Blowback From a Tragic Error

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.

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

BILL and KATHLEEN CHRISTISON are ashamed to say that years ago they were both analysts with the CIA.  In recent years Bill has written numerous articles on U.S. foreign policies, while Kathleen for over 30 years has written on Middle East Affairs.  She is the author of two books on Palestinians and U.S. policy on Palestine-Israel.  Bill and Kathleen visit Palestine frequently and are joint authors of a book, forthcoming in mid-2009 from Pluto Press, on the Israeli occupation and its impact on Palestinians, with over 50 of their photographs.  They can be reached at kb.christison@earthlink.net.

 

 

 

 

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. Kathleen Christison is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.