PORTLAND - Most people have witnessed the unfolding Israeli horrors in Gaza. No sane human being could classify Israel’s war as self-defense. It is brutal carnage in real time. Israel has killed well over 40,000 Palestinians, including 30,000 women and children in Gaza, with many more likely buried under the rubble and thousands injured; it has denied food and basic medicine to suffering Palestinians who have had limbs amputated without anesthetic and who face imminent danger of starvation, cholera and polio; and it has displaced the entire population of Gaza several times over.

By any measure these are war crimes, if not genocide, pure and simple. The civilian casualties are unacceptable as confirmed by American generals such as Petraeus and by some politicians, even by President Biden, an avowed Zionist. While Gaza has witnessed the most visible terror inflicted on Palestinians, less reported is the slaughter, torture, displacement and imprisonment of Palestinians in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers, who are deemed illegal settlers by the United Nations, have been engaged in a government-sanctioned rampage of ethnic cleansing and torture.

All this in self-defense? All this to eradicate Hamas? Knowing full well that the idea behind Hamas cannot be eradicated by death and destruction? 

Israel’s atrocities have been enabled by the United States of America. American bombs, planes, intelligence, money and political support around the world, especially at the UN Security Council and, most egregious, threats to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. While America tries hard to distance itself with words from Israeli war crimes, it continues its multidimensional support of Israel with bombs and money and other aid to Israel, a country that is richer than France, while Americans at home suffer from lack of food, medicine and housing. As Israel blames all Gazans for October 7 to justify its “collective punishment,” we Americans must begin to look in the mirror and process the undeniable fact that America has been Israel’s enabler in chief and if collective punishment means anything, we Americans are guilty for not demanding a heavier dose of humanity from our presidents and lawmakers in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy toward Palestinians. 

The cherry on top of our national unadulterated homage to Israel was the recent invitation to its leader, Netanyahu, to address a joint session of the U.S. House and Senate, an honor that has been extended to him more times (4) than to any other foreign leader! Netanyahu is the person for whom the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is seeking an arrest warrant for war crimes. Netanyahu is also being pursued by South Africa for genocide at the International Court of Justice. Netanyahu’s address on July 24 was reportedly skipped by about 50 percent of Democrats, including some “stars” of the Senate and House on the Democratic side—former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray (Wash.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.), while Vice-President Harris excused herself due to a prior commitment. Numerous liberal lawmakers have criticized Israel’s Gaza war and called for Hamas to release Israeli hostages, yet there was invariably no mention of the thousands of Palestinians, with many hundreds since October 7, that have been jailed, most without even being charged with anything. While pro-Palestinian comments by U.S. lawmakers and government officials are okay, when it comes to critical votes authorizing weapons (including 2,000-pound bombs that kill indiscriminately and outlawed cluster munitions) and money for Israel, our lawmakers seem to be all in with Israel!

Netanyahu did not disappoint with an address peppered with lies. We gave him an international forum to criticize American lawmakers and demean ordinary Americans exercising their basic rights of protest. He proclaimed that Israel and America “must stand together,” as he lied about civilian deaths in Gaza and hoped we would forget Israel’s attack on USS Liberty in 1967 killing 34 American sailors and injuring another 171, Israel’s refusal to support us at the United Nations Security Council against Russia’s aggression or to supply Ukraine with emergency air defense systems that we requested. And yet in the aftermath of his speech, the Zionist lobby dared to attack the sitting Vice-President and presidential candidate of the United States for not attending the war criminal’s speech, that her absence “was not a way to treat an ally.” 

Netanyahu and his ilk are obsessed with Iran and will go to any length to bombard the American people and the rest of the West with outright lies to spark a U.S. war with Iran.

Netanyahu criticized his Democratic lawmaker critics in Washington and pro-Palestinian protesters across the U.S. He berated presidents of U.S. universities for allowing pro-Palestinian protests. He demeaned the thousands of protestors outside the Capitol and described them with a blanket of lies: “For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now, outside this building. Not that many, but they're there. And throughout this city. Well, I have a message for these protesters. When the tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair, are praising, promoting, and funding you, you have officially become Iran's useful idiots.” He tried to reassure the United States with his meaningless words “Our enemies are your enemies.” As the New York Times reported, “The speech by Israel’s leader was charged with symbolism, as the war in Gaza has divided lawmakers.” Palestinians and all Arabs would do well to remember that Iran, whose policies have been deservedly criticized on some levels, is still the country that stands up for Palestinians in words and in deeds along with its surrogates who are also part and parcel of Iran’s national defense, surrounded by American forces and hostile Arab nations. Words are all well and good but it is deeds that matter and America falls woefully short when it comes to supporting the legal and human rights of Palestinians. Even President Biden, during his Oval Office address in the aftermath of Netanyahu’s speech, made no mention of Palestinian deaths and prisoners held by Israel and in her statement Vice-President Harris rightly condemned anti-Semitism but had nothing to say about Islamophobia until her statement after meeting Netanyahu. How does America hope to attract Arabs, and more generally Muslims, with such an imbalance in its approach to the region?

Netanyahu portrayed the conflict as “a proxy fight with Iran that must be won at all costs” as he condemned protesters, and boldly proclaimed that Israel is fighting and making sure Iran does not get a nuclear bomb so that America is also safe. Yet he conveniently forgets that Iran and all Arab countries have proposed making the entire region a nuclear-free zone, something that Israel has long rejected in order to safeguard its more than 200 nuclear warheads which are a clear danger to the region and the world. He forgets that he attacked an Iranian consulate (considered Iranian territory under international law) killing a number of Iranians, including a senior general, hoping to spark a war between the United States and Iran. He forgets that Iran had warned the United States before undertaking its missile and drone barrage, wherein it used its least advanced munitions as a warning that Iran did not need nuclear bombs because its hundreds of ballistic missiles, more sophisticated than those fired, would reach everywhere in Israel in the case of an all-out war. He forgets that Israel assassinated Iranian scientists on Iranian soil and collaborated with the United States to assassinate Iran’s top military commander, Qassem Soleimani. Most importantly, he conveniently forgets that America’s irrational support for Israel not only does not make America safer but instead makes it less safe by manufacturing unnecessary enemies for the United States around the world.

