0 Shameless Obama glorifies Israel while erasing the Palastinian people from history

Still suckered by Obama's claim to be different from other presidents? See his glorification of Israel -- the country guilty of violating more international laws than any other in the world.






By Richard Sudan
The Independent
26 January 2012

Barack Obama has taken pandering to the Israeli lobby to shameful new levels.

In a frankly shocking video, even by US standards, in what I can only describe as one the most cynical pieces of electioneering I have witnessed in my lifetime,

Obama’s team has released a video re-affirming the USA’s special relationship with Zionism, and their unwavering commitment to supporting a state which draws legitimate comparisons to South Africa under apartheid.

All the usual clichés are thrown in – the ones that became the very backbone of his platitudinous speeches in the run-up to the election in 2008, which now make me fume whenever I hear them, and feel angry for allowing myself to be suckered like everybody else.

I, like millions of others, allowed myself to entertain the notion that this President might be different.

That was a mistake.

Fast forward to 2012 and we now have an administration which has continued with the direction and legacy inherited from the Neo-Cons and engaged in new conflicts.

We have the Obama campaign team once again stepping up their game with this new piece of propaganda, sending out a clear signal to Obama’s donors and supporters that he knows which side his bread is buttered on.

The same familiar mantra which in the one breath evokes one of the greatest human tragedies in history, but then, in the other, exploits that same sentiment to try to justify the persecution of Palestinian people is all too evident in the clip.

To be found in Obama’s video are testimonies from Shimon Peres, and Benjamin Netanayahu, and Ehud Barak, reiterating the extent to which the 44th President has safeguarded their interests.

Conveniently avoided is the subject of life for the Palestinian people, who continue to be illegally occupied and held under siege in an open air prison camp, which constitutes one of the most densely populated pieces of land in the world.

Israeli soldiers attack Palestinian girl. In self-defence?

Israel’s right to exist, we are told by an ever eager President Obama, and her right to protect herself from any existential threat, is a priority for the US government.

The same ideology that once drew up the doctrine, which began this tragedy, is the same ideology responsible for the persecution of the Palestinian people and it is the real driving force and the politics, operating beneath the charade of the presidential race and indeed the presidency.

It’s the same influential power base that would ensure our government bent the rules around universal jurisdiction, so that the former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni could enter Britain and not face trial and responsibility for an Israeli assault on the Gaza strip that lasted 22 days and left hundreds of innocent people dead.

The same power structure that would see Theresa May struggle to justify the detainment of a spokesperson for the Palestinian people, in front of Keith Vaz in the commons, based on a charge which later proved to be without substance.

All of this barefaced hypocrisy underlines what many of us know. The current status quo regarding our perception of the Israel/Palestine conflict is as firmly rooted at the heart and soul of our political system as it ever was.

It’s pretty telling that within the British conservative party there is a ‘Friends of Israel’ but no ‘Friends of Palestine’, just the same as in the US, where you’re likely to see cozying up to Israel but no mention by Obama of the Palestinian children detained in solitary confinement in Israeli jails.