Washington’s outright support for Israeli military action in Gaza outrages the entire world: the casualties and destruction are too great. The vast majority of the world community realises that without US patronage, such actions by Tel Aviv, bordering on genocide, would not have been possible.
Continued support for Israel’s security has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy for every U.S. administration since President Harry Truman. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the United States has provided more than $130 billion in bilateral aid, currently the U.S. provides $3.3 billion as an annual military grant and $500 million for joint missile defence programmes.
President Eisenhower was not particularly loyal to Israel at first, in his view Israel was only a small pawn in US global strategy, and not worth the risk of conflict with the Soviet Union. He was also unhappy with the campaign by Israel, Britain, and France to wage conflict with Egypt in 1956. (He even threatened to cut off official and private aid to Israel and expel it from the UN to force it to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula in 1957, which it had captured in the 1956 war.)
However, as some Arab countries became closer to the Soviet Union, Israel’s strategic value increased daily, and Washington’s attitude changed accordingly: in 1962, President Kennedy privately told Golda Meir that the US and Israel had a special relationship in the Middle East.
After Israel won the 1967 war, L. Johnson realised that Israel could help the US achieve its strategic goals in the region. Israel was soon seen as a priority ally in the Middle East. In January 1987, the U.S. Congress named Israel as a major non-NATO ally.
The US vetoed at least 46 UNSC resolutions condemning Israel.
The US pro-Israeli line was perceived as a constant, so individual spats between the two allies were generally muted. During Trump’s presidency, the US officially recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the Golan Heights as an integral part of the Jewish state. Many analyses have consistently suggested that the US will always be on Israel’s side for the foreseeable future because the Jewish lobby in America is the strongest: the US and Israel have roughly the same number of Jews – just over 6 million.
In America, Jewish organisations are extremely influential: their weight in the state apparatus and the media is very high.
In addition, evangelical Protestants, more than 50 million of them in America, believe that the second coming of Christ will take place in Israel (by the way, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, M. Johnson, is an ardent evangelist).
Under the 1979 Camp David Peace Treaty, Israel receives more than three billion dollars in aid annually, not counting other subsidies provided by the Americans to Tel Aviv. Even at present, despite fairly widespread condemnation of Israel’s barbaric actions against the Palestinians, Congress is considering allocating an additional $14 billion to the Israeli state.
In this regard, the Saudi Arab News noted on 8 February that “anti-Arab hatred, Islamophobia and demonisation of the Arab world in America today surpasses the level of hatred and hostility that followed the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. They are driven by a campaign of one-sided propaganda, this turns anti-Semitism into a weapon to marginalise Arab and Muslim rights, and give the Israeli government the mandate it needs to continue the collective punishment and massacre in the Gaza Strip”.
Washington and its allies have rejected calls for a ceasefire for four months now, knowing full well that Israel is committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip, denying civilians access to aid, bombing hospitals and killing thousands of women and children. Despite the heinousness of the killings and the scale of the destruction, Washington is considering urgently supplying tens of millions of dollars worth of new weapons to Israel.
Even some American observers are writing that this is not only a short-sighted but a disastrous policy, for the new generation of Palestinians will think only of how to avenge the deaths of their relatives.
Washington, the Saudi Arab News recently wrote, has set aside morality and law to protect Israel from sanctions and provide funding to support Israeli military massacres and the expansion of illegal settlements.
The trouble is, the same newspaper noted, that the US does not have a strong president, and the current one is one of the weakest and most ineffective, whose international standing is further undermined by the political polarisation he promised to heal but instead has reinforced. “America is a divided weak nation. Biden is too weak to tell a bully leader of a foreign country, and indeed an ally, to restrain himself. Biden is a weak president whose image is further tarnished by his frequent cognitive impairments and constant memory lapses.”
America’s weakness, the Washington Post stated, shows that it has no leverage and no deterrent to Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip, resulting in a further blow to US-Middle East relations and America’s popularity plummeting.
Reports are now coming in that Algeria is about to introduce a draft resolution to the UN Security Council for an immediate cessation of hostilities, and Washington has already signalled that it will definitely block the draft.
Vladimir MASHIN, PhD in History, political observer, especially for “New Eastern Outlook”