[lbo-talk] FT on massacre

[Joel Schalit]

The Americans enabled Israel to act out, essentially, where Israel's leadership wanted to take the country anyway, following the 1967 war. Without the Americans, obviously, the Occupation would not have lasted to the degree that it has. The US paid for it. However, Israel initiated it, and it ought to be held responsible for it, along with the US. That the Occupation coincided with American geoplitical interests at the time, and was ideologically defended by the US, is still a huge problem.

Clearly, if America had not seen Israel as instrumental to its foreign policy goals for so many years, Israel would not be where it is today. The problem is that Israel's leadership sold Israel out to the Americans, in exchange for its support of the Occupation. That's where the "Israel as a tool" of US interests thesis is valid. The issue is that it is a sacrifice Israel's political echelon self-conscioulsy made in the 1960s, and the US willingly took advantage of that. Just ask Kissinger.

Best, Joel

On Jun 2, 2010, at 3:47 PM, Eric Beck wrote:


> So how can the Chomskyan/Estabrookian thesis of Israel's chasteness
> before it met the Yankee Lothario explain the brutality of the Nakba
> and the immediate post-48 period? Undoubtedly Israel has gotten
> nastier in the last 40 years, but to attribute that solely to US
> machinations instead of to Palestinian resistance as well is
> maddening, condescending, and more than a little Orientalist. And
> Chomsky does this. To him, Palestinian resistance is always secondary,
> something to mention when talking about the nobility of Palestinians,
> but it's always reactive and never a cause of Israeli aggression.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk