There is that scene in the hilarious movie Steve Martin and John Candy made in 1987, “In Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” throughout which many nonagenarian viewers should probably have closed their eyes. Martin and Candy are in the opposite direction lane on a highway, and they mock the guy who warns them that they are in the “wrong way,” sneering “How could he know where we are going!”
We know where the United States is going. Not all Americans, but those who hold the power in politics, finance and commerce are going to stomach “a worse-than-apartheid” Israel.
“Israeli apartheid far more brutal than anything we saw in South Africa,” said Andrew Feinstein, a former South African politician and a colleague of international human rights icons Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who lived through all those incredible years in his country. That is why South Africa is bringing Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
For Americans with a sense of history, ethics or national security, their country’s relationship with Israel has been more than problematic since its creation. Albert Einstein, professor Hannah Arendt and many other Jewish dignitaries in U.S. politics and science, who yearned for years for a homeland for the Jews that would have saved them from the European pogroms, massacres and finally their genocide, had outright rejected the creation of Israel without sharp borders for partition of Palestine. Arendt, a German American historian and philosopher and one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century, later sent a letter with several other signatories to the New York Times (NYT), protesting the visit to the U.S. by Menachem Begin and denouncing his Herut (Freedom) party on the grounds that it was “a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.”
Hence, I and many other people say that not all Americans, particularly not those young people on the streets all over America and Europe, are part and parcel of the U.S., United Kingdom, French and German government’s support of the forthcoming genocide of Palestinians. Those governments do not only support the ipso facto Zionists’ massacre of almost 40,000 Gazan people, but they in fact whipped up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by supporting the most anti-Palestinian government in Israel’s history. It was reported all over the world that Netanyahu had agreed to have the support of Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party’s six Knesset members to save himself from the bribery and embezzlement case in exchange for endorsing their “Endlösung” (final solution to the last semi-autonomous Palestinian land in Gaza.
Biden and his cohorts in Europe knew that Netanyahu, his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and National Security Minister Ben-Gvir would be on the lookout to finalize the expulsion of Palestinian people from the last autonomous patch of land they have left. A Hamas group’s Feb. 7 raid on the camp of the Israeli occupation soldiers provided them with the excuse they have been waiting for. If it had not happened, Netanyahu’s coalition would have found another excuse to implement what was promised to realize “the Jewish people’s “exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel” in its first statement. Biden knew this went even further than the 2018 “basic law” – which enshrined apartheid in Israeli law – by stating that only Jews have the right to self-determination.
Biden knew he had put his country in this “wrong way,” which would lead to the unheard-of dissolution of the country in modern history.
Not only will the semi-imperialistic security “order” the U.S. created after World War II come to a crashing end, but also the financial system that helped friend-and-foe all nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union if (this is a very big “if”) the U.S. does not stop sending arms and ammunitions to that “worse than Apartheid regime” in Israel will be blowing up hook, line and sinker.
Biden would be strongly advised to read Einstein and Arendt’s letter to the NYT.
They accused Menachem Begin of Fascism: “Lest America be fooled by post-Independence rhetoric, the Herut party Begin led was ‘closely akin to the Nazi and Fascist parties.”
American politics has been on its way to becoming increasingly racial and religious. The rise of U.S. populism has brought the menace of Donald Trump, who seems to have no personal ethics whatsoever, so he unquestioningly endorsed Israeli policies and etched this attitude into mainstream U.S. politics. But it should not be. The U.S. has the military capacity to stop that “worse-than-apartheid Israel.” The only peaceful way to do it would be the U.S. recognition of a Palestine state.
Right now, Israel should be defined as a pariah state; soon, neither the U.S. nor its European accomplices will be able to prevent such outcomes of being a pariah state as expulsion from the United Nations and many other international organizations. Those young protestors and demonstrators will be in positions of decision-making for their countries. They do not see any reason to condone Israel’s genocide because the European Jewish people had been subjected to genocide themselves. Finding their moral feet, young Americans and Europeans will change their countries’ abject attachment to Israel to neutrality, if not hostility.
It is the only way to win the hearts and minds (and votes) of 8 million first-time voters in November as well as Generation Z, who constitute 20% of all voters this year.
