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Yesterday’s nomination of Tzipi Livni as Kadima’s candidate for Israel’s upcoming national election (and especially the pleasant reception of the news by Ramallah) confirms two immutable facts about Israel/Palestinian relations: 1) Israel’s tradition of electing killers to the highest office is alive and well… Likewise, 2) the Palestinian puppet leadership always lick it all up.

Let me elaborate…

To begin, yesterday’s contest between Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz was an old-fashioned battle between two evils. Despite Kadima’s reputation for being “moderate” and offering Israel’s best hope for brokering peace with the Palestinians, both candidates were (in Livni’s case, still is) entirely unfit to rule.

On the one hand, yesterday’s nomination offered Shaul Mofaz - a man notorious for recent revelations that, during his tenure as commander of the IDF in the West Bank and Gaza, he called for 70 slain Palestinians per day. This, as well as his role in demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes during the same period, has led to accusations of war crimes. David Kretzmer, emeritus professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that recent evidence suggest that Mofaz “committed serious offenses, some of which at least, fall into the category of war crimes.” (more…)

Two evenings ago, speaking before the American-Israeli Pubic Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Barack Obama desperately attempted to win back his floundering support among the American Jewish community by demonstrating his hawkish, pro-Israel stance. This is neither unusual nor suspect—especially in the United States where the Jewish demographic tends to be more fundamentally Zionist than the Israelis themselves and aspiring candidates are almost required to recite Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat by heart.

Naturally, Obama made the typical platitudes: “Israel has the right to defend itself”, “I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend … Israel”, ad nauseam. But then he said something that could have caused Ariel Sharon to crack a smile through his coma:

“Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognised, defensible borders. And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and must remain undivided,” he said to rapturous clapping and cheering.

What? East Jerusalem will remain part of Israel? Have U.S. politicians finally ceased pretending they support a negotiated settlement? (more…)