If you lie to Congress, it is a crime.  It’s called perjury.  You may remember that when Roger Clemens did it, he barely escaped two counts of it.  And you should remember that the official reason President Bill Clinton was impeached was because of perjury (you know, it had nothing to do with the rabid hatred the GOP had of him, then Congressman Bob Barr, R-GA, asked aloud, If we can’t get rid of him with impeachment what else can we do?  Uh, win an election.)

So if it is illegal for citizens to lie TO Congress, why is is legal for them to lie to us?

First case of lying: Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA)

Issa has made some wild claims about Benghazi.  One that he has repeated is that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally signed a cable about Benghazi.  This has been refuted by all of the whistleblowers and a Washington Post fact checker called that assertion “a whopper” (from Congressman Elijah Cummings’, D-MD testimony at the hearing on the subject on May 8, 2013 — you can watch it online).  All State Department cables have the Secretary’s name.

Yet, Issa repeats this claim over and over and over.  The goal, of course, is to weaken Secretary Clinton because she is the front runner for the Democratic Party and is popular among Republicans.  The only thing they can find to hurt her is this.  Truthfully, that we had people in such a dangerous place left so far away from military support seems really upsetting.  I am torn from thinking this is Libya, this was September 11th, how could we leave our ambassador so unprotected? The Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigated and released this report.   They found that mistakes were made and offered suggestions to prevent this from happening ever again.  They were not wimpy as they have been called by some on the right. They were thorough and pretty scathing.  There is no question that this should not have happened.

What we know is that when the idea of increasing funding for diplomatic security came up, many of these Republicans who are so unhappy with what happened now, said “no.”

(Disclaimer: I worked for the Clinton Administration on and off for most of it.  I also worked for Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign and support the idea of her running in 2016.)

Liar number 2: Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)

Senator Ayotte has been questioned about her vote against the recent gun control bill.  Her response has been — more than once — that she opposed it because she doesn’t want there to be a national registry of gun owners.  I support gun control and I don’t want that either.  I voted against former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty because, at least partially, he almost went through with a policy to send DC police door-to-door to request residents turn over any guns they didn’t want in their home.  If said guns could be tied to a crime, the people who turned them over could be charged with that crime.  That is ridiculous.

The bill Senator Ayotte voted against had no such provision.  Senators Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) put a provision in the bill making it a felony to keep information on people who had bought a gun past a certain amount of time.  No one wants to see such a registry.

I don’t know what her real reason was and would like to hear it because I feel like every other five minutes I hear someone on the right whining that “No one read the bill!”  Read the damn bill.  And if you have a real reason for going against this common sense bill, please share it.  I might even agree with the real reason, if I knew what it was.

And the liars that love them.

Could the right be happier about anything than Benghazi?  Were they this upset with President Bush for letting 9/11 happened? (Didn’t he get a report entitled Bin laden determined to attack the US within the US?  Did he not have intelligence that al Qaeda was looking at using airplanes?  Yes on both.  You may remember how I was jumping up and down begging for hearings?  Oh, you don’t?  This isn’t just because I am not a major TV network but because I am not a truther nor do I see politics in every event on earth).

Second problem I have with the right’s response is their comparison to Watergate.  They say “when Obama lied, people died.”  I have two problems with that statement.  The first issue I have is substantive.  President Obama has not lied.  This is not a cover-up.  This is a tragedy and shows some real holes in the way we do business that need to be fixed.  Secondly, it implies that these lies caused deaths.  Even if this was true, they happened after the event in question so any attempts at finding a causality are just ridiculous.

On the gun control thing, the National Rifle Association and American Future Fund have some to Senator Ayotte’s defense.  The latter has sponsored ads that compound her lie with one of their own.  They claim she has voted for increased background checks when she did the opposite.  Read that here (and see the ad).

One thing that gets under my skin more than many things is when people put up with politicians who lie because that’s just how it’s done.  We get the government we settle for, we need to expect better.

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President Barack Obama delivers remarks to the Israeli people at the Jerusalem International Convention Center on March 21, 2013.

