XPost: or.politics, seattle.politics, edm.general
XPost: sac.politics
There should be little doubt in anyone’s mind that the “wag the dog” relationship between the United States and Israel has done terrible
damage to American institutions and constitutional liberties. The US
bipartisan unconditional support of the ongoing Israeli genocide of
the Palestinian people has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world
which now despises America’s corrupt political system and its
increasing bizarre and out of touch leadership. There were even
reports this past week that Washington and Tel Aviv have been
discussing shipping upwards of two million Palestinians to Sudan and
Somalia, two of the most violent places on earth, to permit the
development of Trump Gaza resort and the annexation of the rest of
historic Palestine by Israel.
To be sure, the cancer at the heart of the Israel-US relationship, if
one might even call it that, has been in place for a long time as
American politicians scrambled to get their share of Jewish
billionaire money in exchange for a carte blanche when it comes to
Israeli misbehavior. I recall how in May 2023, the newly appointed
Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy, spoke before
the Israeli Knesset. McCarthy made it a point to flatter his Israeli
hosts by emphasizing that traveling to Israel was his first foreign
trip as speaker, underlining the value of the relationship.
McCarthy was accompanied by the usual cast of congressional toadies
who flock to Israel during every recess. The group was bipartisan and
included the loathsome Steny Hoyer of Maryland who has made and even
led the groveling entourage more than twenty times. The
ambition-driven McCarthy, who has never been accused of having a great
deal of brain power, delivered a predictable speech that produced the
pro forma standing ovations from the audience, but I would call
attention to one part of it in particular where he said the following:
“This is the foundation of our special relationship: We are the only
two countries in history that were conceived in liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that we are all equal. Our values are your values.
Our heritage is your heritage. Our dreams are your dreams. America is
grateful for our friendship with Israel. We are a better nation
because of it. And we must never shy away from defending it… As long
as I am speaker, America will continue to support fully funding for
security assistance in Israel.”
Nearly every line in this part of the McCarthy speech is basically
either an out-and-out lie or a twisting of reality to such an extent
that it is incomprehensible, but it has served as the congressional
framework for the fleecing of the American people while also stripping
them of their liberties. In roughly the same time frame, the US based
Israel Lobby was separately working assiduously to criminalize any
criticism of Jewish collective behavior and/or of the state of Israel.
Nobody worked harder at the task than hyper-ambitious Florida Governor
and presidential aspirant whose groveling performance in bowing to
Jewish power and money during his own trip to Israel culminated in his
signing a new state law that inter alia exploits the “hate” mechanism
to criminalize nearly all criticism or even skepticism regarding
Israeli apartheid, of the co-called holocaust narrative, or of the
behavior of Jewish groups and individuals. At the signing, DeSantis
boasted how the legislation was very clearly about protecting Israel,
arguing that rejecting “Israel’s right to exist is antisemitism,”
which is the line that prevails among both Democratic and Republican politicians currently and which has also been copied by many other
state legislatures. Thirty-six other states in addition to Florida
have penalized anyone seeking to either boycott Israel or accept doing
so, sometimes to include denial of government jobs or benefits.
As it happens, during the past two weeks Donald Trump and his band of
Zionist stooges have finally hit rock bottom with their arrest and
threatened deportation of a student who had admittedly helped organize nonviolent campus demonstrations against the Israeli slaughter of the
Gazans. This was followed by threats directed by Trump against a
highly respected congressman who has been critical of a number of
issues involving both the administration’s foreign policy and
congress. At heart, both were and are First Amendment free speech
issues and both rely on a White House presumption that because it
names someone as a “threat” it has to provide no evidence that that is
actually the case. And there in the Israel exception rule in place
that allows the Jewish state to avoid any consequences for its
actions. Any and all “free speech” which is critical of or offensive
to the foreign nation to which most American politicians and much of
the fawning mainstream American media owe their primary allegiance
clearly is considered outside the pale of acceptable behavior, even
when supportive of every value and principle to which US governments
have hypocritically claimed to adhere.
