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The accepted wisdom is that passing the amended Democratic health care bill will be an albatross around the necks of the party as it moves forward into the fall mid-term elections and beyond.  Republicans gleefully point to polls which suggest they will benefit from the electorate’s opposition to the bill and their own improved prospects for picking up seats in both the United States Senate and the House.

In the short term they may be right, but it’s not at all clear that health care will play much of a role in any losses sustained by the Democrats in the fall except with the GOP’s own base and some disaffected independents.  The electorate is generally grumpy with the state of the economy, primarily unemployment, and the size of the deficit.  The fact that the Democrats deserve credit rather than electoral punishment for the steps both the administration and Congress have taken to prevent a deeper recession, and to stimulate the economy through fiscal measures that were necessary but inevitably resulted in a higher deficit is, unfortunately, lost on many voters.

In the longer term, however, I am convinced that as Americans come to actually learn what’s in the health bill and see the benefits not only to the uninsured but to those who already have insurance or Medicare (the most fervent opponents to the bill), they will come to embrace it as they did Medicare and Social Security – two other additions to the social safety net that most congressional Republicans opposed.

I also think it’s why the GOP has mounted such a bitter opposition to the bill.  If they believed their own rhetoric one would think they would welcome passage of a bill which, according to every Fox News right-wing mouthpiece and Republican politician who’s given an opportunity to blab on-air, will mean Democratic Armageddon.  But they don’t and the reason may be that they fear that it will be a long term boost to both Obama and Democrats in general for the 2012 elections, and to their own detriment.

The misinformation and sound-bites have served the right well in what has been less a debate than a frenzy of vitriol and misleading talking points by the GOP and its Fox News cheerleaders.  Oh, and let’s not forget the Tea Baggers.

However, once the bill passes this campaign of obfuscation and misrepresentation will be much harder to sustain effectively, and the beneficial elements of the bill will start to speak for themselves.  In this situation Democrats will, in time, gain a strong advantage as the party of can-do and of positive, pro-active policy prescriptions in contrast to the GOP as the party of “NO-can-do.”

If Democrats can find the courage and the will to pass health care insurance reform, whether through parliamentary maneuvers or a straight vote, not only will the country have much reason to be thankful but also, I believe, the Democratic Party.

During the previous administration, Bush and his Republican chorus in Congress and the right-wing punditry exploited the fear and ignorance of most Americans to invade a country that represented no threat to us, establish what amounted to an offshore America gulag for our enemies, real or imagined, and to spy on United States citizens without judicial approval or oversight. 

Today, the GOP and allies are doing it again to stir opposition to the agenda of President Obama and the Democrats as they seek to enact comprehensive health care insurance reform and steer the ship of state in a more moderate and progressive direction.  And it’s clearly working.

Obama’s poll numbers have plummeted and Democrats have lost a senate seat in Massachusetts, of all places, and governorships in Virginia and New Jersey.  Never mind that the two previous Democratic governors in Virginia had been instrumental in making it one of the best administered states in the union.  Or that the seat won by a right-wing Republican with nothing to distinguish him save his abs was previously that of Senator Edward Kennedy, who accomplished so much for his state and his country and whose unrequited dream was universal health coverage for all Americans.

A grumpy and fearful electorate has bought into GOP lies and distortions to blame Obama and the Democrats for not fixing in a year what took the Republicans nearly three decades to break.  Sure, some blame attaches to Democrats who foolishly bought into or lacked the courage to oppose the deregulatory fervor of the right.  But it was the GOP, starting with Reagan and ending with George W Bush, who pushed the idea of the self-regulating free market and the notion that stricter government oversight unnecessarily and perniciously fettered our financial institutions.  We failed to heed the warning of the savings and loan fiasco of the 90’s and the result, in time, was an economic meltdown precipitated by irresponsible banks. 

