I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
A Palestinian woman reacts following Israeli bombardment in Rafah, in
the southern Gaza Strip on December 14, 2023, amid ongoing battles
between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
(Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)
Members of Congress, now providing such
easy rhetoric in public statements to justify huge and ongoing military
support to Israel, would not be so complacent if they had to dig their
own dead children out of the rubble.
The vast majority of Congress members have refused to call for a
ceasefire in Gaza during three months of slaughter by Israel’s military.
Capitol Hill remains a friendly place for the Israeli government, as it
keeps receiving massive arms shipments courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.
“Israel would not be able to conduct this war without the U.S., which
over time has provided Israel with about 80 percent of the country’s
weapons imports,” Voxreports.
The distance between the Capitol and Gaza can be measured by the vast
disconnect between the standard discourse of U.S. politics and the
terroristic carnage destroying the Palestinian people.
The impunity enjoyed by Israeli leaders is enabled by President Biden, who clearly does not want a ceasefire.
The same can be said of the vast majority of Congress, with silences
and equivocations if not outright zeal to voice support for the
wholesale killing of civilians in the name of Israel’s “right to defend
itself.”
Members of Congress, now providing such easy rhetoric in public
statements to justify huge and ongoing military support to Israel, would
not be so complacent if they had to dig their own dead children out of
the rubble.
Seventeen members of the House stepped forward in mid-October to sign on as cosponsors of the ceasefire resolution introduced by Congresswoman Cori Bush,
“calling for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and
occupied Palestine.” The number of those forthright representatives has
not risen during the 11 weeks since then.
What we’ve gotten instead has been the molasses-pace drip of some other members of Congress calling for—or kind of calling for —a ceasefire.
Now in circulation from some antiwar organizations is what’s
described as “a growing list of members of Congress who have publicly
called for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.” But the basis for listing those names—56 House members and four senators—ranges from solid to flimsy.
A case in point is my congressperson, Rep. Jared Huffman of
California, whose name is on the list but doesn’t belong there. As
ostensible documentation, the list provides a link to a Nov. 19
social-media post
by Huffman stating that a ceasefire would require “Hamas releases all
hostages, disarms & relinquishes control of Gaza”—in other words,
full surrender by Hamas as a prerequisite for an end to Israel’s mass
killing of civilians there.
Several other listed House members, such as Reps. Judy Chu (Calif.), Diana DeGette (Colo.), Teresa Leger Fernandez (N.M.) and Jamie Raskin
(Md.), have “publicly called for a ceasefire” only with caveats and
preconditions—without calling for the U.S.-backed Israeli government to
immediately stop killing Palestinian civilians no matter what.
A lot of members of Congress have taken far worse positions. But we
should not be grading on a curve. Constituents need accurate
information—so they won’t be under the false impression that they’re
being represented by an actual firm supporter of a ceasefire.
Even including the most dubious names that have been put in the
category of ceasefire supporters, the current list comprises just 13
percent of the House and 4 percent of the Senate. That’s a measure of
just how far we have to go in order to end what amounts to congressional
support for Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza.
Outpourings of protests against U.S. support for that war have
included large nonviolent actions at bridges, highways, train stations,
airports, college campuses, legislatures, and more. Some activists have
also confronted members of Congress.
But mostly, congressional supporters of Israeli impunity have been
spared the nonviolent confrontations that they deserve. Such
confrontations can occur at their office on Capitol Hill, but traveling
to Washington is not necessary.
Senators and House members have numerous offices back home that are
conveniently located for most of their constituents to visit, picket,
and nonviolently disrupt—insisting that support for the mass murder in
Gaza is morally unacceptable.
Long before South Africa filed a case against Israel at the
International Court of Justice on 29 December 2023 over its genocidal
war on Gaza, its iconic anti-apartheid leader, Nelson Mandela, who came
to embody the struggle for justice worldwide; stated, “Palestine was the
greatest moral issue of our time.”
Three decades have passed since Mandela expressed those
sentiments. They remain as relevant today as they were then. Perhaps
more so.
Mandela and fellow Black South Africans finally won their fight
against apartheid beginning in the 1990s. Palestinians, however, have
yet to be free from the shackles and evils of settler-colonial
apartheid.
Palestinians have not lived free in their own country for over 75
years. On 7 October 2023, they refused to live imprisoned for one more
day. And for three months now, in the rubble of bombed-out buildings in
Gaza, they have challenged the powerful U.S.-Israeli war machines.
American politicians and U.S. media—themselves under a form of
occupation through intimidation and groupthink—have reluctantly begun to
break their silence on Palestine. They have yet to clearly state
that: Israel is not a democracy, it is an apartheid entity; it is not a
promised land, it is a settler-colonial project; it is not a nation
under siege, it is an aggressor; it is not defending itself, it is
conducting a genocidal war in Gaza.
The American enablers of Israel continue to call the slaughter of
civilians and destruction of their homes in densely-populated Gaza a
“war.” Dropping over 40,000 tons of high explosives, some weighing 2,000 pounds,
capable of killing and wounding people more than 1,198 feet away, must
be described for what it truly is—Israel’s quest to systematically
annihilate an entire population.
Seizing a people’s homeland is comparable to robbing them of their
identity, history, culture and future. All of which Israel has tried to
do since it declared statehood on Palestinian land in 1948.
Through their ongoing resistance, Palestinians have denied the
Zionists their dream of an “Eretz” Greater Israel. Not on our land,
they say.
