As we reflect on the Afghan withdrawal, I remember well the ideological thrill experienced by Israel supporters in the sadness and shock of 9/11. Now you know what it is like to live in Israel. The U.S. and Israel are in the same boat. Our tough neighborhood has come to your shores. Let us advise you how to deal with radical Islamist terror.
In the years that followed, the Israeli mindset and model were adopted by American policymakers. We occupied two Muslim countries and set about to reform their societies and governance. We dedicated ourselves to fighting the terrorists that hated us for who we are, a democracy. Yes, I know there were some Good Old American reasons to undertake these militant imperial activities; but the role of Israel and its lobby were significant. Netanyahu and AIPAC and the leading thinktanks urged the U.S. to go into Iraq. The neoconservatives who populated the Bush administration and had Rumsfeld’s ear had a near-religious faith in the use of American force (in a world of one superpower) to transform the Middle East.
From the start the causes of terrorism were never thoughtfully considered by our media. Only leftwingers and realists discussed Robert Pape’s exhaustive research in “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” showing that many suicide terrorists through history were seeking to rid their lands of occupiers.
Alongside that blindness was the failure by the media and the government’s 9/11 Commission to consider a primary motivation of the 9/11 attackers: hatred of America’s role in oppressing Palestinians. That motivation got a few uncomfortable lines in the massive 9/11 report. But because Israel support is actually an article of faith in Washington– “unwavering commitment”, in Biden’s words; we support Israel even “if the Capitol crumbled to the ground,” in Pelosi’s words– such support must never be made to seem problematic. So the media and politicians distort the facts.
Just as the media and political establishment today ignore the fact that the leading human rights groups have labeled Israel an apartheid state.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has delivered a shock to the U.S. identification with Israel. The Israel lobby liked the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. Israel lobbyists said that the occupation could go on indefinitely and the occupation was a lot better than the alternative: a terrorist state created by the people who live there who hate America and the west. For the Israel lobby, the U.S. occupation is in the image of the Israeli occupation, which the Israel lobby wants to go on forever even as it laments its presence and wishes this were not necessary.
Now the United States has withdrawn from Afghanistan amid scenes reminiscent of France leaving Algeria or the U.S. leaving Vietnam, and Afghanistan is for the Afghans.
Palestine must never be for the Palestinians. And that is the shock.
The decolonization of Afghanistan damages the Israeli-American identification since 9/11, and removes a geopolitical justification for Israel’s neverending occupation of Palestinian lands. But neverending occupation is Israel’s only answer to the Palestinian question. If a Palestinian state is created, it will just be a terror state, the Israeli leaders always say; and the Israel lobby echoes the propaganda. And says, Afghanistan will become a terror state.
You could see the panic in Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s meeting with Joe Biden last week. Bennett gave a long/bush-league/biblical lecture to the president. He spoke with evident angst about all the terror groups that surround Israel, from Hamas to Islamic Jihad to Hezbollah. He urged the U.S. to stay in Syria. He described Iran as a terror state outside civilized parameters and said Israel will continue to take it on– presumably by continuing to murder Iranian scientists.
It was the same old war on terror, being sold to Americans who polls show overwhelmingly want an end to the Afghanistan war. And the Israel lobby exulted over the summit meeting, saying it shows that the bipartisan consensus for Israel that Trump wrecked has been restored. A rightwing PM became “close friends” with a Democratic president, who all but endorsed the use of force against Iran.
Being idealistic, I say the good times at the White House can’t last. The paradigm has shifted on the war on terror, and Israel as an apartheid state.
Israel will continue to experience terror attacks, and will deliver terror ten-fold back to Palestinians– so long as it constitutes itself as a majority “Jewish” state that grants higher rights to Jews and forces rights-less Palestinian into cantons. No one in the Israeli government has challenged these concepts of governance. Israel is in national mourning today for a sniper who was shot at the wall of the Palestinian ghetto of Gaza by a Palestinian who is confined to that space. The Israel lobby tells Americans that a “Hamas terrorist” killed a good soldier.
The Israel lobby doesn’t care that 2 million Palestinians can’t move outside a tiny area whose water is undrinkable. It doesn’t care that Israeli snipers maim and kill Palestinians who protest their imprisonment.
When liberal Zionists say the occupation is unsustainable, they leave out the inevitable sequel: Palestinians who want a better future are always going to resist Israeli rule, by whatever means.
That’s why Israel is a security state surrounded by terrorists. It’s not a democracy.
This was all foreseen. Hannah Arendt said during the Nakba in 1948 that Israel was doomed to “degenerate” into a Spartan warrior state so long as it ignored the desires of its neighbors. In the same year State Department advisers warned the White House that helping to implant a Jewish state in Palestine would result in decades of unrest. Both predictions have come to pass. Nobel Peace Prize-winner Obama bombed 7 Muslim-majority nations.
