CHAPTER 4 - IN LOCKSTEP

“Israel is a right-wing country, where racism is politically correct

 and personal corruption is irrelevant.”

      Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist, March 3, 2020

US policies are in lockstep with those of Israel.

Only the staunchest of news followers will remember that one week before 9/11, the US and Israel walked out of the United Nations World Conference on Racism, hosted by South Africa. Israel was upset over wording that most of the rest of the world had agreed on, wording that declared Israel as an oppressive racist state for its illegal militant occupation and treatment of Palestinians. While the declaration had nothing to do with the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC a week later, the US sentiment for Israel and its tolerance of Israeli oppression has contributed to the pure hatred, or at least anger and utter distrust, of the United States around much of the world. 

What isn’t a coincidence is this: the Saudi Arabian terrorists listed America’s relationship with Israel as the number one motivation behind the 9/11 attacks. 

In Colum Lynch’s Washington Post article “UN Demands that Israel Remove ‘Security Barrier’” on July 21, 2004, one can hear echoes of the World Conference in Durban:

The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution Tuesday night demanding that Israel abide by a world court ruling to dismantle a 451-mile “security barrier” that cuts through Palestinian territory. The resolution in the 191-member assembly passed by a vote of 150 to 6, with 10 governments abstaining. The United States opposes the resolution, saying that the international court and the General Assembly are inappropriate venues for resolving the Middle East crisis. Israel, Australia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau also opposed the resolution.

Time and time again, under the political guidance and control of Israeli interests, the United States has opposed and vetoed measures attempting at limit or punish Israel for its actions. It’s an automatic reaction regardless of the nature or degree of the offense or maneuver. 

The deputy US ambassador to the United Nations at the time, James B. Cunningham, echoed his predecessors and those who would follow him in the position with the standard response: “A durable solution is only to be found in a negotiated settlement between Israelis and Palestinians,” knowing that Israel rarely has, and doesn’t now, have any interest in negotiating a two-state solution (in which Israel and Palestine are formally and legally acknowledged as sovereign nations). Under the Netanyahu empire, the plan is to simply wipe the Palestinians off the map, as made clear by Dan Gillerman, Israel’s UN ambassador, who “dismissed the ruling as ‘one-sided,’ saying it did not address a Palestinian terrorism campaign against Israelis.” 

In this instance, it didn’t address the ongoing daily Israeli terrorist campaign against the Palestinians either. With Israel having the Western world’s lone superpower in its back pocket, it can fall back on saying the same thing month after month, year after year. Vote all you want, nothing will happen.

Two years later, Justin Bergman’s article in the Washington Post on November 12, 2006 was entitled “US Vetoes UN Measure on Israeli Action in Gaza.”

The United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution Saturday that condemned an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip and demanded that Israeli troops pull out of the territory. US Ambassador [to the UN] John R. Bolton said the Arab-backed draft resolution was “biased against Israel and politically motivated.”… It was the second US veto this year of a Security Council draft resolution concerning Israeli military operations in Gaza. The other came this summer after an Israeli soldier was captured by Hamas-linked Palestinian militants and Israel responded by launching an offensive … Palestinians strengthened calls for Security Council action after Israeli artillery shelled the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, killing 20 civilians Wednesday.

So how does this veto work? The United Nations Security Council has five permanent members: the U.S., Russia, China, France, and Great Britain (United Kingdom). It also has ten non-permanent members that serve two-year terms, which are elected by the UN General Assembly. In June of 2020, the non-permanent members were Belgium, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Germany, Indonesia, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa, Tunisia, and Viet Nam. 

The list is provided simply to exhibit the great variety of countries represented. Measures passed by the Security Council over the decades represent opinions and positions expressed by peoples from all parts of the globe. Those opinions and positions are expressed via Security Council Resolutions. 

Any one of the five permanent members can veto a resolution on its own, regardless of how one-sided the vote was in an attempt to pass it. Even if countries vote 14-0 on something, the United States or one of the other four permanent members can veto the measure.

Since April 1988, the Council has passed twenty resolutions condemning Israel’s behavior during conflicts in Gaza and the West Bank or related to their Palestinian detention measures, settlement construction or the separation barrier building efforts. The United States has vetoed all of them but one.

