Israeli Card

Editorial

18 August 2007

REPUBLICAN presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has just announced that the Palestinians should not have a state of their own and that the United States must continue to support the state of Israel.

The former New York mayor’s close affinity to the Israel lobby is no secret. According to Giuliani, it is not in America’s interests to help create a state “which will support terrorism”. He added that Washington’s protection and support of Israel must be a “permanent” feature of its foreign policy. When he plays the Israeli card, he is doing the anticipated. In one respect it is good that Giuliani has nailed his colors to this mast so soon in the campaign. Effectively he has indicated that he too, like so many previous actual incumbents of the White House, is ready to sacrifice the direction of US Middle East policy to the dictates of an ungrateful “ally” that has been prepared to have its spies steal those few weapons secrets that the United States has been unwilling to supply for free.

Yet by abandoning the basic Bush stand —however feeble it may have been in execution — that the Palestinians should have their own independent state, is Giuliani perhaps representing the covert beliefs of the Republican political establishment? Can it be that the official statement of US principle, which even leading Israeli politicians have accepted in outline, is in fact so much hokum served up merely to assuage the widespread anger at Washington’s consistent partiality toward the state of Israel?

Polls indicate that even if he wins the Republican nomination, Giuliani is unlikely to make it to the Oval Office. After all, it’s unthinkable that the Republican conservative religious base that got the current president into office would vote for a man who is pro-choice and has expressed support for gay civil unions — a stance he only recanted earlier this year for obvious political reasons. Unfortunately whether the Democrats’ eventual candidate is Clinton or Obama, it will be harder to sell the idea of dialogue than military force. The only true anti-war candidate in the mix is the much-ignored presidential contender Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

If American voters felt they could somehow hit back and expunge the shame of defeat in Iraq brought on by the bungling Bush, they might support a tough-talking candidate like Giuliani. And the former New York mayor has one big card yet to play — his city leadership at the time of the 9/11 attacks, which he will doubtless claim brought him right into the front line of the US war on international terror. (Critics will no doubt point to firefighters suffering from health issues related to Giuliani’s handling of the 9/11 cleanups, but at a national level he is still “America’s Mayor”).

Justice for Palestinians and US Middle Eastern double standard count for nothing when a man is aiming to become the most powerful man on the planet.