Truthdig
In 2013, Trump's Defense Nominee Compared Israeli Occupation With Apartheid
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/in_2013_gen_james_mattis_compared_israel
i_occupation_to_apartheid_20161203/
AddThis Sharing Buttons
Share to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to More
Posted on Dec 3, 2016
By Juan Cole (http://www.truthdig.com/staff/juan_cole) / Informed Comment
(http://www.juancole.com/2016/12/occupation-apartheid-blackballing.html)
The interview of Gen. James Mattis by Wolf Blitzer at Aspen in 2013, in
which the recently-retired former CENTCOM commander spoke freely on Middle
East policy, has come back to haunt him now that Donald Trump has put him
forward as the next Secretary of Defense. At a time when the US has ground
troops in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, however, it is not his position on
those conflicts that is controversial. It is his remarks on Secretary of
State John Kerry's attempts at peace talks
(http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/tikkundaily/us-centcom-general-if-kerry-l
ed-peace-talks-fail-israel-may-become-apartheid) between Israel and
Palestine. Alternet quoted him as saying:
So we've got to work on [peace talks] with a sense of urgency. I paid a
military security price every day as a commander of CENTCOM because the
Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel, and [because of this]
moderate Arabs couldn't be with us because they couldn't publicly support
those who don't show respect for Arab Palestinians.
Everybody involved in US foreign policy and security knows that aggressive
Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank and siege of Palestinian
civilians in the Gaza Strip is a major cause of terrorism against the United
States, since Washington is blamed for it, and is a major security problem
because it makes the US a pariah in the Muslim world. One of the reasons
Osama Bin Laden gave
(http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/jerusalem-and-terrorism-ariel-sharon.html)
for attacking the US was the Israeli mistreatment of stateless Palestinians:
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic,
the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its
occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this
is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state,
and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq,
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their
disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of
the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.
As I've said before, if it were a matter of taking a hit to defend Israel on
its people's right to live in safety, then the US will always step up. But
to take a hit to defend Israeli wanton war crimes and disregard of
international law is unacceptable.
In his Aspen interview in 2013, Mattis went on to use the "A" word:
I'll tell you, the current situation is unsustainable ... We've got to find
a way to make work the two-state solution that both Democrat and Republican
administrations have supported, and the chances are starting to ebb because
of the settlements. For example, if I'm Jerusalem and I put 500 Jewish
settlers to the east and there's ten thousand Arabs already there, and if we
draw the border to include them, either [Israel] ceases to be a Jewish state
or you say the Arabs don't get to vote - apartheid. That didn't work too
well the last time I saw that practiced in a country.
Jimmy Carter was treated shamefully by Alan Dershowitz and Brandeis
University and the entire Israel-Lobby Establishment for voicing precisely
the same warning, and was excluded by their pressure from speaking at the
Obama Democratic National Conventions. Watchlists have been made of
academics who dare critize Israeli squatting on Palestinian-owned land.
And let us remember how poor Chuck Hagel was treated
(http://www.juancole.com/2013/02/mauled-bizarro-senate.html) , a
distinguished Vietnam War vet with two purple hearts and a senator, during
the hearing to confirm him as Secretary of Defense, at the behest of Neocon
chicken hawks:
Ah, and then there is Lindsey Graham, the Red Queen of the Senate (who is
the essence of the pedantic governess and asks through-the-looking-glass
questions like: "Divide a loaf by a knife: what's the answer to that?") ...
Then the Red Queen went after Hagel for having said that the "Jewish lobby"
intimidates people. He demanded, "Name one person here who's been
intimidated by the Jewish lobby . . . Name one dumb thing we've been goaded
into doing due to pressure by the Israeli or Jewish lobby."
Hagel said he didn't have anyone in mind.
The irony, of course, is that Graham is himself part of the Israel lobby,
and there he was intimidating Hagel for complaining about having been
intimidated!
All the congressmen and senators know that the Israel lobby intimidates them
or tries to, on a daily basis. Ernst Hollings complained, "you can't have an
Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here." AIPAC is the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the de facto foreign agent of the
Israeli government in the United States, which gets away with not having to
register as such because it has bought off or intimidated Congress.
So let's see if Senator Graham treats Gen. Mattis the same way (I wouldn't
advise it; he is called "Mad Dog" for a reason), or whether the Israel
lobbies will just have to swallow this defeat.
So can the sensible observers of the Middle East now be invited to dinner
again and the Israel-Lobby blackballing of them be lifted?
By the way, the rest of Mattis's interview in 2013 was likewise informed and
usually sensible. He was against getting involved in Syria, and warned that
military action couldn't resolve the issue of Iran's nuclear enrichment
program.
'Saturday Night Live' Rips Into Trump's Careless Twitter Use and Scary
Cabinet Choices (Video)
Trump's Treasury Secretary Pick is a Lucky Man. Very Lucky.
Why Trump and His Cabinet's Jihad Against 'Political Islam' Will Fail
Trump Would Almost Certainly Be Violating the Constitution If He Continues
to Own His Businesses
Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
C 2016 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
Signup for Truthdig's newsletter
