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Many Democrats, including President-elect Barack Obama, maintain staunch support for Israel, despite its military crackdown on Hamas in Gaza over the past two weeks, but a few Minnesotans — including Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman — have taken more independent approaches. Discussing the conflict with Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi yesterday, Ellison expanded on his statement of last Friday, which accused the Bush administration of passively ignoring the strikes and ground offensive that have killed nearly 600 people in Gaza and during which he said he supported actively engaging both sides to find peace. He says there’s little sympathy from the U.S. for civilians in Gaza (some of whom died yesterday when Israel attacked U.N.-administered schools in Gaza, killing at least 40).
“Just declaring ‘We support Israel’ or, for that matter, ‘We support Palestine’ is no solution. What we need someone to say, ‘We support peace,’” Ellison said. “There is a legitimate Palestinian narrative that the world must hear.”
He continued: “The people who have a strong sympathy for the Israeli position dominate the conversation. It’s really not politically safe to say, ‘Look, there are two sides to this, and Israel has not been an angel in this, and certainly there have been people on the Palestinian side who have not contributed to a constructive solution.’ … I don’t believe my colleagues are fully aware of how desperately bad it is [in Gaza for Palestinians].”
Video after the jump.
Related: Kucinich: In Gaza, Israel has violated arms export act
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7 Comments »
Comment posted January 7, 2009 @ 2:10 pm
MinnesotaIndependent, thanks for posting this article. It has been made a sacrilegious a long, long time ago to criticize israel and it is a political suicide to not support israel in what ever it does, any crimes it commits, any land it grabs and any US and International law it breaks.If you don`t want to end your career and lose your Job, demonized on the excessively pro-israel american media, you support israel or else.
MinnesotaIndependent, the website written in the box is not mine
Comment posted January 7, 2009 @ 6:43 pm
WFraser1
Hamas has fired thousands of rockets at israel while preaching hatred and intolerance towards anyone who is not an Islamic jihadi hate monger. The reason I should feel sorry for the people who supported Hamas and its war against israel for the past three years is???
\The Palestinian people continue to get the governements they deserve. Poorly led, poorly educated, religiously fundamentalist and unable to build a functioning state w/o support from Muslim “charities” and Iran, which are fronts for Islamic hate groups,
they are complainignafter attacking Israel continuouisly for the past 3 years???
The only people who believe their propaganda are those who don’t follow current events or understand the virulent nature of Hamas and fundamentalist Islam. Even now, islamic clerics are urging attacks on Israel throughout the Arab world.
When Arabs and Muslims adopt a modern, non intolerant world view, the sooner Muslims can have a decent life, free of the hatred and destruction, uneducated hate mongering that Islamic clerics have forced them to accept. Surely there are some free thinkers in Islam who understand 3000 rockets, fired at your neighbor(which incidentally, ceded the land they live on to them three years ago in a bid for peace) will result in a military response.
I hope Israel blows the Hamas terrorists and their supporters straight to kingdom come, where they deserve to be. Wake up and be nice..
wbf Austin Texas
Comment posted January 7, 2009 @ 11:33 pm
ellison is totally right wing pro israel. this article is a joke. did you all see how minnesota muslims screamed at him at the state capital at the demo last week? c’mon…this is all rhetoric from him. he knows how to play a crowd. since his first vote in congress (authorizing more money for the iraq war), this man has totally disappointed me.
Comment posted January 8, 2009 @ 2:19 am
“Hamas has fired thousands of rockets at israel while preaching hatred and intolerance towards anyone who is not an Islamic jihadi hate monger. The reason I should feel sorry for the people who supported Hamas and its war against israel for the past three years is???”
Palestenains are unde occupation for the last 61 years. They have been under complete siege for the last few years. And if they reacted with simple home made bullets (rocket is too much to name a few KG home made explosive to teh high tech destructive ones), is a kind of protest. Gaza is a concentration camp and they have either to die slowly with hunger or instantly as they are now.
“The only people who believe their propaganda are those who don’t follow current events or understand the virulent nature of Hamas and fundamentalist Islam.”
Was palestine free before Hamas inception, that is 20 yrs back . Or before rocket is seen 8 yrs back??
None of the 219 children sloughtered so far ar mature enought to know Hamas. Yet theyr broethrs it will not be easy to forget to the murderer of tehir loved ones. They do not need religion, and this brutal action feeds extremism. Yiu may turn into Palestine and you get muslims and christian muslims equally angry , because they suffer equally.
Free palestine. and give hope by stopping the settlements. Day by day the hope is fading away with the expansion of illegal settelments. Just, because Israel is goot at PR and propoganda does not make the occupation lovely, nor their way of killing a praiseworthy
Comment posted January 8, 2009 @ 4:34 pm
Lisa – I saw how Muslims screamed at him at the rally and if you want to know the truth, it’s because they expected him to condemn Israel and he sidestepped that point – politically – and instead brought up the need to focus on the humanitarian crisis and to encourage people to use the unique central portrayal of Gaza in the media to springboard into massive education of the nature of the situation there. He’s unable to criticize Israel in a manner not accepted by his political peers for more than obvious reasons (see: Cynthia McKinney) and frankly the crowd wasn’t interested in catering to his politics and wanted a shred of honest, exasperated outrage. He couldn’t give them that because of his position – they treated him badly and shamed themselves in so doing. To claim Ellison is some right wing Pro-Israeli is quite unsubtle and unfair. Anyone who knows anything about the Israeli lobby as defined by Mearsheimer and Walt can agree that it’s almost unsafe to criticize Israel in mere public society, much less in political office. Be discerning before dropping an intelligent ally to causes of oppressed peoples.
Comment posted January 8, 2009 @ 7:16 pm
This is a good article. Keith Ellison is a good man and I do not feel it is correct to say that he is an apologist for Israel war crimes. He cares for the Palestinian people that is why he speaks more of the need to alleviate human suffering in Gaza rather than to merely condemn Israel.
I would like, however to disagree with the notion that Palestinians do not have much sympathy in the US – you only need to see the tens of thousands of Americans who have taken to the streets to condemn Israel’s crimes.
On one point, I do agree though. By their brutal actions in Gaza, the Israelis have once again shown their true colours as the illegal, repressive, war criminal occupying power that they are.
Comment posted January 11, 2009 @ 7:42 am
i don’t know why israel have stop the reporters to get into gaza, the only media that have a reporter in gaza is aljazeera.
what r they trying to hide ?
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