Yet the GOP has succeeded in painting Obama as a typical big-spending liberal, ignoring the fact that junior Bush added three trillion dollars to the national debt after inheriting a budget surplus from his Democratic predecessor, and that the current deficit is partly the result of the $750 billion TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) passed under the previous administration.  The Obama $787 billion stimulus bill, on the other hand, was a necessary response to the deepest recession since World War II that he inherited and it has helped to ameliorate what would otherwise have been a much worse employment picture.

As for the health care bill, Americans again have been guilty of both woeful ignorance and susceptibility to GOP propaganda.  A Kaiser Foundation tracking poll found that whilst Americans are evenly divided on whether they support the Democratic bills, most have no clue what’s in them.  Furthermore, when told of the bills’ specific key elements, support rises significantly.  

Yet the GOP and the right-wing punditry have managed to convince Americans, falsely, that the Democratic legislation will increase the deficit, raise their taxes, and diminish the quality of their own health insurance whilst raising its cost.

Congressional Republicans may be a despicable bunch but their manipulations of the truth could not succeed without an American electorate too lazy to find out the facts for themselves.

In the wake of the Christmas Day effort by Nigerian citizen Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to destroy an in-flight airliner over Detroit, Republicans are hammering home with renewed vigour the myth that Democrats are weak on national security.  Yet by any reasonable measure the invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration, with the enthusiastic support of congressional Republicans, has proved to be a national security as well as a foreign policy calamity.  And whilst it’s true that many Democrats voted for the Iraq War resolution, there can be no real doubt that the quest to invade Iraq was driven by the Republican Bush administration and its right-wing supporters in the GOP. 

Even setting aside the human and monetary cost, the adverse consequences to America have been severe indeed.  Perhaps the most serious is the fact that our failure to implement and sustain long term security and reconstruction in Afghanistan after driving out the Taliban has enabled the latter to rejuvenate and return as a more formidable enemy; one that we must now commit almost 100,000 troops to combat just when we were getting out from under the crushing Iraq commitment.  And the refusal of General Tommy Franks and then Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to commit American forces such as rangers to the effort to trap and destroy the remnants of al-Qaida in the White Mountains at Tora Bora, which stands as the best opportunity we’ve had to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, must rank as both a colossal error of judgment and failure of nerve that ensured the terrorist organization’s survival.

Not only did our focus on Iraq divert needed military expertise and resources away from Afghanistan but, as we’ve learned to our cost recently, it also resulted in neglect of countries such as Yemen where branches of al-Qaida have taken root and flourished. 

If invading Iraq had truly been part of the war against al-Qaida rather than a fantasy and hoax peddled subliminally to the American people by the Bush administration and its right-wing cheer leaders at Fox News, maybe it could be forgiven.  But Saddam Hussein was hated by Islamic extremists and he, in turn, hunted them down as ruthlessly as anyone else who potentially threatened his hold on power.  Our invasion of Iraq may have unseated a tyrant but it also replaced an Iraq that represented a bulwark against al-Qaida with one in which a branch of the latter was able to establish and operate with devastating consequences, not least to the Iraqi people.

The Bush administration made other bone-headed decisions in the name of national security: Guantanamo and the secret CIA  prisons in Eastern Europe, torture, electronic domestic surveillance without court supervision to name but a few.  Along with the unprovoked invasion of Iraq they represent a darker America, one that is less than what we aspire to be.

Al-Qaida cannot destroy America but they can inspire a reaction that might change us into something we would hardly recognize.  Dick Cheney and the Republicans started us down that path in the panicked aftermath of 9/11 when what we showed was less strength than fear and weakness. President Obama and most Democrats recognize that in our quest to stay safe from attack we must not surrender what it is that makes us proud to be Americans in the first place.  That would indeed give the victory to al-Qaida.

