Romney's Palestinian Problem

John Cassidy:

Speaking at a breakfast fundraiser attended by the likes of the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the hedge-fund tycoon Paul Singer, and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, the G.O.P. candidate appeared to blame the failure of the occupied Palestinian territories to match Israel’s economic performance not on a lack of capital, the economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, or the presence in the West Bank of Israeli settlers and military forces but on the differing cultures of the two peoples. Citing the “dramatically stark difference in economic vitality” and G.D.P. per capita between Israel and its troublesome occupied zones, Romney said he had been studying the work of David Landes, the octogenarian Harvard historian, whose 1999 tome “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations” argued that the political and economic culture of Europe played a key role in its rapid development. “Culture makes all the difference,” Romney said at the fundraiser, which took place at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, where he and his entourage were staying. “Culture makes all the difference. And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.” Since Romney didn’t specify what these “few other things were,” his audience, and Palestinian politicians, were left to dwell on his references to cultural factors. (There was apparently a mention of divine providence.) “All I can say is that this man needs a lot of education,” Saeb Erekat, an aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told the Washington Post. “He doesn’t know the region, he doesn’t know Israelis, he doesn’t know Palestinians, and to talk about the Palestinians as an inferior culture is really a racist statement…. He should know that the Palestinians will never reach their economic potential under Israeli occupation, and if he doesn’t know this fact, this man has a lot to learn.”

Seriously?  I would think trade and travel restrictions imposed by an occupying army might have some effect on a nation's economic development.  Or maybe the annexation of the nation's potentially productive agricultural land by it's neighbor might also hurt it.  I am stunned that one political party in the United States can be so crazily biased in a dispute as large as this one.  And the fact that most of it has to do with loony apocalyptic beliefs of religious fundamentalists who are looking forward to the end of the world really creeps me out.  I am stunned that anyone would support the Republican Party when it backs so many ideas which make absolutely no sense whatsoever.  And the fact that Mitt Romney believes that advancing this foreign policy is a good idea is enough to prevent me from ever considering voting for him.