We can expect to hear grumbling in the Israel-first quarters of America’s talking heads following Obama’s Cairo speech.
A good example would be Charles Krauthammer’s piece in the Washington Post this morning.
In it he accuses Obama of ‘dictating’ to Israel a freeze on settlements, stating that such a freeze does not allow for the natural expansion that comes with a growing Israeli population.
What Mr. Krauthammer conveniently overlooks is that expanding settlements into Palestinian land, with the accompanying bulldozing of Palestinian homes, is illegal.
The idea of displacing Palestinians to accommodate Israel’s natural growth would be absurd were it not for years of Israeli success at depicting Palestinians as sub-human terrorists.
To augment his one-sided view, Mr. Krauthammer points to Gaza and accusingly states..”their leaders built no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, none of the fundamental state institutions that would relieve their people’s suffering”.
Indeed, it is difficult to build infrastructure when building materials, not to mention food, water, and electricity, are withheld at checkpoints; checkpoints where occupation and Palestinian humiliation intersect.
Perhaps if the occupying power allowed Palestinians to earn a living, rather than subjecting them to daily humiliation, the institutions that Mr. Krauthammer alludes to might be further along, and wouldn’t that be better for everyone?
But no. With Israel-firsters like Charles Krauthammer, the people under occupation are solely responsible for their misery. They alone are responsible for radicalism. They are expected to ‘take it’.
I don’t personally know Mr. Krauthammer, but he’s got a pretty good gig, doing the columnist thing for a major American newspaper. I suppose he’s smart, and I suppose he often knows what he’s talking about. But to write a one-sided piece that demeans Arabs with language suggesting them incapable of being civilized is racism, pure and simple.
Obama surely recognizes that bulldozing Palestinian homes to make way for more Israelis will never lead to peace; rather it will lead to further radicalization and conflict.
What Obama is dictating to the leadership in Tel Aviv is that racism, Krauthammer-style, needs to end.