As he left office, President Barak Obama allowed his Security Council representative, Ambassador Samantha Power, to abstain on a vote that was otherwise 14-0 in favor of declaring Israel’s settlement activity illegal. Resolution 2334 passed on December 23, 2016. Israel expressed its outrage for the US abstention, as did hardcore Zionist organizations in the US. Israel accused Obama of secretly arranging the vote and then issued sanctions against non-permanent members of the Council as a penalty for voting in favor of the declaration. 

The following are just three examples of standard operating procedure when it comes to US-Israeli collusion.

Example 1: Blame Hamas for Everything

When Kuwait introduced resolution 8274 in May 2018, Donald Trump’s UN ambassador Nikki Haley made it quite clear the US would not be joining the other Council members in supporting a draft that condemned Israel’s disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force in response to border demonstrations and rocket launches from Hamas. 

One hundred and twenty Palestinians had been killed and more than four thousand wounded. Haley explained, “The draft resolution presented by Kuwait represents a grossly one-sided view of what has taken place in Gaza in recent weeks. Anyone who cares about the peace process should vote against it. But make no mistake: regardless of how others choose to vote, the United States will oppose the draft resolution and we will veto it if we must.”

To what “peace process” was she referring?

Haley was correct with one section of her dissertation: “One of those realities is that Hamas is a major impediment to peace.” The radical element of that group, similar to the radical element of the Jewish settlers stealing Palestinian land, is one that must be controlled if any actual peace process were to move forward. That’s a given. She then went on to repeat typical Israeli excuses and blame Hamas for everything. It represented extreme obedience to Israel, the occupier and oppressive force.

Example 2: US Chooses to Ignore Illegal Israeli Settlements

Even Obama’s administration, generally distrustful of the Israeli government, at times catered to the Israelis.  In February 2011, more than one hundred UN member states agreed to sponsor a draft resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal. The Council vote was 14-0 in favor of the resolution; however, the U.S. voted no. 

Presenting Security Council representative Mr. Salam of Lebanon stated: 

“At the beginning of this week, on Monday, 14 February, the occupying Power’s municipal authorities in Jerusalem adopted a plan to construct 124 new housing units in what is known as the Ramat settlement. On 16 January, the Israeli occupying authorities approved a plan to construct 1,400 new housing units in what is known as the Gilo settlement, south of East Jerusalem. And on 9 January, the Israeli occupying authorities demolished the Shepherd Hotel in occupied Jerusalem—a well-known historic landmark and important part of Palestinian heritage—in a measure to pave the way to establishing a settlement of approximately 400 housing units.”

The rest of world has always deemed the settlements on Palestinian land illegal. Israel says they’re not, keeps building, and does so even when the US protests. The American government, whether led by a Democrat or Republican president, has always expressed its angst over settlement activity and occasionally threatened penalties, but has never taken concrete, long-lasting action to stop the illegal settlements. The US has opted to engage in a diplomatic, public relations tap-dance.

Headlines like “Over US Objections, Israel Approves West Bank Homes” have been seen ad nauseam over the last two decades. An example appeared in the New York Times on September 5, 2006, when Steven Erlanger wrote:

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, authorized construction bids on Monday for another 690 homes in the occupied West Bank in the face of pro forma [standard, routine] American criticism. The houses will be built in Maale Adumin and Betar Illit, two settlements near Jerusalem that the Israeli government says it intends to keep in any agreement with the Palestinians.

Another standard line and practice each and every time Israel builds illegal settlements: Israel will keep this land and/or these homes regardless of any future agreement with the Palestinians.  

That theme took a twist in a Washington Post article by Glenn Kessler on April 24, 2008, titled “Israelis Claim Secret Agreement with US.” The Israelis cite a letter President George W. Bush had given then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004:

Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush’s letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush’s peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories in the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon’s chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza. 

US officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized even settlement expansion on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which Israel does not officially count as settlements. But as peace negotiations have stepped up in recent months, so has the pace of settlement construction, infuriating Palestinian officials, and Washington has taken no punitive action against Israel for its settlement efforts.

So, to clarify the US position: there is no such secret agreement. The US’s position is that we definitely don’t want you (Israel) building settlements, but go ahead and do it anyway. Of course this concept, and this secret agreement reference, continued under the even more aggressive administration of Netanyahu.

