Israel’s military entered Nablus in occupied Palestine to “preemptively” “neutralize” three “suspects” who were allegedly “planning attacks in the immediate future.” The timing was exquisite, coming on the heals of Secretary of State Blinken’s diplomatic visit.
The Israeli military’s daytime raid began at around 10:15 a.m. (3:15 a.m. ET), Ahmad Jibril, the local director of Red Crescent, told CNN. It is “a time when everyone is out shopping in the open market of the old city. No one expects an invasion at this time of the day,” he said.
There were Israeli snipers on the rooftops shooting live ammunition, he said. “That’s why many people were shot in the head, shoulders and backs,” he said. Most of the dead were shot in the head, he added.
“People who were unarmed and even away from the old city were also shot. Bullets were everywhere!” he said.
Even by Israel’s standards, this was a brazen affront against international law and a big “FUCK YOU” to the Biden Administration.
The IDF killed 11 Palestinians and wounded 102 before withdrawing from Nablus.
U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Jan. 30. Photo: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images
Summary of call: Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke today (Feb. 18) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reiterate our support for a negotiated two-state solution and opposition to policies that endanger its viability. The Secretary underscored the urgent need for Israelis and Palestinians to take steps that restore calm and our strong opposition to unilateral measures that would further escalate tensions. The Secretary and Prime Minister also discussed broader regional challenges, including the threats posed by Iran, and the Secretary underscored our ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.
My message to President Biden: Netanyahu doesn’t give a flying FU*K about your diplomacy, about a two-state solution, or any damn “shared values” between the U.S. and Israel. You’d better tell the American public what you consider our ‘special relationship’ to be, specifying the substance and policy dimensions of the two countries’ so-called ‘shared values’. Only by clearly defining those values can you set the U.S. apart from Israel’s flagrant violations of human rights and international law, such as the slaughter in Nablus this week. And you should make clear what would represent a departure from those ‘shared values’. Otherwise, you and your Administration are joined at the hip with a country that “preemptively” assassinates Palestinians with impunity. (Israel has murdered 62 Palestinians so far in 2023.)
The ‘special relationship’ between the U.S. and Israel has been on the rocks for years, but only now does it appear to be kosher to speak about ending it.
Netanyahu, like Trump and the American right, like Orban and Bolsonaro, like Modi, Le Pen and Italy’s neo-fascists, has for years now promoted an ethno-nationalist authoritarian agenda that is now calling into doubt all the values that once bound Israel and the U.S.
Michael Rosen’s review of Walter Russell Mead’s book — The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People — in the National Review (October 13, 2022), describes some of the history and events leading up to the ‘special relationship’.
“The development of America’s special relationship with Israel enabled the special relationship with the Arab oil producers without which the American political, economic, and foreign policy revival from the crisis of the early 1970s could not have taken place,” writes Mead.
A lot of ink has been spilled on this ‘special relationship’ — explaining it, defending it, opposing it and trying to change it. Harvard professors Mearsheimer and Walt really opened my eyes about the role of Israel’s lobbyists and strong influence over the U.S. Congress after my first visit to Palestine in 2004. [Mearsheimer, John J., and Stephen Walt. “Is It Love or The Lobby? Explaining America’s Special Relationship with Israel.” Security Studies 18.1 (January-March 2009): 58-78. And Walt, Stephen and John J. Mearsheimer. “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” KSG Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP06-011, March 2006.]
“Although most Americans have a favorable image of Israel, surveys show that they also favor a more even-handed Middle East policy and a more normal relationship with Israel. Thus, the special relationship is due primarily to the lobby’s influence, and not to the American people’s enduring identification with the Jewish state.”
Few Americans may actually understand how generous American taxpayers have been with their support for Israel. Since 1976, Israel has received more U.S. foreign aid each year than any other country, totaling about $100 Billion since the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979. (Egypt receives the 2nd highest amount of U.S. foreign aid.) Although this aid included significant economic assistance at the beginning, its now almost all in the form of military aid. A great boondoggle for America’s military industrial complex.
The U.S. government has also sheltered Israel from international criticism — as illustrated with the numerous U.S. vetoes at the U.N. Security Council on resolutions critical of Israel. [An excellent summary of the information shared here can be found in The Rocky Future of the US-Israeli Special Relationship, by Dov Waxman and Jeremy Pressman, The Washington Quarterly, Summer 2021]
The U.S. ‘special relationship’ with Israel has become domestically contentious as the debate over how the U.S. should support Israel has ramped up and become a partisan issue. The GOP generally expresses unequivocal support for Israel while the Democrats are engaging in a conversation about the terms of our country’s conditional support for Israel. The progressives are challenging their party’s leadership to think anew about the ‘special relationship.’