Palestinian identity remained steadfast under Ottoman rule, during
the British Mandate from 1922 to 1948 and has grown stronger under
Israeli apartheid. They have a deep relationship with the land
of Filastin (Arabic for Palestine), in existence for over 3,000
years. With the introduction of Islam (in 7th century AD), it has been
the nucleus of the Islamic world, a sacred land with Al-Quds (Jerusalem)
its spiritual, geographical and political center.
Creating an ethno-nationalist state on the ruins of Palestine, as we
see in Gaza today, is not new to the Zionist project. Statehood at any
cost was the primary objective of Israel’s founders, regardless of the
casualties.
The genocide we are witnessing in Gaza is the culmination of over a
century of European imperialism, European Zionism and American collusion
and deception. Expulsion and erasure are entrenched in Zionist history
and is a pervasive sentiment in Israeli society today.
Zionist colonization and the roots of erasure began with the
dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War. After
the war, the newly-created League of Nations granted Britain and France
colonial authority (called mandates) over former Ottoman territories.
Under Article 22 of the 1920 Covenant of the League, the Fertile
Crescent—present-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan (then Transjordan) and
Palestine—were to be governed until such time as they could become
independent. All of the mandate countries achieved varying degrees of
independence, except for Palestine.
A small cadre of influential European Zionists labored to make sure
that Palestine remained under British control, knowing that the British
Mandate for Palestine (officially adopted in 1922) incorporated the
principles of the Balfour Declaration—a 109-word letter, authored
by British foreign minister, Arthur James Balfour, declaring his
government’s support for the establishment of a “national home for the
Jewish people” in Palestine. From the start, and throughout, the people
of Palestine were never consulted.
The mandate system specifically stated that the territory entrusted
to the mandated power be developed for the benefit of the native
people. In Palestine, however, instead of working in support of the
Palestinians, the British, in collusion with European Zionists,
established the framework and institutions for the creation of an
eventual Jewish state on Palestinian land. For example, Article 2 of the Mandate reads:
“The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such
political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the
establishment of the Jewish national home….” Promotion of Jewish
immigration into Palestine was also a mandate provision.
Additionally, Article 4 recognized
the Zionist Jewish Agency as the public body to advise and cooperate
with them (the British) in the administration of Palestine to affect the
Jewish state.
No where in the mandate’s 28 articles was there any reference to the
Palestinians as a people or to their national or political rights. The
British mandate essentially legalized their erasure.
After years of conflict, Britain terminated its mandate on 14 May
1948. On that same day, Israel proclaimed its “independence,” and set
in motion its “Plan Dalet” expulsion policy—euphemism for ethnic cleansing—to destroy Palestinian towns and villages and to repopulate them with Jews.
Russian-born Ze’ev Jabotinsky,
influential Revisionist Zionist who provided the ideological map for
Israel’s future Likud Party, expressed those same sentiments. Aware of
the financial limitations of European Jewry, Jabotinsky wrote in November 1939 to
a fellow party member: “We should instruct American Jewry to mobilize
half a billion dollars in order that Iraq and Saudi Arabia will absorb
the Palestinian Arabs….The Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz
Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also
possible to move the Palestinian Arabs.”
Plan Dalet and what Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, referred to in 1938 as “compulsory transfer,” is clearly Israel’s scheme to depopulate Gaza.
Unlike the Nakba of 1948 when 780,000 Palestinians were violently
forced from their ancestral land, the Israeli regime cannot furtively
carry out mass expulsions of Gaza’s population as it did then. It has,
therefore, resorted to making Gaza uninhabitable and unable to support
life. To destroy the collective memory of the Palestinians, the Israeli
military has obliterated entire neighborhoods, so there will be nothing
recognizable; nothing to return to.
By denying the people of Gaza food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel, some Israeli officials, like retired Major General Giora Eiland–who
continues to advise Israel’s defense minister—sees the spread of
disease as a tool of war. Eiland callously remarked, “Severe epidemics
in the South of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer.”
Israel’s plan is to make life so unbearable, that the people of Gaza
will have no choice but to leave or die. To effect its scheme, the
Israeli regime has been laying the groundwork and attempting to build
international support for permanent mass expulsions of Gaza’s civilians
to neighboring Egypt and Jordan; thus far rejected by both countries.
Although he later changed course on Israel’s displacement plan, Biden had initially given Tel Aviv the green light to conduct ethnic cleansing in Gaza. On
11 October, Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed that the
administration was working with Egypt and Israel to create what he
called a “humanitarian corridor” in the Sinai for Palestinians fleeing
Gaza. And on 20 October, an official funding request was sent to
Congress to “address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring
countries.”
President Biden is one among many U.S. presidents who have
shamelessly and brazenly embraced Israel. The United States has been
deeply implicated in Israel’s crimes against humanity from the
beginning. On 14 May 1948, President Harry S. Truman hastily issued a
statement officially recognizing the new state of Israel—the first world
leader to do so. He released it to the press without first notifying
his top ranking State Department officials and U.S. delegates to the
United Nations.
In the foreword to Israel Shahak’s 1994 book, Jewish History, Jewish
Religion, Gore Vidal writes that “John F. Kennedy told me how in 1948
Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came
to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million
dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign
train. That’s why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so
fast.”
Since 1948, influential pro-Israel lobby groups have spent millions
of dollars to insure that U.S. politicians never stray from supporting
Israel. Their lobbying has also come to define the American political
landscape. Biden, for example, who prides himself on being an honorary
Zionist, has been the number one recipient of Israel lobby money. For his implacable support, he has, since 1990, received $4,346,264 from pro-Israel groups.
