Arab MK: U.S. beginning to question Israeli policy on Palestinians
Ahmed Tibi lashes out at treatment of American lawmakers brought to Israel by Jewish lobby group J Street.
By Haaretz Service Tags: Israel newsKnesset Member Ahmed Tibi has lashed out over the treatment of American lawmakers brought to Israel by the J Street organization, warning that unconditional U.S. support for Israel is on the wane.
Writing in an opinion piece published Friday in the Washington Times, Tibi said:
"The visiting members of Congress, though staunch supporters of Israel not yet questioning American aid, are beginning to raise questions about Israel's actions against the Palestinians."
The visit by members of Congress in February was apparently subject to an attempted boycott by a senior Israeli official due to the involvement of J Street.
Rep. William Delahunt (D-Massachusetts), who headed the delegation, said at the time that Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon had "apparently attempted to block our meetings with senior officials in the Prime Minister's office and Foreign Ministry".
Tibi also had harsh words for what he branded Israel's apartheid policies, saying: "Israel's policies are putting it in league with the West's most notoriously racist governments of the past five decades."
He went on to quote Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who told the prestigious Herzliya Conference earlier this year that Israel was in danger of becoming "an apartheid state".
For Palestinians, this was already a reality, Tibi said, with "the separation wall running through the West Bank and East Jerusalem," and "different Israeli laws for Jews and Palestinians in the occupied territories".
The Arab lawmaker, who is also the deputy speaker of the Knesset, slammed Israel for responding to growing international criticism with a lackluster "propaganda" campaign to boost its image abroad, rather than tackling "the fundamental injustices meted out to Palestinians every day".
Tibi concluded: "Members of Congress don't need another decade of complicity with Israel's occupation, but the political courage to tell an ally and its associated lobbyists that continued domination of the Palestinians is simply not acceptable in the 21st century."
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People state that Arab-Israelis can vote and can attend universities and become doctors. In the US, the doctor connected to the idea of transfusions, Dr.Drew, died because a hospital wouldn't take him some decades ago. He studied to be a doctor. Black people in many places could vote. It doesn't mean ther isn't discrimination. Michael Oren complained of prejudice in a Catholic neighborhood in the 60s, and he could vote and be a doctor or whatever and unlike Arab-Israelis Jews in America since some decades have been in government. Arab Israelis can't build anywhere much blacks in the US decades ago and then the book a "Raisin in the Sun" changed that. Let's face it, Israel is like the US under segregation and South Africa's apartheid was extreme segregation. Israel falls in between both examples, as I have demonstrated.
I can rarely believe the comments that are made by people on the articles of Haaretz. They are so rightist and so ignorant. McQueen your statement has the quality of a black and white world view, where all arabs are terrorists and evil. The problem is not little McQueen and his ignorance and total political confusion, but that his views are held by so many in Israel and the US.
tibi speaks for the arabs lieberman speaks for the wackos
while his Jewish contemporaries had to serve in the IDF. Then he is allowed to badmouth Israel in the Israeli Parlament ,Knesset and receives a handsome salary for it from the discriminatory Israeli state .
...is acceptable?