By Lawrence Davidson

It is said that the devil has about him the smell of fire and brimstone (sulfur). Evil deeds are often described as “most foul.” On the other hand, people who appear, accurately or not, as always innocent are described as “smelling like roses.” There seems, then, to be a longstanding association between behavior and smells.

The Israeli army has recently dedicated itself to demonstrating this association. On March 6, the Middle East Monitor reported “Israeli forces have sprayed Palestinian homes in the village of Nabi Saleh with Skunk as a punishment for organizing weekly protests against the Apartheid Wall built on occupied land. Human rights watchdog B’Tselem published a video showing Israel’s armored tanker trucks fitted with ‘water canons’ [spraying] the foul fluid.”

Skunk is a fluid so offensive smelling that people automatically retreat from any place or anyone doused with it. This is not the first time the Israelis have used such noxious tactics. Zionist settlers are fond of diverting the sewage from their illegal settlements, which are usually placed on high ground, into the fields and towns of Palestinians living in the valleys below. This is apparently done with the knowledge and approval of the Israeli state.

I doubt if many of the Israelis involved in these maneuvers have ever read Dante’s Inferno. In that epic poem, Hell is a place steeped in sewage and rot, and Israeli actions seem intent on reproducing this scenario. Are the Israelis then trying to turn the Holy Land into Hell? Well, yes, at least for the Palestinians. To this end the settlers and soldiers mimic Dante’s demons.

How far does the bad smell of Israeli actions reach? We can be sure that it reaches as far as London, where MP David Ward of the Liberal Democratic Party recently wrote in a Holocaust Memorial book that “having visited Auschwitz twice . . . I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.”

Ward’s reference to “the Jews” has been qualified, because not all Jews support Zionism or Israel’s claim to “Judea and Samaria,” much less the pogrom-like way the Israelis are going about ethnically cleansing the areas under their control. In fact, an increasing number of American Jews are expressing alienation from such behavior in Israel.

Yet Ward was correct when it comes to the “Jewish state’s” behavior. Perhaps Mr. Ward’s confusion was a product of Israel’s constant insistence that it represents all the world’s Jews.

Not everyone seems to smell the odor emanating from Israel. Mr. Ward’s Liberal Democratic Party called him to account for daring to draw attention to the fact that foul acts continue to be committed against the Palestinians by the self-proclaimed representative of the Jews.

A quiet word to Ward about avoiding generalizations would probably have sufficed but, using a process similar to those carried out by totalitarian regimes, Ward’s party ordered him “to meet with the party’s ‘Friends of Israel’ chapter to ‘identify and agree on language that will be proportionate and precise when he speaks out again on the Israeli-Palestine conflict.’” He did so and issued the required apology. This smells like censorship to me.

It’s one thing to punish someone for calling attention to Israel’s rank behavior. It is something else to insist that foul is actually fair – to say the sewage smells like roses. Who would be reckless enough to imply such a nauseating thing and do so with a straight face before cameras with the whole world watching? How about the President of the United States? He lives in Washington D.C., where denial of Israel’s malodorous nature is almost unanimous.

President Obama had an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 TV station on March 15, just before he left to visit that country. In the interview, he stated that he admires Israel’s “core values.”

In a subsequent analysis, the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who has an honest nose for these things, asked, “which values he was talking about? The dehumanization of the Palestinians? The attitude toward African migrants? The arrogance, racism and nationalism? Is this what he admires? Don’t separate buses for Palestinians remind him of something? Doesn’t two communities living on the same land, one with full rights and the other with no rights, ring a bell . . . ?

“To admire ‘core values’ while knowing we’re talking about one of the most racist countries there is, with a separation wall and apartheid-like policies, means betraying the core values of the American civil rights movement that made the Obama miracle possible.”

Nonetheless, upon arriving in Israel, President Obama said that U.S. support for the very same Israel Levy describes will “be forever.” It might be added that, at the same time, the President insisted that the Palestinians cease demanding a halt to the building of settlements, with their targeted open-sewer policies, before any further “peace” negotiations with the Israelis.

When it comes to Israel, President Obama, and most of the Congress as well, can’t tell the difference between fair and foul. That is because they live in a peculiar professional world whose parameters, in reference to Israel and Palestine, are defined by a Zionist lobby with Orwellian powers.

