Hitchens on Obama's Israel Policy: 'Not Impressive'

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/05/21/Barack_Obama_No_He_Cant

Author Christopher Hitchens criticizes the Obama administration's response to the continued construction of Israeli settlements in Arab neighborhoods. "The last time there was an impressive American policy it was a Republican administration, and it was undone by the hero of every liberal in this room," he quips.

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A year and a half after Barack Obama's historic election, can we still believe in hope and change?

In this lively session from the 2010 Sydney Writers Festival, three heavyweight America-watchers examine the unfolding legacy of the Obama administration.

Why has the "President for Peace" pulled out of Iraq only to increase troops in Afghanistan? Banks have been bailed out, but what about the people? Has Obama failed to live up to the lofty promises of his campaign? Or, were the expectations of a nation keen for renewal simply too much, maybe impossible, to fulfill? The panel includes journalist Anne Davies and writers Don Watson and Christopher Hitchens. The moderator is Geoffrey Garrett from the United States Studies Centre. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Christopher Hitchens was born in Portsmouth, England and worked in Britain as book reviewer for the Times, and chief foreign correspondent for the Daily Express. After emigrating to the United States in 1981, he wrote the "Minority Report" column for The Nation. Since 1992, he has been columnist and contributing editor at Vanity Fair and, at different times, Washington editor and columnist for Harper's magazine, American columnist and correspondent for the Spectator, the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement, Sunday Today, and the Sunday Correspondent. Hitchens writes regularly for the Atlantic Monthly and Slate, and is the author of God is Not Great, Letters to a Young Contrarian and Why Orwell Matters.

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[DjMindz]

@BillKiernan some americans are smart enough to see through the zionist jew hooked nose face

King David Hotel : USS Liberity, Gulf OF Tunkin, Lavon Affair

all these terrorist attacks were done by JEWS to frame arabs

google it you zionist fag

[Whocreatedgod]

@BillKiernan

Aha!

And you worthless Israeli animal are trying to associate yourself with the welfare of the people whose lands you robbed and whose lives you ruined by worrying about Islamists this and Liberalism that?

Oh dear...Oh dear...

Why not show some integrity and start with your own crimes.

Give back the land and fuck off back to Eastern Europe so you can sort out their welfare issues too?

Israeli scum.

[Whocreatedgod]

@BillKiernan

White noise. Garbage.

Let's get you back on focus here.

Forget the Islamists and Liberals and all that class.

Give back the land you stole.

[Kili303]

@BillKiernan fuck hamas and hezbollah too!

[BillKiernan]

@Whocreatedgod misguided liberals rooting for an Islamist Middle East aren't going anywhere either it seems.

[BillKiernan]

@Kili303 hoping for hitler while rooting for hamas and hezbollah. keep the hits coming.

[Kili303]

@BillKiernan let's hope it will disappear as soon as possible. history repeats itself afterall, we might see a next hitler soon. or maybe more than one.

[Whocreatedgod]

@BillKiernan

Israel isn't going anywhere.

HIV isn't going anywhere.

Cancer isn't going anywhere.

Life's a bitch and Israel is one aspect of the shitty injustices humans cause to one another.

My role is to remind others for generations to come is to keep the memory alive and remind the world how the "bastard" of the West was raped into the Geography of the Middle East.

Hopefully when the years turn over and the balance of power shifts away from your surrogate patron states you will be judged

[BillKiernan]

@Whocreatedgod that's nice. well, Israel isn't going anywhere, so I guess it's time for you to start dealing with it.

[Whocreatedgod]

@BillKiernan Think before you write. When did the Jewish immigration to Palestine start? When did the violence begin? What was the interval? Why weren't the thousands of Jews living there for centuries not "wiped out" untill the mass immigration waves in the late 19th and first two decades of the 20th centuries? The devil is in the details. Those Russian and Eastern European Jews should go back where they came from. You stole the land not me Shame on you not me Morally twisted Israeli scum