There is no lesser evil in U.S. politics when it comes to Israel and Palestine

This is a bad year for the politics of expedience & lesser evilism if you’re a supporter of BDS & Palestinian justice. There isn’t a single candidate to vote for that doesn’t wholeheartedly support Israel. Yet you see progressives all over the place, including those who think they’re honchos on the left, endorsing Bernie Sanders & Jill Stein. And now Hillary Clinton has come out with a full-fledged promissory note that she will stand with Israel, oppose BDS, & go to the mat denying Israel is an apartheid regime in return for big bucks from billionaire Zionists.

Peddling influence is the least of her problems. For anyone who did their homework, that’s how Obama operated also. And all the jamokes before him. That’s the way US politics work. It’s a rigged system favoring millionaires & corporations. This should be where that “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” stuff kicks in but it takes some longer to wean from desperate hope springing eternal that a rigged system can be gamed.

The problem isn’t taking money from Zionists; the problem is Clinton’s support for Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing. The role Israel plays as a US military fortress is so fundamental to US control of the Middle East that she doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the Democratic nomination unless she tows the line. She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the welfare of Jews; not a whit more than she cares about defending Palestinians against dispossession & carpet bombing.

Let’s be frank: if you want to separate the wheat from the chaff among political candidates, Israel & Palestine are the touchstone because of the role Israel plays in enforcing neoliberal predation & the role Palestinians play in the historic struggle against it. All else is blither. Because if Clinton, Sanders, & Stein (& lord knows who else) won’t draw the line at apartheid in Israel, they will acknowledge no barriers to injustice anywhere.

Leave a Reply