The New York Times published “Israelis Say Bush Agreed to West Bank Growth” by Ethan Bronner on June 4, 2009. The Israelis were accusing President Obama of failing to acknowledge what they called a clear understanding from six years earlier:

When Israel signed onto the so-called road-map for a two-state solution in 2003, with a provision that says its government “freezes all settlement activity” (including natural growth of settlements), the officials said it did so after a detailed discussion with Bush administration officials that laid out those explicit exceptions. “Not everything is written down,” one of the officials said. 

This is called finding-another-way-to-not-honor-an-agreement. And whether it is by methods like this, or via violent incursions into Palestine, Israel’s activities routinely get called out by the rest of the world, then vetoed by the US of I.
 Here is an example from 1989. In his address, presenting council representative Mr. Belonogov of the Soviet Union said:

 “A little more than a month ago, the widespread outrage of the international community was aroused by the violence in the Palestinian village of Nahhalin. The General Assembly, in its resolution 43/233, adopted by an overwhelming majority, once again condemned the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied territory and requested the Security Council to consider with urgency the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory with a view to the adoption of measures needed to provide international protection to the Palestinian inhabitants. … Because of the negative position taken by one of its permanent members [the US], however, it was not able to take a decision calling on Israel to halt illegal actions in that part of the world.” 

The vote in favor of the resolution was 14-0, by a group as diverse as Algeria, Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Malaysia, Nepal, Senegal, USSR, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia. The US vetoed it. 

Yes, thirty-plus years ago, the United States of Israel was well entrenched. More recently, this lockstep has become a synchronized goosestep. 

Example 3: A “Peace Plan”: Shared Lies and Cruel Disdain

Fast-forward to Netanyahu and Trump, two right-wing nationalists working from the same playbook. Although one is a savvy, cynical, intelligent operator and the other a narcissistic con-artist, the synchronized offense works when you’re on the same page. One lies a little, the other lies a lot.

In the April 22, 2019 “The Talk of the Town” section of the New Yorker, David Remnick wrote:

Just as Netanyahu provided Trump instruction on the political possibilities of right-wing populism, Trump has provided Netanyahu with instruction on the possibilities of outrageous invective [insulting or abusive language], voter suppression and disdain for the law. Netanyahu now delights in the use of such phrases as “fake news.” Investigations into his financial adventures are “witch hunts.” To suppress the Arab vote in last week’s election, his supporters mounted more than a thousand cameras at polling places where Arab citizens ordinarily vote, the better to intimidate them. And, of course, both men like a wall. As Trump puts it, “Walls work. Just ask Israel.”

Remnick goes on to describe what many have called out—Netanyahu’s lip service to peace with the Palestinians. He’s never had any intention of coming to a peaceful two-state solution, because he’s never had any interest in allowing the Palestinians to keep their land. The beauty of the “we can’t let international courts, or the UN, or other countries dictate the terms of the State of Palestine—it has to come from face-to-face negotiation” excuse is the hard truth that the Israelis will never agree to a sincere and outcome-based negotiation face-to-face. Like the “anti-Semitism” crutch and many others, it’s a gift that keeps on giving.

The “a durable solution is only to be found in a negotiated settlement between Israelis and Palestinians” bullshit was thrown out the window again in the spring of 2020 when Netanyahu announced plans to annex 30 percent of the West Bank. This was based on a Trump “peace plan” constructed by his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner, a man with no international diplomacy experience and a dear friend of the Netanyahus. 

Trump had a top donor who also happened to be a billionaire militant Zionist. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson also created intense excitement and joy for the Netanyahu regime. Adelson and the Israelis knew that Trump, regardless of his personal opinion of the Jewish nation, would kiss Jewish butt. Show him the money, says Remnick:

Trump has given Netanyahu one long-desired prize after another. He pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and, in the midst of the Israeli election campaign, recognized that nation’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. 

Remnick also points out that like Trump, Netanyahu’s paramount interest is self-interest. He’s the longest serving prime minister in the country’s history and he’s working hard to continue his reign, which means appeasing the Zionists with the annexation of those Jewish settlements:

By at least speaking the language of annexation, he could try to win the enduring support of the racists and the absolutists in a potential right-wing coalition, who might, in turn, quash the multiple corruption indictments that he faces.

Netanyahu’s bribery, fraud and breach-of-trust trial began in the spring of 2020. Trump was impeached in the winter of 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Racism as a personal trait is another sad commonality, as is deflecting responsibility and blame for multiple sins. In 2019 both regimes began to throw around the “deep state” term, to suggest that they were innocent and honest, and that secret enemies were simply conspiring against them.

