Chuck Schumer: ‘strangle Gazans’ until they vote how we want

June 11, 2010 · Posted in Foreign policy, Israel, Politics 

True/Slant’s Zaid Jilani says it all:

Imagine if Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) — the nation’s first elect Muslim congressman — appeared at a radical mosque in, let’s say, Dearborn, Michigan. At this radical mosque, Ellison explained that the Israeli government simply didn’t want to accept a Muslim state in Gaza and the West Bank — and let’s suppose this wasn’t actually true — and that this was because, you know, they don’t read the Quran. …

Then Ellison would go on to say, “You see, those Israelis elected Netanyahu. And we don’t like Netanyahu, he has committed great crimes against our people. So I think it makes sense to economically strangle the Israelis until they change their minds.” And then Ellison went on to advocate denying them fresh meat, basic medical supplies, and a whole host of humanitarian items.

The congressman would probably be (rightly) lambasted across the political spectrum, made into a wild-eyed extremist in the media, and probably forced to resign (or maybe he’d lose by a 30-point landslide in the next election).

Of course, this hypothetical is just that. Unfortunately, this event basically happened, just replace Keith with Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and the radical mosque with the Orthodox Union.

ThinkProgress has the video. Stunning.

Meanwhile, outside the reflexive-Likudist bunker in Washington, NYT columnist Roger Cohen writes:

Israel is a liberal democracy stuck in the blind alley of a morally corrupting 43-year-old occupation that has made force its reflexive mode of operation. Several factors have nudged the country rightward: religious-settler extremism; obliviousness to the Palestinian plight now concealed behind walls; Russian-imported strands of Arab-baiting intolerance. But it is still a liberal democracy, home to a level of debate and openness unknown elsewhere in the Middle East. This needs broader acknowledgment.

What Israel in turn must realize — before it is too late — is that the real threat it faces today is not one of destruction but of de-legitimization. Its tactical lurches, often violent, do not add up to a strategy; they have resulted in a shocking erosion of Israel’s stature. I was talking the other day to the Israeli ambassador to a West European nation and he complained that he could rarely set foot on a university campus these days. Universities represent the future.

The only way to re-legitimize Israel and integrate it is an end to the occupation and the achievement of a two-state solution, with Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people and Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people. Israel cannot do this alone. Feckless Arab powers must step forward.

But Israel emphatically cannot do this, ever, by succumbing to a deeper and giddier embrace of those terrible twins, victimhood and force — terrible because at once addictive and blinding.

An ever larger share of the officer corps of the Israel Defense Forces comes from Orthodox or settler families. The mindset of secular Tel Aviv has migrated — as far as is feasible — to Europe and the United States.

But apparently, not to the United States Congress.

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