Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Omar

Romney Goes against his church on Stem Cell Research

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The Utah delegation to Congress all voted for continued stem cell research because they know the majority of Utahns, who are Mormons like Romney, support continued scientific stem cell research but Mitt Romney decided to take an extreme right wing turn. He is off the farm now and needs to explain his position because it does not square with his church.

Romney’s pandering to the religious extremes is odd because evangelicals are his largest opposition. I can’t figure out what he is thinking. He turned his back on his own people, the Mormons, to appeal to the anti-Mormons, go figure.

Is it guts, nuts or confused?

Inviolable Taboos Broken

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Since the publication of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John Mearsheimer of the Univ of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard the taboo of criticising Israel has been lifted slightly. These two respected scholars who have no previous history of engaging in the Middle East debates surprised everyone and the response has also been a surprise. The paper is being subjected to reviews from the left and the right in agreement that our relationship with Israel is harming American interests abroad and to accusations of anti-semestism. The paper was recently republished with minor revisions and updates in the journal “Middle East Policy”.

In addition to the Mearsheimer and Walt piece Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian teaching at Columbia, published his most recent book on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict “The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood” in which he says it is time to treat history with some respect; “The avoidance of the hard realities of the Middle East in some quarters in the United States is not a new phenomenon.” Khalidi goes on to discuss how Palestinians failed to achieve their dreams of statehood through a variety of external historic forces aligned against them.

These two publications are introducing a new movement in the scholarship, debates and direction on the future of the region through a different prism, Israel is no longer a sacred subject for serious political analysis where religion, politicals, partisanship and distortion characterize the debates. We are entering a new era that I think will make Israel stronger and more secure in the long run, America more secure and the Palestinians just might get their homeland once the debate focuses more on issues that matter and less on the spin of history.