Those of us who have longed for an end to America’s military engagement in the Middle East have hoped for a candidate who was not tied hand and foot to Israel, which is the root cause of the badly-broken and essentially pointless US foreign policy in the region.
But the real tragedy is that in spite of Israel’s near-constant interference in government process at all levels in the United States, no candidate will mention it except in the most laudatory fashion.
It will be praised as America’s best friend and closest ally, but the price the US has paid for all that balderdash while it has simultaneously been turning itself into the slave of the Jewish state will never surface.
The Democratic Party leadership is owned by Israel through its big Jewish donors whose billions come with only one string attached, i.e.
that the Jewish state must be protected, empowered and enriched no matter what damage it does to actual US interests.
Number one Israeli-American billionaire donor Haim Saban has said that he has only one interest, and that is Israel.
How such a man can have major influence over American foreign policy and the internal workings of one of its two major parties might be considered the death of real democracy.
At the Israel America Council’s National Conference Nancy Pelosi explicitly put Israel’s interests before America’s: “I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel.
That’s fundamental to who we are.” With that lead in, it is difficult to imagine how Biden would suddenly recognize the humanity of the long-suffering Palestinians, to include those who are, like he claims to be, Catholic.
Biden is close to AIPAC and has spoken at their annual convention a number of times.
He is opposed to putting any pressure on the Jewish state at any time and for any reason, which presumably includes not even protecting US interests or the lives and property of American citizens.
Biden also worked for President Barack Obama and was a colleague in office of Hillary Clinton.
Both did the usual pander to Israel and neither was particularly well disposed to the Palestinians, though Obama talked the talk of a man of peace so effectively that he was awarded a Nobel Prize.
Bear in mind that Obama personally disliked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but he increased the money from the US Treasury going directly to Israel to $3.8 billion per annum and guaranteed it for ten years, an unprecedented move.
The fact is that money was and is illegal under American law due to the 1976 Symington Amendment, which banned any aid to any country with a nuclear program that was not declared and subject to inspection under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Obama, who claims to be a “constitutional lawyer,” surely was aware of that but rewarded Israel anyway.
Optimists point to the fact that the Democrats have now elected a number of congressmen who are willing to criticize Israel and they also cite opinion polls that suggest that a majority of registered Democrats want fair treatment for the Palestinians without any major bias in favor of the Jewish state.
In spite of a news blackout on stories critical of Israel, there is broad understanding of the fact that the Israelis are serial human rights abusers.
But those observations matter little in a situation in which the top of the party, to include those who manage elections and allocate money to promising prospective candidates, identify as strongly and often passionately friends of Israel.
That is not an accident and one can assume that major effort has gone into maintaining that level of control.
How exactly this fissure in the Democratic Party will play out after November is anyone’s guess and, of course, if Trump wins there will be an autopsy to find out who to blame.
Israel certainly won’t be looked at because no one is allowed to talk about it anyway, but some progressives at least will demand a review of a foreign policy platform that was heavy on intervention and global democracy promotion and light on getting along with adversaries, making it largely indistinguishable from that of the Republicans.
*(Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) delivers remarks at the 2017 AIPAC Policy Conference. Credit: AIPAC/ YouTube)