https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Y3xfcok3k
Thursday, June 17, 2021
Wednesday, June 16, 2021
Black and White on Palestine and Israel
- IAN WILLIAMS
- ISRAEL-PALESTINE
- POSTED ON
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 2021, pp. 24-25
United Nations Report
By Ian Williams
EVEN THOSE OF US who did not allow our revulsion for former President Donald Trump to view President Joseph Biden through rose colored glasses have been pleasantly surprised by his behavior on the U.N., on WHO, UNRWA and even on domestic issues. Sadly though, we were not too surprised by his tepid prevarication over the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, nor were we even that shocked by his muted response to the assault on the al-Aqsa Mosque and Sheikh Jarrah. “All politics is local” is an axiom of American politics, and no more so than on Middle East policy, where the effect of lobbies and donors counterbalances reality on the ground. In the past if the lobby had declared that apples soar upwards from the tree, Congress would have agreed so but that is no longer guaranteed.
In the last few weeks, several Middle Eastern threads became inextricably tangled. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on Israeli apartheid was not revolutionary in its concept. But in the current context, it has contributed to a revolution in liberal U.S. discourse, aided to a great extent by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s hard work to put truth in the allegation in the weeks since. After all, nothing says apartheid quite so eloquently as footage of thugs from Brooklyn committing home invasions against Palestinian grandmothers in Sheikh Jarrah.
While undoubtedly transformative, the apartheid designation was, after all, a much belated concession to reality. Many years ago, in the Washington Report, I discussed HRW’s tendency to pull its punches over Israel, which I ascribed to sensitivity to its donor base. Amnesty International had similar foibles—refusing to describe Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu as a prisoner of conscience for many long years of his solitary confinement.
The HRW report followed similar documents from the U.N. that were stifled by U.S. pressure, not least one from the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), whose suppression by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in 2017 was a harbinger of his subsequent subservience to the U.S. and Israel. The head of ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, resigned in protest.
But mostly absent from the discussion was the relevance and accuracy of the original U.N. determination back in 1975 that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” which recalled that even earlier, in December 1973, the General Assembly condemned, inter alia, “the unholy alliance between South African racism and Zionism.” The racism reference was overturned by massive diplomatic pressure from the administration of George H.W. Bush, who, while buoyed internationally by the defeat of Iraq in the first Gulf War, was headed for domestic defeat by the pro-Israeli lobby backlash against his refusal of U.S. loan guarantees to build settlements for Soviet Jews going to Israel. As pandering goes it was a flop. He managed to overturn the resolution, but AIPAC & Co. never forgave him or Senator Bob Dole for defending Washington against the hordes of Zionist lobbyists who descended on the Capitol.
Bringing the issue back home, at that time there was agreement that the Congressional Black Caucus would stay silent about this alliance in return for the lobby’s support on domestic issues. The visit of South African anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela to the U.S. and the U.N., after his release in 1990, really put the fox in with the chickens. But the chickens stayed shtum. The object of universal adulation and praise referred repeatedly and provocatively to his support for the Palestinians. If he had been a mere Andrew Young, or Jesse Jackson, saying the same things, the lobby and the media would have launched a political lynching. But they astutely realized the usual character assassination would not have dented his standing, and would, if anything, have popularized his views.
It is mind-boggling to envisage the mental choreography of Biden and his team, including his new seemingly conscientious U.N. ambassador as they traipsed through the minefield of the current Israel-U.S. relationship with Black Lives as the back drop. Few, if any, of them, have any illusions about Netanyahu’s good will or moral probity. They all know he is an amoral, vindictive, lying scumbag. But at one time, they would have voted to protect him confident that the only people taking note of the betrayal of their avowed principles would be Israel and its supporters.
However, until recently, even with President Barack Obama facing the Trump-Bibi axis, the pro-Israeli cabal around Biden knew they were on sound ground in domestic politics. The Black Caucus would give Obama a pass and the pro-Israeli caucus among the rest of the Democrats would reliably “stand by Israel,” albeit with a few pinches of incense on the altar of peace and human rights.
Despite the derision its leaders heap on the United Nations, Israel knows that the road to the Hague is paved with U.N. resolutions, not least of which are the Security Council decisions, about which they have lectured when Iran or Iraq is the frame. Biden could and should have supported the Security Council meeting and resolution that the other members were putting forward. We can be sure the implied threat of that led to Netanyahu’s belated acceptance of a ceasefire in Gaza.
So, it would appear the ceasefire in Gaza involved some serious tightrope walking for Biden. He might well have implied the threat of breaking with the thick blue line and condemning Israel but with the face-saver that it was not to be mentioned in public. As a warning to Netanyahu and a gesture to the Palestinians, the State Department announced the re-opening of the consulate in East Jerusalem.
But consider what has changed in U.S. politics. The tidal wave set off by Black Lives Matter suggests that many components of Biden’s Democratic coalition see uncomfortably direct parallels between armored Israeli police and soldiers wading into demonstrators and mosques and self-exiled Trump supporters acting like KKK vigilantes in Sheikh Jarrah. In parallel, legislative successes by the Left mean that this was no longer AIPAC’s Democratic Party.
By condemning Israel, Biden “risks” alienating the people who think that Trump is still the president and were last seen storming Capitol Hill. The former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon has been quite explicit. Israel should concentrate on these Evangelicals recognizing that while the investment by AIPAC and die-hard Israeli supporters in the most repugnant right-wing Republican Party ever, has alienated the liberal wing of the Democrats, including its Jews.
Biden knows which groups almost won the Democratic primary and whose support was essential to his victory. With his record of support for “Israel’s right to self-defense,” he was not going to pander to BLM and pro-Palestinians, but he was not in a position to alienate them.
It is a chilling thought, but it is possible, that the knee-on-the-neck technique, popularized by Israeli trainers of U.S. police forces, started the cycle of events that run from George Floyd’s murder, through the protests, to Netanyahu’s reluctant ceasefire.
U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of UNtold: the Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).
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