It’s
official now. America’s closest ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, the one accorded more than 50 standing ovations in Congress
just months ago, is under indictment by
the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war
crimes. America must take note: the U.S. Government is complicit in
Netanyahu’s war crimes and has fully partnered in Netanyahu’s violent
rampage across the Middle East.
For
30 years the Israel Lobby has induced the U.S. to fight wars on
Israel’s behalf designed to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian
State. Netanyahu, who first came to power in 1996, and has been prime
minister for 17 years since then, has been the main cheerleader for
U.S.-backed wars in the Middle East. The result has been a disaster for
the U.S. and a bloody catastrophe not only for the Palestinian people
but for the entire Middle East.
These
have not been wars to defend Israel, but rather wars to topple
governments that oppose Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
Israel viciously opposes the two-state solution called for by international law, the Arab Peace Initiative, the G20, the BRICS, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the UN General Assembly.
Israel’s intransigence, and its brutal suppression of the Palestinian
people, has given rise to several militant resistance movements since
the beginning of the occupation. These movements are backed by several
countries in the region.
The
obvious solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis is to implement the
two-state solution and to demilitarize the militant groups as part of
the implementation process.
Israel’s
approach, especially under Netanyahu, is to overthrow foreign
governments that oppose Israel’s domination, and recreate the map of a
“New Middle East” without a Palestinian State. Rather than making peace,
Netanyahu makes endless war.
What
is shocking is that Washington has turned the U.S. military and federal
budget over to Netanyahu for his disastrous wars. The history of the
Israel lobby’s complete takeover of Washington can be found in the
remarkable new book by Ilan Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic (2024).
Netanyahu
repeatedly told the American people that they would be the
beneficiaries of his policies. In fact, Netanyahu has been an
unmitigated disaster for the American people, bleeding the U.S. Treasury
of trillions of dollars, squandering America’s standing in the world,
making the U.S. complicit in his genocidal policies, and bringing the
world closer to World War III.
If
Trump wants to make America great again, the first thing he should do
is to make America sovereign again, by ending Washington’s subservience
to the Israel Lobby.
The
Israel Lobby not only controls the votes in Congress but places
hardline backers of Israel into key national security posts. These have
included Madeleine Albright (Secretary of State for Clinton), Lewis
Libby (Chief of Staff of Vice President Cheney), Victoria Nuland (Deputy
National Security Advisor of Cheney, NATO Ambassador of Bush Jr.,
Assistant Secretary of State for Obama, Under-Secretary of State for
Biden), Paul Wolfowitz (Under-Secretary of Defense for Bush Sr., Deputy
Secretary of Defense for Bush Jr.), Douglas Feith (Under-Secretary of
Defense for Bush Jr.), Abram Shulsky (Director of the Office of Special
Plans, Department of Defense for Bush Jr.), Elliott Abrams (Deputy
National Security Advisor for Bush Jr.), Richard Perle (Chairman of the
Defense National Policy Board for Bush Jr.), Amos Hochstein (Senior
Advisor to the Secretary of State for Biden), and Antony Blinken
(Secretary of State for Biden).
In 1995, Netanyahu described his plan of action in his book Fighting Terrorism.
To control terrorists (Netanyahu’s characterization of militant groups
fighting Israel’s illegal rule over the Palestinians), it’s not enough
to fight the terrorists. Instead, it’s necessary to fight the “terrorist
regimes” that support such groups. And the U.S. must be the one to
lead:
The cessation of terrorism must therefore be a clear-cut demand, backed up by sanctions and with no prizes attached. As with all international efforts, the vigorous application of sanctions to terrorist states must be led by the United States, whose leaders must choose the correct sequence, timing, and circumstances for these actions.
As Netanyahu told the American people in 2001 (reprinted as the 2001 foreword to Fighting Terrorism):
The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states. International terrorism simply cannot be sustained for long without the regimes that aid and abet it… Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into dust. The international terrorist network is thus based on regimes—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Taliban Afghanistan, Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, and several other Arab regimes, such as the Sudan.
All of this was music to the ears of the neocons in Washington, who
similarly subscribed to U.S.-led regime change operations (through wars,
covert subversion, U.S.-led color revolutions, violent coups, etc.) as
the main way to deal with perceived U.S. adversaries.
After
9/11, the Bush Jr. neocons (led by Cheney and Rumsfeld) and the Bush
Jr. insiders of the Israel Lobby (led by Wolfowitz and Feith), teamed up
to remake the Middle East through a series of U.S.-led wars on
Netanyahu’s targets in the Middle East (Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria) and
Islamic East Africa (Libya, Somalia, and Sudan). The role of the Israel
Lobby in stoking these wars of choice is described in detail in Pappe’s
new book.
The
neocon-Israel Lobby war plan was shown to General Wesley Clark on a
visit to the Pentagon soon after 9/11. An officer pulled a paper from
his desk and told Clark:
"I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense's office. It says
we're going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five
years—we're going to start with Iraq, and then we're going to move to
Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran."
In 2002, Netanyahu pitched the war with Iraq to
the American people and Congress by promising them that “If you take
out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous
positive reverberations on the region[...] People sitting right next
door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such
regimes, of such despots is gone.”
A
remarkable new insider account of Netanyahu’s role in spearheading the
Iraq War also comes from retired Marine Command Chief Master Sargent
Dennis Fritz, in his book Deadly Betrayal (2024).
When Fritz was called to deploy to Iraq in early 2002, he asked senior
military officials why the U.S. was deploying to Iraq, but he got no
clear answer. Rather than lead soldiers into a battle he could not
explain or justify, he left the service.
In
2005, Fritz was invited back to the Pentagon, now as a civilian, to
assist Under-Secretary Douglas Feith in the declassification of
documents about the war, so that Feith could use them to write a book
about the war. Fritz discovered in the process that the Iraq War had
been spurred by Netanyahu in close coordination with Wolfowitz and
Feith. He learned that the purported U.S. war aim, to counter Saddam’s
weapons of mass destruction, was a cynical public relations gimmick led
by an Israel Lobby insider, Abram Shulsky, to garner U.S. public support
for the war.
Iraq
was to be the first of the seven wars in five years, but as Fritz
explains, that follow-up wars were delayed by the anti-U.S. Iraqi
insurgency. Nonetheless, the U.S. eventually went to war or backed wars
against Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Lebanon. In other words,
the U.S. carried out Netanyahu’s plans—except for Iran. To this day,
indeed to this hour, Netanyahu works to stoke a U.S. war on Iran, one
that could open World War III, either by Iran making the breakthrough to
nuclear weapons, or by Iran’s ally, Russia, joining such a war on
Iran’s side.
The
neocon-Israel Lobby teamwork has marked one of the greatest global
calamities of the 21st century. All of the countries attacked by the
U.S. or its proxies—Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria—now
lie in ruins. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza continues apace,
and yet again the U.S. has opposed the unanimous will of the world
(other than Israel) this week by vetoing a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution that was backed by the other 14 members of the U.N. Security Council.
The real issue facing the Trump Administration is not defending Israel from its neighbors, who call repeatedly, almost daily, for peace based on the two-state solution. The real issue is defending the U.S. from the Israel Lobby.