While publicly stating that it has stressed to the Zionist regime the
importance of minimizing civilian casualties, the White House continues
to provide the Israeli military with the bombs it has been using to
exterminate an imprisoned population. For the second time in December
2023, Blinken has approved the “emergency” sale of weapons to Israel;
once again bypassing Congress. Despite civilian deaths nearing 23,000, with over 57,000 wounded and 24,000-25,000 children made orphans by Israeli bombs, Blinken approved another “emergency” sale of weapons amounting to $147.5 million.
Contradicting his promise to “restore the soul of America,” Biden has
thrown the country’s power and reputation behind the supremacist
Israeli regime; a regime determined to erase the Palestinian
people. His decisions to shield, finance and militarily involve the
United States in Israel’s war crimes is incomprehensible. It is unclear
how America’s short-term, long-term or moral interests are served by
Biden’s policies.
Israel’s barbarity has exposed its “might makes right” ethos, defined
in the core writings of Jabotinsky, who set in motion Israel’s ideology
of force. Israel’s war on Gaza has also revealed the callousness of
the U.S. government, well disposed to finance Israel’s genocide.
In his 1923 essay, “The Iron Wall,” Jabotinsky argued that morality
and conscience could not dictate Zionist policy and that extremism and
force were integral to accomplishing Jewish statehood. His directive
read: “Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or
falls by the question of armed force,” and that, “It is important to
build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but unfortunately, it is even
more important to be able to shoot….”
Israel’s birth certificate has been stained with the blood of
Palestinians. It has no place in the Middle East until it puts down the
gun and rejects the ideology of force and exclusion.
For over a century, Palestinians have endured untold injustices
orchestrated by Britain, Israel and the United States. The horrific
crimes done to them can only be undone when the ongoing Nakba is ended
and their fight against apartheid leads to a free Palestine.
Plastic sheeting to make tents is in high demand in Rafah, where the population has more than tripled over the past weeks.
Bashar TalebAPA images
As Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza slouches towards the three-month mark, an end seems nowhere in sight.
To the outside world, Israel’s leadership has repeatedly warned of a many months-long assault.
On Christmas Day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stipulated three war aims for a US audience, aims that are entirely lacking any diplomatic horizon.
Domestically, however, the more honest talk is of ethnic cleansing, “voluntary” or otherwise.
It is the latter discourse to which attention should be paid. Unlike the three aims Netanyahu posited in the Wall Street Journal
on Christmas Day – the destruction of Hamas, the demilitarization of
Gaza and the “deradicalization” of Palestinian society – ethnic
cleansing has a definable end game.
It is also a logical outcome of Israeli policies over many decades, not just in occupied territory but domestically.
Having “settled” the land-for-peace formula by building colonies across
occupied territory to prevent any independent Palestinian entity from
emerging, Israel has left itself with the option of either indefinite
military occupation or formal annexation.
7 October put paid to the idea of indefinite occupation.
Formal annexation under current demographic realities, however,
leaves population parity, and either an apartheid state or a state with
equal rights for Jews and non-Jews.
If Israel had ever been interested in the latter formula, the Palestine issue would have been long resolved.
A second Nakba
Ideologically, Zionism is not about equality, but about exclusive
Jewish statehood in Palestine. That demands an unassailable Jewish
majority and a sufficiently diluted, disempowered and thus manageable
minority.
So, like in 1948, when Zionist militias expelled two thirds of
Palestine’s native population, Israel is now sensing a chance for a repeat.
Israel’s military strategy on the ground certainly points to a
deliberate effort at ejecting Gaza’s population south to Egypt, while
rendering Gaza unlivable and return impossible.
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has been among the most destructive and deadly in history, leaving some 70 percent of homes in the besieged territory damaged or destroyed.
The bombardment has destroyed mosques, churches, offices, bakeries,
farmland, government buildings, cultural centers, UN facilities,
universities and schools.
Some 22,000 people have been killed, according to the official death toll, the vast majority women and children, and just 13 hospitals out of 36 are left “partially functioning” to attend to more than 55,000 injured people.
The military has been pushing 1.9 million people – 85 percent of Gaza’s population – progressively south, first below Wadi Gaza and now, as it targets Khan Younis, to Rafah.
Having cut food, water, electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza, allowing in only a trickle of aid, 93 percent
of Palestinians in Gaza now face starvation and malnutrition, while
“soaring rates” of infectious diseases are flourishing in the unsanitary
conditions of overcrowded, repurposed shelters.
Rafah, on the border with Egypt, had a population of 280,000 in October. Now, that number has swelled to 850,000.
There is nowhere left to go in Gaza. And while Egypt has been clear
it will not allow Palestinians to be removed to its side of the border,
it will be impossible for Cairo to resist the pressure if, and when,
people start to die of hunger or disease.
Surrender or die?
Of course, Israel still needs to get to that point. The result in war
is “never absolute,” war theorist Carl von Clausewitz long ago argued, and there is no other endeavor “so constantly and so generally in close connection with chance.”
Well-prepared and well-drilled Hamas fighters are uncowed and
unrelenting, slowing the Israeli military’s advance and inflicting more
casualties than the army is willing to admit.
Having told Hamas to surrender or die, Israel has only motivated Gaza’s resistance to fight to the finish.
As Mike Tyson – a less conventional philosopher of war – put it: It’s hard to beat somebody that doesn’t want to quit.
Moreover, Israel’s unhinged aggression is reverberating through the region.
Hizballah has kept Israel under military pressure from South Lebanon where fighting is sharpening, Yemen’s Houthis have disrupted global shipping, and in both Syria – which Israel has been freely bombing for years – and Iraq there have been several attacks against US forces.
