U.S. politicians and the fruits of pandering

[calzone]

"A big part of the crisis confronting the United States in the Middle East can be traced back to what is now more than a quarter-century-old competition among American politicians over who can best pander to Israeli hardliners.

Rather than furthering Israel’s long-term interests – or those of the American people – these politicians seek short-term electoral gains by appealing to blocs of right-wing Christian and Jewish voters who reject any criticism of Israeli policies.

But this calculated positioning – from the likes of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards on the Democratic side to George W. Bush and the neoconservatives on the Republican side – has thrown the diplomatic calculus in the Middle East out of whack.

Whereas the United States traditionally served as an honest broker between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the current dynamic is for ambitious American politicians to adopt what they see as the favored Israeli position and thereby deepen the anger of the Muslim world.

So you get former Sen. Edwards appealing to an Israeli security conference earlier this year with tough talk about putting military pressure on Iran – “We need to keep ALL options on the table. Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table” – without offering a word of criticism about Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s policies toward the Palestinians.

You get Sen. Clinton eagerly sharing a platform last summer with Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, a notoriously anti-Arab bigot who joked at a 2006 conference of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee that “while it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim.”

You get President Bush – only 10 days after taking office – giving a green light to an Israeli crackdown on Palestinians. At the first meeting of his National Security Council, Bush jettisoned President Bill Clinton’s efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal."

<<<SNIP>>> full article at........

http://consortiumnews.com/2007/021107.html