Zonie63
Posts: 2826
Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
Isn't it tragic how way that politians and vested interests exploit the apathy of their electorates to pursue their own agendas? The compliance of the media further excerbates this sad state of affairs.
Most politicians just want to get re-elected. They need positive media attention in order to accomplish that, although the goals of the media are a bit more nebulous. For the most part, the media have pushed interventionism wholeheartedly throughout most of my lifetime, not just with Israel, but elsewhere around the world.
It is somewhat inexplicable, since other examples of U.S. interventionism would suggest some sort of economic benefit for the U.S., although in the case of Israel, the U.S. gets nothing in return for its support. Considering the Arab oil embargo and subsequent price jumps in oil which crippled the U.S. economy, supporting Israel has been an overall net loss for the U.S. economy.
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The US public may have much more power to intervene positively in these affairs than it may appear. For example look at the role the people of the US insisted that the Vietnam war was brought to a close. Or the effect of public disenchantment with US involvement in the seeming never ending disputes in the ME.
Yes, I agree that the public has the power to intervene positively, although a lot has changed in America since the days of the Vietnam War and the anti-war protests back then. The media were different back then, too. A lot of music from that era was far more politically-oriented and appealed to the anti-war sentiment of the time. Academia and civil rights groups were also quite activist at that time and were concurrently anti-war as well. Of course, it still took quite a number of years of massive protests before the U.S. actually pulled out of there, and it's not clear how much the protests were a factor in US politics overall. There apparently weren't enough protesters to defeat Nixon in '72. Nixon also supported Israel in the 1973 war, which led to the Arab oil embargo.
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So US citizens have the power to change things when they put their mind to it. The economic decline in the US should act as an aid to this movement as you point out. Another way that individually and collectively contribute to Palestinian liberation is join with millions of other like-minded people across the globe in the ever growing Boycott Divestment and Sanction movement against Israeli belligerence and the Occupation of Palestine. Check out http://www.bdsmovement.net/ for further info
Political opinions in the US seem to be going in a completely different direction these days. Ultimately, I think Americans will start to realize that this is not really our fight and that we should not take sides in it. But the problem is that we've already taken sides, and there's the feeling that we should stay the course, since pulling out our support of Israel would be dishonorable. They're still seen as a strong, reliable ally all during the Cold War, so it's difficult to advocate reversing that perception. And then there's the whole "holy land" angle which is rather important to the Christian Right.
The other side to this is that, if one is going to try to shift public opinion away from a pro-Israel stance, what would this actually mean for America and our relationship with the Arab and Muslim worlds? If the US withdraws its support of Israel, would this mean peace? I think that people might support such a proposal if they thought it could achieve a positive goal, but there's no real guarantee for any lasting peace. If people could be reasonably convinced that it could lead to something good, then it would be a sellable proposal.
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RE: The current middle eastern crisis is Israels fault... - 
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