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Tuesday, April 29, 2008 12:00 AM

Taking back the debate over Israel

Sick of right-wing Jews speaking in their name, progressive American Jews have launched J Street to change the way the game is played in Washington.

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  • Tuesday, April 29, 2008 09:40 AM

    It seems to me to be a means to cover Kadima's rear

    That is to say, if you watch their video advert, the positive payload is on Olmert, which means Kadima. Now, Kadima is itself a sort of centrist fusion of cadres from Likud on the one side and Labor on the other, with the sadly insignificant Meretz hanging onto its coat-tails. Olmert and Co. are well aware that as things stand in the USA, the AIPAC machine could bring down the Kadima government within a month or so if it put its mind to it, and naturally they don't want that to happen.

    But, really, what IS the Kadima policy? When Olmert took up the prime ministership in 2006 he was talking in terms of something called in hebrew, "hitkansut," which is usually translated as "convergence," more or less accurately, but the essential idea was that the settlers would be "converged" behind the wall, and the settlers who still remained beyond it would eventually have to look after themselves. However, this is not quite as straightforward as it seems, because at no point did he even consider giving up control of the ribbon of land immediately abutting the west bank of the Jordan river. If you visualise this, you will see that it is not the settlers who are being "converged" (i.e. concentrated behind a protective barrier) but the remaining Palestinians who are being "converged" by being concentrated in the remaining space between the Israeli controlled territories to both West and East of them. This is not a problem that can be solved by any amount of stylistics, and it is not on JStreet's agenda, or anyone else's, to abandon the aforesaid ribbon of land on the riverbank. See the problem?

    p.s. - on a personal note - I am one of the reportedly non-existent Kansas O'Flaherty fans. I have links to all sixteen episodes on my blog somewhere.

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