In this special world, double-think abounds. Racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and the tactical use of Skunk and raw sewage disappear and are replaced by imaginary “core values” that smell like roses.

The President can privately smell garbage and call it roses all he wants. But when he tries to sell the rest of us on this connection, the credibility of his language sinks into the gutter. Remember what George Orwell tells us about the potential for harm in the misuse of political language.

Misused, such language offers a “defense of the indefensible” and is “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” That is what most politicians’ language has sunk to when it comes to Israel/Palestine.

That this should go on “forever,” as the President claims, is just hyperbole. Consider the fact that a recent CIA report calls into question the Zionist state’s ability to last for more than another twenty years.

No, the bad smell coming from Israel denotes internal socio-political rot, as well as rotten tactics toward non-Jewish inhabitants. Sooner or later everyone possessing a humane conscience, to say nothing of a functioning honest nose, will refuse to have anything to do with this “apartheid-like” state.

Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s National Interest; America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism.

(Originally posted at Consortium News)

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before a poster of his late father, Hafez Assad.

By Ivan Eland:

The U.S. government recently designated the Syrian opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra Front a foreign terrorist organization. The move was designed to build Western support against the Syrian government by alleviating fears that money and weapons donated to the opposition would flow to a militant group.

The designation means that Americans cannot have financial ties to the Nusra Front and is meant to be a precedent for other nations considering imposing similar sanctions on the group. U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford noted that “Extremist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra are a problem, an obstacle to finding the political solution that Syria’s going to need.”

What the ambassador forgot to mention was that U.S. Middle East policy has played a big role in the group’s rise and potency. The group has some of the Syrian opposition’s most competent and battle-hardened warriors, and the reason is that the group is an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Nusra Front gets funding, fighters, and training from its Iraqi brethren.

And of course, al-Qaeda in Iraq came into being to fight the ill-advised U.S. invasion of Iraq. Critics of the Iraq War predicted that battle-tested fighters from the conflict would be exported, after it was finished, to other Islamic countries to destabilize their governments. Of course, you didn’t have to be Nostradamus to see that that prediction would likely come true.

In addition, U.S. sanctions are mere symbolism, because during a chaotic civil war, arms sent to the Syrian opposition by, say, Turkey, Qatar or Saudi Arabia could easily end up in the Nusra Front’s hands, either on purpose or because of the unsettled conditions in the country. Likewise, if John McCain and the other salivating American hawks have their way, and the U.S. begins overt arms supplies to the rebels, the United States could become an inadvertent arms supplier to a group on its own terrorism list.

Even now with supposed U.S. vetting of Syrian groups getting weapons from the three aforementioned countries, more and more weapons are getting into the hands of Islamist militants. And there are other militant groups in Syria besides the Nusra Front.

In the worst case, by putting the Nusra Front on the U.S. government’s list of terrorist groups, the United States, as it has done many times before, will create a new enemy. A group that wasn’t focusing its attacks on the United States may begin to have incentives to do so, as has happened with the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from Yemen.

And all of this is occurring in Syria in the face of many previous examples of inadvertent consequences of arming either foreign groups or countries. For example, in 1980s, the United States funneled arms and money through Pakistan to the Afghan mujahedeen fighting the Soviets. The Pakistanis gave the military aid to the most radical groups, which morphed into the anti-U.S. terrorist group al-Qaeda.

Now, the United States is giving arms and aid to a Pakistani government that is supporting Taliban insurgents fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan; some of the American aid is leaking through to the Afghan Taliban.

Lastly, the chaotic Western war against Libya liberated many of Muammar Gaddafi’s weapons stocks from Libyan government control. Those arms ended up being used by al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist rebels to create a potential terrorist sanctuary in northern Mali. Not learning a thing, the United States is pushing Mali’s African neighbors to use force to take out the Islamists by force. Who knows where the weapons from that potential war might end up?

Given the very real possibility of inadvertent adverse consequences from any U.S. intervention in Syria, the U.S. should not ship arms or money to the Syrian rebels, should not have deemed the Nusra Front a terrorist organization, and should not have imposed financial sanctions on the group, which is no enemy of the United States. The United States already has enough enemies and doesn’t need more.

Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.

(Originally posted at Consortium News)

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Free Syrian Army fighters carry their weapons as they stand on a street in Aleppo’s al-Amereya district December 11, 2012. Picture taken December 11, 2012. REUTERS/Aaref Hretani

The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Reuters:

Syria’s chemical weapons could be used at “a moment’s notice” and the international community should not accept any assurances from Syrian officials that they will not be used, U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said on Wednesday.

U.S. and other Western officials recently issued sharp warnings to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad not to deploy chemical weapons. Syria called those warnings a “pretext for intervention” in the civil war.

Rogers, a Republican, told Reuters in an interview that the Syrian government’s activities related to chemical weapons were a shift in posture and a major concern.

“I believe that they have put elements of their chemical weapons program in a condition of which they could be used at a moment’s notice, which is very different from before,” Rogers said.

“And some notion that they have promised not to use them, I don’t think the international community … should take that on face value,” he said.

“This is a regime that’s getting more desperate by the day. They have affirmatively put elements of their chemical weapon program in a position for use, that is something that we should all be concerned about.”

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A Syrian army helicopter flies over the northern city of Aleppo in October. Iraq has shut its airspace to four Syrian flights scheduled to pick up attack helicopters that had been repaired in Russia, the Iraqi Prime Minister’s spokesman said Tuesday. (Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/GettyImages)

Iraq has shut its airspace to four Syrian flights scheduled to pick up attack helicopters that had been repaired in Russia, the spokesman to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Tuesday. Syria has failed several times since June to retrieve the refurbished helicopters from Russia, and the regime of Bashar al-Assad appears to be growing more desperate as fighting intensifies.

Iraq’s denial of the flights appears to be a diplomatic breakthrough for the U.S. Although Baghdad has said it won’t allow arms shipments to Syria and has recently begun to inspect some planes flying from Iran, White House and State Department officials have been pressuring Iraq to act much more aggressively to choke off military aid.

Two U.S. diplomatic officials who are closely monitoring Iraq-Syria relations expressed relief when told that Baghdad said it had denied Syria’s overflight request for the helicopters.

But one of the officials emphasized caution, noting that flights continue over Iraqi airspace from Iran to Syria. Iraq has maintained that the flights carry humanitarian goods but the United States suspects they contain matériel. “The abuse of Iraq’s airspace continues to be a concern,” the official said. “We urge Iraq either to require flights enroute to Syria over its territory to land for inspection or deny overflight requests for these aircraft.”

ProPublica reported on the Syrian fly-over requests last week, noting that the cargo plane expected to pick up the helicopters did not land or take off at the scheduled times at a military airfield near Moscow. The reason was unknown at the time.

Ali al-Mousawi, the prime minister’s media adviser, told ProPublica on Tuesday that Syria’s requests had been denied by the Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority.

“We will not authorize any overflight until we make sure that it does not contain any military equipment in line with the Iraqi government’s policy which firmly rejects allowing transporting any military shipments via our airspace from or to Syria,” he wrote in an email.

Syria has tried various ways to retrieve its attack helicopters from Russia.

In June, a cargo ship carrying helicopters from the Russian port of Kaliningrad to Syria was turned back after the ship’s insurer withdrew coverage in response to sanctions. A second attempt by sea a month later also failed.

The new plan, according to flight records obtained by ProPublica, was to fly an Ilyushin IL-76 cargo plane in late November and early December from Damascus to Ramenskoye Airport outside Moscow, also known as Zhukovsky Airport. The records described the cargo as an “old helicopter after overhaullling” (sic) and identified the model as an Mi-25 — a heavy combat helicopter that has been filmed in online videos appearing to fire at rebels.

Some of the flight records were posted by hackers associated with the online collective Anonymous. Many of those documents, as well as others, were obtained separately by ProPublica, which reported last week that Syria appears to have flown 240 tons of bank notes from Moscow this summer.

One of the U.S. diplomatic officials said Iraq’s decision to block the flights — and to acknowledge doing so publicly — risks angering Moscow. Failure to deliver the helicopters, this official said, could mean a delay in payment for the Russians. Russia has long been Syria’s main supplier of arms.