US allies, such as Jordan and Egypt
are under intense domestic pressure, and both have been vocal in
condemning Israeli excesses and adamant in rejecting any suggestion that
Palestinians be removed from their homeland.
Saudi Arabia has dropped any hint of normalization with Israel and even the countries of the Abraham Accords, notably the United Arab Emirates, have learnt that for all their attempts at currying favor in Washington, they do not and will not have the same purchase in America’s corridors of power as supporters of Israel.
American delusion
Growing regional instability will necessarily factor into Israel’s calculations.
It will factor even more into US calculations, where its attempt at a
“coalition of the willing” to counter Yemen’s shipping blockade is foundering.
So far, and despite the many and grotesque Israeli war crimes, Washington has stood solidly by Israel, repeatedly vetoing resolutions calling for a ceasefire at the UN.
It early deployed war ships to the Mediterranean to deter actors like Hizballah from getting involved.
It has kept Israel’s munitions stores stocked. As late as 29 December, the Biden administration even circumvented Congress to send munitions to Israel, the second time it did so last month.
There is no suggestion Washington – despite calling for a lower intensity
“stabilization phase” – is intending to seriously intervene any time
soon, even though it is inconceivable that the US does not understand
what Israel is doing.
In a country where the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine
will be free” is so controversial that Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib got
censured by Congress for using it, while actual calls for genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from other members of Congress and presidential candidates go unremarked, that may not be surprising.
Indeed, Joe Biden seems to think of the whole thing as some sort of game, while his chief diplomat, Antony Blinken appears deluded about America’s role in the world.
Israel and the US are increasingly isolated globally, as countries
around the world recoil not only from an unfolding genocide, but from
Washington’s willing complicity and America’s complete disregard for the
UN, its institutions and its rules.
This matters, even to Washington.
The impotence of the world body in the face of US intransigence is
undermining any semblance of international order with potentially
long-lasting consequences that reach far beyond Palestine.
After all, Israel, the US and the UK (which is also offering material
support for Israel’s onslaught in Gaza) were among the last countries
to stand by South Africa’s apartheid regime.
And while the deliberations of the International Court of Justice will take time, they have Israeli officials concerned already. Israel reached immediately for the anti-Semitism defense, as it does so often.
Unlike the International Criminal Court, which is tasked with
investigating claims of war crimes but whose jurisdiction is not
recognized by Israel, Israel is a signatory to the Genocide Convention.
Israel could of course ignore any injunction from the ICJ for Israel
to cease fire. And the US could continue to protect it against any
potential sanctions that might follow.
But international pressure is growing along with regional tensions, suggesting Israel is running out of time.
The resistance in Gaza, battered as it may be, is still standing.
And Washington is going to have to decide soon where it stands on ethnic cleansing.
Israel has been clear about its intentions. The clock is ticking.
Omar Karmi is associate editor of The Electronic Intifada and a
former Jerusalem and Washington, DC, correspondent for The National
newspaper.
US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield abstains
during a vote to approve a resolution that “demands” all sides in the
Israel-Hamas conflict allow the “safe and unhindered delivery of
humanitarian assistance at scale” at UN headquarters in New York on
December 22, 2023.
(Photo by Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images)
The $1.5 trillion in military outlays each
year is the scam that keeps on giving—to the military-industrial complex
and the Washington insiders—even as it impoverishes and endangers
America and the world.
On the surface, US foreign policy seems to be utterly irrational. The
US gets into one disastrous war after another — Afghanistan, Iraq,
Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and Gaza. In recent days, the US stands globally
isolated in its support of Israel’s genocidal actions against the
Palestinians, voting against a UN General Assembly resolution for a Gaza
ceasefire backed by 153 countries with 89% of the world population, and
opposed by just the US and 9 small countries with less than 1% of the
world population.
In the past 20 years, every major US foreign policy objective has
failed. The Taliban returned to power after 20 years of US occupation of
Afghanistan. Post-Saddam Iraq became dependent on Iran. Syria’s
President Bashar al-Assad stayed in power despite a CIA effort to overthrow him.
Libya fell into a protracted civil war after a US-led NATO mission
overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. Ukraine was bludgeoned on the battlefield by
Russia in 2023 after the US secretly scuttled a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2022.
To understand the foreign-policy scam, think of today’s federal
government as a multi-division racket controlled by the highest bidders.
Despite these remarkable and costly debacles, one following the
other, the same cast of characters has remained at the helm of US
foreign policy for decades, including Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, and Hillary Clinton.
What gives?
The puzzle is solved by recognizing that American foreign policy is
not at all about the interests of the American people. It is about the
interests of the Washington insiders, as they chase campaign
contributions and lucrative jobs for themselves, staff, and family
members. In short, US foreign policy has been hacked by big money.
As a result, the American people are losing big. The failed wars since 2000 have cost them around $5 trillion in direct outlays,
or around $40,000 per household. Another $2 trillion or so will be
spent in the coming decades on veterans’ care. Beyond the costs directly
incurred by Americans, we should also recognize the horrendously high
costs suffered abroad, in millions of lives lost and trillions of
dollars of destruction to property and nature in the war zones.
The costs continue to mount. US Military-linked outlays in 2024 will
come to around $1.5 trillion, or roughly $12,000 per household, if we
add the direct Pentagon spending, the budgets of the CIA and other
intelligence agencies, the budget of the Veteran’s Administration, the
Department of Energy nuclear weapons program, the State Department’s
military-linked “foreign aid” (such as to Israel), and other
security-related budget lines. Hundreds of billions of dollars are money
down the drain, squandered in useless wars, overseas military bases,
and a wholly unnecessary arms build-up that brings the world closer to
WWIII.
