Every single US president and the entire US "intelligence community" blatantly lies, and every single member of Congress knows they are lying, about the (per Schumer!) "well-known fact" of Israel's nuclear weapons in order to disburse aid to Israel. All any member of Congress who is serious about "conditioning" aid to Israel has to do is point this out, publicly and consistently, on the floor of the Congress and in every media interview. All Betty has to do is join Desmond Tutu, tell the truth and demand that her colleagues and the president follow the law. That would simply and immediately disrupt the discourse of Israeli "self-defense" exceptionalism, the blathering about dangerous Palestinian rockets and Iranian nuclear programs, etc., and create new kinds of pressure for American politicians to explain themselves-much more than concerned tweeting and submitting bills they know Nancy Pelosi and Chuck ("Guardian of Israel") Schumer are going to bury.
Which is why nobody does it.
There is no chance that a group of people who unanimously lie all the time to give Israel tons of public money in contravention of U.S. law will pass Betty's law, or any like it--and Betty knows it. If Betty and her co-signers are serious about "conditioning" aid, they will bring up Israeli nuclear exceptionalism, every day. If they don't, it's because they have agreed, at the direction of their party leadership, not to. It's because they are more committed to not disrupting Zionism's hold on the Democratic Party (or on America itself) than they are to disrupting, let alone defeating, Israeli colonialism and apartheid; it's because they are not really fighting for Palestinians, but--with deliberate, chosen impotence--virtue-signaling to their increasingly dissatisfied constituents (53% of Dems support such conditioning of US aid). Just as they are doing with Medicare-for-All and the minimum wage.
Here's where that gets you:
I hope I'm wrong, but I will use the "n"-word we should always avoid: The Democratic and Republican parties will never abjure their commitment to Zionism. As in: "If Washington D.C. crumbled to the ground, the last thing that would remain is our support for Israel." There is a lot more lopsided money and power behind that proclamation today than was behind George Wallace's "Segregation forever!" in 1963. Those political parties will die, and should be killed, as the parties they are--and as one of their presidents, without objection, said he would--fighting for Israeli apartheid. The political and media elites, and George Wallace himself, came to see American Jim Crow apartheid as not just wrong, but impossible: they could not not significantly re-calibrate in the face of armed black militancy and burning American cities. They do not care a whit how many Palestinian (or Syrian, or Iranian) towers, towns, and children burn. There is no limit.
If "left-wing" legislators and activists aren't going to
go right at it, and, as unflinchingly as they would have against George
Wallace, fight the fight to the political death of any agent or institution
that wants to die on the crumbling hill of Zionism, then... well,
there's no such thing as Progressive Except Apartheid Zionism Forever.
Because time is way past up for hemming and hawing. It always comes too late in systems of apartheid. It came very late for African-Americans. It has been way too long for Palestinian Arabs.
If you don't see the connection, you're just wrong. Here's an eloquent voice on that for African-Americans, which also absolutely is a voice for Palestinians, about whose predicament he wrote with equal urgency and eloquence:
What is it that you expect Palestinians to reconcile themselves to? There comes a time when even the most stubborn have to recognize that appeals to colonized people for peace and patience are nothing more than demands to surrender and accept their subjugation.
I hope that an increasing number of Americans see Israel's latest blatant program of ethnic cleansing and its vicious attack on Gaza as instances of colonialist violence that has never and will never stop within the Zionist project.
I hope they see that it is simply wrong to expect, let alone demand, that Palestinians wait any longer to overturn, by any means necessary, the system of apartheid in which their homes, lands, hopes, and lives are just not as important as those of Jewish settlers. I hope, and think, they understand that the time for hemming and hawing is over. Way over.
This is not a conflict between Israel and Hamas, but between the whole Zionist movement--which includes all the forces mentioned above--and the whole Palestinian people. It is a fight that pits enormous, well-coordinated, military, financial, and political power against the enormous, but still ill-organized, power of millions of people.
I know it seems impossible to imagine the defeat of Zionism, but we have to recognize both the reality and fragility of Zionist power.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
