Facing charges of genocide, Israel claims “self-defense” in front of the ICJ, as world powers strike Yemeni rebel group in the name of protecting global trade. Meanwhile, Israel continues to bomb and shoot Palestinians.
Orientalist media coverage of the war in Ukraine reflects the worldview inherent in Western governments’ policies.
During Israel’s invasion of Egypt during the Suez crisis of 1956-1957, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower did not hesitate to defy domestic political pressures and censure Israel at the United Nations, withdraw agricultural aid, and threaten financial sanctions that put “Israel’s life… at stake.” Those measures worked to end an Israeli occupation and restrain Israeli attacks on civilians, and gave Washington prestige across the global south. The U.S. political mood changed swiftly after the ’67 war. But it could change back again in the wake of apartheid reports.
The West had 20 years to advance the cause of social development in Afghanistan. Its failure opened the door for the return of the Taliban.
Voters want aid to Israel conditioned over humans rights violations. Elizabeth Warren has become the third candidate to address the idea: “Right now, Netanyahu says he is going to take Israel in a direction of increasing settlements, [but] that does not move us in the direction of a two-state solution. It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction, then everything is on the table…Everything is on the table.”
Trump’s decision to pull troops from Syria is “foreign policy malpractice,” says Michele Flournoy, Hillary Clinton’s would-be defense secretary, echoing the D.C. establishment’s horror at Trump’s fulfillment of a campaign promise. Sadly, the realists and leftwingers who have an alternative vision for US foreign policy in the wake of the Iraq disaster and the Syrian civil war have been exiled by the media.
Read an excerpt from Ambassador Chas W. Freeman’s new book “America’s Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East,” which features a large section on U.S. foreign policy in Israel and Palestine, and the bungling thereof.
Excepting a few marginalized journalists and thought leaders, most Americans have learned less than nothing…