Obama Campaign Site Hosts “Israpalestine” Group
What is its agenda, and why is Barack Obama giving it a platform on his Web site?
by Bill Levinson
We phrase this as a question because we are not 100 percent sure, but the context suggests a merger of Israel and “Palestine” into a single country in which Palestinian demographics would soon overwhelm the European minority–an agenda similar to the “Right of Return” under which Palestinians could swamp Israelis through unlimited immigration. Barack Obama’s official campaign site hosts a rather secretive “IsraPalestine” group whose blog is accessible only by members, although some of its content is crossposted to other groups.
All of the following material is hosted on a Web site that is “paid for by Obama for America” and which, contrary to the disclaimer on each Web page, is under the editorial control of Obama campaign staffers. “Exercise of editorial control” makes Obama responsible for the content. Furthermore, “Israpalestine” is not merely an individual posting but an interest group, whose presence must probably be reviewed and sanctioned by the moderators who exercise editorial control over the site.
As stated on “IsraPalestine’s” group site,
This group’s thinking makes a quantum leap in how to address the Palestine/ Israel issue. Our objective is to look at basic human needs such as political representation, citizenry issues, common humanity, and freedom. We do so by bypassing differences in religion and nationality. We will discuss the nature of the conflict, its genesis and possible modalities for reaching a logical outcome. The Israpalestine modality and formulation are open to the creative genius of this group.
This blog is for members only
Directory
Group directory is for members only
EventsEvent listings are for members only
This page gives us at least a hint as to IsraPalestine’s agenda: to its credit, this comment is critical of the Israpalestine group.
Deleting a comment that mentions one state solution is meaningless as long as there is an official private MyBO group ‘Israpalestine’, the term that the European far left uses ofr a one secular state solution.
Far left historical revisionism is as evil as far right hisotry revisionism.
“A one state secular solution” suggests that the agenda of IsraPalestine is indeed to combine Israel with the Gaza Strip and West Bank, thus destroying it through demographics. The content of the publicly available parts of the IsraPalestine blog is certainly hostile to Israel. It includes material from Michael Lerner of Tikkun.org, material from Uri Averny and, most damning, a link to a YouTube video of IfAmericansKnew.org (Alison Weir’s organization).
The first page touts “Fact Check: US Middle East Policy by J Street.”
Dear Care2 Member,
Hi,
I’m Jeremy Ben Ami, Executive Director of J Street, and I’m so pleased
you’ve joined J Street’s email list through our petition asking
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to halt Israeli settlement
expansion in the West Bank.Welcome aboard!
We started J Street to mobilize political support for a new direction in American policy in the Middle East.
Our
goals are to end the conflicts between Israel and its neighbors
peacefully, to bring about a two-state solution between the Israelis
and Palestinians, to avoid war with Iran, and to promote real American
leadership to help resolve the conflicts in the Middle East through
tough, smart diplomacy.To
do that, we have to change a crippling dynamic in American politics -
namely, that a small number of neo-conservatives, right-wing Christian
Zionists, and right-wing Jews monopolize the political landscape when
it comes to Israel and the Middle East.
The same page touts “Rabbi Lerner invited by Saudi King to International Interfaith Conference in Madrid Starting Wednesday.” The interfaith conference doubtlessly had to be held in Madrid because Saudi Arabia is hardly a welcoming venue for anyone but Sunni Muslims. Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal reputedly said, “There are no Christians in Saudi Arabia.”
The second page contains the following from Uri Averny: it suggests that Israel’s Jews should apologize to the Palestinians for being alive, noting that the goal of the Arab aggression of 1948 was to throw all the Jews into the sea.
In my mind’s eye I see the President of the State or the Prime Minister addressing a special extraordinary session of the Knesset and making a historic speech on the following lines:
MADAM SPEAKER, Honorable Knesset,
On behalf of the State of Israel and all its citizens, I address today the sons and daughters of the Palestinian people, wherever they are.
We recognize the fact that we have committed against you a historic injustice, and we humbly ask your forgiveness.
When the Zionist movement decided to establish a national home in this country, which we call Eretz Yisrael and you call Filastin, it had no intention of building our state on the ruins of another people. Indeed, almost no one in the Zionist movement had ever been in the country before the first Zionist Congress in 1897, or even had any idea about the actual situation here.
…ALL THIS does not justify what happened afterwards. The creation of the Jewish national home in this country has involved a profound injustice to you, the people who lived here for generations.
We cannot ignore anymore the fact that in the war of 1948 – which is the War of Independence for us, and the Naqba for you – some 750 thousand Palestinians were compelled to leave their homes and lands. As for the precise circumstances of this tragedy I propose the establishment of a “Committee for Truth and Reconciliation”‘ composed of experts from your and from our side, whose conclusions will from then on be incorporated in the schoolbooks, yours and ours.
We cannot ignore anymore the fact that for 60 years of conflict and war, you have been prevented from realizing your natural right to independence in your own free national state, a right confirmed by the United Nations General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947, which also formed the legal basis for the establishment of the State of Israel.
For all this, we owe you an apology, and I express it hereby with all my heart.
The fourth page touts yet more material from Michael Lerner of Tikkun.org:
Jews jumped from the burning buildings of Europe into Palestine not because we were servants of imperial or colonial interests, but because we were desperate and because no one wanted us or would protect us. Unfortunately and tragically, we landed on the backs of Palestinians who were already there, and we hurt many of them in our landing. So scarred were we by our own pain-having just witnessed the death of one out of every three Jews alive on the planet-that we were unable to notice or take seriously the pain that we were causing to the Palestinian people in the process. When our army uprooted Palestinians from their homes and villages, it was in the midst of a struggle for survival in which Jews were determined to be as ruthless towards others as others had been towards us.
