Are the walls of the “special relationship” falling? No way. But five years after Walt and Mearsheimer, the issue is finally being poked at by the mainstream media. Here at Foreign Policy under the headline “Special Relationship,” Colum Lynch reports on the latest wikileaks cables on the U.S. and Israel, showing the efforts to stymie the Goldstone Report. If you go to the cables, Ambassador Rice speaks about building a “blocking coalition” against the report:
The new documents, though consistent with public U.S. statements at the time opposing a U.N. investigation into Israeli military operations, reveal in extraordinary detail how America wields its power behind closed doors at the United Nations. They also demonstrate how the United States and Israel were granted privileged access to highly sensitive internal U.N. deliberations on an “independent” U.N. board of inquiry into the Gaza war, raising questions about the independence of the process.
In one pointed cable, [Susan] Rice repeatedly prodded U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to block a recommendation of the board of inquiry to carry out a sweeping inquiry into alleged war crimes by Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants. In another cable, Rice issued a veiled warning to the president of the International Criminal Court, Sang-Hyun Song, that an investigation into alleged Israeli crimes could damage its standing with the United States at a time when the new administration was moving closer to the tribunal. “How the ICC handles issues concerning the Goldstone Report will be perceived by many in the US as a test for the ICC, as this is a very sensitive matter,” she told him, according to a Nov. 3, 2009, cable from the U.S. mission to the United Nations.
Rice, meanwhile, assured Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during an Oct. 21, 2009, meeting in Tel Aviv that the United States had done its utmost to “blunt the effects of the Goldstone report” and that she was confident she could “build a blocking coalition” to prevent any push for a probe by the Security Council, according to an Oct. 27, 2009 cable.
Rice assured Lieberman. Rice assured Lieberman. It wasn’t a month ago that even David Remnick described Lieberman as “proto-fascistic.” And we’re bombing Libya because of attacks on civilians and meanwhile kissing this guy’s behind?
Remnick, by the way, once mocked Walt and Mearsheimer by saying, oh if we somehow ended the Israel-Palestine conflict the lion would lie down with the lamb– wait here are his words: “Mearsheimer and Walt give you the sense that, if the Israelis and the Palestinians come to terms, bin Laden will return to the family construction business.” Ha ha ha. As if our entanglement on one side of this conflict hasn’t helped destroy the American brand across the Middle East.