Officials at the Russian Foreign Ministry and its lead arms exporter Rosoboronexport did not return phone calls from ProPublica. The 150 Aircraft Repair Plant, which is listed as the charterer of the flights, declined to answer questions.

Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev told reporters last week that Russia was obliged to fulfill its existing contracts even in the teeth of international pressure.

Until last year, Iraqi airspace had been largely controlled by the U.S. Air Force. But American officials have gradually turned over control to the Iraqis and now have little involvement in day-to-day operations, according to U.S. aviation advisers working with the Iraqis.

The New York Times reported Sunday on the struggle of American officials to stop arms shipments from Iran. According to the Times, Iraq’s foreign minister promised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in September that Iraq would inspect the flights from Iran. But since then, the newspaper said, it has only inspected two planes, including one that was returning from Syria.

President Obama, speaking yesterday at the National War College, said, “We will continue to support the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people — engaging with the opposition, providing them with humanitarian aid and working for a transition to a Syria that’s free of the Assad regime.”

(Originally posted at ProPublica)

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From NBC News:

The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials said. As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the “precursor” chemicals had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs. […]

U.S. officials stressed that as of now, the sarin bombs hadn’t been loaded onto planes and that Assad hadn’t issued a final order to use them. But if he does, one of the officials said, “there’s little the outside world can do to stop it.”

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Ahmed Shihab-Eldin: Not willing to play the 'angry Arab'

By Ben Cohen: Regardless of whose side you take in the Israeli Palestinian crisis, there is no denying that the Jewish state has been far better at the public relations game than the Palestinians have ever been. There are many well funded pro Israel groups in the US that have sophisticated media strategies and employ them brilliantly when faced with criticism of their behavior towards the Palestinians. As a consequence public opinion is solidly in favor of Israel in the US, making it an anomaly in comparison to the rest of the world. The Palestinians have done an awful job of bringing attention to their plight, and despite the shockingly one sided nature of the conflict between themselves and Israel, they continue to be portrayed as the aggressors.

While Jews have been incredibly well represented in the US mainstream media both in management and on air, Palestinians have never had anyone in a position of real influence, and this has clearly had a major impact on the way the crisis in the Middle East has been portrayed.

Up until now, that is. In a forward thinking and (at least by American media standards) brave move, the Huffington Post hired Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, a Palestinian American to host and produce segments for their recently launched ‘Huff Post Live’ video platform. A former producer and and co-host of Al Jazeera English’s Emmy-nominated social media show, “The Stream”, Ahmed is no rookie, but his position within a large mainstream media entity is a novelty in America’s media establishment.

Ahmed regularly draws attention to the plight of the Palestinians, bringing on guests rarely seen on other mainstream media outlets like Palestinians from the Gaza strip and critics of Israel who are usually confined to academia or obscure foreign policy websites that have little reach. Ahmed, an extremely likeable and articulate character, refuses to play into the ‘angry Arab’ role the media likes to pick up on, despite facing intense criticism from all sides of the political spectrum (just check some of the comments on youtube to get an idea). Ahmed represents a new breed of journalist in the digital age, where an ability to connect with an audience trumps ethnicity, age or social background.

The Daily Banter spoke to Ahmed about his thoughts on the latest outburst of violence in the region, the Palestinian’s inability to draw attention to their cause, Obama’s indifference to Israeli aggression, and why Arianna Huffington took such a big risk in hiring him.

(NB: The answers have been lightly edited for brevity)

TDB: What was your immediate reaction to the overwhelming support for Palestinian statehood in the United Nations?

ASE: My immediate reaction was that a lot of people are going to try to break down an deconstruct what this actually means and I think that the sad reality is that it means very little. And so the people who have been saying that are right. What I think is most significant about this, even the way it played out, the fact that Israel switched their tone as they often do 180 degrees by saying that this is you know, a threat against peace and then as soon as it looked like the Palestinians would probably win, switching and saying that this is insignificant and downplaying the significance of the vote.

Also, the US was really exposed as a weakened power, one that’s reputation in the Middle East, that is quickly changing, but also in terms of the international stage is becoming increasingly less significant, especially unilaterally, especially as a leader.