“Netanyahu Copies Trump’s ‘They’re Not after Me, They’re after You’ Meme” was the title of a story in Haaretz on December 22, 2019 by Allison Kaplan Sommer. She and other political observers weren’t surprised by the copycat nature of the strategy. The only difference was the expressions on their faces, Trump pointing straight ahead like an old Uncle Sam “I Want You” (for US Army) pose; Netanyahu pointing with a bigger smile. Both were copying an original effort by another nationalistic leader, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, who first used the slogan. Sommer wrote:

The cross-pollination between Trump and Netanyahu may not be a coincidence. Two weeks ago, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, Trump’s former campaign manager and deputy campaign manager, respectively, visited Israel to discuss the possibility of joining Netanyahu’s campaign as he heads into his third election in less than 12 months, following his failure to form a governing coalition after the past two elections. 

Yes, the US President and Israeli prime minister were sharing election strategists, not only legitimate ones, but also those considered more controversial and inflammatory. 

The headline and subtext in Haaretz on June 14, 2020 for a piece by Alexander Griffing says it all: “From Trump, Breitbart, and Bannon with Love and Conspiracy Theories: Meet Netanyahu’s New Media Advisor—Will Breitbart’s Aaron Klein use his Trumpworld experience to accelerate the deterioration of Israel’s political discourse?”

Klein, 41, has long been a frontline figure in the fringe conservative media in the U.S. and has helped mainstream far-right conspiracy theories from his time at World Net Daily (WND) onwards. The Washington Post dubbed WND “the granddaddy of right-wing conspiracy sites,” and it was one of the first places to push the “birther” conspiracy theory falsely alleging Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and was thus an illegitimate president. … Klein even told now de-platformed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in 2013 Obama “might be with” Al-Qaida (the terrorist group) given his “Islamic background.”

Dear citizens, meet the Israeli prime minister’s media adviser, Aaron Klein.

Meanwhile, feel free to compare and contrast the Christian activities and church-going habits of Obama with those of Trump. 

Congress, particularly the Republican Party contingent, remains owned. The headline and subtext on June 23, 2020 in Haaretz read “Majority of House Republicans Sign Letter Endorsing Israeli Annexation. The letter, signed by 120 out of the 198 House Republicans, praises the Trump administration’s Mideast vision and blames the Palestinian leadership for choosing to reject it.” The story, written by Amir Tibon, included some good news:

At the same time, more than 170 House (of Representatives) Democrats have signed a letter opposing annexation, including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. The letter is still being circulated on Capitol Hill, and the final number of signatures could be close to 200. Several Democrats who are considered close to AIPAC, the influential pro-Israeli lobby group, have also signed.

These Democrats obviously recognized the comically one-sided nature of the US of I’s peace plan, which was “negotiated” and built without any input from the Palestinians. All parties involved in its construction were Jewish. 

Provisions included the following: Israel could annex 30 percent of the West Bank, the Palestinian capitol would be outside of Jerusalem and include a refugee camp, and any benefits to Palestine would only kick in after they agreed to recognize a separate set of pre-conditions, including abandonment of any legal action against Israel or the United States.

Further detail is unnecessary. Know that neutral parties have referred to this deal as “the joke of the century” and “the fraud of the century,” and a Vanity Fair writer described it as “the Monty Python sketch of Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives.” 

One of the men who helped develop the plan is US ambassador to Israel David Friedman. A lawyer who helped Trump with his casino bankruptcies, a US citizen of course, and a vocal member of the administration, he might as well be on the Israeli payroll. He’s a dedicated hardcore Zionist.

The Haaretz editors offer insights in their official daily editorial published on June 17, 2020: 

The coronavirus pandemic and the wave of protests are preoccupying President Donald Trump, especially since elections are round the corner and his position in the polls has slipped. But none of this has cooled the enthusiasm of the champion of the whole Land of Israel within the White House, US ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Friedman supports annexation and is pushing for it, certainly more than either Israel’s prime minister or its alternate prime minister, and he’s more determined than either of them not to let the settler’s window of opportunity close without annexing as much territory as possible with as few Palestinians as possible.

