The danger of a larger war in the Middle East seems to grow every day. Israel continues its genocide in Gaza, attacks Palestinians on the West Bank, invades Lebanon, make the United Nations (UN) Secretary General persona non grata, and attacks UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. Israel, a nuclear-armed state, also seems to be seeking to provoke a war with Iran with the hope that it will draw the United States directly into the conflict.
Is Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal to prolong the war so that he holds onto power and thus avoids prison? Is his vision an apocalyptic one, that a general war can produce a remaking of the Middle East so that the dominance of the U.S.-Israel alliance will be ensured for the foreseeable future? Does the Israeli prime minister remember that twenty-one years ago, he encouraged the U.S. to invade Iraq with exactly the same prediction?
War with Iran?
Ignoring that history, Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people, at once appealing to them and threatening them. Contradictorily, he claims Iran “plunges our region deeper into darkness, deeper into war” but asserts “there is no place in the Middle East Israel cannot reach. There’s nowhere we will not go to protect our people and our country.” The Israeli leader tells the Iranian people that its government wastes money on nuclear weapons and wars instead of spending money on children’s education, health care, and development of the country’s infrastructure. Misplaced funding priorities, of course, are even more true of Israel and the United States.
Though it backs Israel, the Biden Administration has no appetite for a war with Iran. It is sensible enough to recall the disasters that resulted from the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, it may also be considering that Iran’s alliance with Russia might mean that U.S. involvement in an Israeli-initiated war with Iran could lead to direct conflict with Russia with the risk of escalation into a nuclear war.
Can the U.S. Restrain Israel?
On October 15, CNN reported that , in an apparent nod to U.S. concerns, “Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have assured the U.S. that a counterstrike on Iran will be limited to military targets rather than oil or nuclear facilities.” Nevertheless, the risk that Iran and Israel, as John Mearsheimer puts it, will go up the escalation ladder remains significant.[1]
In Mearsheimer’s view, the U.S. and Israel are “joined at the hip” because of the influence of the Israel Lobby in the U.S. As if to document Mearsheimer’s point, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security told CNN, “Our commitment to Israel’s defense is ironclad.”
Despite Mearsheimer’s argument that the Israel Lobby is all powerful with the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government, it is not impossible for the U.S. to take a stance against Israel. There have been occasions when U.S. presidents have opposed Israel’s actions. The most notable example was when the Eisenhower Administration in 1956 opposed the invasion of Egypt by Israel, the United Kingdom, and France, and forced their withdrawal.
More recently, the Administration of George H. W. Bush opposed the right-wing Israeli government of Yitzhak Shamir. In May 1989, Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker proclaimed that Israel must accept U.N. resolution 242 providing for its withdrawal from the territory it seized in 1967. Baker told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the principal organization of the Israel Lobby, that Israel had to “lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel.” The Bush Administration held up $10 billion in loan guarantees over Jewish settlements on occupied land, Bush declaring that “the settlements are counterproductive to peace.”[2]
More recently still, the Obama Administration in 2015 negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran and rejected Israel’s demand that Iran be required to recognize Israel.[3]
The 30-Day Deadline
Although the Biden Administration has for months talked about a ceasefire deal to end the genocide in Gaza, it has failed to take the decisive step of withholding armaments from Israel or insisting that its ally change its behavior. This week there was the first sign that the Biden Administration may act. On Sunday, October 13, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin gave Israel 30 days, as CNN put it, “to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza . . . or risk violating US laws governing foreign military assistance, suggesting US military aid could be in jeopardy.”
The thirty-day deadline comes after the November presidential election. Is this an attempt to respond to the peace movement? Nihad Awad, National Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) declared: “Although we welcome the Biden administration’s long overdue threat to withhold weapons from the Israeli government, waiting 30 days to do so is unacceptable. The Israeli government is starving and killing the Palestinian people today, right this very moment, in violation of U.S. law. The Palestinian people cannot wait another month for the Biden administration to uphold the law and end its complicity in the Israeli government’s campaign of slaughter and starvation.”
The Ukraine War
There is another front where we have a right to worry about an escalation to a nuclear conflict. Although the Ukraine War may be reaching its end point, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seeking to change what has thus far been a proxy war on the part of the West against Russia into a direct war between the U.S. and Russia. Those two states have the power, given the size of their nuclear arsenals, to end human life on the planet.
Fortunately, the Biden Administration has thus far refused to authorize Ukrainian long-range strikes deep into Russian territory with U.S. weapons. U.S. personnel would be directly involved. On October 17, White House press secretary and senior presidential advisor Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed, “Our policy . . . with respect to prohibiting the use of ATACMS or long-range strikes inside of Russia has not changed. That is not going to change.”
Unfortunately, moving toward a diplomatic solution to the war remains off the table for the Biden Administration thus far. On September 24, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres declared, “The longer this tragic war continues, the greater the risk of escalation and spillover.” Nonetheless, Guterres pointed to the Black Sea Grain Initiative and prisoner exchanges as indications that a diplomatic path was possible. “Today, though the prospects for peace may seem distant, I am inspired by the growing calls for dialogue.”
