William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Orgs, jumps in to the smear campaign against Ben & Jerry’s board chair Anuradha Mittal for daring not to sell ice cream in “occupied Palestinian territories” — which Daroff says is a meaningless term. The “grownups” at Unilever can override the Ben & Jerry’s decision by “just snapping their fingers,” Daroff proclaims, echoing the rightwing Israeli government position.
When Biden blamed Hamas for the Gaza war in May, he was ignoring Democratic voters who by more than 4 to 1 blamed Israel for the violence. “That tells you the story right there. Democrats were not understanding why Biden’s not at least criticizing both sides,” political scientist Shibley Telhami tells Americans for Peace Now.
Shocking images of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the restoration of Taliban government have become a “talking point of the Israeli right,” says Israeli journalist Neri Zilber, speaking on an Israel lobby event. Israel must never withdraw from Palestinian territories it has occupied for 54 years, the right says. “We can’t agree for such an arrangement with the West Bank… Withdrawal from the West Bank should never be countenanced, considered seriously.”
The two-state solution is a mantra inside the Democratic Party and the liberal Establishment but Foreign Affairs dares to ask how many experts think it’s viable and finds that only Israel supporters do so, and as a matter of hope over actual facts on the ground. So daring to ask this verboten question is itself a breakthrough, as Israel lobbyist Robert Satloff indicates. “I am very disappointed that Foreign Affairs is asking this question, which can only contribute to misinformation on an issue that is ultimately all about leadership.”
The U.S. embarked on the “war on terror” with Israel as a model. Occupy Muslim lands, bomb civilians to defeat political opposition. It didn’t work in Afghanistan; and the U.S. withdrawal will force the Israel lobby to come up with new messaging to maintain the false belief that Israel and the U.S. face the same “bad neighborhood.”
Progressive groups condemned Joe Biden’s embrace of Israeli PM Naftali Bennett yesterday and the president’s vow to continue military aid to Israel, with no reference to its apartheid policies against Palestinians. Israel’s advocates say that Bennett got everything that he wanted from the meeting, including a suggestion the U.S. would use force against Iran.
The script of the Naftali Bennett visit to the White House was set yesterday when Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the prime minister, “Maybe you have something to teach us,” with reference to Bennett’s diverse governing coalition. The idea that Israel is a model democracy (and not an apartheid state) is sure to be a theme for President Biden in his meeting with Bennett today.
As Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett launches a charm offensive in Washington to show he is not Netanyahu– but will do nothing about Palestinian human rights–Joe Biden should go along with the charade so as to overcome his loss of international standing from Afghanistan and to keep Israel a bipartisan issue, leading Israel lobbyists urge the White House.
The mainstream media have largely adopted a pro-war narrative: the U.S. should have stayed longer, Biden’s withdrawal is precipitous, the president has failed to secure all the good things that America brought to the people of Afghanistan/Kabul. Biden has gotten surprising support from the left, which has long opposed the Afghanistan occupation, and from some independent voices who have said that the 20-year war was catastrophic and violent and the chaotic scenes at the airport are merely the last chapter in a misbegotten policy.
You would think that the Afghanistan debacle is another blow to neoconservatives: That the school of foreign policy experts inside the Beltway who gave us the Iraq war would be further discredited by the fall of Afghanistan. And you would be wrong.