Let’s get one thing clear:  the failure of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate a bomb on an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day was not only an extremely good piece of luck for the passengers and crew (who deserve credit for their quick thinking and courage), but also for those charged with security in the United States.  Why?  Because it highlighted flaws in the way in which we analyze and use intelligence information that has been collected on potentially dangerous individuals, and in our screening procedures at airports. 

Yet instead of celebrating our good luck we’ve been treated instead to unseemly hand wringing and finger pointing. The sources for most of this, not unexpectedly, are Republicans and the right-wing punditry.  President Obama has been criticized for his delay in making a statement and for not lending it more urgency by not, presumably, sounding sufficiently breathless.  And of course the GOP lost no time trying to make political hay out of it.  Former vice-president Cheney sounds more and more as though he can’t wait for an al-Qaida attack to succeed so that he can begin an endless round of I-told-you-so interviews on prime-time network TV.  He evidently blames Obama for not reacting in the same panicky mode as he did in the wake of 9/11.

The fact is this near miss is a gold mine of an opportunity to improve our intelligence collection and handling procedures, as well as to tighten security screening practices by, for example, speeding the more widespread introduction of newer technology such as full-body scans.

We seem to be missing a couple of essential lessons from this and past incidents.  The first is that no matter how much we may want it, the government cannot guarantee our safety.  I don’t happen to think that explosives sewn into underwear is necessarily a sign that al-Qaida has increased its effectiveness or ingenuity; quite the contrary.  But the fact remains our human protectors will always be fallible and the efficiency of our technology limited.  Big Daddy cannot always protect us.

The second lesson is that maybe Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was unwittingly correct when she said that the system worked. Part of the “system” has to be us, the ordinary members of the public.  Just as it was the action of passengers and crew that saved that flight over Detroit, and of others who forced the 9/11 hijackers of United Flight 93 to abort their mission to crash into the White House or the Capitol, so we must all realize that we, too, have a role to play in preventing terrorist attacks from succeeding. 

After all the next attack may not come on an airliner at five thousand feet but on a crowded city bus at ground zero.

With the United States Senate poised to vote on a Democratic healthcare bill, the cacophony of verbal abuse from the right has now been joined by voices from the disillusioned left to make a veritable crescendo of opposition.  Most of these disaffected liberals agree with former Vermont governor Howard Dean that the senate bill is damaged goods and so far from the ideal that it would be better to kill it and start again.

I really like Howard Dean and I agree with him on just about everything he says about health care reform in this country; on this issue, however, he is dead wrong.

First, it ignores the reality of the American system of government. The Democrats need a super majority of 60 votes to pass legislation in the senate.  It would be great if they had 60 liberal Democrats to end debate on the health bill but, instead, they have Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and other, decidedly more conservative senators such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, whose votes were essential in the face of unanimous GOP opposition.  Getting any sort of health insurance reform measure this sweeping to pass in these circumstances is an incredible feat for which Majority Leader Harry Reid deserves enormous credit.

Second, to kill the senate bill now is to sign the death warrant of any reform for another generation.  That much is certain.  Does anyone actually believe that Democrats will pick up seats or even keep all the ones they have now in the Congress in the 2010 mid-terms elections, with a grumpy electorate who have already forgotten just how awful the Republicans were at governing?  To kill the senate bill is to abandon those Americans who have no insurance, or who are under-insured and liable for massive out-of-pocket expenses or who have pre-existing conditions that make it impossible for them to even buy insurance, or who will become sick and be dumped by their insurance company.  This is why we on the left supported health care reform in the first place, to curb the victimization of those most in need by the health insurance industry.  Those people are still out there and they still need us to support this bill.

Finally, flawed though it is the senate bill contains much that is good and useful. It addresses the worst of the insurance industry’s practices mentioned above.  It contains provisions for long term care, and for pilot programmes to research more efficient ways to provide care and obtain better outcomes at lower cost.  And as part of the funding mechanism it slashes Medicare incentive funds paid to private health insurance companies for plans outside the regular programme.