It’s almost mind boggling the level of foreign-policy influence consistently set aside for Zionists, while Jews make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. population. It only feels like 30 percent:

As an “honest broker,” Friedman’s behavior is unprecedented. Instead of mediating between Israel and the Palestinians and getting the Palestinian president to return to the negotiating table, Friedman has spent the last few weeks energetically mediating between Netanyahu and his alternate prime minister, Benny Gantz. For anyone observing from the sidelines, from any side, it’s clear that the only consensus Friedman seeks as a “broker” is an internal Israeli one. 

At the announcement of the plan, Friedman rallied for immediate annexation and stated “we will recognize it” as if he was speaking on behalf of the United States. He wasn’t, but he is the not-so-attractive poster boy for the United States of Israel.

Also on annexation, In “Today’s Worldview” in the Washington Post on June 15, 2020, Ishaan Tharoor and Ruby Mellen point out the following:

The problem for Netanyahu and his allies is that much of the world opposes their plans. … Though Netanyahu and Trump pay lip service to the future viability of an independent Palestinian state, no serious expert believes it would be more likely once the internationally brokered understandings of the past three decades get cleaved apart by a unilateral act of annexation. Instead, the specter of an entrenched apartheid looms.

Note the distinct use of the word “unilateral,” meaning “performed by one person, group, or country.” Any time the Palestinians have threatened a United Nations vote on granting legal statehood, the Israelis have screamed “no unilateral actions by Palestine allowed!” 

Again, the annexation process stemmed from a Trump “peace plan” categorically rejected by the Palestinians. There was no negotiation or agreement, just a unilateral Israeli maneuver.

In reference to in-sync racism against black and “brown” people in both countries, nothing is more symbolic than the police activities in Minneapolis and Jerusalem three weeks apart in the late spring of 2020. The police murder of George Floyd in Minnesota that led to unrest and weeks of national protest in the US was followed by this eerily similar incident in Israel. From the Americans for Peace Now (APN) website on June 15, 2020, they summarize the news: 

Quote of the day: “I can’t breathe.” – Arab-Israeli diplomat Ismail Khalidi said to Israeli security guards who pinned him to the ground and put a knee on his neck at the entrance to the Jerusalem Central Bus Station.

Racism in the United States is largely a function of ignorance, a lack of exposure and education both formal and informal. When granddad tells his son to hate blacks, and son passes that on to grandson, etc., etc., i.e. the concept of hating someone for the color of their skin, it is difficult or impossible to make integration inroads culturally or systematically.

The same phenomena routinely rear their ugly head in Israel even at the “highest levels.” On the same day on the same website, APN published what it calls its “you’ve got to be kidding” news snippet:

“The riots prove that there is no chance for coexistence in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and all the minorities must leave the city.” – Yair Netanyahu, son of the prime minister, called to ethnically cleanse Jaffa from Arabs following Arab-Israeli protests in Jaffa.

Yair is his father, minus the public relations and lies. What Donald Trump, Jr. is, in what had been a more timid way, to Donald. Two families and countries acting as one.

Police tactics and weapons aren’t the only things being shared. Just a few months earlier another common headline was found online at Ynet News: “Joint Israeli-US military drill begins.” The routine story was by Yoav Zitun on March 24, 2020 was basically presented like a weather or traffic alert—pretty much ho hum scheduled information.

But now we go from the routine to the diabolical.

On June 11, 2020, Noa Landau wrote in Haaretz under the headline “US Decision to Sanction International Crime Court Was Coordinated with Israel, Source Says.” “Netanyahu congratulated Trump on decision to sanction ‘kangaroo court’ that he says is ‘obsessed with conducting witch hunts against Israel, the United States and other democracies that respect human rights.” 

A remarkably appalling and ironic statement that manages to work in their common catchphrase “witch hunt”: 

The move was discussed in a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Jerusalem last month, the source said on Thursday. Trump announced that his administration is placing sanctions on the International Criminal Court in retaliation for the court’s intention to probe the conduct of US forces in Afghanistan.

Summarily, the ICC began as an official entity in 2002 and as of December 2019 had 123 member states. Eighteen judges oversee international cases involving genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, etc., and it’s more often than not it’s the country being investigated that calls for the ICC’s demise. Israel is often complaining.

Trump’s actions included visa withdrawals and economic sanctions against the judges themselves and threats against any of the 120 countries caught cooperating. The court called the moves an attack against the interests of victims of atrocity crimes and an unacceptable attempt to interfere with the rule of law.

The judges hail from all over the world and when selected must be “persons of high moral character, impartiality, and integrity.” That doesn’t fly in the US of I.