{"id":1585015,"date":"2024-04-02T06:02:20","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T06:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=317723"},"modified":"2024-04-02T06:02:20","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T06:02:20","slug":"washington-post-believes-u-s-israel-can-get-back-on-the-same-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/04\/02\/washington-post-believes-u-s-israel-can-get-back-on-the-same-page\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post Believes U.S. & Israel \u201cCan Get Back on the Same Page\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain<\/p><\/div>\n

In a bizarre, even obtuse, lead editorial on March 31, the <\/span>Washington Post <\/i>outlined a scheme for the United States and Israel to \u201cget back on the same page.\u201d\u00a0 The <\/span>Post<\/i> editorial suffers from the conventional misperception that ignores today\u2019s fundamentalist and separatist Israel, which is so different from Israel\u2019s long ago standing as a secular and social democratic society that replicated many West European countries.\u00a0 The <\/span>Post<\/i> ignores the fact that Ashkenazi Jews from Europe are no longer in control, and the political and social influence of Orthodox Jewry, the Haredim, who play a central role in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.\u00a0 These misperceptions are apparent throughout the mainstream media.<\/span><\/p>\n

The key blunder of the Biden administration is to believe that kowtowing to the Netanyahu government and his fundamentalist coalition allows the United States to maintain influence in Israel.\u00a0 There is no better example of the contradictory nature of U.S. policy than the so-called \u201cred line\u201d that Biden has drawn against any Israeli \u201cscorched earth invasion\u201d of Rafah and the recent delivery of weapons that should never be used in an urban environment.\u00a0 This delivery includes 1,800-lb MK84 bombs and 500 500-lb MK82 bombs that are capable of leveling entire city blocks and leaving 40-ft deep craters in Gaza.\u00a0 MK84 bombs were used in October against the Jabalya refugee camp where more than 100 Palestinian civilians were killed in a mission designed to kill one Hamas official. There was no warning whatsoever.\u00a0 Israel\u2019s use of these bombs is a war crime, and the United States is complicit as Israel\u2019s only supplier of such lethal weapons of war.<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. delivery also included 25 F-35 jet fighters that are valued at $2.5 billion, and will certainly be involved in future mass casualty events in Gaza.\u00a0 Once upon a time, the United States and Israel were linked by their commitments to human rights and humanitarian values.\u00a0 Now, the United States and Israel are linked by Netanyahu\u2019s horrific war, the use of bunker-buster bombs, and a military campaign that is killing and traumatizing the entire Palestinian population in Gaza, particularly the children.\u00a0 Continued U.S. military aid signals unequivocally that the Biden administration is willing to underwrite Netanyahu\u2019s violent war in Gaza; the settler violence on the West Bank; and the permanent occupation of both.<\/span><\/p>\n

President Biden seems to believe that the recent U.S. abstention on the cease-fire resolution at the United Nations Security Council and the feckless warnings about avoiding a humanitarian nightmare in southern Gaza allow his administration to pose as an \u201chonest broker\u201d between Israelis and Palestinians.\u00a0 The United States has never been a genuine \u201chonest broker.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, its key negotiators have served primarily as Israel\u2019s lawyers in various negotiations.\u00a0 Obvious examples of such \u201cIsraeli lawyers\u201d have been Dan Kurtzer, Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller, and Martin Indyck, who have been ambassadors in the region or assistant secretaries of state for the Middle East. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Several Democratic Senators have criticized the American weapons that are responsible for the soaring death toll in Israel\u2019s occupation of Gaza.\u00a0 Senators Chris Van Hollen (MD) and Jeff Merkley (OR) have been leading the way; Independent Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) has correctly labeled the recent transfer as \u201cobscene.\u201d\u00a0 When White House and National Security Council spokesmen have been asked about these weapons deliveries, the stock response has been \u201cWe have continued to support Israel\u2019s right to defend itself.\u00a0 Conditioning aid has not been our policy.\u201d\u00a0 Meanwhile, Palestinian fatalities and casualties have passed the 100,000 mark, some from malnutrition as the famine has begun.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that the United States is coming to the aid of Benjamin Netanyahu makes our complicity even worse.\u00a0 Netanyahu has been creating problems for Democratic and Republican administrations for the past three decades.\u00a0 Secretary of State James Baker made Netanyahu persona non grata <\/i>at the Department of State in the early 1990s following Netanyahu\u2019s accusation that the Bush administration was \u201cbuilding policy in the Middle East on a foundation of lies and distortions.\u201d\u00a0 George H.W. Bush was one of the rare U.S. presidents willing to stand up to Israel and its illegal settlements on the West Bank.<\/span><\/p>\n

Netanyahu has always been a problem for the United States.\u00a0 He boasted to his key advisors that the \u201cUnited States is a thing you can move very easily.\u201d\u00a0 Netanyahu displayed his arrogance in discussions with Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.\u00a0 In 1996, after an acrimonious meeting with Netanyahu, Clinton said \u201cWho the f\u2014- does he think he is\u201d and, following a lecture from Netanyahu, Clinton remarked \u201cWho\u2019s the f\u2014\u2014\u2014 superpower here?\u201d\u00a0 Obama was fed up with Netanyahu as early as his first year in the White House, but rewarded him with a record-setting military aid package in the last year of his administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and National Security Council advisor Jake Sullivan constantly refer to the importance of a \u201crules-based order\u201d in U.S. foreign and national security policy, but our military support for Israel\u2019s immoral war puts the lie to our rhetoric.\u00a0 Asked about differences between the United States and Israel, a State Department spokesman said \u201cwe don\u2019t view our job as trying to calm Israel down\u2026our job is not to stop them, our job is to work together toward our common objective\u201d and to \u201calign our policies as much as possible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the nonaligned countries in the Global South have not responded to our calls for support for Ukraine in its valiant stand against Russian aggression because of the hypocrisy of U.S. support for Netanyahu\u2019s immoral campaign and war crimes in Gaza.\u00a0 At the same time, there has been increased settler violence against Palestinians on the West Bank that is ignored by Israeli Defense Forces as well as by the Biden administration.\u00a0 The IDF is making Gaza uninhabitable, and the Biden administration has remained on the sidelines.\u00a0 Donald Trump gave Israel a free pass; Joe Biden\u2019s policies are essentially not very different.<\/span><\/div>\n

The post Washington Post Believes U.S. & Israel \u201cCan Get Back on the Same Page\u201d<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a bizarre, even obtuse, lead editorial on March 31, the Washington Post outlined a scheme for the United States and Israel to \u201cget back on the same page.\u201d\u00a0 The Post editorial suffers from the conventional misperception that ignores today\u2019s fundamentalist and separatist Israel, which is so different from Israel\u2019s long ago standing as a secular and social democratic society that replicated many West European countries.\u00a0 The Post ignores the fact that Ashkenazi Jews from Europe are no longer in control, and the political and social influence of Orthodox Jewry, the Haredim, who play a central role in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.\u00a0 These misperceptions are apparent throughout the mainstream media. More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Washington Post Believes U.S. & Israel \u201cCan Get Back on the Same Page\u201d<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":200,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,266,204],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/200"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1585015"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1587317,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585015\/revisions\/1587317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1585015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1585015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1585015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}