We need to look at this imperfect but very worthwhile senate bill – which will almost certainly be close to the final legislation if anything is to pass – as a beginning framework for a system that can and will be improved over time.  If the insurance companies find new ways to behave badly, they will simply reinforce the case for even more government regulation, or perhaps even a single-payer system.  To use the words of Winston Churchill:  Now this is not the end.  This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

The problems of America’s dysfunctional healthcare system are, by now, well known: we spend more on ours as a percentage of economic output than any other industrialized country, yet often produce inferior results; the system is so inefficient and wasteful that we are unable to control rising costs; and despite the resources we devote to healthcare, the system fails to cover a significant proportion of the population.
 
Missing from much of the debate, however, and a key reason why reform is so urgent is the plight of the underinsured.  Ironically, many of the 80% of Americans who have voiced satisfaction with their healthcare insurance are in this group, unaware as they are that they would be on the hook for thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses in the event that they needed major surgery.  Statistically, ill health is a leading cause of bankruptcy filings in the United States; and the majority of those individuals actually had medical insurance – at least at the beginning of their health problems.
 
Ignoramuses on the right love to pontificate about the presumed failings of the Canadian and British nationalized healthcare systems such as “rationing” (as if the US system doesn’t ration and in a far more irrational manner than those managed systems) and wait-times for relatively minor surgeries; however, no Canadian or Briton will ever go bankrupt or even into debt because of his medical bills.  In fact he wouldn’t pay a penny.  
 
Much has been made of the fight over a “public option” supported by President Obama and many Democrats in Congress but opposed by the health insurance industry and the American Medical Association.  Personally, I support a public plan but not if it becomes a deal-breaker.  Rather, the idea could be placed on a shelf and used as a future option to be triggered automatically if the private insurance industry fails to perform within acceptable cost and coverage parameters.  The ‘Economist’ newsmagazine echoed this idea in a recent article on the subject and reminded us that there are several European models for a private healthcare system but with stiff government mandates.
 
Whatever the shape of the reform that finally emerges from Congress, it must cover the uninsured and include a mandate for everyone to buy insurance; it must be designed to contain costs (in part by reversing current incentives for doctors and hospitals to perform unnecessary services and procedures); and it absolutely must ensure that insurance plans, at a minimum, cover 100% of the cost of critical surgery and hospitalization. 
 
Anything short of this will mean that Americans as a whole will still be worse off than their Canadian friends to the north – no matter what Rush Limbaugh or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell may say.

When Americans think of national vulnerabilities, their minds turn first to international terrorism or to possible security threats from the likes of North Korea or, maybe, in the future, China.

Yet our real vulnerability has been shown not to be from bombs and missiles, but from an economic recession that has exposed our tattered social safety net as an object that resembles Swiss cheese, and the fact that secure funding for vital public services such as education is a fantasy.

While private sector job losses have hit globally, only America, among leading industrialized nations, is seeing teachers, police and fire and other key public employees being laid off.  This is folly of a high order. It’s bad enough losing private-sector jobs but when we slash public jobs not only are we adding to the pernicious effects of the recession by increasing unemployment, but we are hurting our children and the most vulnerable in our communities who rely on government services the most.  How will slashing teachers and school librarians help our kids to compete with their international peers who are fortunate enough to be living in countries not plagued by such terminal myopia?

It has become clear that the impact of Obama administration’s stimulus package has been to mitigate the cuts in state budgets.  That is not meant as a criticism.  In fact, without the stimulus many more states and would be facing fiscal disaster and their people more pain.

A recent piece on PBS’s News Hour highlighted how the Hartford, Connecticut, school district had been making recent strides in improving test scores with innovative policies, and were looking to federal stimulus money for education to further boost their efforts.  Instead, the governor of the state slashed education funding and the federal stimulus money will be used to “flat line” meaning it will replace the state funds, hopefully without substantial cuts.

