The art of being passive

---

US elections have just entered a new and more competitive phase with the showdown narrowed to the Republican and Democrat nominees John McCain and Barak Obama. The winner is going to walk into the Oval Office come January 2009, for a term of four years.

It is a long time since US elections have been a domestic affair. The business of a superpower is the whole world's business. This much we have learned from events in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and elsewhere. So you get the Israel lobby rolling up its sleeves and watching the candidates like a hawk, to ensure they do not depart from Israel's preferred script. Only the Arabs are laid back about the whole thing, even when every single US presidential candidate appears to be out to get them.

John McCain boasts of being Israel's most ardent supporter. He's already endorsed Israel's conditions for any settlement with the Palestinians and said that any aggression against Israel will be seen as aggression against the US. Obama, not to be outdone, hastened to support the siege on Gaza and policies aimed to isolate Hamas while threatening to punish any country threatening Israel. Initially, however, Obama tried to be fair.

The democratic presidential hopeful underlined that Israel needs to make hard choices to restart the peace process. He also pointed out that America was not at war with Islam. Furious, Zionist groups claimed that Obama's statements were unorthodox and that he may be a closet Muslim -- after all, his father's name was Hussein. That was enough to get Obama rethinking to the extent that he promised $30 billion in aid to Israel over the next 10 years, pledging that guaranteeing Israeli superiority would be his main concern.

To humour the Zionist lobby US presidential candidates try to stay on Israel's good side and our bad one. Why isn't anyone trying to humour us? The answer is that we are not in the habit of raising hell, even when hell is being raised against us. That's why our interests are being sacrificed on the Zionist altar.

Once a candidate takes office he continues to show support to Israel. This may seem odd considering our immense wealth and close connections with the oil and weapons cartels that often guide US policies. But even when we have the power we still get short-changed.

Analysts wonder why the Arabs are so passive during US elections. Some even think that perhaps the Arabs are not that interested in changing Washington's pro-Israeli stance. This may not be the case, but the fact is that everyone else is pushing and shoving to advance their goals in Washington while we just sing softly beneath some window of the White House hoping against hope someone will listen.