Israel and the U.S.: Partners in Permanent Aggression
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"There is only one other nation whose appetite for
violence is comparable to the United States: Israel."
Just before the U.S. elections, Senator Joe Biden shot
off his mouth about the certainty that Barack Obama would be "tested" early
in his presidency. "Watch," said the blathering vice-presidential candidate.
"We're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the
mettle of this guy." Biden didn't predict where the test would come from.
Then, a week before Christmas, a senior Bush State
Department official filled in the blanks. Obama's "mettle" would be tested by the Russians,
over U.S. anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe.
The truth is, nobody on the planet wants to "test" any
American president. Everyone knows the Americans are crazy, always looking for
a fight, the "greatest purveyors of violence in the world," as Dr. Martin Luther King
said back in 1967. There is only one other nation whose appetite for violence
is comparable to the United States: Israel, America's junior partner in
aggression.
It is Israel that is testing the limits of world tolerance
for its 60-year war against the Palestinian people. More specifically, Israel
is taking measure of the incoming Obama administration's sensibilities to the
spilling of Palestinian blood in the besieged
enclave of Gaza. Israel's aerial blitzkrieg and long-standing blockade of
1.5 million people is a crime against humanity for which its sponsor and
champion, the United States, is equally guilty. But the Israeli leadership
understands that complicity in crime must be constantly renewed, so that each
party is reminded that its hands are also soaked in blood. The Israeli atrocity
against Gaza serves as a ritual renewal of its special relationship with yet
another U.S. administration.
"Both countries are
under the permanent control of their respective war parties."
Not that Barack Obama's loyalties to Israel have ever been
suspect. As a candidate, Obama went further than any U.S. president in
recognizing Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem - a position that
guarantees there can be no lasting piece in the region. Obama's right-hand man,
chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, is a born-and-bred Zionist who volunteered to work
for the Israeli army during the 1991 Gulf War. And the Bush regime's Defense
Department, a bastion of Israeli Likud Party warmongers, is about to be
transformed into the Obama Defense Department, with few changes in personnel,
including the guy at the top, Secretary Robert Gates, who is being retained.
Israel and the United States have a wartime alliance that
never quits, since both nations are constantly at war. Both countries are under
the permanent control of their respective war parties - although Israel gets
the better part of the deal, since her domestic war party has also infiltrated
both U.S. political parties.
Despite the deep ties that bind American and Israeli war
criminals, the junior partner, Israel, seems to constantly need reassurance
that the senior gangster, Washington, is a willing accomplice in the next
bloodbath. Thus, the timing of the massacre in Gaza, ensuring that Obama - by deferring
to Bush - enters office with blood on the soles of his shoes. He has passed
the Israeli test.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].
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