The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: Freeper on March 25, 2013, 07:46:12 PM
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babylonsister (143,421 posts)
Don't Be Naïve. That Speech Was a Revolution
Last edited Mon Mar 25, 2013, 07:55 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
http://prospect.org/article/dont-be-na%C3%AFve-speech-was-revolution
Don't Be Naïve. That Speech Was a Revolution
Gershom Gorenberg
March 25, 2013
Obama told Israelis last week that the occupation is destroying their country's future.
flickr/AJstream
Barack Obama acknowledges the crowd after his speech last week at the Jerusalem Convention Center.
After a couple of days for careful reflection, it's clear: Barack Obama gave an amazing speech. The president of the United States stood in a hall in Jerusalem, and with empathy and with bluntness that has been absent for so long we forgot it could exist, told Israelis: The occupation can't go on. It's destroying your own future. And besides that, Palestinians have "a right to … justice" and "to be a free people in their own land."
If you don't think this is a breakthrough, you are letting naïve pessimism overcome realism. Yes, it's true that one speech will be worth nothing if not followed by intense American diplomacy. That comment has become banal. A realistic assessment is that Obama's visit, and the speech, were the opening act of an American diplomatic effort—a near perfect opening.
The first breakthrough was in method: Obama started by negotiating with the Israeli public. The choice of venue, an auditorium full of university students rather than the Knesset, was not a glitch, as many people thought beforehand. The venue was the message: The politicians have been too slow, so I'm stepping around them to talk to normal Israelis first.
snip//
Yet even the first piece of the speech wasn't quite the shmaltz it seemed to be. Obama told Israelis that he understood their fears. That was necessary before challenging the fears. But when he said in Hebrew, "You're not alone," he was not just offering support. He was directly challenging the narrative of fear on which Benjamin Netanyahu's politics are built. "Chill," Obama was saying. "It's not 1938. You are not about to be wiped off the map." And therefore, he was saying, you can consider the internal threats to Israel's future, the damage done by occupation, and you can make peace.
The most direct, powerful part of the speech was when Obama said that the Palestinians' "right to justice must also be recognized," when he told Israelis that settlement, and roadblocks, and settler violence are unjust. No American president has dared state that stark message before an Israeli audience before—or before an American one. To underline it, he borrowed the line, "to be a free people in our land," directly from the Israeli national anthem. "Palestinians," he said, "have a right to be a free people in their land." The words that define your story of yourselves, that move you even when you are tired of them and think they are kitsch, Obama suggested to Israelis, are the words that should help you empathize with Palestinians.
snip//
One speech doesn't make a peace process. But as the beginning of a process, this speech was a revolution.
http://sync.democraticunderground.com/1251295917
Last time he gave a speech that was a revolution the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt, I know the DUmmies would love it if they took over Israel as well.
oldhippydude (2,438 posts)
7. that was my thought... that people were not paying attention
it seems to me that this should be viewed at least in some part, with President Obama's speech to the Muslim world... building on diplomacy and events from he first Obama term..
while the jury is still out.. President Obama will go down in History as a one who united.... we are fortunate to have a leader with such foresight, and ability
:mental:
They really are this stupid.
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They really are this stupid.
Thank God Israel is not.
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Even if the DUmmy was right, why is O more concerned with Israel's future than the future of the country he is President of? He certainly spends money and divides the people like there's no tomorrow.
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Thank God Israel is not.
:cheersmate:
One speech doesn't make a peace process. But as the beginning of a process, this speech was a revolution.
(http://ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4911094179301429&pid=1.7)
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We'll see how revolutionary the Israelis think it is when Morsi carries through on his campaign promise to repudiate the Camp David accords.
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Palestinians have "a right to … justice" and "to be a free people in their own land
That would be Jordan wouldn`t it?
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Yes the DUmmies are that stupid.
The Palestinians had their chance for their own state...in 1948...they turned it down.
Funny how the left never mentions that.
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Yes the DUmmies are that stupid.
The Palestinians had their chance for their own state...in 1948...they turned it down.
Funny how the left never mentions that.
Really doesn't mean anything either way now, you could say something equally-dismissive about Israel itself, the North American colonies, or India under the Raj. The politics of nationalism and its effects are a moving picture, not 65-year-old black and white snapshot.
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Gosh, where's Rachel Corrie when you need her?
Oh yeah...I forgot; she's buried, clutching the Palestinian Flag in the pancake position.
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Gosh, where's Rachel Corrie when you need her?
Oh yeah...I forgot; she's buried, clutching the Palestinian Flag in the pancake position.
Maybe they rolled her up in it burrito-style. Better yet, pig in a blanket...
:evillaugh:
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Gosh, where's Rachel Corrie when you need her?
Oh yeah...I forgot; she's buried, clutching the Palestinian Flag in the pancake position.
:dozer:
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Maybe they rolled her up in it burrito-style. Better yet, pig in a blanket...
Rachel could serve as the blanket.
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How come Babylonsister has not been DUmmy Of The Year with all the stupid posts? :???:
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How come Babylonsister has not been DUmmy Of The Year with all the stupid posts?
She has tons of stupid posts, but not a single one has been entertaining.
For example, this one just follows the standard democrat line, promoting the destruction of Israel and allowing the Palestinian savages to kill all the Jews.
It sounds like a standard anti-Semitic campaign speech by the jug-eared muslim.
Stupid as hell, but not entertaining in the least.
And she's like the braindead DUmmy kpete - all copy-and-paste.
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She has tons of stupid posts, but not a single one has been entertaining.
For example, this one just follows the standard democrat line, promoting the destruction of Israel and allowing the Palestinian savages to kill all the Jews.
It sounds like a standard anti-Semitic campaign speech by the jug-eared muslim.
Stupid as hell, but not entertaining in the least.
And she's like the braindead DUmmy kpete - all copy-and-paste.
That is boring. She does have more posts than Nadin, TomInTib, Skinner, etc. Of course her postings are not out of the ordinary.
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She's more boring than Rob atman McGrath. (By the way, what's the over/under on the permanently unemployed cartoonist's return to the DUmp?)
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She's more boring than Rob atman McGrath. (By the way, what's the over/under on the permanently unemployed cartoonist's return to the DUmp?)
I'm betting we'll never see Atman again.
It makes me disconsolate, but I don't blame him. The gynofascists are just too unbearable, and one hopes they hurry up and die soon.