By Walter E. Block
The Biden-Harris Administration has a goal for Israel: at all costs, avoid escalation. And when they say all costs, they mean exactly that: all costs. These costs include, even, the eventual total destruction of that country, Israel, itself. Hey, it is not their nation. They have proven, over and over again, that the prosperity, even the very survival of the Jewish state, is not one of their prime objectives.
To this end they have often urged, nay, threatened, that unless the Jewish state agrees to a pause with its enemies, to a cease fire, to a truce, to a treaty, there will be an end to US transfers of needed, and contracted for, military supplies.
In behalf of this goal there has been recent but constant shuttle diplomacy on the part of the United States, conducted by officers such as Antony Blinken. He and his colleagues have engaged in Monday morning quarterbacking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his staff in order to promote this vision of theirs: avoid escalation at all costs, even if it severely weakens the only civilized country in the Middle East.
Why this concern on the part of the President of the US? Part of it, undoubtedly, is due to entirely reasonable concerns to eliminate, at least reduce, devastation, to save lives, and is entirely praiseworthy. After all, if Russia, China, Turkey and who knows who all else gets involved in the hostilities in which Israel is now beset, there is no telling how many more people will perish. A nuclear World War III can certainly ruin your entire day.
On the other hand, Biden (or whoever else is now the real president of the United States, given his mental infirmities; it is certainly not Kamala Harris, who seems, now, to be on a permanent vacation) has just, wait for it, escalated the war between Russia and Ukraine. The US has armed the latter and given permission to use rockets far more damaging than the previous ones, and capable of reaching far further into the territory of the former.
If that is not escalation, then there is no such thing as escalation. Why the difference on the part of the US regarding these two very different theaters of war? Why bitterly oppose escalation in the Middle East, while not only welcoming it in Asia, but brazenly promoting, aiding and abetting it there?
One explanation is that Biden is anti-Semitic. He seeks for Israel to fight with one hand tied behind its back. His administration is at best a very fair weather friend of this country. That, not fear of escalation, is his motive for his continual sniping against and deprecating of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In this he follows his puppet master and mentor Barack Obama who was ever ready to give Bibi the back of his hand, poetically speaking of course.
What is the evidence for this contention? Why should we think that avoiding escalation is not his prime motive, rather that it is the hog-tying of Israel? It is his aforementioned policy in Ukraine, which constitutes escalation, personified.
Which is more likely to promote World War III with Russia (and, possibly, in tandem with its ally, China)? Directly attacking Russia via its proxy, Ukraine, or taking its foot off the neck of Israel in a war located many hundreds of miles away from Russia, where that country is at the very most only very peripherally involved?
Obviously, the former.
Which would the US take greater umbrage at? An attack by Brazil on Saint Louis, or an attack by Brazil on US ally Argentina? To ask this is to answer it.
Biden should butt out of the Middle East, Ukraine too for that matter, and focus, instead, on justifying his pardon of his son for some dozen felonies, after promising to do no such thing, something, perhaps, that given his diminished mental capacity, he can still fully understand.
To whomever is now the president of the United States: A little less hypocrisy, please.
Thank goodness for Russian foreign policy. Its leaders acted like statesmen in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. At the time, the US had ringed the Soviet Union with “weapons of mass destruction surrounding that country. When the USSR tried to return the favor by placing such military hardware in Cuba, the US went berserk. They placed a blockade around that island nation, which constituted an explicit act of war. Happily, for the preservation pretty much of the entire human race, the communists negotiated.
Something similar is now occurring regarding Ukraine, vis a vis Russia. When it agreed to the reunification of East and West Germany, it was on the basis an agreement on the part of NATO not to move eastward. The Cold War was then over. What should have occurred was the dissolution of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The latter occurred, the former moved east despite statement of Mr. Putin that this crosses any number of red lines.
One need not be an advocate of the Russian system of socialism to realize that when it comes to placing its troops abroad, that country has been far more peaceful than the US, with its some 800 military bases in foreign lands.
HI, Reader
Conned or not, Israel has been doing pretty well lately.
@Michael S
I haven’t noticed any attempts on anyone’s part of trying to please me, and I cannot understand why you take my comments personally.
If you took offense at my comment about not wanting to be conned, I want to make it clear that I meant only the politicians and the media but not you personally.
Reader,
You’re apparently an impossible person to please. Don’t take it out on me.
@Michael S.
Israel is not winning.
It is surviving for the time being.
Its victory will happen when Israel lives permanently in peace and security, and the Diaspora Jews move to the Promised Land in its largest Biblical borders, but this outcome is not in the interests of the “world community”.
Every time Israel is starting to win, it is made to stop to let its enemies regroup and rearm to keep the conflict permanent and to make the life of the country hell.
The same technique is applied when it looks like Russia starts winning – the calls for negotiations and ceasefires start.
There is also a constant push for the TSFS which is, in fact, an attempt to diminish Israel’s size permanently in order to prevent any more Jews from settling there, to surround it with a hostile terrorist Arab state and to cut it in half at the waist with a road or a tunnel so that the two sectors of the Arab state can stay connected to each other.
Those who want this to happen know that this will make Israel indefensible and doomed to destruction.
