New Internationalism

Keynote speaker Phyllis Bennis, fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, noted, however, that the discourse is changing. Previously there was an assumption that Israel was the region’s only democracy, and the U.S.’s only friend there. That’s changed with the coming of the Arab Spring. And Israel’s policies are causing them to lose allies. No country in Europe now buys Israeli agricultural products. A 2010 Zogby poll found that 63 percent of Democrats support tearing down the settlements. It’s no longer political suicide to criticize Israeli policies. The question is, how to turn a shift in discourse into a change in U. S. policy?

"'The real challenge,' said Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the liberal Institute for Policy Studies who studies social movements, is making the revolt against the accumulation of wealth 'happen politically.' The 3-week-old Occupy movement must spotlight the outrage of folks such as Schwetz to build a movement big enough to succeed in making tax-the-rich proposals become law, analysts say...Critics of the fledgling movement dismiss it as the rambling of the usual protesters — a cacophony of liberal causes broadcasting a scattershot message. It's much of the same language that was used to dismiss the antiwar movement a decade ago when the United States invaded Afghanistan, Bennis said."

The proposal by the Quartet, which includes representatives from the United States, the European Union, Russia and the U.N., "can derail the (Palestinian statehood) application to the Security Council," said Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank.

"There is a serious danger that the Security Council will … launch a committee to launch an investigation to issue a report, to … bury the application, so the issue may not surface for months, possibly until after the elections in November 2012," she said.