The Biden vs. Netanyahu Flap

The recent flap between America's Vice President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu over Israel's building 1600 new Jews-only housing units in East Jerusalem is, at its root, a disagreement about whether or not Israel should take the "new path" advocated by Israel's previous Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, or continue on its old path. I discussed Olmert's "new path" in 2008 in my article, A New Path For Israel? [ http://newdemocracyworld.org/War/New%20Path%20Israel.htm ], which noted that hours after resigning as prime minister of Israel on September 21, 2008, Olmert gave an interview to the Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth (excerpted in the New York Review of Books), in which he said,

"We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the [occupied] territories. Some percentage of these territories would remain in our hands, but we must give the Palestinians the same percentage [of territory elsewhere;] without this, there will be no peace." In answer to the interviewer asking, "Including Jerusalem?" Olmert replied, "Including Jerusalem with, I'd imagine, special arrangements made for the Temple Mount and the holy/historical sites."

Indeed, prior to this, as reported in Ha'aretz November 29, 2007, Olmert explained exactly why the "two state solution" was necessary if the state of Israel was to persist as a Jewish state, in these words:

WASHINGTON - "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz Wednesday, the day the Annapolis conference ended in an agreement to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008. "The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us," Olmert said, "because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents."

It appears that Netanyahu disagrees with Olmert and does not believe the two state solution is necessary for Israel's existence as a Jewish state (which Zionist leaders define to be a state with at least an 80% Jewish population, even if it takes ethnic cleansing to make it so.) There seems to be a real disagreement among these equally hard-core mass-murdering racist camps within the Zionist elite. It also seems that, as I suggested in 2008, the U.S. ruling elite thinks Olmert, not Netanyahu, is right about what is best for the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing to remain secure.

Due to this disagreement, we may see the U.S. government apply real (not just the usual phony) pressure on Israel to follow Olmert's path. We may see things like an arms embargo on provisions of U.S. arms to the Israeli government. Let us not confuse such pressure with opposition--even the slightest amount of opposition--to Zionism or the ethnic cleansing that is its defining goal.

The American ruling plutocracy views Zionist ethnic cleansing as strategically useful for controlling both the people in the Middle East and Americans*. If we in the United States are going to have a government that does not support Zionist ethnic cleansing, it will require defeating the power of the plutocracy that, in actual fact, controls our government no matter who we elect. The plutocracy was never elected, and thus cannot be un-elected. Removing them from power will take a revolution--a revolution to win genuine democracy--which is exactly what we don't have and should be working for, for the sake of ordinary Americans as well as all of the people in the world, like the Palestinians, who suffer grievously at the hands of our war-mongering rulers.

* For discussion of this point, see the articles linked to in this sentence, which are at these urls:

http://newdemocracyworld.org/War/Iran.htm

http://newdemocracyworld.org/War/Saudi%20Rulers%20use%20Israel.htm

//www.divestmentproject.org/downloads/Why_Our_Govt2007.pdf