I am not looking for scapegoats, I just refuse to believe that the smartest and most experienced politicians in the world make their decisions based on some emotions suited to five-year-olds – Russia is bad, Ukraine is good, Israel is a bully abusing the poor (500 million) Arabs who desperately need a 24th Arab state on Israel’s Biblical territory.
I describe what I see and I don’t like to be conned.
Reader,
I don’t understand you. You’re looking around for scapegoats (Americans, Christians) when Israel is WINNING! Are you accusing us of maliciously causing you to win??
Odd.
Germany does the same thing:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/german-weapons-exports-to-israel-down-by-half-this-year-compared-to-2023/
Oh, and I forgot.
In both cases, the ongoing conflicts generate unending profits to the US (and to some extent, European) military-industrial complexes.
The US escalates in the Russia-Ukraine war and deescalates in Israel-Hamas/Hizballah, et al. war because it has to use different means to achieve destructive results in each of the two cases, not because of simple hypocrisy.
The destructive results serve a different goal in each case.
The goal in the Russia-Ukraine war is:
to create a long-term meat grinder at the front to deprive both countries of the largest number of its soldiers, to destroy Ukraine, bleed Russia of its resources, and to take over Ukraine – the US and Western politicians are already publicly stating their intent to use the resources of Ukraine, and their corporations are buying up Ukrainian land – if this takeover is successful, any number and types of weapons aimed at Russia will be positioned in Ukraine.
The goal in Israel vs. various terrorists war is:
to never let the Jewish state live in peace and security, not to mention prosperity, ideally resulting in the destruction of the Jewish state – this goal seems completely irrational – because it is.
The reason here is not economic but RELIGIOUS.
Without going into details (it would really help to read David Nirenberg’s book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition and to know some of the Jewish tradition to realize what has been going on), Israel living in peace and security within its Biblical borders quite simply means the END of Christianity – whose prophesies would then come true?
And this end would be quite embarrassing when the 2 billion Christians realize that they have been lied to and made to commit horrible crimes in the name of vicious lies for the last 2,000 years.
Of course, this cannot be allowed to happen, therefore, we have a ridiculous situation when a tiny country the size of the Chicago Metropolitan Area is treated as the cause of the unending bloody conflict in the Middle East and is made to suffer constant attacks on all its borders and inside the Green Line.
Peloni and Teed, I just posted a long comment here that has immediately disappeared. Please restore it to this comment space. The comment expressed my disagreement with Mr. Block view that Russian foreign policy over the years has been statesmanlike, and instead pointed out that most of the time it has been reckless and foolish, causing Russia far more harm than good.
Much of what Mr. Block says about hostility of American foreign policy makers, especially under the Biden-Blinken administration, is true.
However, his praise f Russian “statesmanship in international affairs is not true. Kruschev’s decision to pmove Soviet missiles to Cuba, amove that he either knew or should have known would terrify and infuriate the United States, was definitely not a statesmanlike decision. A terrible crisis was averted largely due to the skilled dpilomacy of American statesman, such JFK, RFK, Adlai Stervenson, then the United States Ambassidoir to the United States, and John Scali, the a journalist with White House connections, but soon to succeed Stevenson as U.S. Ambassidor to the United Nations, that defused the situation, by devising diplomatic formulas that allowed Russia to back off its provocative move,
At the beginning of the Soviet period, Lenin and Trotsky’s inflammatory calls for an immediate violent revolution in the rest of Europe only succeeded inUniting all the countries of Europe against them, both the former Entente powers and the former Central powers. The attempted revolutions in Germany and Hungary, and riots elsewhere, failed miserable, They led only to invasion of Soviet Russia, by a large coalition of “bourgeois” powers, and encouraged the fanatically anti-Bolshevik ‘White” Russians as well. Later, when future Soviet governments backed away from calls for armed revolt everywhere, and instead encouaged Communists and other leftists to form “United Fronts” in the Western democracies and work within the existing political systems to promote socialist policies. The Soviets did succeed in exerting some influence in the Western democracies and promoting quasi-socialist reforms.
But the reversion to a hardline, confrontational policy toward the West caused Soviet influence in the Western countries to collapse completely, and led to the “McCathyist” investigations, in which everyone believed to a Communist, ex-communist or just pro-Soviet was purged from any position of power and influence in the West. This contrasted with the considerable influence that the Soviets werer able to develop in the UNited State, and Brtain during the Roosevelt years, when many Communists and non-Communist :fellow travellers were able to “infliltrate the Federal civil service and exert some degree of influence, on American policy toward the Soviet union, and also promote quasi-socialist “New Deal” policies at home. During this period when Soviet Russia Union conducted a policy of raprochment with the West, they succeeded in influencing the West, in addition to promoting highly profitable trade with Western countries. However, when Stalin reversed these conciliatory policies and opted for confrontation with the West after World War II, including such rediculous, doomed -to-fail provovations as the Berlin Blockade of 1948. Soviet influence in the West largely collapsed.
Success in increSsing Soviet influence in the “Third World,” such as Cuba and African counties, partially compensated for these Soviet failures in the West. But when the Soviet Union fell in 1991, most of this influence was also lost to Russia.
More later/
Nobody is listening. On one hand, nobody wants to live under Russian rule. On the other, nobody wants to live under this existing US rule either.
We can only hope that Trump will straighten things out next year.
This needs to be said since all you hear from american media is lies