Yet to describe these gargantuan costs is also to explain the twisted
“rationality” of US foreign policy. The $1.5 trillion in military
outlays is the scam that keeps on giving—to the military-industrial
complex and the Washington insiders—even as it impoverishes and
endangers America and the world.
To understand the foreign-policy scam, think of today’s federal
government as a multi-division racket controlled by the highest bidders.
The Wall Street division is run out of the Treasury. The Health
Industry division is run out of the Department of Health and Human
Services. The Big Oil and Coal division is run out of the Departments of
Energy and Interior. And the Foreign Policy division is run out of the
White House, Pentagon and CIA.
Each division uses public power for private gain through insider
dealing, greased by corporate campaign contributions and lobbying
outlays. Interestingly, the Health Industry division rivals the Foreign
Policy division as a remarkable financial scam. America’s health outlays
totaled an astounding $4.5 trillion in 2022, or roughly $36,000 per
household, by far the highest health costs in the world, while America
ranked roughly 40th in the world among nations in life expectancy.
A failed health policy translates into very big bucks for the health
industry, just as a failed foreign policy translates into mega-revenues
of the military-industrial complex.
The more wars, of course, the more business.
The Foreign Policy division is run by a small, secretive and
tight-knit coterie, including the top brass of the White House, the CIA,
the State Department, the Pentagon, the Armed Services Committees of
the House and Senate, and the major military firms including Boeing,
Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. There
are perhaps a thousand key individuals involved in setting policy. The
public interest plays little role.
The key foreign policy makers run the operations of 800 US overseas
military bases, hundreds of billions of dollars of military contracts,
and the war operations where the equipment is deployed. The more wars,
of course, the more business. The privatization of foreign policy has
been greatly amplified by the privatization of the war business itself,
as more and more “core” military functions are handed out to the arms
manufacturers and to contractors such as Haliburton, Booz Allen
Hamilton, and CACI.
In addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars of military
contracts, there are important business spillovers from the military and
CIA operations. With military bases in 80 countries around the world,
and CIA operations in many more, the US plays a large, though mostly
covert role, in determining who rules in those countries, and thereby on
policies that shape lucrative deals involving minerals, hydrocarbons,
pipelines, and farm and forest land. The US has aimed to overthrow at
least 80 governments since 1947, typically led by the CIA through the
instigation of coups, assassinations, insurrections, civil unrest,
election tampering, economic sanctions, and overt wars. (For a superb
study of US regime-change operations from 1947 to 1989, see Lindsey
O’Rourke’s Covert Regime Change, 2018).
In addition to business interests, there are of course ideologues who
truly believe in America’s right to rule the world. The
ever-warmongering Kagan family
is the most famous case, though their financial interests are also
deeply intertwined with the war industry. The point about ideology is
this. The ideologists have been wrong on nearly every occasion and long
ago would have lost their bully pulpits in Washington but for their
usefulness as warmongers. Wittingly or not, they serve as paid
performers for the military-industrial complex.
There is one persistent inconvenience for this ongoing business scam.
In theory, foreign policy is carried out in the interest of the
American people, though the opposite is the truth. (A similar
contradiction of course applies to overpriced healthcare, government
bailouts of Wall Street, oil-industry perks, and other scams). The
American people rarely support the machinations of US foreign policy
when they occasionally hear the truth. America’s wars are not waged by
popular demand but by decisions from on high. Special measures are
needed to keep the people away from decision making.
In theory, foreign policy is carried out in the interest of the American people, though the opposite is the truth.
The first such measure is unrelenting propaganda. George Orwell nailed it in 1984
when “the Party” suddenly switched the foreign enemy from Eurasia to
Eastasia without a word of explanation. The US essentially does the
same. Who is the US gravest enemy? Take your pick, according to the
season. Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Hugo Chavez, Bashar al-Assad, ISIS,
al-Qaeda, Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin, Hamas, have all played the role of
“Hitler” in US propaganda. White House spokesman John Kirby delivers the
propaganda with a smirk on his face, signaling that he too knows that
what he is saying is ludicrous, albeit mildly entertaining.
The propaganda is amplified by the Washington think tanks that live
off of donations by military contractors and occasionally foreign
governments that are part of the US scam operations. Think of the
Atlantic Council, CSIS, and of course the ever-popular Institute for the
Study of War, brought to you by the major military contractors.
The second is to hide the costs of the foreign policy operations. In
the 1960s, the US Government made the mistake of forcing the American
people to bear the costs of the military-industrial complex by drafting
young people to fight in Vietnam and by raising taxes to pay for the
war. The public erupted in opposition.
From the 1970s onward the government has been far more clever. The
government ended the draft, and made military service a job for hire
rather than a public service, backed by Pentagon outlays to recruit
soldiers from lower economic strata. It also abandoned the quaint idea
that government outlays should be funded by taxes, and instead shifted
the military budget to deficit spending which protects it from popular
opposition that would be triggered if it were tax-funded.
It has also suckered client states such as Ukraine to fight America’s
wars on the ground, so that no American body bags would spoil the US
propaganda machine. Needless to say, US masters of war such as Sullivan,
Blinken, Nuland, Schumer, and McConnell remain thousands of miles away
from the frontlines. The dying is reserved for Ukrainians. Sen. Richard
Blumenthal (D-Conn.) defended American military aid to Ukraine as money
well spent because it is “without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,”
somehow not dawning on the good Senator to spare the lives of
Ukrainians, who have died by the hundreds of thousands in a US-provoked
war over NATO enlargement.
This system is underpinned by the complete subordination of the U.S.