And Connecticut is one of the lucky states; in my own state of Washington, the stimulus money will not make up for state cuts, and school budgets are being slashed.  Few state governors have had the courage to propose temporary tax increases to help get us through this terrible spell and avoid damaging cuts in education, health and other social services.

Depressingly, it goes without saying that as more Americans lose their jobs they are also losing their healthcare insurance, thanks to our lack of universal medical insurance.  Americans, in fact, are suffering in this recession far more than people in any other industrialized nation; we seem unable to understand that America cannot be strong abroad when it is weak and vulnerable at home.

President Obama understands this as well as anyone else in the country; it’s really too bad that so many of his fellow citizens don’t.

In the 30 years I’ve lived in this country, I have never witnessed a more shameful and cowardly performance than that of Congress denying the Obama administration funds to move Guantanamo detainees to high security prisons  in the United States.

It’s not like the NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) concept is alien to me; it’s just that I never thought I would see such irrational fear and illogic displayed to the world in a way that was so utterly brainless, gutless and weak-kneed.

America’s prisons house serial killers, rapists, sociopaths and psychopaths and other evil doers to compare with any country in the world. Yet our representatives and senators, not to mention their constituents, are scared shitless at the thought of having some of the prisoners at Guantanamo incarcerated even in US military prisons. It’s hard to know whether their fear is of the detainees escaping en masse to wreak havoc in their communities or the thought that al-Qaida might launch an invasion of, say, Fort Leavenworth to free them.

The city council of Hardin, Montana, hoping to boost a sagging economy, has stepped up to the plate by offering to house some of the detainees in a newly built prison that the state now says it no longer needs. “Over my dead health-care plan” says Senator Max Baucus (or words to that effect anyway), ever the study in political courage.

And then there’s the issue of where to put those detainees who have been determined not to be enemy combatants. These are the people whom we scooped up in the Bush administration’s panic-ridden response to 9/11, held for several years in conditions that most of us don’t want to know about, only to find that they were no threat to us after all. Many of them can’t go home because they would likely be imprisoned, tortured and killed by their own governments.

We had an opportunity to release one such group, Muslim Chinese called Uighurs, into the US. These have no axe to grind against the US but oppose the Chinese government’s policies towards the Muslim population. There are Uighurs in the US already, including a community in the Washington DC area. Had we been willing to bring them to the US we might have had more luck convincing European governments to take other detainees.

But no, jittery politicians and a frightened electorate don’t want to hear about it.  The gutsier souls of Bermuda and Palau have put us to shame and agreed to take in some of the Uighurs.

So my question is this: how is it that a country capable of fielding such valiant and dedicated men and women in its armed forces who serve their country so bravely, can be otherwise so bereft of courage?

The story of American education today is one replete with achievement gaps: achievement gaps between different states; between rich and poor, white and black, white and Hispanic; between school districts, individual schools and even between children within individual schools.  In elementary school our children compare well internationally; by high school they have plummeted to the bottom of the international league.  We spend more money overall on education than any other country but we get the least bang for our buck.

These findings are highlighted in a recent report by McKinsey & Company: “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools.”  The report’s recitation of our educational failures will sound all too familiar to anyone who even vaguely follows this issue.  Where the report is particularly useful is in quantifying the economic cost of our national failure to educate our children to world standards.  Among the report’s findings, for example, is that if the United States had in recent years closed the achievement gap with top performing nations such as Finland and Korea, our Gross Domestic Product in 2008 could have been between $1.3 to $2.3 trillion higher (or 9-16% of GDP).  In a further example, if the gap between black and Latino student performance and that of whites had been similarly narrowed, the report finds that US GDP in 2008 would have been between $310 billion and $525 billion higher (or 2-4%).  The gain would likely have been even bigger had the gap between the lowest achieving states and the rest been narrowed to a similar degree.