When I heard about the bid, my first logistical reaction was ‘great’, now eventually Israel will be pursued in the international criminal court because now they can. And I think that’s great because Palestinians for far too long have not had any cards in their pocket to play when it comes to the games Israel plays regarding the conflict. This both really undermines Americas power, both soft and hard. And I think most importantly Europe realizes that they have to go it alone…..so I think Europe is starting to realize that it no longer has to fall in step with the US. Which I think is great because the US, more so than Israel believes that there is no resolution to the conflict.

TDB: Why do you think the Palestinians have had such a hard time drawing attention to their plight, particularly in the US?

ASE: I think it’s a lot of reasons. Perhaps first and foremost I am actually going to place the blame on Palestinians, ironically. I think too often we blame the press, we blame the West, we blame America, and I think those are all valid concerns, but I think the Palestinians have allowed divisions about our own identity to get the better of us. I really think that if the Palestinians were more unified in terms of their leadership, but also in terms of their ideology and in terms of their demands, I think they have allowed Israel and others to divide us in that regard. Of course another thing is AIPAC and the Jewish lobby and the fact that the way that American politics works – the two party system – you have to pledge allegiance or blind support to Israel’s right to defend themselves. Israel has created this really great narrative that Israel deserves the right to defend itself against all reason or rational, disregarding international law, and America bows to this for many reasons.

TDB: Do you see anything to be positive about in terms of US attitudes towards the conflict?

ASE: I really do. And I wish people didn’t ask me that question, because admitting to that – because it has been such a slight change and if we all talk about this change and celebrate the change, people tend to forget. People tend to have short attention spans. But to answer your question, yes, there is a change. Partially because of the internet, because things go viral and people are connecting of social media, but also because of other platforms – Indie GoGo and Kick Starter, because people based in Gaza being able to document and live tweet events and it adds to the effect that Palestinians are actually, you know, humans. The whole notion that Palestinians have  been dehumanized by Israel’s aggressive policies, that’s one thing, but I think that the media have portrayed Palestinians very simplistically and I think that that has done a huge disservice to our plight. I think the shift is coming, in that there are people who are more influential, because as you know the Huffington Post is one of the most read news sites in the US, and for eight days, we covered it – and it wasn’t biased.

There is a compelling narrative coming out about people having the right to live in dignity for the right for their leaders to represent their interests. Now obviously these haven’t been covered seamlessly by any means, and we’re still at the beginning process – we’re seeing tens of thousands of protests happening in Tahir Square – it’s still in its infant stages, but in the context of that, that has forced the media, not just the Huffington Post and social media outlets but also the mainstream media to cover the conflict within that context. You can’t avoid that context. Even if the new Arab Spring is more complex, with terrorism and violence, that narrative still exists; of popular revolt and uprising, and you know that has been happening for decades in Palestine. Obviously they are not rising up against their own leaders – they are uprising against their oppressors, so I think you can extrapolate from that – and that’s why we’re partially beginning to see a shift.

TDB: Let’s talk about official US policy. Do you see any nuance in Obama’s position?

ASE: No. I have to tell you I’m very disappointed in Obama. I understand the criticism of him weren’t necessarily fair in the first term given the context of the claims against him – you don’t want to seem anti Netanyahu or anti Israel or whatever,  but this is his second term and he hasn’t offered anything during the Gaza conflict to really be a leader. And a leader is someone who leads because he has conviction and because he knows what’s right and because he knows what’s best in his estimation, and I didn’t see any leadership from Obama. Even in calling the settlements illegitimate and making that distinction rather than calling them just ‘settlements’, which of course we know now there’s 3000 more. You know the United Nations – they vote to recognize Palestine – they call the settlements illegal – if they call Gaza occupied even though Israel does not, why Obama feels the need to buy into this notion that we can pretend that the reality on the ground isn’t the reality. And this at a time when he’s seen first hand more than any other President the entire reality on the ground completely shift in the Arab world – like dramatically. And it’s continuing to shift. It’s really troubling to me and I think he thinks it’s not going to affect him or affect Americans, I’m trying to really grasp what it is – or what is informing his need to maintain that status quo.

