Updated 2024-08-29
2024-08-04 On GPS: Does the US actually have any influence over Israel? Fareed speaks to New Yorker staff writer Robin Wright and Johns Hopkins professor Vali Nasr about how the US could work to calm tensions in the Middle East. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/on-gps-does-the-us-actually-have-any-influence-over-israel/vi-AA1odCHm
2024-06-12 They’re Arresting the Wrong People Inside of Congress While they are arresting peace activists for exercising First Amendment rights, they are making plans to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a war criminal with an actual arrest warrant request.
I was arrested again inside of Congress for speaking out against U.S.-backed genocide. Myself and others were brutally tackled and carried out of the room by Capitol Police. I was charged with “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding” for speaking out and holding a sign as the secretary of state and the secretary of defense testified in Congress for more money for the endless U.S. war machine. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/congress-arresting-wrong-people
This is only a partial explanation of the US-Israel alliance. A far more formidably entrenched factor is that Israel and the U.S. have overlapping Empires – one in the Middle East and the other globally – with deep common purposes. Here are some examples of how these empires operate in tandem.
Both Empires violate international laws with impunity. Both Empires consider every military operation defensive. Both Empires have collaborating military-industrial complexes and are major arms exporters. Both Empires wield “force projection” as atomic bomb powers. Both incurred a rare counter-attack (9/11 & October 7) when advance warnings by advisors were ignored. Both Empires lie repeatedly regarding their tactics and strategies. Both Empires control the United Nations Security Council with the U.S. veto shielding whatever Israel does. Both occupy or control land that is not theirs, violating international laws. Both Empires vio, late their legal duty as occupiers to protect the civilian population’s well-being. Both Empires’ leaders, Biden and Netanyahu, profess to practice their respective religions, though they are violating the basic precepts of both their religions in implementing their violent wars. Both Empires spend little time pressing for ceasefires, peace negotiations, and the stability of peace treaties. Both Empires, contrary to their fundamental juridical documents, in the case of the U.S., our Constitution, operate as elected dictatorships in conducting military and foreign policy. Both Empires have a so-called free mainstream media that mostly toes the Empire party line. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-and-u-s
2024-03-27 How Biden Could Radically Alter the U.S.-Israel Relationship On February 1, the Biden administration issued an executive order on violent extremism by settlers in the West Bank, which has been increasing over the past several months with the world watching the war in Gaza. The Biden administration accompanied this order with sanctions on four settlers who, it charged, had directly carried out violence or intimidation. This month, the Biden administration expanded the sanctions, adding three more settlers and two illegal outposts, which it said were bases used to “perpetuate violence against Palestinians.”
Elsewhere, it was heralded as a potentially major development, a warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, particularly given that U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that they were considering sanctioning two of his coalition’s extremist members, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. https://newrepublic.com/article/179968/biden-executive-order-west-bank-us-israel-relationship
2024-03-03 Netanyahu Was Right: Israel Acts Like a US Aircraft Carrier That is how Israel, as a military colony, serves its imperial master. Although it may seem puzzling why the United States supports and provides cover for Israel’s most outrageously authoritarian, lawless, and even brutal actions, the reason is hiding in plain sight. It is not, as many speculate, primarily because of AIPAC. It is because Israel is a military colony of the United States.
From its inception, Zionism viewed a Jewish state as the handmaiden of colonialism. The founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, described his proposed Jewish state in his 1896 book, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) as “a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism.” (Astute readers will find echoes of this racism in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent justifications for Israel’s conduct in Gaza; one can decide for oneself if the echo is intentional.)
In 1947, the United Nations—controlled by European colonial powers such as France and England and their ally, the United States—voted to create a Jewish state. The new state was surrounded by victims of European colonialism: Jordan, which became independent from Britain in 1946; Syria and Lebanon, which became independent from France in 1946 and 1941, respectively; and Egypt, which did not become independent from Britain until 1952. In 1956, when Egypt dared to declare itself the owner of the Suez Canal, which ran entirely through Egyptian territory, Israel joined its colonial sponsors France and England in making war on a country which had been a former colony of both, fulfilling Zionism’s promise to be “a wall of defense.” https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-us-aircraft-carrier
2024-03-02 The US Backs Israel Because of a Perceived Strategic Interest—How Can That Be? The need to challenge U.S. support of the Israeli war and occupation is more important than ever, but it’s not as simple as just defeating the pro-Israel lobby.
