When will the US gain ‘independence’ from Israel?
In a video recorded in 2001, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly said, "The main thing, first of all, is to hit them [Palestinians]. Not just one blow, but blows that are so painful that the price will be too heavy to be borne." Dismissing the possibility that the United States would be an obstacle to the perpetration of such gruesome crimes, he added, "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way."
When the above statement was first reported in various media outlets in 2010, Netanyahu's claim of Israeli influence over the US was met with disbelief and, in some quarters, with ridicule. Many thought it was inconceivable. How could Israel exercise such control over a country like the US?
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. More than a decade on, if we unpack the intricacies of US-Israel relations, we may not characterise Netanyahu's statements as hyperbolic or counterintuitive. Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear understand that the US-Israel relationship is asymmetrical and lopsided in favour of the latter's interests. Successive US governments have been acting against the stated values and principles of their country in order to offer unconditional support for inhuman Israeli policies against Palestinians. US governments—both Democratic and Republican—have been routinely ignoring their own human rights stance by using the veto power at the UN Security Council to protect the Israeli state from criticism of its gross violations of human rights and international laws.
The US's acquiescent submission to Israeli authorities has become more conspicuous, and the magnitude of its catastrophic consequences more evident, since early October 2023 when Israel launched its ongoing genocide against Palestinians. At the expense of its domestic and international interests as well as its global standing, the US has been providing Israel with economic incentives and military munitions, which the latter has been using to slaughter innocent Palestinian children, women, and men and to demolish educational institutions and other critical facilities—all designed to trigger a mass exodus of the surviving Palestinians from their land.
There are instances when the US government treated its own citizens' lives as less valuable than the interests of Israel.
In March 2003, Israelis went on their routine killing and demolition spree in the Palestinian town of Rafah. At that time, Rachel Corrie, the 23-year old US citizen and an alum of Evergreen State College in the state of Washington, was part of a team of peace activists who went to Palestine to prevent Israelis from bulldozing indigenous homes. On March 16, 2003, an Israeli bulldozer was approaching to flatten a house where a Palestinian pharmacist named Samir Nasrallah lived with his wife and three children. It "stood alone in a sea of sand and debris," as Israelis had levelled most other Palestinian houses in the area.
Rachel Corrie stood in the path of the bulldozer, urged the operator to stop, and acted as a human shield to protect the property. Her urgings fell on deaf ears. Manufactured by the US company Caterpillar, Inc, the bulldozer ran over Corrie, fracturing her skull, shattering her ribs, and puncturing her lungs; she was crushed to death on the spot. Later, an Israeli court acquitted the IDF soldier who "deliberately" ran the bulldozer over Corrie, and the US government didn't protest.
Emails that Rachel Corrie sent from Palestine before her death included the following:
"It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States… I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere."
I hope commentators who attempt to insult our intelligence by saying that the problem between Israel and Palestine started on October 7, 2023 take note of Rachel's words and consider the history of Palestine at least since the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
About 21 years after Rachel Corrie's death, 25-year-old US Air Force serviceman Aaron Bushnell couldn't take the mass murder that Israel has been committing in Palestine since October 7. On February 25, 2024, he walked to the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, "poured a flammable liquid atop his buzz-cut head, [and] lit himself on fire." Before immolating himself, Bushnell declared in a calm and clear voice:
"I'm about to engage in an extreme act of protest but, compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonisers, it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."
Perhaps in his righteous passion for justice, Bushnell's pure heart anticipated that his "extreme act" would bring the US government to its senses. Sadly, he was wrong. What's more, his statement didn't even receive adequate media coverage.
The seven World Central Kitchen aid workers that Israel killed in Gaza in April 2024 included a US citizen. Unsurprisingly, that didn't shake US loyalty to Israel.
For a very long time, the US has prided itself as a land of freedom, free speech, and freedom of movement. Unfortunately, acting in the interests of Israel, it has flouted such core principles.
Prof Ilan Pappé of the University of Exeter is a British-Israeli citizen of Jewish background. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) and a known critic of Israeli apartheid and genocidal policies. He was travelling from the UK to the US to deliver a talk in Michigan. Upon his arrival at Detroit airport on May 13, 2024, he was detained and questioned by security personnel for two hours about his views on Israel-Palestine issues. He was allowed to leave the airport only after the agents "copied the contents of his phone."
The US government regularly lectures the rest of the world on intellectual and political freedom and castigates other nations for their lack of free speech. It is very unfortunate that, guided by its loyalty to Israel, it let this incident take place. What's more, we are shocked to have seen university authorities in the US stifle free speech and crack down on peaceful demonstrations and encampments that students set up at campuses to promote justice for Palestinians.
All these suggest that (electoral) democracy is not the only system that is under attack in the US, and Donald Trump is not the only politician to blame. Authorities in the US are eroding long-established principles and values in order to support Israel's apartheid rule. This has harmed US reputation in the world and embarrassed its conscientious citizens. The extent to which the US has contravened its own principles and international laws to show allegiance to Israel does not suggest that it has acted independently.
It is time for the US to realise how it has subverted its own interests and prestige, and follow its own interests as a sovereign country. With students' encampments at US universities, the movement for US "independence" from Israel has started. The sooner it materialises, the better for the US and for the rest of the world. Importantly, the freedom of Palestine from Israeli occupation is dependent on US "independence" from Israel.
Md Mahmudul Hasan, PhD is professor of English at the International Islamic University Malaysia. He can be reached at mmhasan@iium.edu.my.
Views expressed in the article are the author's own.
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