The main burden of stopping Tel Aviv's wars has to fall upon Israelis -- more precisely, Jewish leftists and Palestinian citizens of Israel -- but they can't do their job without Hizballah, Hamas, Tehran, Damascus, etc. doing their part: fighting a good enough fight to impress upon the Israeli public that there is no military solution. Paradoxical as it may sound, Hizballah, etc. help Jewish and Palestinian leftists inside Israel, though few -- no? -- Jewish leftists love Hizballah, etc.
That's my Two Thirds Camp position. :->
Beyond that, we can't just focus on foreign policy. We have to win enough people to change the governments in our respective countries, mainly on the strength of what we do on the domestic political front.
On 8/14/06, Angelus Novus <fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> > What about American commies? Israel gets a lot of
> > money and weapons
> > from us, and starts lots of wars our government
> > likes.
>
> I think "stop U.S. arms to Israel" is an acceptable
> demand within the United States,
Rather than singling out Israel alone, US leftists had better try to stop US aid (military or otherwise) to Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia as well as Israel. That would probably be a more effective campaign. It would counter any spillover anti-Semitism (i.e., a spillover from naive criticisms of Israel, as opposed to traditional anti-Semitism based on racial supremacy) that may feed on an exclusive focus on criticizing US aid to Israel, too.
> as long as activists
> are aware that the possibility always exists that the
> U.S. could abandon Israel if it becomes too much of a
> liability. The U.S. has portrayed former allies as
> rogue states before (cf. Saddam Hussein), and the
> U.S.-Israel friendship is not even very old. The U.S.
> is not likely to dump Israel in the near future, but I
> don't think it is as much of an impossibility as many
> on this list suggest.
>
> If and when that day comes, I think the Left would
> have to re-position itself on this question.
For better or worse, leftists are fickle, and most leftists' stances toward Tel Aviv are largely determined by Washington's support for Tel Aviv, so you can count on leftists to re-position themselves, probably with some fancy and not-so-fancy footwork. :-> -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>