The following day in the Oval Office, Netanyahu told President Biden: “From a proud Jewish Zionist to a proud Irish-American Zionist, I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the state of Israel.” 

Changing America’s Arab-Israeli policies to incorporate international legal consideration, justice and human rights, is an almost impossible road to contemplate anytime soon in the United States. As is well known, the Zionist-Jewish lobby is well financed and ruthlessly uses its funding to help elect national politicians who support Israel in every way. In this quest it has been extremely successful and as a result Israel gets almost everything it wants. It does not hurt Israel that the sitting U.S. president proudly proclaims that he is an avowed Zionist, that two of the three most important cabinet members (Secretary of State and Treasury) are Jewish and that there are nine Jewish senators among 100 while Jews make up about 2 percent of the U.S. population. Do our lawmakers put U.S. interests first? This is a serious question if you consider that our blind support for Israel isolates us from the rest of the world, needlessly manufactures enemies for us, undermines our credibility at the United Nations, saps our resources and divides us as a nation. Effective pressure inside the United States would have to come from donations to lawmakers who support a just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, to universities and contracts with U.S. companies, especially those in the media, who support Palestinian rights or at least are not pro-Israeli. This requires money and organization. Arabs and more generally Muslims in the United States have money but they are not united, are hopelessly disorganized and in the past could not have cared less about Palestinians. Building an effective counterweight to the Zionist-Jewish lobby would take much time, and time is not what we have as Palestinians are being butchered and Palestine is being ethnically cleansed. Realistically, it will be tough to near impossible to spark a radical change from inside the United States among Americans. 

This is a serious question if you consider that our blind support for Israel isolates us from the rest of the world, needlessly manufactures enemies for us, undermines our credibility at the United Nations, saps our resources and divides us as a nation.

Effective pressure on the United States would have to come from Arab and other Muslim countries. They have the means to change U.S. policies for the better—by recalling their ambassadors to Washington, severing diplomatic relations with the United States, closing U.S. bases in their countries, severing economic and financial ties to U.S. corporations and economic sanctions. But as with most politicians and rulers everywhere, they are selfish and act in their own personal interest so they are reluctant to offend and much less confront the most powerful nation on earth—the United States. Witness Saudi Arabia’s relations with President Trump and his family. After Trump ordered the U.S. embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (something that all past administrations had refused to do), thus recognizing a divided city as Israel’s capital, and recognizing Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights (something that the United States refuses to do in the matter of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea), what did Arabs do? In the face of these two unprecedented moves by President Trump, you would expect Arabs to close ranks and not reward Trump and his family. Not so! Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) overruled his own experts and awarded Jared Kushner a $2 billion lucrative private equity contract as soon as Trump lost the election and gave a $1 billion similar contract to Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury, Mnuchin. The Trump organization joined hands with a Saudi firm (something that MBS also had to okay) in a multi-billion resort development in Oman. Trump’s golf courses have benefitted to the tune of millions of dollars from the Saudi-backed Liv’s tournaments. The rulers of Saudi Arabia and the other rich Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) seem to care little about other Arabs, especially Palestinians, and pursue their own interests to shore up U.S. military and political support for their undemocratic rule from all sides.

While some Arab rulers may be indifferent to Palestinian suffering, the Arab streets are beginning to seethe at the shameless behavior of their rulers. 

Arabs and Muslims more generally profess the religion of Islam whose central message is “Justice” and yet most of their rulers are turning a blind eye toward the injustice imposed on fellow Arabs and Muslims in order to garner U.S. support for their rule. This state of affairs is at best unstable, if not explosive!

Recall that it took a simple street vendor’s self-immolation in Tunisia to spark the Arab Spring across North Africa and the Middle East. How much worse is the death of over 40,000 Palestinians on top of what we are sure to discover are thousands more buried under the rubble, tens of thousands injured and the wrongfully incarcerated multitudes? Besides the human toll, who will come up with the tens of billions of dollars to rebuild Gaza with homes, hospitals, schools and a viable economy?

Hopefully long before the ICC issues its arrest warrants, especially those for Netanyahu, and long before the ICJ case is resolved, surely a charismatic Arab or a Muslim of any race will galvanize Arab and Muslim populations around the world. The spark will be the moment we are allowed to see the full scale of the Israeli genocide. There will be so much pressure on Arab rulers to act, pressure from their own subjects and from other Muslim countries, such as Malaysia or Türkiye. When they act, the United States will be forced to change its relations with Israel and to treat it as any other ally, putting the ongoing and long-term interest of the United States first and foremost. This will happen. Of this I am sure. We saw a much more violent example of Arab resentment in the person of Osama bin Laden who objected to the presence of foreign troops in Saudi Arabia, the land of the Prophet Mohammad. Again, consider the carnage and destruction in Gaza and in the occupied West Bank, will its associated anger be less? It is only a matter of time. 

Netanyahu and his ilk are obsessed with Iran and will go to any length to bombard the American people and the rest of the West with outright lies to spark a U.S. war with Iran. Netanyahu and his allies want to annex all of Palestine and have only subservient allies in the region. The carnage of Palestinian lives is of little consequence to them. The United States should be clear-eyed about Israeli intentions and how they will affect U.S. standing in the Muslim world and around the globe.

Hossein Askari is emeritus professor of business and international affairs, George Washington University