Why it is that 25 years after a landmark report admonished that American K-12 education was characterized by a “rising tide of mediocrity” our children languish near the bottom of the international achievement league?  The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found in 2006 that US 15-year-olds ranked 25^th out of 30 nations in math and 24^th in science.

The litany of depressing statistics goes on and on but the key point here is that if we don’t turn things around, we will not be able to maintain our place as the foremost economic power.  And what about the lost employment opportunities in such fields as high technology as Microsoft, Intel and others rely increasingly on foreign graduates of American universities because we don’t produce enough of our own?  These are jobs that pay $77-100,000 a year for a software developer.

K-12 education is principally a state responsibility and the states have failed dismally.  Even President (and former governor) George W. Bush recognized it with what was probably his most useful legislative accomplishment: No Child Left Behind (NCLB).  To his credit Bush took the improvement of US education seriously enough that he was willing to push the federal government more deeply and intrusively into the issue than ever before.  Regrettably, too many of the darts he fired at state backsides to prod them into doing better have missed their mark. 

For example, insisting on annual testing from third grade on has turned out to be overkill, taking up too much of the time of teachers who have a lot to do during the shortest school year in the industrialized world.  A laudable requirement aimed at raising the proficiency of math and other teachers has been largely circumvented by many states.

Most serious of all, whilst NCLB required that states meet student proficiency targets across the board or face consequences, it made the fatal error of leaving both the definition, and the testing of “proficiency” to the states.  This has led to perverse outcomes as some states strive to meet NCLB benchmarks but without actually doing much to improve their children’s performance.  This was highlighted in a recent Time Magazine article by Walter Isaacson advocating national educational standards for US children.  In one particularly egregious example, Mississippi tested its 4th graders in reading and pronounced 89% of them proficient or better, making them the highest achievers in the nation.  When they were tested under the more rigorous (and meaningful) National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 18% were actually proficient – putting them dead last.

Not all is bleak since not all states are led by boneheaded governors like Haley Barbour in Mississippi, or Terry Sanford in South Carolina who famously tried to refuse federal stimulus dollars for education, preferring to use it instead (if he really absolutely had to take it) to pay down state debt.  North Carolina and Texas are southern states that, along with Virginia, have made significant strides to improve their children’s education.  We have in Massachusetts a state whose children’s educational level compares favourably with the best performing countries in the world.  If the top five American states were tested separately they would do well when stacked against their international peers.  The problem is there are fifty states not five and the worst performing ones are dragging the nation down.  And even in the better ones there is much room to improve.

I agree with Isaacson that we need national standards and a national test; “national” does not have to mean “federal.”  In fact, we shouldn’t reinvent the wheel again but maybe settle on a curriculum and test regimen with a proven track record: the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System or MCAS. The fact is if all US children performed at the level of those in Massachusetts we would have much less to complain about.  Why not adapt MCAS for the nation as a whole or at least use it as the basis for a national examination? While we’re at it, I suggest we try to learn from that state how they have managed to get a first time pass rate of around 90% of their children for what is a rigorous examination.

We also need to improve the funding mechanism for education in this country.  As most states grapple with the current deep recession, education is being cut almost everywhere. How is this going to improve our ability to educate our children or to compete economically in the future?  They’re not cutting education funding in competitor nations so why are we?  Can we not get our priorities straight and assure education funding regardless of the economic ups and downs?

Why is our spending not cost effective?  Maybe we spend too much money on things like school transportation when we have parents and public transport which should carry the load.  And there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that we spend way too much on educational bureaucracies.  Fifty of them and that doesn’t include the school districts themselves (about13000 of those).  How about states pooling their bureaucratic resources instead of clinging to their very expensive independence?

The school year is too short.  It needs to be increased to at least 200 days a year from 180.  And while we’re at it, let’s make teaching the highly paid profession it should and needs to be to attract the best and brightest.  Yes, both suggestions will take money – see the paragraph above.