Congress to the war business, to avoid any questioning of the
over-the-top Pentagon budgets and the wars instigated by the Executive
Branch. The subordination of Congress works as follows. First, the
Congressional oversight of war and peace is largely assigned to the
House and Senate Armed Services Committees, which largely frame the
overall Congressional policy (and the Pentagon budget). Second, the
military industry (Boeing, Raytheon, and the rest) funds the campaigns
of the Armed Services Committee members of both parties. The military
industries also spend vast sums on lobbying in order to provide
lucrative salaries to retiring members of Congress, their staffs, and
families, either directly in military businesses or in Washington
lobbying firms.
It is the urgent task of the American people to overhaul a foreign
policy that is so broken, corrupted, and deceitful that it is burying
the government in debt while pushing the world closer to nuclear
Armageddon.
The hacking of Congressional foreign policy is not only by the US
military-industrial complex. The Israel lobby long ago mastered the art
of buying the Congress. America’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid state
and war crimes in Gaza makes no sense for US national security and
diplomacy, not to speak of human decency. They are the fruits of Israel
lobby investments that reached $30 million in campaign contributions in 2022, and that will vastly top that in 2024.
When Congress reassembles in January, Biden, Kirby, Sullivan,
Blinken, Nuland, Schumer, McConnell, Blumenthal and their ilk will tell
us that we absolutely must fund the losing, cruel, and deceitful war in
Ukraine and the ongoing massacre and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, lest we
and Europe and the free world, and perhaps the solar system itself,
succumb to the Russian bear, the Iranian mullahs, and the Chinese
Communist Party. The purveyors of foreign policy disasters are not being
irrational in this fear-mongering. They are being deceitful and
extraordinarily greedy, pursuing narrow interests over those of the
American people.
It is the urgent task of the American people to overhaul a foreign
policy that is so broken, corrupted, and deceitful that it is burying
the government in debt while pushing the world closer to nuclear
Armageddon. This overhaul should start in 2024 by rejecting any more
funding for the disastrous Ukraine War and Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
Peacemaking, and diplomacy, not military spending, is the path to a US
foreign policy in the public interest.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center
for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed
The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN
Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN
Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three
United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG
Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author,
most recently, of “A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism”
(2020). Other books include: “Building the New American Economy: Smart,
Fair, and Sustainable” (2017) and “The Age of Sustainable Development,”
(2015) with Ban Ki-moon.
The news of John Pilger’s death is a sad event in the history of
progressive and critical journalism. His work throughout his career was a
glorious example of a dynamic trailblazer who stood for truth, justice,
human rights and for oppressed and marginalised people. The world has
lost a courageous son who fought against imperialism, neo-fascism, and
the oppression of Palestinians by a brutal colonial-settler state and its
imperial patrons.
May you rest in peace, dear friend of the oppressed and victims of imperialism and colonialism.
In addition to killing thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, Israel has
been routinely attacking at least four other nations in the region:
Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon. Why does the U.S. media keeps the
American public in the dark?
For years, this site has warned that Israel, especially Benjamin
Netanyahu, have tried to instigate the U.S. into a wider war in the
Mideast, particularly with Iran. We’ve also regularly indicted the U.S.
mainstream media for ignoring this danger.
Today, the threat is greater than ever. And, true to form, the New York Times,
National Public Radio, and the others continue to cover it up, instead
treating Netanyahu as the embattled but honest leader of an Israel that
is only trying to defend itself.
For more than a decade, Netanyahu’s main aim was to destroy
Iran’s alleged (and unproven) program to build nuclear weapons. He
openly tried to sabotage the Obama administration’s successful nuclear
deal in 2015, and then vigorously encouraged Donald Trump’s abrupt
decision to end the agreement 3 years later. Secretly, Israel conducted a
long campaign of sabotage against Iran, which included cyber warfare,
and actual assassinations inside the country, including the November
2020 killing of an Iranian scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Netanyahu
wanted to provoke Iranian retaliation, which would draw in the U.S., and
— he hoped — trigger an American attack that that would set back or
even destroy Tehran’s nuclear program.
Since October 7, the stakes for Netanyahu are much higher. Israelis
blame him for the Hamas attack, and the opinion polls show his
popularity has never been lower. A number of Israeli commentators have
called him the worst leader in the country’s history. If just a handful
of members from his own coalition in the Knesset abandon him, his
government will fall, and he will be trounced in new elections. Even
worse, the pending court cases against him for corruption will then
revive, and he could well end up in prison.
Luring the U.S. into a conflict with Iran will distract from his own troubles, and give him time to maneuver. So:
On December 24, an Israeli air strike assassinated Iran’s top commander in Syria, Razi Mousavi. The always valuable Iranian/American expert Trita Parsi, asked: “Did Israel kill Iranian commander to provoke a wider war?”
Also last week, a cyber attack
“caused two-thirds of Iran’s gas stations to suddenly stop working,”
yet another sabotage effort with Israel’s fingerprints all over it. No
country will be able to endlessly ignore such provocations.
(Netanyahu is not the only Israeli leader who wants the U.S. to
attack Iran. Former prime minister Naftali Bennett just published an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal
headlined: “The U.S. and Israel Need to Take Iran On Directly.” He
disclosed 2 secret Israeli attacks inside Iran during his 2021-2022
tenure as prime minister: the destruction of a drone base and the
killing of an Iranian military commander. After the article appeared,
some Israeli officials criticized Bennett “for revealing classified information. . . saying that he was potentially putting the country in danger.”)
