This Senate letter of last Thursday, signed by all hundred senators, berates the UN Secretary General over criticism of Israel at the U.N. and supports Ambassador Nikki Haley’s determination to root out “anti-Israel bias” and “anti-Semitism in all its forms” — which means undue focus of Israel. The U.N.’s actions on Israel, the senators say,
have at times reinforced the broader scourge of anti-Semitism.
All 100 Senators line up behind two Trump officials. First, Nikki Haley:
We commend the words of our nation’s ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, who recently stated, “It is the UN’s anti-Israel bias that is long overdue for change.”
Haley made that comment in a February 17 appearance at which she characterized the UN Security Council resolution against settlements of last December, which the Obama administration allowed to pass, as a “terrible mistake.” Is this really the sort of policy that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown and Amy Klobuchar, the valiant progressives of the Democratic Party, wish to endorse? Dianne Feinstein was one of the few senators to praise Obama for the settlements resolution. Couldn’t she have just said no when this letter came to her desk from Marco Rubio?
The senators also laud Erin Barclay, a deputy assistant secretary of State, who recently trashed the UN Human Rights Council for focusing on Israel not Syria:
The obsession with Israel …is the largest threat to the Council’s credibility. It limits the good we can accomplish by making a mockery of this Council.
The senators actually echo Barclay on “obsession/mockery.”
Somebody noticed!
I thank all 100 US senators for standing up for Israel at the UN. #keepit100
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) April 28, 2017
The letter was first reported by the Washington Post, with a bit of jaundice from Anne Gearan, who points out how unusual the letter is:
The unusual unanimity expands on the fierce denunciation of U.N. treatment of Israel mounted by Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, this year. The letter praises Haley for that effort, which she has said is intended to show that the United States will not “put up with” the bashing of its close ally.
The letter hails UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for quashing the recent report stating that Israel is practicing apartheid (prepared by Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley for the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia). And in turn, the Senate letter is saluted in the Post by Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, and by a spokesperson for AIPAC, too. What a crowd. You’d think in the 50th year of occupation, and the 100 days of Trump, there would be a bit of dissent in US public life. No.
The objective of the letter is totally understandable: israel must be left undisturbed to keep expanding the settlements, then annex the West Bank & the rest of the Palestinian territories, and continue with its incremental extermination of the Palestinians.
The senators and Ms. Barclay are engaging in typical Zionist hypocrisy and whataboutery:
– they don’t want Israel to be “singled out” for special treatment, but they don’t want Israel to be held accountable for its past and on-going (war) crimes; and
– as long as murderers exist, it’s okay to rape.
Ms. Barclay’s speech, in particular, is amusing. She refers to Syria, Iran and North Korea without mentioning…
– the political, financial, military and/or economic actions that continue to be taken against those countries; or
– the generous political, financial, military and economic support being given to Israel even as it continues to commit (war) crimes deliberately and with impunity.
Please see today’s earlier MW article, Fake Progressives.
The fact that both sanders and warren signed this sad little letter, and the unanimity of ALL 100 senators, highlights better than anything the reasons the progressive wing in this country is toothless and powerless. If someone like sanders, feels obliged to go along with giving israel a free pass for its horrendous and inhumane treatment of palestinians, AND for it pushing for the destruction of countries such as Iraq and Syria, shows just how marginalized progressive policy advocates are.
I have said this in many comments over the past many years, that ultimately, foreign policy is a lithmus test of the truth of progressivism (particularly in the economic sphere). Ultimately, Sanders and warren, whatever else they believe in, are still at one with the Empire. And unfortunately, with the culture of lobbies pervading the soul of the Empire, it is not surprising that they, like almost anyone else who managed to get elected to national office, must pay homage to the most powerful lobby of them all, AIPAC (yes, it is the most powerful, IMO, though I use my own yardsticks to define “most”). Signing such an egregious letter is the price that must be paid to maintain what little platform the so-called progressives have to push some domestic agenda. That’s what politics is like in the US and has been for a very long time.
Support the israeli settlements (in deed if not words) and may be, just may be, we’ll let you wax poetic on some minimum wage or medicare-for-all or some illegal alien rights (as long as they are referred to by the new terminology of “immigrants” – heaven forbid using the European version of “migrants”).
I believe it was Jon Stewart who described the criminal Netanyahu’s speech to the US joint house as “the longest blowjob a Jewish man has ever received”… http://www.salon.com/2015/03/04/jon_stewart_destroys_netanyahu_over_speech_to_congress/