The Israelis and their many rightwing friends in the US are
demanding Biden must maintain crippling sanctions on Iran and keep
threatening war. Israel is free to attack Iran in Syria. And Israel
will bomb Iran if it deems it has crossed a nuclear threshold– which is
always just six months from now, forever. While anonymous Israeli
officials tell pliable Israeli reporters that Tony Blinken is the
biggest leftist in the Biden administration and he is stoking tensions between
the US and Israel.
In August, Biden welcomed Bennett at the White House and
announced that they were close friends, and Israel’s friends in the US rejoiced
in the fact that Israel was a bipartisan cause again, because the divisive
Netanyahu was gone, and Democrats and a rightwing Prime Minister were on the
same page.
One tenet of that close bond is that if there are any
disagreements, they will be aired privately. Bennett has now violated that
understanding. He is trying to embarrass Biden publicly, and tell the United
States what to do with Iran. Just as Netanyahu embarrassed Biden very
publicly and went to the Congress to try to undermine the Iran deal in 2015.
On that occasion, Barack Obama made perhaps the bravest statement
of his presidency, saying, “As president of the United States, it
would be an abrogation of my constitutional duty to act against my best
judgment simply because it causes temporary friction with a dear friend and
ally.”
American leaders need to follow Obama’s example. They should
stop taking dictate from Israel. It is in US interest to restore the Iran deal,
and also to get Israel to stop stealing Palestinian land. Both of which aims
are completely counter to the new Israeli government. It loves having a global
cold war with Iran to keep the world’s attention off apartheid.
The superpower should have its way with Israel too; but no,
Israel is a spoiled brat that issues ultimatums. The reason it gets away with
this behavior is obvious. There is a powerful Israel lobby inside the United
States (though the US mainstream press claims it might not exist), and the
lobby has one overriding purpose, to make sure there is no daylight between the
US political establishment and Israel.
The power of the lobby is the reason that Netanyahu once
told a hot mic that the US is a thing that can be easily moved. The power of
the lobby is why Trump trashed the Iran deal in 2018, to keep the support of
his biggest backer, Sheldon Adelson. The power of the lobby is the reason
progressive Congressperson Jamaal Bowman goes and meets with a rightwing
Israeli prime minister, and sells out Palestinian human rights organizations,
out of fear he will lose his seat in Congress if he doesn’t defer to Israel.
It is really a pity, and a moral horror too, that the US
leaders can’t tell Israel to stay away. But there are countless well-funded
organizations, telling these politicians to stand up and grin for the unwavering
special relationship between the United States and Israel. Donald Trump
threatened the American consensus by trying to politicize it, and say the
Democratic left was going off the reservation. But then former members of AIPAC
promptly started a new branch of the lobby, the Democratic Majority for Israel,
to close rank in the Democratic Party. And Nancy Pelosi banished the left
by saying that the Capitol would crumble and fall before the US
abandoned its support for Israel, so please ignore the leftwing critics in her
party.
Now Joe Biden is reluctant to take on the lobby because the
midterms are looming; and Tony Blinken has to cater to Israeli prime
minister, even when he is insulting him. The clear message from Vienna is
that the Iran deal will not be restored because Biden is refusing to lift
the sanctions that Donald Trump reimposed on Iran. Obama’s point man Ben
Rhodes says it’s all about the lobby.
Biden is afraid to politicize the issue. He knows that
Adelson’s widow is conducting the same sweepstakes her late husband did:
to see which Republican candidate for president will be the most pro-Israel. He
knows that AIPAC is all over the Democratic Party.
The special relationship with Israel should be politicized.
It helped get us into the Iraq war, with catastrophic consequences for many
nations, and is now endangering war with Iran. It has granted endless immunity
to apartheid, with desperate consequences for the Palestinian people.
Fifteen years ago, Walt and Mearsheimer called out the
lobby’s influence in a landmark book on American foreign policy, and as
Mearsheimer said often, “We just Israel to be treated like a normal country.”
But that book can still only be read in brown wrappers in
Washington, and the intrusion in our politics by Israel and its friends just
keeps getting deeper. Twenty-seven states adopt legislation that would limit
free speech rights by penalizing those who boycott Israel. A Georgia
lawmaker confesses that the Israeli government “asked me” to introduce one
of those bills. A dozen attorneys-general seek divestment from Unilever because
one of its brands, Ben & Jerry’s, doesn’t want to be foster the persecution
of Palestinians by selling ice cream in occupied territory.
A Republican congressman who voted against Iron Dome says
AIPAC’s effort to turn him out of office is “foreign interference in our
elections.” The University of North Carolina clamps down on a teacher
who wants to tell the true history of Palestine after the Israeli consulate and
a Democratic congressperson pressure school officials. “[I]t is strange that
the Israeli consulate general was granted an audience,” the instructor says.
“If this was a class on Hungary or Australia, would the university have
permitted the attempted interference of a foreign government? The fact that
this meeting happened at all is clearly a threat to academic freedom.”
The American people want distance. Polling shows that they
are overwhelmingly for an evenhanded approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict,
that young people are moving to the Palestinian side, and that Democratic
voters are for sanctions on Israel over its settlement behavior.
It is time that our mainstream press surveys all the damage
and takes on the corruption in our political process. It’s time our leaders
stop worrying about what the lobby and Israeli officials want and channel
Obama’s question of 2015. What is the US interest?
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