Right, Lerner, the Israeli Army uprooted the poor, innocent, nonviolent Palestinians even though they had been shooting at Jews long before the 1948 war, and even though it was the Arabs who told them to get out of the way so they could drive the Jews into the sea. This material is hosted on Barack Obama’s official campaign site, where it is “paid for by Obama for America.” The same page continues with this entry:
JERUSALEM – Women screaming and children trying to escape a village on fire.
These are just two of the images that two Palestinian sisters, Fatima and Zeinab Jaber, 65 and 71, live with from an event they witnessed 60 years ago.
They are haunted, too, by the memory of their mother, Nuzah, who they recall crying as she rushed members of their family to safety.
And they are their last recollections of their home, the village of Deir Yassin, as it was being overrun and destroyed by armed Jewish militant groups.
Another entry on this page suggests that “IsraPalestine” does indeed mean a merger of Israel and “Palestine,” thus effectively destroying Israel as a Euro-American democracy.
For some Palestinians, one state with Israel is better than none
By Chinni – May 8th, 2008 at 4:43 pm EDT Also listed in: 6 groups
For some Palestinians, one state with Israel is better than none
By Richard Boudreaux and Ashraf Khalil
May 8, 2008JERUSALEM — Frustrated by years of on-and-off peace talks with Israel, Palestinians are losing hope for an independent homeland, and some are proposing a radically different cause: a shared state with equal rights for Palestinians and Jews…
…”I would say, ‘Be my guest. Continue your occupation. But we’re going to declare this is all one state and ask for equal rights. Are you going to be able to keep us under control for another 40 years?’ ” Jarbawi said.
Page 5 of this listing has a tribute to Rachel Corrie, the International Solidarity Movement activist who was killed after she knelt in front of a moving bulldozer. The International Solidarity Movement and a Hamas terrorist later bragged about how much publicity her death gained for their cause.
Page 6 offers “A 50-Minute Exposé on The Influence of The Israel Lobby in The US …”. The video to which it links was removed from YouTube, possibly for copyright violation, but here is some possible information about it–it offended even the National Jewish Democratic Council!
Again, a Web site “paid by for Obama for America” is the host of all of the above material. Contrary to the disclaimer on each page, the Obama campaign’s moderators exercise editorial control over this Web site. Our question to our readers is as follows: what does “IsraPalestine” mean to you, and why is Barack Obama giving it a platform on his Web site?
Keep digging Bill, now, instead of being distracted by small timers like Jeremiah Wright, you’re on the right track of the Obama danger to Israel, dig away and you’ll get to fellow Chicagoan Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, and the very political interfaith movement, yep. Some of the plans don’t necessarily go one state but a regional confederation with a shared Jerusalem.
p.s., some months ago I read on the Obama website an announcement for an interfaith dialog conference in Oklahoma, featuring Islam, of course, but the kicker: Cherif Bassiouni (as in “M” Cherif Bassiouni the ICC guy who tries nations for crimes against humanity–look at Israel, trains CAIR, and has written some revisionist stuff about Israel himself– so now he’s all peaceful and “interfaith” — not! interfaith = screw Israel, share or take Jerusalem).
In their proposal for “Israpalestine”, they say…
I am all for it! But try it first on all the surrounding Arab states and then we’ll talk!
The process of creating an official MyBO Group does indeed require approval by whoever manages the official MyBO website. In mid-March, 2008, I tried to create The Economy Forum Group. My request was denied because ‘Economy’ is not an approved topic under Issues for MyBO Groups, which I continue to find very disturbing considering the Economy is the #1 issue in this presidential campaign.
Private MyBO Groups are controlled by that Group administrator, usually the person who starts the Group. That person controls membership, blog posts, and can encourage dialog through that Group’s email, only accessible to the Group members. Comments attached to blog posts are controlled by the person who writes the original post.
Whether the official Obama campaign actually pays attention to anything being discussed in any MyBO Group is questionable, unless the Group administrator is connected to the campaign in some way, perhaps because they were a delegate pledged to Obama or an Obama grassroots political operative. The MyBO website continues to be mostly a fundraising and campaign activity machine.
Re: “Whether the official Obama campaign actually pays attention to anything being discussed in any MyBO Group is questionable…”
Remember that “Emily” found and terminated my account within 36 hours of my posting of anti-Obama material at the site.
Even if someone reported my material as “objectionable,” it does not speak well of the MyBO community that a posting that wished for Bill and Hillary Clinton to be lynched during a riot while also calling Bill Clinton “white trash” was not so reported or, if it was, why it was allowed to remain online since January. (I think the posting falls short of being reportable to the U.S. Secret Service, though, because the individual merely wished that the Clintons would be killed as opposed to saying she would do it herself.) The same issue applied to MoveOn.org, where other users voted to agree with various forms of hate speech, which the moderators allowed to stand until it became a major scandal.
“Emily,” by the way, also counseled another user to use “Israel Lobby” instead of “Jewish Lobby.”
Despicable propaganda. It wasn’t the Jews who prevented such a state from being formed. The Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected the UN partition in 1947 and instead went to war against the newly born Jewish state. Once that happened, the UN General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947 became null and void. To now use that resolution to claim Palestinian legal rights to a state there is a load of BS.
Great find Bill.
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How about a bit of illumination on this very topic.
http://www.peteyandpetunia.com/VoteHere/VoteHere.htm
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