So do I think Obama has been a leader? No. Do I think he has shown a shift from his predecessors? Not at all. When it comes to that leaked video of Romney saying the Palestinians don’t want peace, we’re just going to kick the ball down the road – implying that all Palestinians want to eliminate and kill all Israelis – I think that all those things that Romney said, largely Obama would not say, but in terms of how those things affect US policy I think it’s sad to say that Obama really isn’t different. I think that Arabs might even be more disillusioned by Obama, given the context in the region and how he has augmented the ‘let me just kill people randomly’ strategy.

TDB: There are many Jews seriously concerned about the crisis – they do not support Israel’s actions and want to see a viable Palestinian state. What do you think they can do to help change public opinion?

ASE: Generally, raise your voice. Try and mobilize and find like minded people that are Jewish or Muslim or Arab or have a stake in the game or are invested in the region or invested in Israel for a multitude of reasons and try and organize and try create a presence online. I really believe that for any change to happen there is going to have to be an overwhelming display or popular resistance, whether it’s online or whether it’s at the UN or whether its petitioning your elected leaders, whether it’s creating a group like ‘J Street’ or a more justice based group for resolving the conflict for exposing injustices. I think it’s going to have to be an amalgamation and accumulation of these types of movements and initiatives that are going to actually bring about some policy changes because Israel is increasingly isolated themselves and I think there’s a lot of Jews that recognize that and who are concerned by that. And if I was Jewish I would be. I think that’s extremely concerning.

TDB: You’re probably the first Palestinian American to be given such a prominent media platform. Do you think your hiring was a risky thing for the Huffington Post to do, or is it a sign of changing times?

ASE: I think both. I know that’s a cop out, but I think Arianna took a huge risk. Arianna probably didn’t even know that when she asked me to collaborate then eventually to leave Al Jazeera to join her, she didn’t know probably that I was Palestinian, I would argue that she probably thought I was Egyptian, because at the time when I was speaking about what was happening in the region without really mentioning Palestine. Arianna really believes at the end of the day – and that’s part of her own political views and the way in which the Huffington Post has evolved, she really believes in transparency.

I think as long as that person is transparent and is accountable to his or her words and their reporting and all that stuff, then that’s what it should be about and that’s what the Huffington Post is about……I’m not particularly ideological or dogmatic when it comes to my beliefs. A lot of my Palestinian friends yell at me and say I normalize things when I talk to Israelis and acknowledge their right to exist.

TDB: Do you feel a lot of pressure with your role?

ASE: Is it a lot of pressure? Yeah. I have so many friends in the Muslim world, primarily in Palestine, who think that I am their outlet for reaching the wider American world and that’s not the case. I can’t just be a megaphone for what everyone wants to say.

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Huff Post:

The White House and its allies are weighing military options to secure Syria’s chemical and biological weapons, after U.S. intelligence reports show the Syrian regime may be readying those weapons and may be desperate enough to use them, U.S. officials said Monday.

President Barack Obama, in a speech at the National Defense University on Monday, pointedly warned Syrian President Bashar Assad not to use the weapons.

“Today I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command: The world is watching,” Obama said. “The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable. And if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Prague for meetings with Czech officials, said she wouldn’t outline any specifics.

“But suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur,” Clinton said.

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Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, speaking with journalists in 2009. (Photo credit: Trango)

By Paul R. Pillar:

What is one of the first things Hamas does when it is fresh off standing up against an Israeli assault and widely perceived to have gained ground politically at the expense of its intramural rival, Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority? It voices support for Abbas’s effort to get his organization’s status at the United Nations upgraded from observer to “non-member state.”

Given the way Hamas is routinely suspected and reviled in some quarters, this move is sure to give rise to explanations that are convoluted and conspiratorial — that what Hamas is saying is a ruse, or is just a tactic for harassing Israel, or is a step toward shoving the Palestinian Authority aside while Abbas is down.

The explanation that is simple and straightforward, and ought to be obvious, is much more likely to be accurate: that Hamas supports the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel, and that diplomacy is the preferred way to achieve that goal. That’s all that anyone who endorses Abbas’s initiative at the U.N. is signing up to.

