[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qOobKEF_mdc]<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong>by\u00a0Linah Alsaafin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n US President<\/span>\u00a0Barack Obama<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0arrived in the West Bank city of<\/span>\u00a0Ramallah<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0by helicopter yesterday and gave yet another insipid speech. The<\/span>\u00a0Palestinian Authority\u2019s<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0security forces, collaborating with US forces, designated a huge security perimeter with the PA compound \u2014 the Muqataa \u2014 in the middle. Some of the city\u2019s busiest streets were closed off and inaccessible to those not living there. As helicopters filled the skies from the morning up until late afternoon, I was stuck at home working during the nine-hour lockdown, all too aware of the soldiers stationed on the rooftops around my building.<\/span><\/p>\n Protestors tried to march from Manara Square in the city center to the Muqataa yet again yesterday morning, but were stopped by hundreds of policemen and riot guards. The speech Obama gave at the compound was not littered with Arabic phrases (a speech he delivered the previous day was littered with Hebrew phrases) and gave the usual empty and irrational rhetoric of the US supporting an independent sovereign Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state that will only come into fruition through direct negotiations with Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n He also tried to play down the Jewish-only settlements by mentioning that the US does not consider them as \u201cconstructive\u201d or \u201cappropriate\u201d for the advancement of peace, but refused to call for their dismantlement or use strong language to call out their illegal nature, which prompted<\/span>\u00a0Mahmoud Abbas<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0to uncharacteristically interject and describe them as illegitimate and more than an obstacle to peace.<\/span><\/p>\n Obama\u2019s next stop was at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, where he gave a<\/span>\u00a0long-winded sycophantic speech<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0to more than a thousand Israeli students and academics from different universities. It was during this speech that Obama laid out his formula for peace: Palestinians, who have shown a willingness to renounce violence \u2014 as if violence is inherent to Arabs \u2014 should accept Israel, their colonizer and occupier, as a democratic and Jewish state. In return, Israel should halt its illegal settlement building.<\/span><\/p>\n Twenty-five-year-old Rabeea Eid, a student activist and member of the<\/span>\u00a0National Democratic Assembly<\/span><\/a><\/span>, had heard and had enough. He stood up in the middle of Obama\u2019s speech and called him out on three issues that summarized the flaccid nature and flagrant inefficacy of Obama\u2019s visit to occupied Palestine.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDid you really come here for peace or to give Israel more weapons to kill and destroy the Palestinian people? Did you happen to see the apartheid wall on your way here?\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n What is the point of Obama\u2019s visit? It is to bribe the PA to maintain its repression of Palestinian protests and \u201cunrest\u201d to uphold Israel\u2019s security and to pressure it to re-enter bilateral negotiations with Israel without any pre-conditions?<\/span><\/p>\n The unnecessary bit is the Israeli side to the question. Obama wants to fall short from supplicating himself fully on the ground to an extremist government, in which the defense minister has likened Palestinians to cancer and the housing minister has pledged to construct more settlements and the minister of trade, industry and labor wants to annex more than half of the West Bank. US foreign policy has always favored and strongly supported the Israeli occupation and rewarded it with billions of dollars in military aid annually \u2014 that is nothing new. From 1949 until the present day, the US has given Israel more than $115 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n The level of groveling, the cringe-worthy speeches and recycled propaganda and lies of depicting Israel as a small pioneering country that started off with its back against the wall amid a sea of hostile enemies alternates between tedium and sarcastic amusement. Even David Ben Gurion recognized that Israel is a colonial enterprise, nothing more and nothing less. Is it necessary to out-Zionize even the most ardent Zionists just to reaffirm support for Israel?<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, Obama didn\u2019t see the<\/span>\u00a0apartheid wall<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0on his way from Ramallah to Jerusalem; he was too busy reveling in orgasmic pleasure at Israel\u2019s innovative technology (with bases set up on occupied lands), its vibrant ancient history, and the mighty brave \u201cIsraeli Defense Forces\u201d (who by the way<\/span>\u00a0arrested 30 schoolchildren on Wednesday<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0in the old city of Hebron.) Eid continued:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere are Palestinians sitting in this hall. This state should be for all of its citizens, not a Jewish state only.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Ah, the conundrum of being Jewish and democratic. Twenty percent of Israel\u2019s population, more than 1.5 million Palestinians, are citizens of Israel. Where exactly do they fit?\u00a0 Surely not as third class citizens battling an institutionalized racist and discriminatory society on a daily basis, or the more than<\/span>\u00a060 laws issued by Israel since 1949 that discriminate against Palestinians<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0in the education, public services, and civil rights sectors, to name a few. Eid also said:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWho killed Rachel Corrie? Rachel Corrie was killed by your money and weapons!\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Some could say this is the nub of the relationship between Israel and the US.<\/span>\u00a0Rachel Corrie<\/span><\/a><\/span>, an American citizen, was killed ten years ago by a bulldozer as she tried to protect a Palestinian family\u2019s home from being demolished in<\/span>\u00a0Rafah<\/span><\/a><\/span>, Gaza. Nine years after her murder, an Israeli court ruled that she was to blame for her own death. The US administration didn\u2019t say a word.<\/span><\/p>\n Does the US allow Israel to continue with its impunity and grave violations of human rights and give it unconditional support because three thousand years ago, Jews were exiled from the holy land? Or \u2014 as Obama correctly noted in his opening speech on Tuesday \u2014 because of the similarities between the US and Israel: both colonizing entities that committed (in Israel\u2019s case, continues to commit) massacres and ethnic cleansing of the population indigenous to the land they settled on?<\/span><\/p>\nGrovelling<\/span><\/h2>\n
Not a word<\/span><\/h2>\n