“Israel is part of the free world and fights extremism and terrorism. Hamas is not,” [Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni] said. And from there we are just one small step away from putting the world on notice that either “you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists”. “These are the days when every individual in the region and in the world has to choose a side,” Livni said.

The Guardian’s Gary Younge is one of my favorites.

By erasing any prospect of negotiation, the violence did not weaken extremists but emboldened them. Israel may want to boost the moderate Fatah faction which governs the West Bank now. But Hamas’s electoral rise was a direct result of the contempt the Israelis showed them in the past.

Meanwhile, the Iraq war has left Iran — the primary sponsor of both Hezbollah and Hamas — with far more influence in the region than they would have had. On almost every front in almost every part of the world, including in the US, the war on terror is now seen as a colossal mistake. Only Israel did not get the memo. And it is now set to fail for the same reasons that America has.

In my opinion, a truly pro-Israel position opposes the settlements and generally opposes Likud policies, though of course politics is a messy business and no one’s right or wrong all the time. What Israel actually needs from a historical point of view is stability. It’s currently seeking security through the methodology of oppression, a foreign policy equivalent of Microsoft’s famous security through obscurity and as such doomed to fail. The thing is, if your neighbors aren’t secure, you aren’t either. No matter how frightened you are, you can only threaten your neighbors into submission for short periods, and in doing so you generate exactly what you seek to avoid.

So I’m impressed with the folks at J Street, the (relatively) new lobbying org of American Jews intended to counter the constant push for aggression from AIPAC and friends. Josh Marshall has written about them several times. From the little I know they seem to have it together on both the political and marketing fronts, which means they’ve got a shot. Plus, the K Street allusion shows some humor in a organizational name, which I like a lot.

Here’s what they’re saying about the invasion of Gaza.

Israel has a special place in each of our hearts. But we recognize that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right or wrong. While there is nothing “right” in raining rockets on Israeli families or dispatching suicide bombers, there is nothing “right” in punishing a million and a half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them.

And there is nothing to be gained from debating which injustice is greater or came first. What’s needed now is immediate action to stop the violence before it spirals out of control.

The United States, the Quartet, and the world community must not wait — as they did in the Israel-Lebanon crisis of 2006 — for weeks to pass and hundreds or thousands more to die before intervening. There needs to be an urgent end to the new hostilities that brings a complete end to military operations, including an end to the rocket fire out of Gaza, and that allows food, fuel and other civilian necessities into Gaza.

Given their relative skills and well-stated positions, they seem to be attracting some notice. Thus their petition to the President-elect might actually be considered. To sign the petition, click here.

Posted by Chuck Dupree at January 05, 2009 01:24 AM

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