Support for Israel in her time of need, from both Democrats and Republicans, is not just the logical choice. It is both a strategic and moral imperative.
— Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-MD)
I want to commend the Bush administration for its support of Israel during this difficult period.
— Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA)
Since Israel launched its massive, deadly, and completely asymmetric blitzkrieg against the impoverished population of the Gaza Strip, an operation that represents a continuation of Zionist policy since the British mandate period and has so far left over 900 Palestinians dead including some 400 women and children, Ohio Congressman and two-time presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has carried on his practice of consistently speaking truth to power, reprimanding both Israel for its criminal behavior and the United States government for enabling it. In addition to sending letters of protest to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Kucinich has also made numerous public statements about the massacre, and on January 7, he rose to his feet on the House floor to deliver the following words:
Wake up America. We have trillions for a war machine and banks while our government stands by and sniffs at the slaughter of innocents in Gaza, where Israel is blocking aid for wounded Palestinians. […] Today U.S. tax dollars, U.S. jets and U.S. helicopters provided to Israel are enabling the slaughter in Gaza. The [Bush] Administration enables Israel to press forward with the attack against defenseless civilians; blocks efforts promoting a cease-fire at the UN; and refuses to make Israel comply with conditions that arms shipments not be used for aggression. Israel is going to receive $30 billion in a ten-year period for military assistance, without having to abide by any humanitarian principles, international laws or standards of basic human decency. Wake up America.
While Kucinich’s urgent pleas seem to have fallen mostly on deaf ears, he has managed to arouse the ire of at least one pro-Israel organization. Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder of the Washington-based NGO The Israel Project, chastised the Ohio Congressman saying, “He is not a friend of Israel; he doesn’t understand the security concerns of the Israeli people; he doesn’t understand what it’s like to live under rockets that are coming down constantly. If Dennis Kucinich were at all consistent with what voters wanted, he would be the president-elect as opposed to one of many people who tried to be the president-elect.”
But what exactly is it that American voters want? Do they, as Ms. Mizrahi insinuates, fully support Israel’s wanton destruction of the defenseless in Gaza? Do the American people truly stand behind the butchery of innocents including police school graduates, ambulance drivers, and sleeping children?
Despite the entirely slanted and dishonest coverage the calamity has hitherto received by mainstream media outlets in the United States, it turns out that, contrary to what Ms. Mizrahi would have us believe, a substantial segment of the American population does not actually support Israel’s criminal actions. A recent Rasmussen poll has found that Americans are almost evenly split on the issue with 41 percent against the operation compared to 44 percent in favor.
The divide, of course, is even starker when examined along party lines; while some 62 percent of Republicans polled support Israel’s actions, a clear majority of Democrats oppose them by a 24 percent margin. One can only assume that, were the treatment of the ongoing calamity by the mainstream US media not so horribly skewed against the Palestinian victims, these numbers would reveal an even stronger rejection of Israel’s iron-fisted militancy by the American people.
Unfortunately, opposition to Israel’s shock and awe campaign by a majority of Democratic voters does not translate into action or even rhetoric by Democratic leaders. In this respect, Kucinich stands virtually alone amongst a party of Democrats — or, for Denis Perrin, a party of “Savage Mules” — who seem to be vying with their Republican colleagues to see who can best cater to the demands of Washington’s pro-Israel lobby.
President-elect Barack Obama, whose entire campaign hinged on the vague notions of hope and change, has refused to weigh in on the subject, claiming that he is not in any position to take a stand until after taking office on January 20. Anyone with any degree of influence or power who remains silent while masses are slaughtered is a coward, and indeed, Obama’s shirking of responsibility in this time of upheaval and gross injustice is cowardly in the extreme. Moreover, the fact that he felt free during the primaries to ponder invading Pakistan and did not hesitate to condemn the recent attacks in Mumbai only reveals the extent of his hypocrisy.
In recent days, both houses of Congress have passed resolutions expressing the utmost approval for Israel’s aggressive acts with overwhelming bi-partisan support. These shameful resolutions represent two of the first acts of the new Congress. The contentiously worded resolution passed by the House of Representatives expresses “vigorous support and unwavering commitment to the welfare, security, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure borders, and recognizes its right to act in self-defense to protect its citizens against Hamas’s unceasing aggression” and calls on all countries “to lay blame both for the breaking of the ‘calm’ and for subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza precisely where blame belongs, that is, on Hamas.” Only five congressmen voted against the measure: one Republican (Ron Paul) and four Democrats (Kucinich, Gwen Moore, Nick Rahall, and Maxine Waters).
The powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has celebrated both of these legislative victories by posting on its website a 104-page pdf file containing quotes from over one hundred American politicians — including such leaders as Representatives Steny Hoyer and Barney Frank and Senators Evan Bayh, Bob Casey Jr., Christopher Dodd, Dick Durbin, and Bill Nelson — who support Israel’s “right to self-defense” against the downtrodden and dispossessed in Gaza. The voices gathered together on this document are almost identical in the intensity of both their boisterousness and their ignorance, and one can be forgiven for being unable to distinguish between Republicans and Democrats. Once again, it seems that AIPAC has provided further evidence to Jack London’s disparaging characterization of lobbies as “peculiar institution[s] for bribing, bulldozing, and corrupting the legislators who were supposed to represent the people’s interests.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi — once so feared and vilified by the right — has proven herself to be lockstep behind the Israeli occupiers, saying that the Gaza Strip “cannot be allowed to be a sanctuary for attacks on Israel” and that “[t]he United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally.” Similarly, California Congressman Henry Waxman proclaimed that “Israel’s operation in Gaza is an act of self defense. It is a blatant double standard for those who criticize Israel to expect any nation to stand idle as its cities and citizens are indiscriminately shelled.”
By placing the blame for the current escalation of violence squarely at the feet of Hamas and the Palestinians, our elected Democratic representatives are repeating that old charade of blaming the victim for the actions of the victimizer. In the words of New York Congressman Joseph Crowley, “Hamas had a choice this past December: extend the cease-fire or continue hostilities. They chose war over peace.” Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. too has weighed in on the conflict saying, “We in the United States must continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in support of our friend and ally Israel as it defends itself against Hamas’ unrelenting rocket attacks from Gaza.”
Can our Congressmen be any further removed from reality? Unfortunately, it appears that they can. In one of the more revealing statements of support, New York Congressman Eliot Engel points to cultural affinity between the United States and Israel as a justification for his pro-Israeli sympathies. On the House floor, he declared, “I rise this afternoon in support of the beleaguered people of the State of Israel. I rise in support of the only democracy in the Middle East. I rise in support of the country in the Middle East that has the same values that our great country, the United States of America, has: principles of democracy and principles that are so important to every man, woman and child.” Apparently for Mr. Engel, the people of Gaza living under Israel’s iron heel do not share such values, and his callous dismissal of them only goes to prove Howard Zinn’s assertion that “[i]t is easier to explain atrocities if they are committed against infidels, or people of an inferior race.” The late Samuel Huntington would be proud.
Not to be outdone by their colleagues in the House, our country’s Democratic Senators have likewise risen up to express their solidarity with the occupational forces. New York Senator Charles Schumer finds it “naïve and unrealistic that some say Israel should ‘sit down and talk’ to Hamas, a group sworn to Israel’s annihilation, that broke the recent ceasefire by flinging missiles at Israeli cities.” Similarly, New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez communicated his support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza by way of an analogy: “If I am sitting in New Jersey, and rockets are landing around my house, near my children, and near our schools, my number one goal, my immediate goal, is to stop the rockets. So in December of 2008, Israel sent its military to Gaza to achieve a direct goal: stop the rockets.”
One cannot look to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for any courageous leadership on the issue. Reid, who cosponsored last week’s Senate resolution condemning Hamas, was recently featured as a guest on NBC’s Meet the Press. During the course of his interview, he expressed his solidarity with Israel saying that the Israelis “gave it [Gaza] to the Palestinians as a gesture of peace, and all they got are a bunch of rockets in return.” When asked if he was “in sync with the Bush administration” regarding the conflict, Reid responded succinctly: “Yes, I am.”
In his classic text The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon wrote that “the European masses must first of all decide to wake up, put on their thinking caps, and stop playing the irresponsible game of Sleeping Beauty” if the criminal and racist practice of colonialism were ever to end. The same can also be said today of those in the United States who seem to believe that the answer to today’s problems lies in the triumph of one establishment party over the other on election day. The shameful Democratic response to the ongoing bloodbath in Gaza illustrates this point; it is a tragic reminder that the two-party political system of the United States is fundamentally flawed. In the words of Congressman Kucinich, perhaps the sole voice of reason and integrity remaining the Democratic Party, “Wake up America.”