It’s Time for the U.S. to Recognize Palestine
Washington should choose pragmatic diplomacy over ideological posturing.

BY Leon Hadar

The growing international momentum toward recognizing Palestine as an independent state represents a long-overdue acknowledgment of geopolitical realities that Washington has stubbornly refused to accept. As more nations move beyond the tired mantras of “peace process” diplomacy, it's time for U.S. policymakers to abandon their counterproductive approach and embrace pragmatic statecraft.

For decades, American foreign policy in the Middle East has been hostage to domestic political considerations rather than strategic interests. The reflexive opposition to Palestinian statehood recognition serves neither American nor Israeli long-term interests, and certainly does nothing to advance regional stability.

The endless focus on “process” over outcomes has become a substitute for serious diplomacy. While Washington continues to insist that Palestinian statehood can only emerge through direct negotiations with Israel, the rest of the world has moved beyond this increasingly hollow formulation. The reality is that the current Israeli government has shown little interest in meaningful negotiations toward a two-state solution, making the American position appear both naive and enabling of the status quo.

Recognition of Palestinian statehood by the international community doesn't preclude negotiations—it actually creates more balanced conditions for them. When one party enjoys overwhelming military and economic advantages while the other lacks basic recognition of its legitimate national aspirations, meaningful diplomacy becomes impossible.

America’s reflexive opposition to Palestinian recognition has imposed real costs. As European allies, Arab partners, and emerging powers move toward recognition, Washington finds itself increasingly isolated in defending an untenable position.

America’s claim to be an honest broker in Middle East conflicts becomes laughable when it consistently opposes legitimate Palestinian aspirations while enabling Israeli settlement expansion.

The result is the U.S. ceding the moral high ground on Palestinian rights and creating opportunities for rivals like China and Russia to position themselves as champions of international law and justice.

A genuinely realist approach would recognize several uncomfortable truths. 

First, the current trajectory leads nowhere productive. Israeli settlement expansion continues to make a viable Palestinian state less feasible, while Palestinian resentment deepens. This serves no one’s long-term interests, including Israel’s.

Second, Palestinian statehood recognition by the international community is inevitable. The question is whether America will be part of shaping this transition or find itself scrambling to catch up to events it refused to anticipate.

Third, genuine Israeli security requires Palestinian dignity and self-determination. Military occupation and settlement expansion may provide short-term tactical advantages, but they undermine long-term strategic security by perpetuating grievances and radicalizing new generations.

American policy has become trapped by an expansive interpretation of the U.S.–Israel relationship that conflates Israeli government preferences with American interests. A truly pro-Israel policy would sometimes involve disagreeing with Israeli government positions when they undermine Israel’s long-term security and international standing.

The notion that questioning specific Israeli policies constitutes abandonment of a democratic ally reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of alliance relationships. Real allies sometimes disagree precisely because they care about each other’s long-term welfare.

Rather than continue reflexive opposition to Palestinian statehood recognition, Washington should acknowledge reality and accept that Palestinian national aspirations are legitimate and that meaningful self-determination requires statehood.

The U.S. should engage with international partners to establish parameters for Palestinian statehood that address legitimate Israeli security concerns while ensuring Palestinian viability.

It needs to help shape the recognition process rather than find itself responding to initiatives led by others.

The bottom line is that the U.S. needs to abandon the process fetishism that has characterized decades of failed diplomacy and focus on achieving sustainable arrangements that serve both peoples’ interests.

The recognition of Palestinian statehood represents an opportunity for American diplomacy to realign with both moral principles and strategic interests. Continued opposition serves no constructive purpose and increasingly isolates the United States from global opinion and emerging realities.

Genuine leadership requires the courage to acknowledge when existing approaches have failed and the wisdom to adapt to changing circumstances. On Palestinian recognition, that moment has arrived. The question is whether American policymakers will seize this opportunity for constructive engagement or continue down a path that serves neither American interests nor regional stability.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/its-time-for-the-u-s-to-recognize-palestine/

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         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

They Really Think They’ll Be Able To Propagandize The World Into Liking Israel Again

BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

It’s cute how the Zionists think they’ll be able to manipulate and propagandize the world into liking Israel again.

Yeah, saturate all online platforms with weird-faced influencers telling us Israel is awesome. That’ll make us forget those years of genocidal atrocities.

Sure, buy up the social media platforms that young people are using so you can censor criticism of Israel. That’ll convince them that Zionism is cool.

Go on, take control of CBS and make Bari Weiss the boss. That’ll make us forget all those videos of mutilated Palestinian children.

Right, use Zionist oligarchs and influence operations to manipulate governments and institutions into crushing free speech which opposes a genocidal apartheid state. That’ll get everyone supporting the genocidal apartheid state.

Propaganda is an effective tool of mass-scale psychological manipulation, but it isn’t magic. It isn’t going to miraculously erase what people know in their bones to be true.

In order to successfully propagandize people you need to first get them to trust you, and then you need to feed them narratives which appeal to the cognitive biases they already hold. Nobody trusts Israel apologia anymore, and people’s biases are now stacked squarely against the Zionist entity. They’ve got nothing to work with and nowhere to start from.

If a coworker you hate came up to you and started stealing stuff off your desk while telling you he’s your friend and that he would never steal from you, you’re not going to believe him no matter how many words he says to you. No matter how skillful a manipulator he is, no matter how eloquent his words are, nothing he says will trump your first hand observations of your material reality.

That’s what it’s like at this point. They’re trying to throw a bunch of language at us in order to convince us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen, haven’t experienced what we’ve experienced, and don’t know what we know. And they assume it will work because the language they’re throwing at us is being circulated in high volumes and costs a lot of money.

It won’t work, though. Even if propaganda could convince us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen and don’t know what we know, propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. These past two years have made even relatively apolitical members of the public acutely aware that there is an aggressive campaign to manipulate their perception of the state of Israel, and that anyone pushing them to support that state is untrustworthy. Nobody’s going to buy into the propaganda if they don’t trust the source.

Now that everyone’s aware that Israel is paying influencers $7,000 per post to churn out propaganda on its behalf, whenever you see a video online of some young social media-savvy personality promoting pro-Israel narratives you see their replies flooded with memes and jokes about their $7k jackpot. From now on whenever some sunglasses-wearing zillennial shows up going “Israel is surrounded on all sides by Islamofascists and you think JEWS are the problem? Uhh, no babe. Walk with me,” everyone’s going to go “Found one of those $7k posts.”

It just doesn’t work. Psychological manipulation only goes so far. There’s only so much that clever language can do to decouple someone’s mind from their direct experience of material reality.

This is where Israel went wrong in alienating the liberal Zionists. They needed people at the table who understood how normal human beings think, who could help the Israel project walk the delicate line between apartheid abuses papered over with propaganda and full-scale atrocities which would alienate the world. Instead they decided to go all in with the Smotriches and Ben-Gvirs, trusting that the propaganda machine which had served them so well all those decades would continue to carry them through any international upset they might cause.

It hasn’t turned out that way. The world’s eyes are open to what Israel is, and they are never going to close again. You can’t take off the Mickey Mouse mask, show the kids the snarling Freddy Krueger face underneath it, and then put the mask on and hope they start calling you Mickey again. Nobody’s going to forget what you showed them.

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https://www.activistpost.com/they-really-think-theyll-be-able-to-propagandize-the-world-into-liking-israel-again/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.