Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Meddling in Others' Affairs

President Obama is being accused of “meddling in Israeli politics” recently, and I am torn between two responses to that. The first is, “Well, I certainly hope so,” and the second is, “Well, it’s about time.” I think I’ll go with the first, because he hasn’t been in office all that long, so the second would imply an inappropriate degree of impatience, even though the thought would be that it’s about time a president did so, not necessarily this president.

There is a line in a show, where a man is remonstrating with a child who is still living at home as a young adult, “As long as you have your feet under my table you will abide by my rules.” As Glenn Greenwald, in his usual elegant manner explains today, Israel has its feet under our table, and it is time we started laying down some rules for its behavior.

Probably nothing is more damaging to our image in the Middle East than our unwavering support for Israel and all it does, and our ongoing support of its illegal expanding occupation of Palestinian territory is a stain on our image worldwide. For us to be providing Israel with the degree of moral and financial support that we do while sitting back and allowing it to damage our international reputation and standing to the degree that it has done for years is utterly incomprehensible to me.

One does have to admit that invading two countries, and bombing and killing civilians in three is certainly unhelpful to our reputation and standing. There is also the matter of Guantanamo and torture, of course. None of that alters the points made above.

Obama should be “meddling in Israeli politics” like crazy. More seriously, President Obama is making a beginning stand on a position in the Middle East that is courageous and important, and he deserves our vigorous and vocal support in that effort.

1 comment:

  1. "Meddling" is a term that means what you wnat it to depending on the circumstances and politics of the day. Yes, Israel has the right to exist (and to defend itself), so tough beans to the Arab states. On the same token, it has to act responsibility to it neighbors. As they should do to it.

    The US has meddled in a lot of other nations affairs and we ought to stop a lot of it. And not support those who act irresponsibly.

    Am I blathering?

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