In USA, tide begins to turn against Israeli impunity
17.12.2011
LALIT, as part of the world-wide movement against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, has long criticized the USA State and private sector as being the prime source of Israel’s impunity. LALIT now notes that there is the beginning of a change in the USA in its unflinching military and political support for the state of Israel, at least in discourse. The ‘US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation’ has noted that support for the Israeli state is now finally coming under criticism in the US.
The business community in the U.S., the campaign group reports, “quietly come out against U.S. funding cuts to UNESCO”, even as the Palestinian flag first flew over the UNESCO headquarters in Paris yesterday. LALIT member Alain Ah-Vee commented on the importance of this “statement against Israel’s occupation of Palestine” in a declaration to Top-FM Radio yesterday.
And, at the same time, in the USA, after the failure of the bipartisan “deficit super-committee”, which means all US budget expenditure, including on defense, gets automatically cut, the Association that co-ordinates this traditional US support of Israel, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, has not opposed the automatic $250 million cut in military aid to Israel with the same alacrity that it usually does.
And even senior military officials, like former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus have begun to question whether unconditional support for Israel is counter-productive for the USA, itself.
In the USA, over the past few years, instead of a few marginalized groups supporting the Palestinian cause, there are now some 400 organizations working for justice for Palestinians, and exposing the crimes of the Israeli State.
In Mauritius, too, there are now a number of organizations that work together against the Israeli occupation, including the Centre Idriss Goomany Committee, the Phoenix Youth, LALIT, the Confederation of Private Sector Workers (CTSP)and the Women’s Liberation Movement (Muvman Liberasyon Fam) and often work together with the former President of the Republic of Mauritius, Cassam Uteem. Together, we have succeeded in contributing towards the Mauritian State suspending diplomatic relations with Israel when there was the bombing of Gaza in 2008-9, and supporting Palestine’s place in the UN General Assembly.