A People’s Response to Militarism and War
How can ordinary citizens contribute to peace? Most member states of the United Nations are speaking up against the genocide in Gaza and in favor of Palestinian rights. The flourishing of democratic activism by the world’s peoples is the only answer if one accepts Frederick Douglass’s dictum, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
It is especially important for those of us living in the United States to put pressure on our government since it is our government that is Israel’s principal backer and is chiefly responsible for arming Ukraine against Russia rather than reaching a diplomatic solution to that conflict. Dr. Martin Luther King’s remark that the U.S. was the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” remains as relevant today as it was during the Vietnam War.
Democracy is alive and well at the grass roots of our country. That’s been apparent in the campus encampments opposing the genocide in Gaza. On October 6, I joined a Jewish Voices of Peace (JVP) standout in Northampton, about 30 minutes from my home. I held up a huge banner with another JVP member calling for a cut-off of military equipment to Israel. About twenty-five of us spent an hour at a busy roundabout holding up signs for a ceasefire, Palestinian rights, an end to the genocide in Gaza, and opposition to a larger war in the Middle East.
Pressure for a ceasefire, an end to the genocide, and a cut-off of military aid to Israel has come from the student encampments, the peace movement, the uncommitted movement within the Democratic Party, Jewish Voices for Peace, Arab American organizations, and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. Ninety members of Congress (89 Democrats and one independent) have called for a ceasefire.[4]
As I’ve lived in Massachusetts for only two years, I asked my fellow banner-holder, about whether efforts had been made to pass city council resolutions. My fellow JVA member told me resolutions supporting a ceasefire have been adopted by the Town Council in Amherst and the City Council in Northampton. Local news accounts highlighted the impassioned pleas of residents.[5]
Personal Reflections
During the Iraq War, there was a campaign to get city councils to pass peace resolutions. Many cities did so, but although we were on the front page of our small-town newspaper, our Arkadelphia, Arkansas, group failed to get a single council member to vote for our resolution. Even the resolution’s sponsor voted against it because of the pressure by other council members and pro-war community members. He lost his business in the aftermath of our peace campaign.
Today, repression by pro-war groups and institutions has led to the arrest of many members of student encampments and the resignation of some university presidents.
I’ve worked on the issue of Palestinian rights, off and on for over fifty years. My first recognition of the issue was in 1967. I was in Greenwich Village in Manhattan with a friend from college who, like me, was Jewish. We were out late and one of us picked up the next day’s copy of the New York Times. Across the front page was a map with arrows showing Israel’s attack on its neighbors.
I can’t remember my friend’s name, but my guess is that we were active in the movement against the Vietnam War together. Nevertheless, our reactions to the Times story were opposite. We’d both been following U.S. mainstream news report that emphasized Arab threats, but my focus was on the map.
Look who’s doing the aggressing, I argued. To be honest, I don’t recall his counterargument. Perhaps he brought up the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, or Arab opposition to the right of Israel to exist. Although those ideas may have been convincing to some, they did not justify Israel’s aggression. And, in a sense, they were beside the point if the point is to understand the reasons for the aggression. Israel was the far superior military power, and it defeated its neighbors in six days.
“When it was over,” Eric Alterman comments on the Six-Day War, the area of land under or Israel’s control was more than four times that within its 1948 borders – to say nothing of the far smaller territory accorded it by the 1947 partition plan.”[6] Israel acquired the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai, and the Golan Heights. With U.S. support, Israel has defied numerous United Nations resolutions for the return of those territories and the right of Palestinians to return to their homes. The U.S. today fails to stop Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.
Trump Would be Worse on Israel Policy
As bad as the Biden Administration’s policy on Israel has been, Donald Trump would be worse. As president Trump reversed U.S. policy that recognized the illegality of Israeli settlements on occupied lands. In recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Trump ignored the legal status of East Jerusalem as occupied territory, not a part of Israel. Although it took over three years, Secretary of State Blinken announced in February 2024 a return to the pre-Trump policy “that Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank is "inconsistent with international law."
Trump sends conflicting messages, claiming Israel has a “big protector” in him but faces “total annihilation” if Vice President Kamala Harris gets elected. Any Jewish person who votes for Harris is a “fool,” the Republican presidential candidate asserts. Trump’s ideology is a mix of nativism, racism, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism.
Trump on Ukraine
With respect to the Ukraine War, Republican voters and officeholders are less supportive of continued military funding of Ukraine than are Democratic voters and officeholders. In his single debate with Kamala Harris, Trump refused to say he wanted Ukraine to prevail against Russia. He declared instead, “I want the war to stop” and claimed if elected, he would “get it settled before I even become president.”
During his presidency, Trump’s approach to Ukraine was inconsistent. His administration provided significant direct military aid to Ukraine, something the Obama Administration had refused to do. However, Trump later withheld funding and tried to pressure Ukraine into providing negative information about Hunter and Joseph Biden, leading to his first impeachment.
