We are not going to create any conditions on the support that we give to Israel to defend itself.

Kamala Harris, US Vice President, November 2, 2023

When I first read this statement last Fall, I thought to myself that at least we can applaud the Biden Administration for its blood-curdling honesty. Unfortunately, what Ms. Harris means is that we will allow the Israeli government to kill as many Palestinians as it sees fit, in any way it sees fit, with any weapon we see fit to send it. Harris’ statement is another illustration of the moral depravity governing our country’s “special” relationship with Israel. That relationship is indeed special as it is qualified by something not found in our relationship with any other nation. It allows a foreign government to receive billions of dollars in advanced weaponry to be used against a civilian population with absolute impunity. It should be noted that such impunity did not begin October 7, 2023. It has a long and sordid history.

America travels the globe pontificating about human rights and the incumbency of adhering to international law, built on a so-called “rules-based international order.” Yet we provide the political cover to ensure that Israel is not obliged to respect a single instrument of either human rights law, international humanitarian law, or international law in general. Since its creation as a state, Israel has trampled on, trashed, and ultimately jettisoned the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, The Convention Against Torture, The Convention
on the Rights of the Child, the Geneva Accords, the United States Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and well over 100 binding UN Resolutions.

When anyone points this out, Zionist apologists are quick to claim that this is antisemitism, for Israel is being unfairly singled out for criticism. Afterall, there are many other regimes, including in the Arab world, that have similarly deplorable human rights records. This is certainly true, and all such states are condemnable. If, however, Israel wishes to admit that it is
no better than Assad’s Syria, the late Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Myanmar, or similar thugocracies, she should cease spewing blatant lies about being the region’s only democracy, having the world’s most moral army, and similar claims that serve as a thin veil covering a racist entity founded on a massive program of ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

It is undeniable that Israel is sustained by the military might and diplomatic treachery of United States. The ongoing genocide in Gaza makes this patently clear. The massive number of conventional explosives needed to effectively drop four Hiroshima-type atomic bombs on Gaza could never be manufactured in a state as small as Israel. The United States is not just
complicit in the ongoing genocide; we are the senior partner in the operation. In her insightful book, “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” Samantha Power (who seems to have forgotten about her pet project, humanitarian intervention, when it comes to Gaza) makes the following observation, “The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and has in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred.” Maybe the truth of this statement is rooted in the fact that the establishment of the United States required the genocidal erasure of the original inhabitants of this land. If Israel is built on the rubble of 500 razed Palestinian villages, the United States is built on the corpses of 500 extinguished native tribes. Hence, no one should be shocked as America not only ignores the suffering of the civilian population of Gaza, but actively aids and abets it by sending thousands of tons of bombs and other military hardware to its “special” ally.

To date Israel has killed 15,000 children during its ongoing rampage in Gaza. As sickening as that number is, America killed upwards to one million Iraqi children during the 1990s and early 2000s. Our former UN Ambassador, Madelyn Albright, admitted to half a million in 1997. Many of those children died of water borne diseases after we bombed the sewage
treatment and water purification plants to encourage the proliferation of those diseases. Of course, the Israelis have done the same thing in Gaza. We do not mention these facts to merely stress the cynical brutality of America and the Middle East’s sole “democracy,” but to emphasize the moral bankruptcy of the Eurocentric order that the United States and Israel lie at the heart of.

That order, which can produce no Western “democracy” capable of seriously questioning the blatant hypocrisy of its opposition to invasion and occupation in Ukraine, while facilitating the invasion and occupation of Palestine, is willing to sacrifice one of its liberal pillars, freedom of speech, to sustain its colonial project in Israel. That sacrifice has been reiterated by both the US House of Representatives and President Biden, formally and informally, by declaring that any criticism of any Israeli policy, no matter how condemnable that policy may be, amounts to antisemitism.

Were such weaponizing of “antisemitism” happening in a vacuum, some might easily dismiss it. It is, however, happening in the context of a growing student movement that threatens to shake the moral complacency of the American public, as regards Israel, to its core. In less than a month, that movement has led not only to Biden’s kowtowing speech at the Holocaust
Memorial, but it has also inspired the initiation of a law that would make any criticism of Israel illegal. These desperate measures, which are predicated on equating Judaism with Zionism, will only deepen the growing rift between American Jews and Israel, while rendering the idea of antisemitism meaningless.

Such measures also create a climate where the impunity afforded Israel in our foreign policy is extended to her domestic defenders. The genocide against the civilian population of Gaza is justified by the need to destroy Hamas. The assault on the constitutionally protected rights of free speech and assembly is justified by the need to silence those labeled Hamas
supporters. The violence of the Zionist state is facilitated by our federal government. The violence of Zionist thugs, like the ones descending on peaceful protesters at UCLA, is facilitated by the governing bodies of our universities and municipalities. The growing global rejection of Zionist violence is pointed to as evidence of a resurgent antisemitism internationally, and the American public’s growing rejection of that same violence is presented as evidence of the reemergence of a deeply rooted American antisemitism. In the face of these developments, it must be emphasized that the problem is not the specter of antisemitism, the problem is the impunity of unmitigated Zionist violence.

In his speech at the Holocaust Memorial, President Biden pointed to “an ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people from the earth.”That desire is a European one. That European desire culminated in the atrocities of the European fascist regimes, the worst of which were the German Nazis. The horrors of the Nazi-orchestrated Holocaust are undeniable. It is
also undeniable that the Holocaust is the exclusive work of Europeans. In his speech, Biden mentioned the heroism of a European, Raoul Wallenberg, who rescued Jews in Budapest, Hungary. It would have been too damaging to the trope of the “ancient Muslim hatred of Jews” for him to ever mention the heroism of Imam Kaddour Ben Ghabrit and Abdelkader Mesli, who used the Paris Mosque to save French Jews from Hitler’s henchmen. He would also never mention the heroism of tens of thousands of Senegalese Muslims who died fighting the Nazis. Likewise, King Muhammad V of Morocco who was honored by the Israeli government for refusing to implement the antisemitic laws of the Nazi-backed, fascist French Vichy regime, even though Morocco was then under French rule. Muslim soldiers were instrumental in defeating the Nazis in North Africa and made significant contributions to victories on several other fronts. It is estimated that 5.5 million Muslims fought with the Allies against the forces of Fascism and of them 1.5 million lost their lives. None of this is worth mentioning when a climate of Muslim hatred is needed to sustain a genocide.

Biden stated that the “veneer of civilization is paper-thin.” That may be true, but the students, whose ranks are overwhelmingly Muslim and Jewish, as well as the faculty and staff of our colleges and universities who are peacefully protesting a barbaric, uncivilized genocide are not the ones shredding that veneer. That distinction lies squarely at the feet of Biden, a cowardly and compromised Congress, the demonic war profiteers, and the blood lust of the government of Israel. These forces in endeavoring to silence any opposition to an ongoing genocide, are fighting to preserve our “special” relationship with the Zionist state. They are, however, ultimately helping to create the conditions that will hasten that relationship’s demise.

© 2024 New Islamic Directions ^™

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