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) co-sponsored a resolution attempting to block a $735 million arms sale to Israel — the first-ever break from the typical genuflecting that occurs on Capitol Hill. In March 2020, 64 Democratic members of the House wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressing their “grave concern” about the Israeli violations of international law. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg publicly expressed a willingness to either cut, condition or restrict U.S. aid to Israel during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race. In April 2021, Rep. Betsy McCollum (D-MN) introduced a bill, cosponsored by 15 Dems, to prohibit Israel from using U.S. aid for the detention of Palestinian children, the destruction of Palestinian property, or the unilateral annexation of Palestinian territory. [H.R. 2590]
Biden with Netanyahu 2016 – Amos Ben Gershom/Israeli GPO
All of this is to say that the momentum is growing for a serious debate on Capitol Hill about our ‘special relationship’ with Israel. Now a proposal has been published which spells out in some detail how to transform the Biden Administration’s Israel Policy and end the ‘special relationship.’ I urge you to read it in its entirety here — DAWN, February 13, 2023.
To summarize: the authors recommend that the Biden administration articulate its view of the ‘special relationship’ publicly, specifying the substance and policy dimensions of the two countries’ ‘shared values’. Only by clearly defining those values can it make clear what would represent a departure from them by Israel, specifically as related to democracy, pluralism, respect for the rule of law, democratic institutions, and division of power, among other elements. DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now) proposes that Biden compile a list of actions, policies or norms that it considers to undermine its shared values, interests, and policy goals. DAWN has prepared a long list of ideas that might be included in such a list.
After the list is prepared, Biden should inform the Israeli government in advance of the actions it will take if Israel undermines the ‘special relationship’. Again, DAWN has provided a list of recommended actions.
These steps need not cut away the historical core commitments the united States and President Biden have made to Israel’s security. They should, however, revisit the blank-check nature of American security assistance and political support for successive Israeli governments. While DAWN believes that the United States should end all military support for Israel as long as it does not meet its human rights and other international legal obligations vis-a-vis every person living under its effective control, we acknowledge that such an ask is not one the Biden administration will pursue.
The New York Times Editorial Board, so often an apologist for Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinians, opined (August 15, 2019) that Trump’s and Netanyahu’s actions denying two U.S. Congresswomen the opportunity to visit Israel-Palestine was a sign of weakness.
There are not many traditions of decorum that President Trump has not trampled on since entering the White House. But to put at risk, so cynically, America’s special relationship with Israel solely to titillate the bigots in his base, to lean so crassly on a foreign leader to punish his own political adversaries, to demonstrate so foul a lack of respect for the most elemental democratic principles, is new territory even for him.
“America’s special relationship with Israel” translates to $3+ Billion every year from US taxpayers to Israel; an unquestioning veto at the UN Security Council to prevent any measure critical of Israel’s occupation; a willful blindness to the undemocratic, apartheid state that flaunts its “successes” while shielding from public view its grotesque human rights violations; a mindless deference to Israel’s hasbara and security mantra; and a chilling indifference to the suffering, killing and dehumanization of the Palestinians barely surviving under Israel’s military occupation. The N.Y. Times Editorial Board asks: “What are Trump and Netanyahu afraid of?” My answer is simple.
The Truth
Anyone who has lived, worked, volunteered or spent any bit of time with the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, occupied East Jerusalem, or the occupied Gaza Strip knows that the State of Israel has been wildly successful at spinning a righteous tale of its victimhood, its struggle for survival and security in a “dangerous neighborhood,” and its “peace-loving” liberal values.
The State of Israel has succeeded in creating this mirage by carefully pushing its hasbara (promoting its version of the facts) to the exclusion of contrary facts which undermine Israel’s preferred reality. And the New York Times, as well as some other western media, have been complicit in this charade.
Israel has also succeeded in keeping the U.S. Congress duped by indoctrinating them into Israel’s version of the facts with carefully orchestrated junkets to Israel that highlight the “special relationship” between our two countries; by keeping AIPAC (Israel’s Washington lobbyist) in the offices of freshman members of Congress so they are honed to the “correct path” from the beginning; and by unseating those members of Congress who won’t follow AIPAC’s direction. (Read about former Congressman Paul Finley who died August 9, 2019).
There are so many examples, books could and have been written about it. My first education about the myths and propaganda came from one of the new Israeli historians, Professor Ilan Pappe, which I wrote about here.
My correspondence with the editors of the New York Times in 2016 is one small example of trying to break through Israel’s alternative reality. When the editors refused to label the Gaza Strip as “occupied” territory, I challenged them. I wrote about it here. After several communications back and forth, my query finally ended up in the deep, dark hole within the bowels of the New York Times. Even the Democratic National Committee has apoplexy with the term “occupation”, as I wrote about here.
The four congresswomen — Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — the “Squad” as they’re known on Capitol Hill — are a threat to anyone who fears the truth. They’re challenging the powerful lobbyists, the accepted orthodoxy of the Democratic Party, and even the State of Israel’s hasbara.
I can only imagine that the New York Times Editorial Board must be sniffing the same scent that the Emperor who wore no clothes sniffed when it began to dawn on him that his reality didn’t match what everyone around him knew.
لماذا غزة؟ Why Gaza? 