The New York Times did run a brief report
on the December 24 air strike that killed Ravi Mousavi in Syria. But
the article was a model of dishonesty. The paper feigned ignorance in
the report’s opening sentence: “Iran accused Israel on Monday of killing
a high-level military figure in a missile strike in Syria at a time
when concerns are growing that the war in Gaza could escalate into a
regional conflict.” Nowhere do we learn that many observers, including
some Israelis, believe that Netanyahu may actually want a wider
conflict, as long as he can embroil the U.S. in it.
National Public Radio was even worse. In recent days, the network ran
three on-air reports, including one from a correspondent in the region.
The broadcasts were uniformly inept. They barely mentioned Israel’s
provocative killing of Mousavi. In one, host Leila Fadel
asked: “Does the U.S. or Iran really want this to become a regional
war?” Somehow, she forgot to add Israel or Netanyahu to her question,
although anyone who follows the story using a range of non-U.S.
mainstream sources, even including some in Israel itself, would have
known to broaden the inquiry.
The Washington Postreport
has a single throwaway sentence about how an “airstrike” by an unnamed
air force killed a “senior [Iranian] officer” in Syria. That was it.
Of course, the situation in the region is complicated. Ansar Allah,
Iran’s allies (commonly referred to as the Houthis) who control much of
Yemen, have been attacking shipping in the Red Sea, and Hezbollah, the
political/military movement in southern Lebanon that is also allied with
Iran, has been clashing with Israel across their mutual border. (This
site’s estimable Mitchell Plitnick has explained at length
how the Biden administration’s flawed response to the Red Sea shipping
crisis could also trigger a broader conflict.) It is doubtful that even
Benjamin Netanyahu would want to widen the conflict to bring in either
of these other two actors.
But what makes Israel’s provocative killing of General Mousavi and
its latest cyberattack even more dangerous that it also raises the risk
of a lethal accident. Let’s go back to July 1988, when tensions in the
region were similarly high. A U.S. Navy warship in the Strait of Hormuz accidentally shot down
a civilian Iranian jetliner, killing all 290 people on board. Iran did
show restraint, and so the conflict thankfully did not escalate
further.
Today, the danger is arguably even higher. Israel continues to murder
thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and attack at least four
other nations in the region: Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon. Israel’s
desperate leader is rolling the dice for his last time, and the Biden
administration is letting him get away with it — while the U.S. media
keeps the American public in the dark. The chances for a greater tragedy
are high.
Editor’s remarks: Dr. Philip Giraldi in his latest article
articulates with such precision and eloquence what is on the minds of
many anti-war and antifascist people in America, Europe and the rest of
the world. He identifies the reasons why US President Joe Biden
obediently follows what the ultra-right Israeli manipulator Netanyahu
decides.
Vital US interests are sacrificed to avoid offending Israel and its Lobby
by Philip Giraldi
I don’t have anyone whom I would consider a friend who supports the
genocide being carried out by Israel in Gaza. But my occasional
interaction with the psychopaths who infest the US government and media
and who are intimately connected by virtue of their political instincts
as well as their personal interests in campaign donations and/or
elevated salaries derived from Israel and its powerful lobby have plenty
of sound bites to throw out to demonstrate their love of the Jewish
state in all its manifestations. They mouth the Pelosi-Schumer-Biden
assertion that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and that Israel is
“America’s closest ally” and “best friend,” all of which can readily be
exposed as a series of self-serving lies and deliberate
misinterpretations of international law. Beyond that, they inevitably
cite their view that critics of Israel are fully responsible for what
they choose to refer to as the ultimate evil of “surging anti-semitism.”
In so doing they conveniently ignore the obvious fact that anger
towards Jews collectively speaking is nearly always derived from the
crimes against humanity committed by the Zionist political entity that
now legally defines itself as Jewish.
I sometimes ask the friends
of Israel what interest the United States has that would warrant our
country becoming complicit in committing war crimes that, collectively
speaking, amount to precursors for the complete expulsion or killing of
millions of Palestinians from what remains of their homes. They try to
weasel word their way avoiding the implications of that question by
observing that the United States is not directly engaged in the
conflict, an evasion that I belittle by pointing out that Washington is
providing funding, arming and political cover for the more powerful and
lethal party engaged in the conflict while also blocking attempts to
bring about a ceasefire to comply with orders from that same party,
which sure looks like direct involvement to me. I also point out that
Israel is working hard to get the US military engaged against Hezbollah
in Lebanon and also against Iran and is likely to be able to maneuver
the stoneheads in and around the White House to do its bidding vis-à-vis
both objectives.
So the big question has to be “Why does the
United States engage in a conflict that inter alia has utterly ruined
our country’s reputation worldwide and for which there is no real
compelling national interest?” The answer is, of course unpalatable to
many, but has to be that the US government is in many respects and
vis-à-vis some of its designated national policies completely under the
control of Israel and its powerful domestic as well as international
lobby. This habitual bowing to force majeure has warped the thinking of
the ambitious scallywags who seem to be present wherever one turns in
places like Washington. How else does one explain the infamous and quite
frankly ridiculous comment delivered at the 2018 Israeli American
Council meeting by leading politician Nancy Pelosi, who said that “I
have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the
ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and
I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s
fundamental to who we are.”
The delusional Pelosi, who appears to
have no “fundamental” attachment to the interests of the American
people whom she represents, is unfortunately not unique in the halls of
Congress, even less so in the Joe Biden White House, which might be
regarded as the illustration of what happens when you appoint Zionists
to nearly all key positions running your foreign, economic and national
security policies. The degree of direct Zionist/Israeli control over the
hapless Biden can best be illustrated by reviewing the course of the
recent redrafting of a UN Security Council resolution authored by the
United Arab Emirates that sought to bring about a suspension of the
fighting and the urgent resumption of humanitarian supplies for Gaza.