The United States has long been an international outlier in supporting Israel’s far-right government. On February 20, the Biden Administration cast its third veto in four months to block a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, one of forty-eight vetoes in which it was the only dissenting vote of resolutions challenging Israeli policies in recent decades. The United States was among ten out of the 193-member U.N. General Assembly to oppose the measure. The United States is an outlier even among our closest allies: Only one other member of NATO, the Czech Republic, directly opposes a ceasefire.
The United States’ support for Israel validates a fifty-six-year-long occupation coupled with unprecedented violations of international law and human rights standards.
The close relationship between the United States and Israel has been one of the most consistent features in U.S. foreign policy for nearly five-and-a-half decades. The more than $3 billion in military aid sent annually to Israel by Washington—cumulatively far more than the United States has provided any other single country in the world, despite Israel’s small size—is rarely questioned in Congress, even by liberals who normally challenge U.S. aid to governments that engage in widespread violations of human rights or by conservatives who usually oppose foreign aid in general. Earlier this month, a large bipartisan majority in the Senate voted to send an additional $14 billion in military aid to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-us-strategic-interest
2024-01-29 Israel Cannot Hide From the International Court of Justice It is easy to be cynical about the international rule of law. No sooner had the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide against the Palestinian people than the U.S. State Department declared, “We continue to believe that allegations of genocide are unfounded and note the court did not make a finding about genocide or call for a ceasefire in its ruling…”
Yet the ruling has started the clock on Israel’s future. If Israel continues to act with impunity and finds itself declared as genocidaire in the ICJ’s final ruling, Israel will become a pariah state. Young Americans in particular will pull the plug on U.S. backing for Israel. Israel will stand utterly alone, condemned by the world.
Most of the 193 governments in the United Nations already disdain Israel’s behavior. Most see a country that has occupied the neighboring territories of Palestine for 57 years (since the 1967 war), that has scorned and failed to act on dozens of votes by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, and illegally and blatantly settled more than 700,000 Israelis in the occupied territories. Most UN member states hear clearly the expressions of visceral hatred by many Israeli leaders toward the people of Palestine.
Israelis should understand that the U.S. cannot—and will not—save Israel in the long run. American military force is useless or worse in sustaining regimes that lack broad international support and legitimacy. America tires of each misguided military adventure and moves on, and will eventually do so vis-à-vis Israel if Israel becomes a pariah and outlaw state.
Nor will U.S. money and weapons systems carry the day with the Arab neighbors. The U.S. is at the end of its financial largesse. The U.S. public debt is already 122.9 percent of GDP and rising rapidly. Even access to advanced U.S. weapons systems will not persuade Arab nations to abandon the cause of a Palestinian state. In any event, Russian, Iranian, North Korean, Chinese, and other advanced weapons systems will be on highly competitive offer in future years, and with better financing terms.
At the moment, the Israeli public ardently backs Israel’s brutality and slaughter in Gaza. The public is gripped by a combination of overwhelming fear, religious zealotry, and state propaganda. Israelis widely believe that the Arab nations are implacably out to destroy Israel. Israeli society is immeasurably traumatized by the Nazi Holocaust, which remains the central fact of modernity and memory of every Jewish family of European roots in any part of the world.
Palestine will survive the current horrific ordeal, deeply wounded but with strong worldwide backing. Israel’s future, by contrast, hangs in the balance, as it could soon find itself banished by the community of nations as a stark violator of international law. Israel—no less than the United States—must come to understand the self-destructive futility of deploying military force to deny justice and political rights for the Palestinian people. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/international-court-of-justice-israel-genocide
2023-11-08 How & why of total US backing for Israel. As war rages, evidence from 7 June 1981 to this week Why has the US emerged as a staunch supporter of Israel amid its much-condemned offensive on Gaza, which followed the Hamas’ 7 October terror attack? Washington has voted against a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire, even as several allies voted for or abstained, and also vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for the same. In Ep 1343 of Cut The Clutter, Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta dives into the history of US-Israel ties to explain how & why they got so close, and bust some popular conspiracy theories. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXQHVds1Woo
2023-10-27 Here’s Why U.S. Elites Support Israel No Matter What Why does the US gov’t support Israel no matter what? Hint: it has to do with imperialism. BT’s Kei Pritsker explains the crucial role Israel plays in US domination of the Middle East and geopolitics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH8d7UJNmaA
2023-10-00 Palestine and Empire THE BRUTALITY OF the Israeli Occupation, the scale of Israel’s continuing political turmoil, the undisguised Ku Klux Klan-ish murderous Israeli settlers’ attacks on Palestinian civilians and towns, the deepening rage within the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories and inside Israel — and the visible unease among the rulers of the United States’ Middle East Arab allies — have pressured the U.S. government to pretend that it cares about Palestine. The key word here is “pretend.”
