Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Kerry' speech

I am on the road but I just want to say that pro-Palestinians should read the text of the speech in its entirety before commenting on it. The headlines are making it less bad than it actually is.  Is there something new?  Yes, 1) for the first time ever, I think, a US official critiques the Zionist ploy of equating criticisms of Israel with anti-Semitism.  There were a few members of Congress who made that point over the years but to my knolwedge it is the first time an official made that point. 2) He spokes about separation and segregation but without using the word apartheid.  That is rather new.  3) I am not sure if a Secretary of State ever used the word An-Nakbah before: that should be looked up.  But he used it in the context of the Zionist narrative of the history of the conflict.  For John Kerry: every Israeli war and ever massacre (past and future) is justified.  And for him: terrorism can only be genetically perpetrated by Palestinians but never by Israelis.  That is the deep racism of US government Zionism.  Oh, he also was able to tell us--like every single damn US member of Congress and president--how one flight over occupied Palestine made him/aware of the dangers to Israel: which means, Arabs should apologize to Israel for having their region in the area which Zionists occupied.  As if those Zionist congress people were not Zionists before they took that helicopter ride over the Golan.  Lastly, something was implied in the long speech: Arab governments have now going beyond normalization promises and are offering secularity alliance with the Israeli state.