The Israel lobby has worked tirelessly to overcome these brutal realities by projecting the Israeli experience and saying the Israeli condition is the American condition, and everything bad about its neighborhood also threatens America. So Israel is our great ally. The lobby has repackaged that ally again and again through the Cold War and the war on terror and on Iran too. “Both of us… are a lighthouse in a very, very stormy world,” Bennett told Biden.
The Afghanistan withdrawal reminds us that the U.S. and the so-called Jewish state have very different interests in the Middle East. If only we could discuss it.
Despite the $billions upon $billions that borderless, expansionist, racist, illegal/brutal occupier “Israel” has received from American taxpayers since 1947, it has served no real usefull purpose for the United States. Indeed, the principle outcome of the “Special Relationship” has been and remains the creation of justified regional enemies of the U.S., e.g., Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. The Zionist entity is increasingly aware of this and worried that the relationship is on thin ice. History has many precedents!
“The Israel lobby tells Americans that a “Hamas terrorist” killed a good soldier.” PW
A sniper is not a soldier in the true sense of the word.A sniper is a coward who hides in a tree or a hole in the ground.
The idf is heavily populated with cowards and murderers.Azaria for instance , who shot a wounded Palestinian “suspect”.
Azaria spent less than 6 months in prison but a Palestinian Girl got 8 monthe for slapping an idf coward.
https://www.dw.com/en/palestinian-teenager-who-slapped-israeli-soldier-to-serve-8-months-in-jail/a-43076310.
When Israel,s heroes come up against some real soldiers –they drop their weapons and hightail it out of dodge with their tails tucked tightly between their excretion stained legs.
Here is a video of one of Israel,s finest battling for his life in a brave attempt to subdue a 4 year old Palestinian boy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/08/31/this-viral-video-of-an-israeli-soldier-trying-to-arrest-a-palestinian-boy-says-a-lot/
Good soldiers –my ass.
Here’s an interview with Robert Pape, author of “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism” mentioned above, that was made a few weeks ago:
https://abc7chicago.com/afghanistan-news-taliban-war-osama-bin-laden/10955868/
(under “WATCH | Terrorism expert Robert Pape discusses Afghanistan with Chuck Goudie”)The whole interview is well worth it –
“What everybody is watching is the end of a fantasy. We have believed, for years now, that investing a trillion American dollars in foreign aid, and 20 years of commitment of, in many years, 100,000 American ground forces, over 2000 dead, would lead to a liberal democracy in Afghanistan. That is now clear for all to see, is simply a fantasy,” Pape told the I-Team.” Pape goes on to say that the Afghan army collapsed so quickly because it wasn’t willing to fight for a government most people in Afghanistan thought was a corrupt puppet regime with no real legitimacy.
Philip Weiss mentions in his article :
However, the fact of the matter is that Congress specifically prohibited the 9/11 Commission from examining why we were attacked, when they authorized the Commission. Our leaders didn’t want us to know why we were attacked, because if we knew the truth, our support for Israel would decline.
It is 20 years since 9/11 and oversimplification is the rule of the day today as it was then in some of the statements drawing connections between America and Israel. In regards to the occupation of Afghanistan, the dynamics were in fact very different than the occupation of the West Bank. The real enemy was Osama Bin Laden and freelance jihadists in general and the Taliban happened to be the rulers of the territory which was strictly incidental to Osama bin Laden. The failure of the American enterprise, has been apparent for some time, afghanistan is too far away and the globe is too big with other opportunities for jihadis to gather and whisper sweet nothings over boiling caldrons and thus Afghanistan is pretty incidental to American interests in terms of those who consider the anti jihadi mindset to be a major element of America vis a vis the globe. In fact America’s interest has not been clearly delineated since the fall of the Berlin Wall and if there is clarity regarding American interests vis a vis Russia and China, there is no comparable clarity vis a vis the Middle East, Criticism of Israel, for its policies beginning in 1947 at least has a coherence to it. Criticism of the occupation is also appropriate but not as presented here. A military occupation is sensible. Far less than ideal, for sure, there is no escaping the dynamic of enmity and repression met by rebellion that is part and parcel of military occupation. But the Palestinian rejection of the idea of Israel is a primary fact and those fellow travelers who wish to eradicate Israel are attempting something reckless. but i have yet to mention the actual nature of the occupation of the west bank (unlike the military domination of gaza) and that is the settler nature of the occupation. this turns the occupation into something far worse than the military occupation in itself. This is a reckless policy in terms of democracy: two laws one for Israeli citizens and one for the noncitizens under military occupation. this nature of the occupation puts israel on a collision course with democracy and that is the essence of the error. Obviously if one is opposed to Israel’s existence then 1967 is just an excuse to get rid of Israel. And that in honesty is the true policy on this site and this post with its “criticism” is a pretense.