Many will say we can’t afford or don’t have the will to take these tough and expensive steps to bring our children up to where they can compete with the best in the world.  I would answer with a question: How can we afford not to?

The prospects for a peace agreement based on a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians have never seemed bleaker.

In the decade following the failure of Bill Clinton’s mediation effort between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak in 2000, the Israelis have been subjected to suicide bombers, random shootings and more recently to unguided rockets from Gaza that targeted innocent civilians.  And an organization that is sworn to destroy the State of Israel now controls half of the Palestinian territories.

If Israeli dead and injured number in the hundreds, those of the Palestinians are counted in thousands as Israel has unleashed its military might, sometimes brutally, to crush first the Intifada and more recently the Hamas rocket barrage.  Gaza is beleaguered and in ruins, a testament to the callousness of both Hamas towards its own people, and of the Israelis who seem to think that not targeting civilians absolves them of moral responsibility when they’re killed “collaterally.”

The Palestinians in the West Bank have yet to see much concrete benefit from choosing the more moderate Fatah party of Mahmoud Abbas.  They are, as ever, subjected to daily humiliations by Israeli military roadblocks; they see extreme right-wing Jewish zealots building new and expanding existing settlements on the West Bank often on the best available land. There are roads the Palestinians are not permitted to use and water sources that are for the Jewish settlers alone.

A recent devastating segment on the CBS network’s 60 Minutes highlighted the reality of the second-class status of Palestinians in the West Bank.  In one part it showed a Palestinian family whose house was regularly occupied without warning by Israeli troops because it happened to be situated on a rise affording good observation over the surrounding area.  During these temporary expropriations, the homeowner (a bank manager) and his wife are kicked out of their bedroom for the duration, and must live with their children downstairs.  The Israeli soldiers refused to be filmed or to answer questions; perhaps they were ashamed, as well they should be, but probably not.  When the 60 Minutes crew arrived a second time at the house coincidentally with the children returning from school, they were told the latter would not be admitted until the film crew departed.  Such is the daily life of one Palestinian family.

CBS showed a lot of courage airing this piece because it was sympathetic to the Palestinians.  Unlike in the rest of the world, that’s not a popular thing to do in the United States.  Despite the fact that Israelis have the strongest military in the region, Americans perpetually labour under the illusion that it’s the former and not the Palestinians who are the underdogs.  The plight of the Palestinians receives short shift in the media and American public opinion; and politicians of both parties take note.

A few years back, Jimmy Carter received a good deal of flak here for using the word “apartheid” in the title of his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. In the book, Carter made a compelling case that Israel had essentially imposed a sort of apartheid  on the Palestinians of the West Bank.  Although pilloried in America, his opinion is widely shared throughout the rest of the world, and for good reason as anyone who saw the 60 Minutes segment would see.

The Bush administration did virtually nothing to reconcile the two sides in eight years.  On its watch the bitterness and hatred between Israelis and Palestinians after so much violence has only hardened attitudes. Politically, the Palestinians are now disastrously split with the dreadful Hamas in control in Gaza; Israelis meanwhile have now given the hard-line Benyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud a better than even shot at forming a government.  The prospects for a lasting peace have surely never seemed worse.

Yet there is hope even in the very hopelessness of it all.  Israel is faced with three unpalatable choices in its relationship with the Palestinians.  If the two-state solution is rejected, it has two other choices: It can drive the Palestinians out of the territories or at least try to make life for them so unbearable they that will leave of their own accord to go… where? Jordan?  Egypt?  In the alternative, it can continue on its present course towards an apartheid state in which its Jewish citizens enjoy a privileged existence whilst Arab and Palestinian inhabitants live as second-class nobodies with few rights.  In either case it is Israel’s soul that will be destroyed.

Sooner or later Israel and the Palestinians must come back to the table because the status quo is simply not sustainable.  And in the Obama administration, let’s hope Israel finds it has a true friend and not one that sycophantically tells it only what it wishes to hear.