Axios reports that two Democratic congresspeople (Joaquin Castro and Veronica Escobar) are calling on Joe Biden to hire for diversity in his ambassadorial corps, and Biden’s team has responded positively.
The emphasis is on people of color, who make up only 14% of the senior officers in the Foreign Service, Axios says. Among ambassadors it’s even worse: “Out of 189 U.S. ambassadors serving abroad last summer, three were Black and four were Hispanic career diplomats, according to the American Academy of Diplomacy.”
Biden’s spokesperson agreed there should be change. “The President-elect and Secretary-designate [Tony] Blinken know that the power of our example is strongest when we are leveraging diversity — especially among women, people of color, LGBTQ+, and other under-represented groups — at all levels, including senior leadership,” said Ned Price. Price said, Biden’s team looks “forward to working with Congress on this task.”
Here is a discriminatory pattern in ambassadorships that Biden should be under pressure to end: Of the last six ambassadors to Israel, four have been Zionist Jews.
1, Martin Indyk (closely aligned with the Israel lobby group AIPAC). 2, Daniel Kurtzer (a State Department professional who has done synagogue tours for the liberal Zionist group J Street, championed Zionist indoctrination, and served on Israeli institutions). 3, Daniel Shapiro (a professed Zionist who describes Israel as “this miracle, this gift, this jewel” and who stayed in Israel after his tour to work for an Israeli security thinktank and really ought to register as a foreign agent). 4, David Friedman (a right-winger who advocated for settlers and routinely insulted Palestinians).
Ever since Bill Clinton openly embraced the Israel lobby, and in 1995 appointed Indyk, breaking a tradition of not sending a Jewish ambassador to the country because it would appear to show bias, the corps of top diplomats has been largely on one side of this conflict.
The Israeli ambassador is supposed to be responsive to a population that includes the occupied territories and is roughly split, 6 million Jews, 6 million Palestinians.
And yet the expectation that a Zionist Jew should get this appointment appears today to prevail among Israel-lovers inside the Democratic Party.
At least five out of six names mentioned in the speculations by Jewish Insider and the Times of Israel on Biden’s foreign-policy picks are ardent Zionists and Jewish: Steve Israel, the former Congressman (advocate for Israel); Michael Adler (fundraiser for Biden and aligned with AIPAC); Robert Wexler (liberal Zionist advocate for Israel); Daniel Shapiro (of “miracle, jewel, gift” school); and Dennis Ross (famously Israel’s lawyer, who told American Jews they should advocate for Israel and not for Palestinians). I don’t know about the sixth, energy exec Amos Hochstein, but he is a former Israeli who served in their army for three years 25 years ago and called Israeli-UAE normalization “momentous.”
Joe Biden is seeking a reputation as someone who represents all Americans fairly. You’d think he would not pander to the dominant group (Israeli Jews/the lobby) in making an appointment that has such symbolic and real consequences for the human rights of a people struggling to be free.
It would be really good for America to send a non Jewish/zionist Ambassador, to send a strong signal to all concerned that the country is independent of Israel, and that we have someone neutral to represent us. Enough of these zionists who keep being sent there to please the controlling Israeli lobbies, and seem to end up doing what is best for Israel FIRST over their own country.
We have seen plenty of these so called diplomats who have helped Israel implement their policies of occupying, stealing lands, building illegal settlements, and saying and doing nothing when unarmed civilians are being killed. We keep giving the world the impression that we are not honest brokers in anything involving Israel. The bias is always obvious to others in the region and around the world.
It seems our ambassadors always becomes part of the Israeli government, their American servants.
This is heartening and a ‘wow’ moment… finally! From The Guardian:
“Israel is a non-democratic apartheid regime, says rights group
Embassy spokesperson rejects ‘false claims’ in report that alleges policies perpetuate supremacy of Jews over Palestinians
Israel is not a democracy but an “apartheid regime” that enforces Jewish supremacy over all the land it controls, a leading domestic rights group has alleged in a position paper bound to provoke fierce controversy.
“One organising principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians,” said B’Tselem, an organisation that documents human rights violations.
Ohad Zemet, the spokesperson for Israel’s UK embassy, dismissed the report as “a propaganda tool”. He added: “Israel rejects the false claims in the so-called report as it is not based on reality but on a distorted ideological view.”
B’Tselem said it rejected the dominant assumption that Israel operates two separate systems of rule concurrently – a democracy within its sovereign territory while maintaining a half-century military grip over Palestinians in the occupied territories.
“Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it,” said the body’s executive director, Hagai El-Ad. “It is one regime between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and we must look at the full picture and see it for what it is: apartheid.”
One other Israeli rights group, Yesh Din, published a legal opinion last summer in which it argued that apartheid was being committed in the West Bank.
However, B’Tselem’s report goes further, claiming Israel has created a system over all the territory in which Jewish citizens have full rights. Meanwhile, it argues Palestinians are divided into four tiers with various levels of rights depending on where they live, but always below Jewish people. …”
more @- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/12/israel-is-a-non-democratic-apartheid-regime-says-rights-groups
Huge props to Hagai El-Ad and B’Tselem for their tireless care for human rights and justice.
“It would be really good for America to send a non Jewish/zionist Ambassador, to send a strong signal to all concerned that the country is independent of Israel, and that we have someone neutral to represent us.”
Sure it would be good. It would be much better, though, to stop voting or participating in any way in the perpetuation of the single-party dictatorship that is at the orders of its Zionist owners. Instead of voting first and then meekly asking what you voted to make impossible.
Sheldon Adelson passes away. One (rich) Israel firster and Trump supporter gone, his wife will continue their evil work, that goes against America. Adelson has done too much of damage within the US, and has supported, and financed, the occupation, land grabs, and killing of civilians.
He did the devil’s work.
“when we are leveraging diversity…”
What on earth does this mean?