought her to the United States. Today, as an older woman, she travels to Israel to visit her brother, Yair, and the story of her life begins to unfold.
Tikva was born to Assia and Yosef, who must have been very special people to name their daughter, Tikva (“hope”), during those terrible times. Before they were killed in the destruction of the ghetto, they gave her to a devout Catholic couple. They took her in because the wife had grown up as an orphan and was taken care of by others and she believed that taking in a Jewish toddler provided her with the opportunity to repay what others had done for her. Tikva travels to Lithuania to visit this family of righteous Catholics who saved her life when she was just a toddler. After three years of living with this family, Tikva’s Aunt Nechama and her husband came to “rescue” her after the war and brought her to a D.P. camp and from there to Israel. Due to their dire financial straits in 1950s Israel, they sent Tikva, at the age of 12, to live with cousins in America. Tikva’s odyssey is a remarkable story. On the one hand, it is the story of one woman’s life and on the other, it reflects the drama of the Jewish people in the 20th century – from death and destruction
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