As chilling as it is, the vicious military and settler violence is also having an impact on sectors of U.S. society. While the Democratic Party leadership remains unshakably committed to the Israeli-partnership, sympathy with Palestine is growing among the voting base and especially young people.
More of the U.S. Jewish community is becoming alienated and angry, particularly as the pillar of the Zionist lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) turns more and more to supporting rightwing politicians including election-denying Trump Republicans. In the face of state-level attempts to criminalize Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions activism, support for the BDS movement is gaining ground. https://againstthecurrent.org/atc226/palestine-and-empire/
2021-05-23 The US Isn’t An Israel Puppet, Israel Isn’t A US Puppet: It’s One Empire The US is not a puppet of Israel, and Israel isn’t a puppet of the US. Saying one puppets the other is like saying Ohio puppets Nevada; they’re both member states of the same undeclared empire ruled by uncrowned kings who use governments as weapons to kill and steal. The lines between nations within the US-centralized empire are no more real than the official elected governments of those nations. It’s just a single unified power structure which uses whatever narratives it requires to justify its continued campaign to rule the entire planet. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-us-isnt-an-israel-puppet-israel
2020-08-31 You Can Have Peace Or The US Empire. You Can’t Have Both In order for Israel to continue existing as the imperialist apartheid state that it is, it needs to wage war in all directions at all times, both against its neighbors and against the increasingly brutalized Palestinian population. If the bombings end, so too does Israel as we know it, because the regional population will never stand for its oppression, tyranny, and multiple illegal occupations. Peace and Israel are therefore two mutually exclusive concepts. You can have peace or you can have today’s Israel; you can’t have both.
This is true of Israel, and on a larger scale it is true of the globe-spanning, empire-like oligarchic world order that is loosely centralized around the United States. This US-centralized empire, of which Israel is a part, is entirely dependent upon endless war for survival. If military violence ceased to be a tool which power structures could use to enact their agendas, this empire would necessarily cease to exist, because there’d be nothing to stop nations from exercising their sovereignty on the world stage. Currencies, resources and commerce would begin moving along completely different channels. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/you-can-have-peace-or-the-us-empire
2018-05-30 The Occupation of the American Mind (original 84-minute version) Over the past few years, Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world — except the United States. The Occupation of the American Mind takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S.
Narrated by Roger Waters and featuring leading observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. media culture, the film explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel’s favor. From the U.S.-based public relations campaigns that emerged in the 1980s to today, the film provides a sweeping analysis of Israel’s decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people in the face of widening international condemnation of its increasingly right-wing policies.
Narrated by Roger Waters / Featuring Amira Hass, M.J. Rosenberg, Stephen M. Walt, Noam Chomsky, Rula Jebreal, Henry Siegman, Rashid Khalidi, Rami Khouri, Yousef Munayyer, Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Phyllis Bennis, Norman Solomon, Mark Crispin Miller, Peter Hart, and Sut Jhally.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP0-YohJR-g&list=PLcKTcNwy7BrF2fsCRkNDSpVvfpG6_RKiW&index=3
2014-02-14 A Dishonest Broker Consider that the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid over the past three decades isn’t some impoverished land filled with starving kids, but a wealthy nation with a per-head gross domestic product on par with the European Union average, and higher than that of Italy, Spain, or South Korea.
Consider also that this top recipient of such aid—nearly all of it military since 2008—has been busily engaged in what looks like a 19th-style colonization project. In the late 1940s, our beneficiary expelled some 700,000 indigenous people from the land it was claiming. In 1967, our client seized some contiguous pieces of real estate and ever since has been colonizing these territories with nearly 650,000 of its own people. It has divided the conquered lands with myriad checkpoints and roads accessible only to the colonizers and is building a 440-mile wall around (and cutting into) the conquered territory, creating a geography of control that violates international law.
“Ethnic cleansing” is a harsh term, but apt for a situation in which people are driven out of their homes and lands because they are not of the right tribe. Though many will balk at leveling this charge against Israel—for that country is, of course, the top recipient of American aid and especially military largesse—who would hesitate to use the term if, in a mirror-image world, all of this were being inflicted on Israeli Jews?
Military Aid to Israel. Arming and bankrolling a wealthy nation acting in this way may, on its face, seem like terrible policy. https://www.utne.com/politics/a-dishonest-broker/
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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict
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