- On his first day as the presumptive Democratic candidate
for president earlier this month, Barack Obama committed a serious foreign
policy blunder. Reciting a litany of pro-Israeli positions at the annual
meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he avowed:
"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."
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- In promising U.S. support of Israel's claims to all of
Jerusalem, Obama couldn't have picked a better way to offend the world's
325 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims. Israel's 41-year stewardship
of the Holy City has alarmed Muslims from Morocco to Malaysia. Upon seizing
East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel razed the ancient Muslim Maghribi quarter
to make room for Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall. Since 1991, Israel
has steadily ratcheted down Palestinians' access to Muslim and Christian
holy sites in Jerusalem. Most West Bank Palestinians can no longer worship
there.
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- Obama's unnecessary promise deviates from nearly six
decades of U.S. foreign policy that held Jerusalem to be occupied territory
under international law. This long tradition was first broken in 2004 when
President Bush acknowledged Israel's demands to keep its illegal West Bank
settlements in a final peace agreement, including those around Jerusalem.
Thus Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer, would both scorn the international
legal system's foundational principle - the inadmissibility of territorial
acquisition by war - and echo President Bush, whose failed Middle East
policies he has rightly deplored.
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- If Sen. Obama's Philadelphia speech on race was a model
of courage and nuance, his AIPAC talk was brimming with the pro-Israel
orthodoxy that typifies this year's presidential campaign. Like presumptive
Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, Obama also backed Israel's so-called
right to exist as a Jewish state.
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- How has it become an article of faith for U.S. politicians
to support a state's privileging of one ethno-religious group over others?
For what Israel seeks in recognition as a Jewish state is permission to
permanently discriminate against Palestinians. Israel is, by law, a Jewish
state. Its declaration of independence and basic law declare it to be so.
But its population, excluding the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is not exclusively
Jewish: 20 percent of Israel's citizens are native Palestinians, and another
4 percent are mostly immigrant non-Jews. Moreover, Jewish demographic predominance
was achieved through the expulsion by force or fear of about 750,000 Palestinians
in 1948. Israel denies Palestinians refugees - with their offspring, about
5.5 million persons - their internationally recognized right to return
to their homes and homeland in order to maintain a strong Jewish majority.
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- According to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority
Rights in Israel, 20 Israeli laws explicitly favor Jews. Israel's law of
return, for example, grants rights of automatic citizenship to Jews no
matter where they are from, while Palestinian exiles still holding keys
to their family homes in Israel are denied this right. Religious parties
play pivotal roles in Israeli politics, and Orthodox Jewish rabbinical
courts govern matters of family law there.
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- Why should any American presidential aspirant promote
ethno-religious supremacy in Israel? Don't we see a "Christian state"
or a "Muslim state" as inherently discriminatory? Why don't we
recognize the same in Israel's quest to be ordained a "Jewish state?"
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- Like Israel, we are a nation that combines a sincere
commitment to democracy and a history that includes injustices. While we
have never fully atoned for our dispossession of Native Americans, in facing
the legacy of slavery, we have made an unyielding pledge to equal rights.
A truly visionary American president might respectfully press a similar
commitment on Israel, not endorse its urges for ethno-religious privilege.
The terrible suffering inflicted on European Jews in the Nazi holocaust
does not entitle Israel to subjugate Palestinians.
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- Barack Obama whiffed in his first major foreign policy
speech as the Democratic candidate. He may believe it necessary to pander
to Israel's U.S. supporters in order to gain office. But he narrowed future
policy options to those that would undermine international law, offend
core American values and diminish our standing in the vital Middle East.
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- George Bisharat is a professor of law at Hastings College
of the Law in San Francisco, and writes frequently on law and politics
in the Middle East.
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- http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/17/EDOQ11A1L3.DTL
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