Clinton's Got It Wrong: Our Freedom is Our Right, Not Your Choice

[Purveyor]

Everyone has had a similar experience. There is some maintenance problem in your home that you have put off repairing for a while. In the back of your mind, you know that leaving it as is might cause greater problems in the future. A friendly handyman looked at it and told you that maybe you can push it a few more years but you will certainly have to confront it at some point. Perhaps fixing it at the moment is too costly; maybe it just takes too much effort. Ultimately, you know it can’t stay like this forever but as long as the consequences seem distant into the future, the more you’re likely to put it off.

Maybe you’ll get around to it one day, maybe you won’t.


U.S. singer Barbra Streisand, former U.S. president Bill Clinton, Israeli President Shimon Peres and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend Peres's 90th birthday celebrations in Jerusalem, on June 18, 2013. (Jim Hollander / AFP / Getty Images)

--CLIP
Yet this is precisely how the rights and freedoms of Palestinians are dealt with.

It is a narrative that has been repeated many times by high profile American officials. Mostly recently, we heard this from former President Bill Clinton who earlier this week spoke at an event honoring Israeli President Shimon Peres. The Times of Israel reported on Clinton’s remarks:

“The longer the Palestinian conflict remained unsolved,” he said, “the more acute the demographic challenge would become for Israel. […] No matter how many settlers you put out there, the Palestinians are having more babies than the Israelis as a whole… You’ve got an existential question to answer.”

Put aside for a moment the very racist notion of paranoid baby counting and consider the overall framing. The freedom of millions of Palestinians living under the yoke of Israel’s military occupation is portrayed as a matter that Israel should resolve because eventually they may be dealing with a larger problem: having to accept Palestinians as equals. Palestinian rights are reduced to an Israeli prerogative.

MORE...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/21/palestinian-freedom-shouldn-t-be-put-off1.html

[Scootaloo]

1. Did... Did Clinton really say this?

No, that's a rhetorical question, I know he did, I'm just sort of... staring at that and... wow. Really?

[aranthus]

2. There is a reason that they say things like this.

The assumption in Israel is that if Israel withdraws the Occupation that the Palestinians will sooner or later get back to attacking Israel. That is that ending the Occupation won't bring peace, and merely makes Israel more vulnerable militarily. Maybe Clinton believes this too, but you can be sure that Peres does, and that Clinton believes that a majority of Israelis believe it. That Israeli belief is not mere posturing, nor is it unreasonable; it is based on over 60 years of Palestinian hostility. Now the Palestinians could take steps to obviate the problem by, for instance, reworking BDS to be less obviously anti-Israel, or by reining in their more extreme voices, but they won't, and there isn't any chance that they could be forced to. However, if you want to convince the Israelis to withdraw in spite of that belief, then you have to give them a reason; that something even worse will happen if they don't withdraw. That reason is the demographic bomb that Clinton talks about, which is why he and Obama talk about it. What other reason could convince the Israelis to risk their lives by ending the Occupation?

[Purveyor]

3. Well then I guess the 'final solution' is to just go ahead and eradicate all of them (Palestinians)

and be done with it...eh?

[aranthus]

4. Maybe it's your final solution, but not mine and not Israel's

But you already knew that, so why post something so hateful?

[shira]

5. What demographic threat? Jews outnumber Palestinians 2:1 in Israel....

...and the West Bank combined. With the very high Haredi birthrates, as well as Arab birthrates going down throughout the mideast, there is no demographic threat.

[aranthus]

6. I wasn't saying that there was one.

I was only explaining why Clinton and Obama would claim that there was.

[Mosby]

7. the palestinians are not helpless victims

If they want to negotiate a settlement they can, the ball is in their court, bibi said numerous times now that he would sit down with abbas and the negotiating team anytime, anyplace, provided they will talk without preconditions.

[azurnoir]

8. yes n Bibi seems a master of multi tasking in that area isn't he?

he negotiate while building and mailing out land confiscation orders, truly a master he is

well except that the land in question doesn't actually belong to Israel to hand out as it sees fit

[azurnoir]

9. gotta hand it to Clinton though

he did almost as much for the Palestinians as he did for poor women and children in this country