Simultaneously, the government is pressuring America’s colleges and universities to stamp down hard on anyone who demonstrates in defense
of the Palestinians, using the DeSantis formulation that they are both antisemites and terrorism supporters. Columbia University is being
particularly hit hard and has had $400 million in federal research
funds blocked. The Trump administration has demanded that Columbia
make dramatic changes in student discipline and admissions before it
just might discuss lifting the cancellation of the money and has also
said the ultimatum was necessary because of what it described as
Columbia’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment. The
Trump Administration has demanded that the university formalize its
definition of antisemitism to include criticism of Israel and to place
the school’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
Department under “academic receivership,” the equivalent of constant
monitoring by the government. The university has rolled over,
responding by cutting lose a number of students involved in the
nonviolent demonstrations after suspending them and in some cases
expelling them. Interestingly, Jewish counter demonstrators who were responsible for most of the violence faced no punishment or sanctions
because, so the argument goes, it is all about antisemitism. Indeed,
to demonstrate its seriousness, the Department of Justice has
dispatched a Task Force to four American cities (New York, Chicago,
Boston, Los Angeles) to investigate the problem of antisemitism and
Palestinian protests.
The student who was arrested graduated with a Masters Degree from
Columbia in December of last year. He is Mahmoud Khalil a Palestinian
man married to an American woman who is reportedly eight months
pregnant. Khalil has legal permanent resident status in the US, the so
called “green card.” The Trump administration, without citing any
precedents or history of criminal behavior, has insisted that it can
hold Khalil without charging him and can do whatever it wants with
him, even though the only issue relating to him is that he was
exercising his free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the
US Constitution.
Last Monday, President Trump confirmed that “Khalil’s arrest and
attempted deportation are part of his administration’s effort to crack
down on ‘students at Columbia and other Universities across the
Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity’… This is the first arrest of many to come.” Khalil has been
shipped off to a federal prison in Louisiana one thousand miles from
his home in Manhattan, presumably to distance him from supporters in
New York, even though the government cannot produce any evidence that
he threatened anyone or committed a crime. On Wednesday, the
Department of Homeland Security released a document citing an alleged
provision in immigration law that gives the government authority to
deport anyone if “The Secretary of State has determined that [his/her]
presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse
foreign policy consequences for the United States.” What those
“consequences” might be in the case of Khalil was not described and
should be considered challengeable by the defense lawyers.
The congressman who is being pressured is Tom Massie from Kentucky. He
is considering running for the state’s soon to be vacated Senate seat,
but Trump has called for him to “primaried” by the Republican Party so
he will not even receive the nomination. Also, the Republican Jewish
Coalition has pledged “unlimited spending to block Massie” if he
decides to run. Massie is among the most consistent opponents of
legislation to support Israel and to criminalize so-called
antisemitism in the House, so the prospect of his running “is already generating fierce opposition from the local and national Jewish
community.” Massie is best known in some circles for maintaining
during an interview on Tucker Carlson’s program that he is the only
Congressman who doesn’t have “an AIPAC guy” on his staff that serves
as an Israel Lobby “babysitter.” Massie also opposes having members of
Congress who are secret “dual nationals,” which would presumably would
impact most on Jewish American legislators who also hold Israeli
citizenship. Massie is highly respected in both conservative and
libertarian circles and is consistently antiwar and also a critic of
corruption and overspending on the part of the federal government.
That is what passes for malevolent behavior these days.
If the Trump Administration, working hand-in-hand with the Israeli
government and the US Israel Lobby, can get away with the trashing of
the US Constitution’s most fundamental freedom that of free speech,
there will be “hell to pay,” to employ Donald’s favorite metaphor.
Once the principle is established that the head of state can do no
wrong even when what is being done is visibly suicidal, the United
States that we Americans now living once knew will be gone forever.
And the tragedy is compounded as it will have largely come about in
unnecessary service to a tiny racist nation that is manifestly and
quite openly the most evil place on earth.
https://cnionline.org/the-death-of-free-speech-in-america/
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