Time to cut the tie that binds
Philip Giraldi • October 16, 2018
The
ability of Israel and its powerful Lobby to control many aspects of
American government while also sustaining an essentially false narrative
about the alleged virtues of the Jewish State is remarkable.
Politicians and journalists learned long ago that it was better to
cultivate Israel’s friends than it was to support actual American
interests. They also discovered to speak the truth about the Jewish
State often would prove to be a death sentence career-wise, witness the
experiences of Cynthia McKinney, Paul Findlay, William Fulbright, Chuck
Percy, James Traficant, Pete McCloskey and Rick Sanchez.
More
recently, we have seen the ascent to real political power on the part
of a number of politicians whose pandering to Israel has been notorious,
indicating that the path to the White House goes through Tel Aviv and
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) offices on H Street
in the District of Columbia. Nikki Haley, who recently resigned as
United Nations Ambassador, gained national attention when she became the
first state governor to sign off on laws that would punish supporters
of the non-violent BDS movement. Subsequently, as ambassador, she became
noted for her impassioned defense of Israel, to include complaining
that “nowhere has the U.N.’s failure been more consistent and more
outrageous than in its bias against our close ally Israel.” She vowed
that the “days of Israel bashing are over” and is now being groomed by
the neocons as a possible presidential candidate for 2020. Whichever way
it goes, she will be showered with money by Israel supporters as she
finds her perch in the private sector, like others before her doing
“work” that she does not understand while also making speeches about the
importance of the Israeli relationship.
All
of that said, one of the truly odd aspects of the Israeli/Jewish
dominance is its ability to change the United States. Normally, a tiny
client state attached to a great power would conform to its patron, but
in the U.S.-Israel relationship the reverse has happened. When 9/11
occurred Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pleased,
commenting that the attack would tie the United States more closely to
Israel in its war against “terrorism,” which to him meant his Islamic
neighbors in the Middle East. Since that time, the bilateral “special”
relationship has conformed to what Professors Stephen Walt and John
Mearsheimer observed in their groundbreaking book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,”
namely that the United States does things in the Middle East that
cannot be attributed to national interest. Rather, Washington behaves in
a certain way due to the power of Israel and its lobby. There is no
other way to explain it.
The
emergence of Israeli practices as models to be adopted by U.S. agencies
has occurred, to be sure, to include Israeli training American policemen
and soldiers in their “methods,” but the odd thing is that as Israel
has lurched to the right and embraced political extremism under
Netanyahu, the United States has done the same thing, curtailing civil
liberties with the Patriot Acts, the Military Commissions Act, and
various updates of the Authorization to Use Military Force. Indefinite
detention without trial and assassination of citizens overseas is now
acceptable in America and criticizing Israel could soon become a
criminal offense in spite of the First Amendment. In short, the United
States of America has become more like Israel rather than vice versa.
