- All this can happen because there is a vacuum in U.S.
political discourse. A handful of special interests in the United States
virtually dictate congressional policy on some issues. With regard to the
Arab-Israeli conflict, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and
a few allies have succeeded in imposing complete censorship on both houses
of Congress. No senator or representative dares make a speech on the floor
of his or her institution critical of Israeli policy, even though the Israeli
government often violates international law and UN Security Council resolutions
(it would violate more such resolutions, except that the resolutions never
got passed because only one NSC member, the U.S., routinely vetoes them
on behalf of Tel Aviv.)
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- As the Labor Party in Israel has been eclipsed by the
Likud coalition, which includes many proto-fascist groups, this subservience
has yoked Washington to foreign politicians who privately favor ethnic
cleansing and/or aggressive warfare for the purpose of annexing the territory
of neighbors.
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- On the rare occasion when a brave member of Congress
dares stand up to this unrelenting AIPAC tyranny, that person is targeted
for unelection in the next congressional campaign, with big money directed
by AIPAC and/or its analogues into the coffers of the senator's or congressman's
opponent. Over and over again, AIPAC has shaped the U.S. Congress in this
way, so successfully that no one even dares speak out any more. AIPAC
is not all that rich or powerful, but politics in the U.S. is often evenly
divided between Democrats and Republicans. Because many races are very
close, any little extra support can help change the outcome. AIPAC can
provide that little bit.
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- Moreover, most Americans couldn't care less about the
Middle East or its intractable problems, whereas the staffers at AIPAC
are fanatics. If some congressman from southern Indiana knows he can pick
up even a few thousand dollars and some good will from AIPAC, he may as
well, since his constituents don't care anyway. That there is no countervailing
force to AIPAC allows it to be effective. (That is one reason that pro-Likud
American activists often express concern about the rise of the Muslim-American
community and the possibility that it may develop an effective lobby.)
Moreover, AIPAC leverages its power by an alliance with the Christian Right,
which has adopted a bizarre ideology of "Christian Zionism."
It holds that the sooner the Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, the
sooner Christ will come back.
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- Without millions of these Christian Zionist allies, AIPAC
would be much less influential and effective. The Founding Fathers of
the United States deeply feared that a foreign government might gain this
level of control over a branch of the United States government, and their
fears have been vindicated.
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- The situation has reached comedic proportions. Congress
is always drafting letters to the president, based on AIPAC templates,
demanding that lopsided U.S. policy in favor of Israel be revised to be
even more in favor of Israel. U.S. policy recently changed to endorse the
expansion of Israeli colonies in Palestinian, West Bank territory.
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- Where Israel is in the right, this situation obviously
is innocuous. The United States should protect Israel from aggressive attack,
if necessary. United Nations members are pledged to collective security,
i.e., to protecting any member nation from aggression at the hands of another.
But given that Israel is a nuclear power with a vast arsenal of weapons
of mass destruction; given that Egypt and Jordan have long-lived peace
treaties with Israel; and given that Syria and Lebanon are small, weak
powers, there is not in fact any serious military threat to Israel in its
immediate neighborhood.
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- In contrast, Israel launched wars against neighbors
in 1956,
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- 1967, and 1982 (all of which it won so easily as to bring
into question the necessity for the wars in the first place if they were
defensive), and has since 1967 been assiduously colonizing Palestinian
land that it militarily occupied ? all the while attempting to avoid becoming
responsible for the Palestinian populations on that land.
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- This latter policy has poisoned the entire world. AIPAC
currently has a project to shut up academics such as myself, the same way
it has shut up Congress, through congressional legislation mandating "balance"
(i.e., pro-Likud stances) in Middle East programs at American universities.
How long the U.S. public will allow itself to be spied on and pushed around
like this is a big question. And, with the rise of international terrorism
targeting the U.S. in part over these issues, the fate of the country hangs
in the balance.
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