A Message to Barack Obama

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Counterpunch
January 13, 2009

Your unwillingness before inauguration to say anything substantive about Gaza in public is in our opinion a tragic error. Specifically, your failure to censure Israel for refusing to accept immediately the U.N.’s ceasefire resolution on Gaza will severely and very rapidly damage the true U.S. national interest of improving our relationships throughout the Islamic world.

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Over the longer run, it will also damage our relationships with much of the rest of the world, which sees us as the financier and enabler of Israeli actions in Gaza that are irrational and immoral and that will, over time, harm Israel’s own long-term interests. Perhaps most important of all, your own actions, or inactions, have encouraged the entire right wing of Israeli politics and that part of the Israel lobby in the U.S. that is dominated by the conservative, elderly (and generally wealthy) leaders of AIPAC.

These groups – that is, the people who actually determine Israeli policies today – are the ones whom your actions have encouraged to intensify current Israeli military activities in Gaza. That makes you personally responsible for any killings of either Palestinians or Israelis that occur between now and your inauguration.

You might call this the blowback of your own policies toward Israel.

Sincerely,

Bill and Kathleen Christison

This article was posted: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 10:36 am

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