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I'm Angry at Ralph Nader's Whimpy Statement

By Stan Heller
10 October 2000

From: Stanley Heller

I'm angry that Buchanan's statement on the Middle East was much better than Nader's! A "not called-for situation"????? They put a war criminal surrounded by 2,000 police in a Moslem mosque and shoot to death people who threw stones and Nader can't express any outrage? And what's this nonsense about the parties being close to peace. The "peace process" is a fraud. It's sole meaning was to solidify an apartheid system, with Palestinians kept poor, living in unconnected areas, surrounded by army checkpoints and Jewish only superhighways. Nader is foolishly throwing away a huge opportunity here. The American public will soon be angry at the massacres in Israel/Palestine and the anti-American feeling generated in the Arab world. Who will they remember as having told the truth? Not Nader, but reactionary Buchanan!!!!!!

Please forward this to Ralph Nader and the Green Party.

I'm sending this statement to my Middle East contacts

Subject: [Al-Awda] Nader & Buchanan Talk Mideast
Nader & Buchanan Talk Mideast
October 9, 2000 11:15 am EST

Third-Party Candidates Comment On Crisis

WASHINGTON, OCT. 8, 2000 (CBS News) - Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan sounded off on the Mideast crisis and the race for the White House over the weekend.

The third-party presidential candidates appeared on CBS News' Face The Nation on Sunday.

Both the Green Party's Nader and the Reform Party's Buchanan agreed on which incident sparked the violence between Israel and the Palestinians: the visit by Ariel Sharon to Jerusalem's Temple Mount.

"That stupid and provocative act on the Temple Mount, or the Noble Sanctuary, with hundreds of Israeli security guards triggered this event," said Buchanan, who called the subsequent clashes a "popular uprising" or "people's revolution".

"The Palestinian people have been occupied, persecuted, and oppressed for decades - and now they are responding to that," he added. "And certainly, Americans, quite frankly, who drove the British out of our country in a violent act for offenses far less than what are taking place here, ought to understand this."

Nader described Sharon's visit as "not a called-for situation".

"The tinder box that occurs there and the level of inchoate outrage can be easily provoked by people who aren't really interested in establishing a two-state solution with peace and normal relationships," he said of the crisis.

"The Israelis need and want security and they have overwhelmingly military superiority, while the Palestinians need justice," Nader added. "And the two parties are as close together to a settlement as they've ever been in five decades."

Buchanan - a long-time critic of the United Nations - said the United States made the right move in abstaining from Saturday's vote on the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the violence - a resolution that was critical of Israel.

"For years and years and years, we have allowed these Israelis to build up these illegal settlements on the West Bank, in East Jerusalem, on the Golan Heights, in Gaza. This has put all that dynamite down there," he said.

"We did it because quite frankly U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is held hostage to special interest in the United States, the Israeli lobby, quite frankly, and those who sustain and support it, which someone famously called the 'amen corner' about 10 years ago," added Buchanan, who used the phrase "amen corner" in reference to Israel during his opposition to the Persian Gulf War.