Can the Arabs Really Take American Democracy Seriously?
by Rami G. Khouri
If the Israeli attack on Gaza that started 3 weeks ago was designed partly to send a message to incoming US President Barack Obama, the US Congress in the past week seems to have joined the battle to handcuff the new president and lay down the law for him, even before he takes office.
Obama has tried to remain aloof and stay out of the political battle over the Gaza war by making no substantive statements about it. Israel and its many supporters in Washington have different plans for him. He stayed away from the war, but they have brought the war to him – shoving it down his throat as his first pre-incumbency lesson in how American presidents behave vis-à-vis Israel’s desires – if they wish to remain in power.
The House of Representatives voted last Friday by 390-5 for a resolution that completely backed Israel’s onslaught against Gaza, specifically affirming “Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza”. A day earlier, the Senate overwhelmingly supported Israel and its right to defend itself against terrorism.
Such extraordinary one-sided support for Israel by the United States Congress mirrors the same position taken by the administration. Both President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in press meetings that Hamas was to blame for the current war and the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, and that any ceasefire had to ensure that Hamas stopped attacking Israel. They seemed incomprehensibly blind to Israel’s combined strangulation of and assault on Gaza. (And as this goes to press, comes the story of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bragging about forcing George Bush and Condi Rice to abstain from the UN call for a ceasefire that Rice helped draft.)
This almost irrational absolute support for Israel in both the legislative and executive branches of the US government occurs while a chorus of international condemnation of Israel for using excessive force includes calls by some United Nations officials and respectable non-governmental organisations to investigate whether Israel has committed “war crimes”.
Israeli public has caught a glimpse into the agony of war
An unmoved Israeli public on Friday night witnessed the desperate cries of Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, a Palestinian gynaecologist living in Gaza. "My girls, oh god, they’ve killed my girls," Aboul Aish, who previous to Tel Aviv’s offensive inside the Gaza slither had worked at the Tel Hashomer medical center in Israel, screamed frantically in Hebro. The Palestinian doctor made the comments during a live broadcast.
Gaza will get its ceasefire soon, but will Washington ever find relief from the choking stranglehold of Israel’s political thugs?
These congressional votes in the past few days were not an unusual event, sadly, but rather a routine reaffirmation of the chokehold that Israel enjoys over the elected representatives of an otherwise healthy democracy. For example, two years ago, when Israel attacked Lebanon with similar ferocity, the US House of Representatives voted 410-8 to support the Israeli onslaught and to condemn Hamas and Hizbollah for “unprovoked and reprehensible armed attacks against Israel”.
Two years before that, in 2004, the House voted 407-9 to support President Bush’s position that it was “unrealistic” for Israel to return completely to its pre-June 1967 borders.
On no other foreign policy issue does the US Congress collectively sticks its head in its back pocket, turns off its power of independent judgement and disregards the impact of its decisions on how the United States is perceived around the world. At no other time does the US Congress vote according to the interests of a foreign country, rather than according to the US national interest. This kind of blind, wholehearted plunge into a maelstrom of pro-Israeli fanaticism and zealotry reflects precisely how strong the pro-Israeli lobby is in the United States, and how weak the voices of reason, balance and justice as drivers of American foreign policy are.
This is the distorted reality that Obama will inherit this week, and what an ugly thing it is. It captures the worst of all worlds rolled into one – the vicious, hysterical force of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States that buys and terrorises politicians as easily as buying bags of peanuts at a circus; the anaemic, mindless and spineless Arab governments who stand naked before Israel and the United States, and shameless before their own people; and the American political establishment that behaves on this issue, with a handful of brave and decent exceptions, in a most un-American manner in the face of the omnipotent pro-Israeli forces that decide if they live or die politically.
None of this is surprising or new. It only amazes me that Americans expect us to take them seriously and not to laugh – or throw up – when they preach to us about promoting democracy.
George Galloway – Palestinian Rights and Israel
Did Britain have the right to give European Jews the Lands of Palestine? What did Palestinians do to the Jews of Europe?
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