Israel and the U.S.: Partners in Permanent Aggression
Glen Ford
"Israel is taking measure of the incoming Obama administration's sensibilities to the spilling of Palestinian blood in the besieged enclave of Gaza."
"There is only one other nation whose appetite for violence is comparable to the United States: Israel."
Just before the U.S. elections, Senator Joe Biden shot off his mouth about the certainty that Barack Obama would be "tested" early in his presidency. "Watch," said the blathering vice-presidential candidate. "We're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy." Biden didn't predict where the test would come from.
Then, a week before Christmas, a senior Bush State Department official filled in the blanks. Obama's "mettle" would be tested by the Russians, over U.S. anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe.
The truth is, nobody on the planet wants to "test" any American president. Everyone knows the Americans are crazy, always looking for a fight, the "greatest purveyors of violence in the world," as Dr. Martin Luther King said back in 1967. There is only one other nation whose appetite for violence is comparable to the United States: Israel, America's junior partner in aggression.
It is Israel that is testing the limits of world tolerance for its 60-year war against the Palestinian people. More specifically, Israel is taking measure of the incoming Obama administration's sensibilities to the spilling of Palestinian blood in the besieged enclave of Gaza. Israel's aerial blitzkrieg and long-standing blockade of 1.5 million people is a crime against humanity for which its sponsor and champion, the United States, is equally guilty. But the Israeli leadership understands that complicity in crime must be constantly renewed, so that each party is reminded that its hands are also soaked in blood. The Israeli atrocity against Gaza serves as a ritual renewal of its special relationship with yet another U.S. administration.
"Both countries are under the permanent control of their respective war parties."
Not that Barack Obama's loyalties to Israel have ever been suspect. As a candidate, Obama went further than any U.S. president in recognizing Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem - a position that guarantees there can be no lasting piece in the region. Obama's right-hand man, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, is a born-and-bred Zionist who volunteered to work for the Israeli army during the 1991 Gulf War. And the Bush regime's Defense Department, a bastion of Israeli Likud Party warmongers, is about to be transformed into the Obama Defense Department, with few changes in personnel, including the guy at the top, Secretary Robert Gates, who is being retained.
Israel and the United States have a wartime alliance that never quits, since both nations are constantly at war. Both countries are under the permanent control of their respective war parties - although Israel gets the better part of the deal, since her domestic war party has also infiltrated both U.S. political parties.
Despite the deep ties that bind American and Israeli war criminals, the junior partner, Israel, seems to constantly need reassurance that the senior gangster, Washington, is a willing accomplice in the next bloodbath. Thus, the timing of the massacre in Gaza, ensuring that Obama - by deferring to Bush - enters office with blood on the soles of his shoes. He has passed the Israeli test.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .