While Israel’s impunity for conducting unbridled violence is cracking in the U.S., politicians’ habit of tying career survival to Tel Aviv persists in traditional power structures, writes Ramzy Baroud.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Hukabee at a celebration in Jerusalem of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. (US Embassy Jerusalem. Flickr/CC BY 4.0)
By Ramzy Baroud
Z Network
Two major stories regarding the United States and Israel in recent days represent profound watershed moments in the history of the relationship between both countries.
The first incident occurred on July 8 when U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) and his delegation were detained by armed, illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
“These hoodlums come in with machine guns — an M4, an American-made machine gun — and they detain us,” Khanna in a stunning statement. “They block off the road. And then they call the IDF, and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans.”
Equally shocking to the congressman’s direct encounter with the raw, lawless reality of the occupation was the response of the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. Rather than defending an elected American lawmaker, Huckabee dismissed Khanna’s harrowing experience as a mere “stunt.”
Israeli settlers on Shuhada Street in Hebron, 2010. (ISM Palestine – Flickr/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 2.0)
This defiance of old taboos, however, is not confined to progressive factions. In an even more unprecedented development on July 15, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance used an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience to deliver some of the sharpest criticism of Israel ever uttered by a sitting, top-tier U.S. official.
Addressing a reported Israeli government-funded online influence campaign aimed at sabotaging the administration’s diplomatic efforts, a furious Vance accused “certain elements within the Israeli government” of actively trying to derail peace negotiations and manipulate American public opinion.
He went so far as to target the operators behind the foreign-backed campaign, telling them directly to “go to hell.”
Yet, even as fierce criticism of Israel reaches the very apex of American politics, a profound, schizophrenic rupture divides Washington. While the American public, influential media personalities, and top-tier politicians are openly turning against Israel’s unbridled violence, the traditional power structures continue to toe the line.
Vance at a Turning Point USA event in Athens, Georgia, in April. (Gage Skidmore/ Flickr/ CC BY-SA 2.0)
This is explicitly evident in Congress, where establishment politicians remain busy acting as defense contractors for Tel Aviv.
Lawmakers are quietly pushing forward with Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2027. Far from distancing the U.S. from the ongoing regional bloodbath, this legislation aims to permanently integrate and synchronize the U.S. and Israeli militaries under a joint “Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.”
This institutional blind spot is why the entire alliance is beginning to look utterly ridiculous.
Traditional foreign policy theory views Israel as an American “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the Middle East, policing the region on behalf of Western hegemony. Whether that was ever true is highly debatable.
Today, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the relentless war on Iran and the escalating aggressions against Lebanon and Syria have yielded zero strategic value to the American people. Instead, the United States has paid a massive financial and moral largesse to fund bloody regional wars that disrupt the global economy and make Washington a direct, complicit partner in the destruction of the Palestinian people.
Yet, the American administration continues to offer unquestioning support, with the exception of occasionally leaked, manufactured “tense” phone calls between U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. No matter the physical, economic, or reputational damage inflicted on the U.S., Washington continues to march blindly toward the precipice.
To believe this subservience is a recent phenomenon is to misunderstand history.
For many, the physical detention of Congressman Khanna by Israeli forces evokes the memory of Rachel Corrie — the 23-year-old American peace activist who was brutally crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah on March 16, 2003, while peacefully shielding a Palestinian family home from demolition.
In both cases, the message from Tel Aviv was clear: American status offers no protection.
March 16, 2003 — Rachel Corrie, on right with bullhorn, nonviolently blocking Israeli bulldozers from destroying Palestinian homes along the Rafah/Egyptian border along with nine other International Solidarity Movement volunteers. This photo is from earlier in the day on which Israeli forces killed her. (Joe Carr/Wikimedia Commons/Copyrighted free use)
Yet, this dependency runs deeper, rooted in the 1967 U.S.S. Liberty incident. During the Six-Day War, Israeli forces launched a relentless two-hour attack on an unarmed U.S. intelligence ship, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171.
Instead of demanding accountability, the Johnson administration accepted Israel’s excuse of a “mistake” and covered up the truth to protect its ally. This established a decades-long precedent: Washington would act as a political and military shield for Israeli actions, even at the cost of American lives.
Damage to U.S.S. Liberty, June 1967. (Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
It is often argued that Israel’s stranglehold on American policy stems entirely from the financial power of its lobby in Washington, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Conventional wisdom holds that AIPAC’s true dominance as the ultimate kingmaker began in 1981, when it waged a historic, ferocious battle to block President Ronald Reagan’s proposed sale of AWACS early-warning surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
But the U.S.S. Liberty incident occurred long before the lobby wielded such immense power. The truth is that the U.S. government has simply lost control of the very creature it has nurtured and shielded for decades.
Blaming this dependency solely on campaign contributions no longer suffices: the rot is far deeper. It is driven by a deep-seated fear and trepidation among American politicians who have spent their entire careers learning that political survival requires absolute obedience to Tel Aviv.
This is precisely why Vance’s recent remarks are so critical. It proves that the armor of absolute impunity is cracking, and the language of genuine, systemic criticism of Israel has officially been normalized in mainstream political discourse.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a widely published and translated author, an internationally syndicated columnist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015), and was a non-resident scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB. Visit his website.
This article is from Z Network, is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Please Donate to
CN’s Summer
Fund Drive!