The Trump administration’s foreign policy toward Russia and Ukraine was often incoherent. Dr. Ruth Deyermond, Senior Lecturer in Post-Soviet Security at King’s College in the United Kingdom notes, “Trump took a significantly more conciliatory position with Russia than that to which his administration was committed.” However, Trump achieved no breakthrough in improving U.S. relations with Russia or resolving the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine government that came to power in 2014 because of a U.S.-sponsored coup. Moreover, his administration increased tensions by pulling out of both the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and tthe European Union (EU).[7]
Would Trump be able to deliver on his claim of producing a deal to end the Ukraine War? When he was asked in the debate with President Biden if Vladimir Putin’s terms for ending the war were acceptable, Trump said they were not.[8] Given the inconsistency in his approach to foreign policy toward Russia during his presidency, his extremist plans for being a dictator, deporting millions of immigrants, jailing his opponents, attacking voting, abortion, and trans rights, peace-making would likely be a low priority.
Two Underlying Problems
A commitment by both major parties and the military-industrial-intelligence complex to U.S. hegemony is one underlying problem. This began in the closing days of World War II with the creating of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It continued through the cold war with the establishment of U.S. military bases around the world and U.S. interventions to overthrow dozens of governments. It continued after the cold war in what U.S. leaders thought of as “the unipolar moment.” It continues today despite the existence of other major powers -- China, Russia, and India -- and the reality of multi-polarity in the world system.
The other underlying problem is that U.S. foreign policy is a giant profit-making scam. Despite one failed war after another, U.S. leaders continue to pursue their failed approach.
Jeffrey Sachs explains it: “The puzzle is solved by recognizing that American foreign policy is not at all about the interests of the American people. It is about the interests of the Washington insiders, as they chase campaign contributions and lucrative jobs for themselves, staff, and family members. . . . The $1.5 trillion in military outlays is the scam that keeps on giving—to the military-industrial complex and the Washington insiders—even as it impoverishes and endangers America and the world.”
The foreign policy scam is the most dangerous because of the lives lost and the threat of a nuclear war, but Sachs points to the health industry, Wall Street, and energy industry scams as “each division [of government] uses public power for private gain through insider dealing, greased by corporate campaign contributions and lobbying outlays.”
The Radical Solution
It will take a fundamental change in our economic system to put an end to the corruption, abuse of power, harm to millions around the world, and the failure to meet the needs of the people of the United States. An intermediate step toward that goal is the creation of a radical movement to end the forever wars, close military bases, slash military spending, create a national health care system, and establish public control of the energy and banking sectors of the economy.
NOTES
[1]. For Mearsheimer’s views, see the interviews posted on his Substack, Youtube, and elsewhere and the book, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. 2007. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
[2]. George C. Herring, 2008, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 (New York: Oxford University Press), 922-23.
[3]. Remarks by the President on the Iran Nuclear Deal, White House statement, August 5, 2015. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/08/05/remarks-president-iran-nuclear-deal;“Iran nuclear deal: US there for Israel, warns Obama,” April 7, 2015, BBC News. <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32194275>
[4]. See https://ceasefireaction.com/ for a list.
[5]. Karen Brown, “Amherst Town Council passes ceasefire resolution, after 5 hours of debate,” New England Public Media, March 06, 2024. https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/03/06/amherst-massachusetts-ceasefire-israel-hamas-gaza; James Paleologopoulos, “Northampton, Mass. city council approves Gaza ceasefire resolution,” WAMC Northeast Public Radio, February 29, 2024. <https://www.wamc.org/news/2024-02-29/northampton-mass-city-council-approves-gaza-ceasefire-resolution>
[6]. Eric Alterman, 2022, We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight over Israel (First edition; New York: Basic Books), 122.
[7]. Ruth Deyermond, “The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine: Explaining Incoherence,” International Affairs, 99: 4 (2023) 1595 –1614; doi: 10.1093/ia/iiad120.
[8]. Transcript of Biden-Trump Debate, June 28, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/politics/read-biden-trump-debate-rush-transcript/index.html
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
“Ahead of U.S. election, Trump ends a U.S. restriction applying to Israeli settlements, October 28, 2020, Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/ahead-of-us-election-trump-ends-a-us-restriction-applying-to-israeli-settle-idUSKBN27D23W/
Zaha Hassan, “Trump’s Plan for Israel and Palestine: One More Step Away From Peace,” December 11, 2018, Carnegie Endowment for Peace. <https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2018/12/trumps-plan-for-israel-and-palestine-one-more-step-away-from-peace?lang=en>
“President Donald J. Trump Keeps His Promise To Open U.S. Embassy In Jerusalem, Israel.” Statement from the White House, May 14, 2018.
Re: Trump giving even greater support to the Zionist Nazis. One must realize that the primary geopolitical result of a second Trump administration will be the collapse of US global leadership. Take France's Emmanuel Macron for example. Trump's approval rating in France is in single digits and falliing. For Macron to follow Trump's leadership anywhere at anytime would be Macron's political suicide. A second Trump presidency likely spells the death of NATO, which is now and always has been nothing more than a vehicle for US imperialism. Hence, Trump embracing the Zionist Nazis will only make them both more of a pariah. Will they do more damage in the process of their demise? Yes. But it will only further enhance both Israel and Trump's isolation, which is ultimately unsustainable. With friends like Trump, who need enemies?