roachboy

what one makes of the us-israel relation is a function of what one looks at.

personally, i think israel should be understood as a nation-state like any other, one which has to abide by certain minimum standards for human rights and so which should be forced to end its occupation of the west bank, dismantle the settlements, take down the wall, take apart the checkpoints--change fundamentally its relations to the palestinian population.
period.

israel should be forced to stop its abuse of the population of gaza. period.

it is self-evident that much of the planet understands the occupation as carried out by dual nation-states, to the extent that the americans unconditionally support israeli policy. that policy is shaped by rightwing governments who, like the bush administration, attempt to use the discourse of "terrorism" to maintain themselves in power, prevent a coherent evaluation of israeli actions vis-a-vis the palestinians...

but it is self-evident that the interests of the israeli political right are not those of israel as a whole, that they do not represent anything like a representative cross-section of israeli public opinion. they represent more than anything else the power of the discourse of "terrorism" to shut down alternatives, lock in reactive and reactionary policies, and continue a repressive status quo--a situation which is expressed with particular clarity in the occupied territories.

nothing coherent has happened since the bush people took power, and nothing coherent will happen until they are out of power. much of the appalling situation in gaza can be blamed squarely on a bush administration fuck up, its "assessment" of the implications of the hamas election, the refusal to consider that allowing hamas to take power and be able to exercise it would moderate them. too boxed in by the limitations of the discourse of "terrorism" to be rational, too boxed in by the history of us-israeli relations (glossed with whatever whackjob millenarian ideology has wafted up from the ranks of evangelical protestants).

and the bush administration is the last collection of people on earth who could possibly be in a position to criticize another regime's use of the discourse of "terrorism" to prop itself up. so we have a unique combination of ideological paralysis and analytic incompetence in the bush regime and its policies--if you want to call them that--toward the israeli right, toward the israeli state dominated by the right.

so it seems to me that this relation is ripe for a reconsideration--i am not sure that it will happen--but it should.
it is still far too early in the presidential horse-race, far too much into the war of attrition geared around a conflation of the candidate with the deepest pockets with the candidate whose positions are most worthwhile for consideration as successor to the bush regime, to bother with trying to figure out who might most closely align with the need to rethink this relation.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite