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‘Survival and well-being of the Jewish state’ is a national security interest of U.S., Indyk says

Former Middle East mediator Martin Indyk spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival a couple of days ago, interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg. This interchange begins at about 2:50 in the video above.

Indyk: What’s true about John Kerry– God bless him– is that he has this conviction, if we don’t do something to reverse the trends we’ve talked about, that the window will close on the two state solution. And that will be very bad for Israel.

Goldberg: OK. Very bad for Israel. But is that a primary national security concern of the United States?

Indyk: Yes. Because we have a deep and abiding commitment to the survival and well being of the Jewish state….

Goldberg: Apart from that, Is it a national security concern of the United States? That is an emotional, spiritual, historical attachment–

Indyk: It’s a national interest of the United States. It’s a vital interest of the United States, that successive presidents have declared, including President Obama.

(Also in the Goldberg interview, at 2:00 or so, Indyk says that Israel will cease to be a Jewish state if it annexes the West Bank and gains millions of Palestinian citizens. So that’s a US national security interest, to stop Israel from changing its character?)

Notwithstanding his commendable question, Jeffrey Goldberg is a longtime supporter of Israel, and once moved there and served in its army. Martin Indyk has long served U.S. presidents, pressed on Clinton by the Israel lobby group AIPAC. At Aspen, Tom Friedman interviewed Salam Fayyad, introduced by Walter Isaacson. The presence of Jews in the U.S. establishment, many of whom are sympathetic to Zionism, is obviously a factor in the structural premise that Indyk states so baldly above. And therefore my question: How important is it when Jews, recognizing the welcome we have gotten as a religious minority in the U.S., walk away from Zionism as an answer to our situation in the west?

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I think it’s vital that Jews everywhere run away from Zionism.

As for our relationship with Israel: It is a dangerous one that threatens US national security.

(‘Jewish state’ is what Israel wants to be according to the Zionists; apartheid state is what it is)

The jewish state is very unwell. It’s not America’s job to fix it. Not that it could anyway. Sovereignty means responsibility.

So Indyk couldn’t actually answer the question, but just repeat it as a statement with no rationale whatsoever. This is a mantra, part of the cult worship, which is why it has no logic or reason, and according to these people is not open to debate. Funny that no other country comes into this blind faith category – isn’t that singling out Israel for special treatment?
Does this unquestioning commitment include supporting the revenge ethos of Israel so amply demonstrated by the burning of young boy? The undemocratic nature of Israel and the support of apartheid? Because if it does, then the American people ought to hear why it is important to shower Israel with money and arms in order to maintain this garrison state. Just saying it is a ‘deep commitment’ avoids all of these questions which they have a responsibility to answer – if they believe in democracy, freedom of speech and accountability, of course.

Gaahhh. “national interest” … “historic ties” … “attachment” … “emotional, spiritual” … This nonsense rhetoric has been going on for 40 years almost to the day.

No one will call it out for what it is: co-opting Cold War rhetoric at its most propagandist and tying it to a specific and limited political interest, particularly one associated with ethnic and (il-)legal privilege. It’s a well-tested strategy. Many special-interest groups bought status within U.S. political system by swearing themselves to the cause of satrapies scattered around the world, each one enforced by U.S. military presence. Polish-Americans did it, largely through the control of the Chicago Tribune. Cuban-Americans did it, through their seizure of the Florida electorate. Mormons did it, first through the FBI, and then throughout the intelligence apparatus. Evangelical Christians got there eventually, perfuming over the stink of the John Birch Society while hijacking its patriotic rhetoric. Every such group does this by elevating U.S. military action to the pinnacle of political achievement.

A sector of Jewish Americans came to it a bit late, finally managing to paper over the well-entrenched perceived association between Judaism and communism from the 1910s through the 1960s. The “Cold War II” (the SALT-SALT II transition) was their chance, associated with the advent of that cunning idiot Richard Pipes to policymaking circles. It meant splitting from effective activism, e.g. labor and civil rights, in all but name and in the most tepid middle-road lip-service, suddenly adopting “leftist” as an epithet.

Indyk came in on the next wave, a product of the New and Huge AIPAC of the 1980s, a grinning cheerleader for Israel’s atrocious war in Lebanon, a deliberate architect of these “ties,” and Goldberg is one of its indocrinated devotees.

Neither of them can identify anything specific to which their airy abstractions refer. Neither of them can answer the question, “What are Israel’s borders?” Neither of them can point to a single benefit to the U.S. arising from a single policy either has recommended or helped to engineer. Listening to them echo their single, base (in every sense) policy under the guise of discussion is simply sickening: an exercise in deceit and the unrestrained urge to violence.

It was never in the US interests to support the establishment of a Colonial Zionist State. Nor was it ever in the interest of Judaism to mix itself with the ideas of a state.

So why is it now vital to US interests? This is not explained.

BTW, is it possible for a state without borders to be a state? Israel has no declared borders? Is it a State? Or is it more like an ISIS — an idea based on a past that never was, that issues passports and other stuff?