The US forced the revisions after coordination with Israel to permit the
Israelis to continue to attack civilian targets and avoid entering into
anything like a ceasefire, changing the word “suspension” in the
original draft to the less demanding creation of “conditions for a
sustainable cessation of hostilities.” Language authorizing the lead UN
role in monitoring and delivering the assistance to the Gazans was also
expunged leaving to belligerent Israel the task of completely
controlling the distribution of any supplies allowed entry into the
areas inside Gaza, which it is also simultaneously continuing to bomb,
thereby slowing the stream of urgently needed supplies to a trickle
while also killing hundreds more civilians.
To be sure, it was
the United States blindly supporting Israel that rendered what was a
promising proposal to put an end to the multiplying civilian deaths
toothless. Israel demonstrated just how high it regarded Joe Biden when
it contradicted what the president said about the US being able to
moderate some Israeli offensive action in Gaza. Netanyahu denied that,
saying that he and his war cabinet were continuing to make all relevant
decisions based on Israel’s own interests. Israel Defense Force (IDF)
Chief of the General Staff General Herzi Halevi followed on with his own
assessment that finishing the job in Gaza, i.e. totally destroying
Hamas by whatever means it requires, will take “many more months.” The
Israeli military has indeed visibly increased its efforts by opening up
new “battle zones” inside Gaza, to include directly targeting the
crowded and starving refugee camps outside the cities. The civilians are
paying the price while a grinning Joe Biden is spending his New Year’s
holiday in the American Virgin Islands.
Allowing Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a known liar and habitual war criminal to
tell the US government what to do is about as low as it gets, Mr. Biden!
You should not only be ashamed, but more than that, humiliated,
compelled to do ghastly things in support of your own fear of possible
Jewish/Israeli reaction if you do not bow down before King Netanyahu. He
and the band of inhuman monsters he has assembled in his cabinet have
made no secret of their intention to remove the Palestinians from
Palestine, either by forced emigration or by killing them if necessary.
On Christmas Day, Prime Minister Netanyahu told a meeting of his Likud
bloc “that he was still working on the ‘voluntary’ immigration of Gaza’s
inhabitants to other countries.” His associates Itamar Ben-Gvir and
Bezalel Smotrich have made it clear that the ethnic cleansing process
will proceed even if it is not in any way voluntary. As Israel is the
occupying power in the former Palestine, what is taking place is, as
defined by the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention and the UN
Charter, a crime against humanity and the United States is completely
complicit in it not to mention actually enabling the slaughter through
its supplying of arms and money to the Israelis. It has recently been
reported in the Israeli media that the United States has delivered an
astonishing “10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment on 244
cargo planes and 20 ships” to sustain the Israeli homicidal assault
against the people of Gaza. And to demonstrate its gratitude for the
flood of weapons, America’s “best friend” and “closest ally” Israel has
nevertheless complained “about a delay in the delivery of munitions.”
The
total support of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians by Washington
and the media is not only shameful, it is lacking any context for a
crime against humanity that has been going on with US connivance for the
past 76 years. Under international law, an occupied people has a right
to use force to resist occupation, but even given that, the majority of
Israeli deaths on October 7th should probably be attributed to so-called
“friendly fire” from the Israeli army not from Hamas. The occupied and
woefully abused Palestinians rising-up and seeking both freedom and
sovereignty in the land that was once completely theirs is fully
justified and should be respected. Israel’s killing women and children
through deliberate starvation or even by execution style is indisputably
a war crime. Bombing hospitals or leaving newborn incubator babies
abandoned to die is a crime against humanity. Arresting innocent
Palestinians before parading them naked and even desecrating their dead
bodies by harvesting organs that you then sell is unspeakable and almost
unimaginable evil as is deliberately targeting and bombing schools and
churches where people are trying to find shelter.
The genocide
and destruction in Gaza is the worst crime committed in modern history
and the man who could have stopped it, Joe Biden, sits on his hands and
grins. No one should remain silent when confronted by this horror but
the silence and the deliberate distortion of what is taking place is a
tribute to Jewish power in America and elsewhere. I am including some
recent commentary from the illustrious Australian Journalist Caitlin
Johnstone which demonstrates perfectly the hypocrisy and inhumanity of
both Biden and the leaders of Britain, France, Canada, and Germany:
“Sometimes Israel’s crimes are so horrific that at first you don’t even
understand what you’re looking at. You just stare at it trying to make
sense of what you’re seeing for a bit, like you would if you suddenly
saw a space alien or a leprechaun or something… It’s so incredibly
obvious what we’re looking at here. The only thing putting a wobble on
people’s perception is the immense amount of propaganda distortion the
media is churning out on this issue, plus the fact that the demographics
look a bit different from what history has conditioned people to watch
out for. If there were two million Jewish people trapped by Christians
in a giant concentration camp and placed under total siege, being told
that half of them had 24 hours to relocate into the other half or be
killed, nobody would have any confusion about what they were
witnessing.”
And a leading American journalist Daniel Larison
must have the last word of advice from his site on Eunomia: “We are
witnessing one of the gravest crimes of our time. Our government is
aiding and abetting the perpetrators. It is up to people in this country
to make our government cut off all support for this war and to press
for an end to the war itself.” Amen, Daniel!
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs a Cabinet meeting at
the Israeli Ministry of Defense, in Tel Aviv, Israel, 17 December 2023.
(Photo: © Menahem Kahana/EFE via ZUMA Press APAimages)
