kalm wrote:CID1990 wrote:
So referring to a supposed ally as a potential apartheid state is good diplomacy, then? No biggie, just a bad choice of words?
The guy is supposedly strong on foreign policy... ran on it against Bush... chairman of the Senate FRC... and yet he cannot figure how it is that the Israelis won't come to the table while the PA and Hamas are reconciling?
He cant even get the Palestinians to concede Israel's right to exist and somehow he's mad at Israel
Agreed. Very poor choice of words for a diplomat, but isn't he kinda right?
Not really. It was a porr choice of words not only because it was crass hyperbole, but also because it was incorrect.
Unless the black South Africans were shooting rockets into Cape Town, blowing up buses full of Africaaners, and refusing to stop until all the white South Africans left South Africa (or were killed), I don't see the parallels.
Apartheid was a system of segregation based solely on the idea of racial superiority. What is going on in Israel is rooted in Israeli security. You wouldn't want Al Qaeda setting up shop in your neighborhood, and the Israelis balking at it is not an indication of Israel becoming an apartheid state. It is moral equivalency, nothing more.
Here's some moral equivalency for you: we fight pre-emptive foreign wars half a world away for our own supposed security and yet want to tell Israel that they should accomodate what would be the equivalent of standing up an Al Qaeda-run district in every large American city. Even Bismarck couldn't make this work.
Disclaimer: I am not a supporter of the amount of financial and military aid we give to Israel and believe we should be weaning them immediately, but I'm also not in favor of trying to tell them what their own best interests are.