And it is what everyone with a hand in this long-running conflict — including Israel, the Palestinians, the Quartet and the Arab League — claims to support. The Hamas spokesman said that his organization supports any political gains that Abbas can make at the U.N. “without causing harm to the national Palestinian rights.”

Although some saw this position by Hamas as surprising, there is no reason for any surprise. Hamas has repeatedly made clear that it will support the establishment of a Palestinian state limited to the 22 percent of the mandate of Palestine that would be represented by the 1967 borders, provided that such a settlement is approved by a majority of Palestinians in a referendum.

The land swaps that are generally recognized as being necessary to accommodate some of the facts that Israel has established on the ground since 1967 represent a small step from that formula, as long as the 1967 borders are taken as the starting point for any such trades.

And yet the government of Israel, and Americans who sing that government’s tune, and much of the American media habitually describe Hamas and the objectives of Hamas as something much different. The usual formula is something like “Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.”

Attempts to substantiate such a description often point to Hamas not having formally recognized Israel and its right to exist. Well, it hasn’t, but neither has Israel recognized any right of Hamas to exist (even after Hamas won a free all-Palestinian election).

Not only that, but Israel has done everything it can to try to squeeze Hamas out of existence, going to the extreme of collectively punishing the population of the Gaza Strip in an unsuccessful effort to do so. It is Israel that appears to be dedicated to the destruction of Hamas. Why should Hamas be expected to bestow the first recognition, gratis, under such circumstances?

One also often hears that all Hamas is offering is a hudna or truce, rather than a commitment to a final settlement. That will be a distinction without a practical difference. The agreement that ended the Korean War 59 years ago is only a hudna, but that peace has held even though the regime north of the armistice line is far more erratic, illegitimate, and downright scary than Hamas.

Besides, anyone can see — and Hamas’s leaders are not dummies — that Israel, the strongest state in its region, is here to stay no matter what its borders. Even if the most extreme, negative assumptions about Hamas’s intentions and objectives were true (and they very likely are not), being part of (or even being the ruling party in) a Palestinian state in that 22 percent would not bring it any closer to being able to destroy or even undermine Israel.

Instead, it would have that much more to lose from the certain retaliation if it were to renege on an agreement that finally established the long-sought Palestinian state.

An upgraded status for Palestinians at the United Nations merely levels somewhat the diplomatic playing field for the bilateral negotiations that will still be needed to bring a real Palestinian state into existence, as well as reconfirming the objective that everybody involved says they share. It would thus be a positive step.

Don’t just listen to what Abbas or Hamas say on the subject. See what former Israeli diplomat Yossi Beilin, who helped to craft the Oslo accords, says about it. See also the statement on the subject by Gro Harlem Brundtland, who was the Norwegian prime minister at the time the accords were negotiated, and Jimmy Carter, who based on his past experience also knows a thing or two about Arab-Israeli negotiations.

Probably some in Israel and the United States will see Hamas’s endorsement of Abbas’s U.N. initiative as another reason to oppose the initiative. If the governments of Israel and the United States continue foolishly to oppose this move and to invest political capital in trying to defeat it, we will have come in a sense full circle.

The organization that is continually accused of not wanting a peaceful diplomatic settlement will have signed on to a process aimed at moving toward such a settlement and giving it additional multilateral approval. It will be its chief accusers who fail to do so.

Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)

(Originally posted at Consortium News)

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Reuters:

The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved the de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the world body to issue its long overdue “birth certificate.”

The U.N. victory for the Palestinians was a diplomatic setback for the United States and Israel, which were joined by only a handful of countries in voting against the move to upgrade the Palestinian Authority’s observer status at the United Nations to “non-member state” from “entity,” like the Vatican.

Britain called on the United States to use its influence to help break the long impasse in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Washington also called for a revival of direct negotiations.

There were 138 votes in favor, nine against and 41 abstentions. Three countries did not take part in the vote, held on the 65th anniversary of the adoption of U.N. resolution 181 that partitioned Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

Thousands of flag-waving Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip set off fireworks and danced in the streets to celebrate the vote.

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