Name: 'Cut Aid Over Israeli Apartheid' Say Americans: Poll - Antiwar.com Original
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'Cut Aid Over Israeli Apartheid' Say Americans: Poll - Antiwar.com Original

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Israel’s American lobby has long categorically rejected assertions that Israelis or would ever become an apartheid regime. That position has become more difficultto maintain over time.Former President Jimmy Carter’s 2006 New York Times bestseller "Palestine:Peace Not Apartheid" argued that Israel’s construction of settlements andcontrol of occupied territories were the primary obstacles to a comprehensivepeace agreement in the Middle East. The word "apartheid" provokedan immediate firestorm within the U.S. . The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) even accused Carterof "engaging in anti-Semitism" in the book.In spring of 2014 Secretary of State John Kerry warned world leaders at aclosed-door Trilateral Commission meeting that if peace talks failed Israelwould become an apartheid state. Israel’s US lobby’s reaction was once againswift. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee ()that "any suggestion that Israel is, or is at risk of becoming, an apartheidstate is offensive and inappropriate." The ADL said Kerry’s remarks were"inappropriate."At the time, Kerry was pushing hard for a "two-state" solution asthe only viable remaining alternative for Middle East peace. Israel would eitherwind up being a unitary state with second class Palestinian citizens or a statethat no longer had the capacity "to be a Jewish state" Kerry claimed.AIPAC indignantly responded that "Israel is the lone stable democracy inthe Middle East and protects the rights of minorities regardless of ethnicityor religion."In 2018 Israel passed its controversial "nation-state law" statingthe "right to exercise national self-determination" in Israel was"unique to the Jewish people." It mandated Hebrew as the officiallanguage and established "Jewish settlement" as a national value.The Trump administration indulged nearly every Israeli policy initiative. Thisincluded silencing campus critics of Israel in the U.S., recognition of Israelisovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights, transferring the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem,claiming settlements were legal and a lopsided peace deal. Most of the policieswere .During the summer of 2020 as Israel made its moves towards formal annexationof West Bank territory, a dozen Democratic Party representatives signed on toa letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warning of U.S. foreign aid cutoffsif Israel proceeded. "Should the Israeli government continue down thispath, we will work to ensure non-recognition of annexed territories as wellas pursue legislation that conditions the $3.8 billion in U.S. military fundingto Israel to ensure that U.S. taxpayers are not supporting annexation in anyway." A plurality of Americans (37.3%) opposed US recognition of Israeli West Bank annexation.The 2020 letter referred to John Kerry’s earlier warning, saying it "wouldactively harm prospects for a future in which all Israelis and Palestinianscan live with full equality, human rights and dignity, and would lay the groundworkfor Israel becoming an apartheid state, as your predecessor John Kerry warnedin 2014."AIPAC again sharply rejected the apartheid label and threatened aid cut-off,saying it would threaten "the U.S.-Israel relationship in ways that woulddamage American interests, risk the security of Israel &amp; make a two-statesolution less likely." Per usual practice, AIPAC did not specify any quantifiableU.S. interests that were served in exchange for Israel’s position as the leadrecipient of US foreign aid.In January of 2021, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in theOccupied Territories, B’Tselem, issued a damning report titled "." B’Tselem is based in Jerusalem and documents human rightsviolations in Israel and Israeli-occupied territories. B’Tselem combats officialand news media denial of the existence of such violations and works to createa human rights culture in Israel. B’Tselem was founded in 1989 with the supportof ten Knesset members and a large group of Israeli lawyers, academics and medicalprofessionals.The documented evidence and conclusions in the B’Tselem report are compelling:Israel and the territories it occupies already form an apartheid regime. EastJerusalem and the West Bank have already been "annexed in practice."Palestinians, whether citizens of Israel or not, do not have the same rightsas Jewish Israeli citizens. Discrimination is observable and endemic. No matterwhere they live, Israel affords Palestinians "a different package of rights"than Jewish Israelis. The "two-state solution" if it ever was viable,is dead.While the report made a small splash in January, U.S. news media interest andfollow up quickly As is the norm, no mainstream U.S. pollster surveyed the American taxpayerswho subsidize Israel and whose government supports the regime commercially,diplomatically while lavishing secret intelligence and military support howthey viewed the situation.Between March 22-25 IRmep asked a representative sample of 2,194 American adultsthrough whether – given the B’Tselem report – Israel should be a leadingUS aid recipient. A 38.1 percent plurality said it should not. In fielding thequestion, the answer order was randomly reversed and the resultant sample biaswas 5.7 percent.A plurality of Americans appear to believe, unlike their government, that systemicdiscrimination witnessed by credible, local observers should have consequences.Grant F. Smith is the director of the Institute for Research: Middle EasternPolicy in Washington. IRmep and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairsare co-organizing the annualon April 17 and 24 with the theme ""&nbsp;

Israel’s American lobby has long categorically rejected assertions that Israelis or would ever become an apartheid regime. That position has become more difficultto maintain over time.Former President Jimmy Carter’s 2006 New York Times bestseller "Palestine:Peace Not Apartheid" argued that Israel’s construction of settlements andcontrol of occupied territories were the primary obstacles to a comprehensivepeace agreement in the Middle East. The word "apartheid" provokedan immediate firestorm within the U.S. . The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) even accused Carterof "engaging in anti-Semitism"...

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