How Washington Has Lost Its Way
One
might well think that the only serious foreign policy imperative of the
Donald Trump administration is to defend Israel. A president elected
because he promised to put United States’ interests first has turned out
to be little different than his predecessors, bowing to the power of
various lobbies and constituencies to carry out their wishes while
simultaneously pretending to be serving poorly defined policies to
promote the security and well-being of the American people.
Israel
possesses, to be sure, the most powerful foreign policy lobby operating
not only in the United States but as well in Western Europe and
Australasia. When Israel makes its incessant demands, politicians from
Washington to Canberra and Wellington pause to listen. In Britain, fully
80% of Conservative parliamentarians are members of the Conservative
Friends of Israel.
Israel
benefits from a large, influential and wealthy community of diaspora
Jews that is willing to do its bidding and which also possesses easy
access to the media and to politicians, many of whom are more than
willing to be corrupted by money. This has led to the creation of an
“Israeli narrative,” most particularly in the United States, which
glamorizes the state of Israel through the incessant reiteration of
expressions like “the only democracy in the Middle East” and “America’s
best friend and closest ally,” both of which assertions are completely
false.
It
should surprise no one that the Trump administration is packed with
Israel-firsters from top to bottom. Those who deal with Israel directly –
Ambassador David Friedman, Chief Middle East Negotiator Jason
Greenblatt, and Special Envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner are all
Orthodox Jews with long standing ties to Israel and its leadership. They
are major financial supporters of Israeli “charities,” to include
projects on the occupied West Bank, which are both illegal under
international law and contrary to long established U.S. policy. It would
seem, without being too hyperbolic, that Israeli interests are at least
as important to them as are the American interests that they ostensibly
represent and are being paid by the taxpayer to support.
Within
the White House, there is virtually no pushback against Israeli
pretensions even when American interests are being damaged. Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly voiced his support of the Jewish state
and his animosity towards that state’s enemy of choice Iran. National
Security Adviser John Bolton, a long-time neoconservative, has never
distanced himself in any way from complete identification with the
policies being promoted by Israel and its increasingly right wing and
racist governments. Donald Trump himself has declared that he will be
the best president for Israel ever, a pledge that he has worked to honor
by moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in spite of the
damage that it does to actual regional American interests.
But
the most vocal advocate for Israel within the Administration is Nikki
Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who has consistently taken
the hardest of all possible lines against Israel’s claimed enemies
while also fully endorsing the most brutal actions undertaken by the
government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Haley’s most recent
action reveals that the United States has truly lost its sense of
direction and moral compass. If one were religious, it might be
suggested that it has lost its soul.
Haley’s most recent foray into her own style of what she might refer to as statesmanship came on June 1st.
Kuwait had brought a resolution to the United Nations Security Council
to call on it to fulfil its responsibility to help protect the people of
Gaza, who were being bombed, gassed and shot dead by Israeli Army
sniper fire. Nikki Haley, however, was thinking of something quite
different, a resolution she had drafted to denounce Hamas for the
alleged volleys of rockets that were launched into adjacent Israeli
controlled areas in response to the Israeli gunfire and bombings. Votes on the two resolutions followed, with Haley failing to obtain any votes on her resolution except her own.
Haley
again voted alone when she vetoed the Kuwaiti resolution to protect the
Palestinian people. And it was not Haley’s first such bit of
unilateralism. She had walked out of
a previous Security Council meeting on Israel’s killing of Palestinian
protesters as a deliberate insult to their representative who had risen
to begin to speak. Haley unfortunately represents America. America the
home of the free and brave? Bullshit.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/06/07/how-washington-has-lost-its-way.html
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