Motasem A. Dalloul
Middle East Monitor / June 9, 2023
On Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)’s summit that the Iranian regime is the biggest danger facing Israel because it has repeatedly threatened to attack Israel and destroy it.
“We are clear-eyed about the many dangers that Israel faces in all of their forms. But there is no danger that Israel faces that is graver than the one posed by the Iranian regime,” Blinken said, pointing out that the Iranian regime “routinely threatens to wipe Israel off the map.”
He claimed that Iran “continues to provide weapons to terrorists and proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas, who reject Israel’s right to exist. It exports its aggression throughout – and even beyond – the region, including by arming Russian forces with drones that are being used to kill Ukrainian civilians and destroy its infrastructure. And in turn, Russia is providing sophisticated weaponry to Iran.”
It is clear that Blinken is carrying out the job of defender of Israel and justifier of its crimes very well. Seventy-five years after it was created on the blood of Palestinians, Israel still needs advocates and propagandists to defend it, justify its actions and whitewash its crimes.
But, why is the US so worried about the threats to wipe Israel off the map? And why does it never question who was wiped off the map to make way for the occupation state?
In its criticism of Iran’s alleged support of proxies in the region, America overlooks its actions around the world.
As a Palestinian and a son of a refugee, who was expelled along with his family from the coastal city of Al-Ramlah, I know about the massacres of the Zionist gangs which were carried out to wipe Palestine and the Palestinians off the map. My father told me how he walked about 60 kilometres with his brothers, sisters, father and paralyzed mother from Al-Ramlah to Gaza.
His family were torn apart as some had decided to flee the massacres being carried out by the Zionist gangs by heading to the West Bank, then to Jordan and elsewhere. He told me how much suffering and agony they experienced under the Zionist occupation and how they felt when they were being forced out of their homes.
My father’s family is one example of hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian families who suffered the same fate. They were all wiped off the map of historic Palestine and replaced with Zionists.
But these families are not mentioned in Blinken’s speech.
The US has a number of proxies ranging from rogue states, authoritarian regimes and terrorist groups that it helps to suppress freedoms, change cultures, steal natural resources or maintain free markets for US products.
The US claimed to be toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq because he possessed weapons of mass destruction, but it has become clear that these claims were false pretexts to justify attacking the oil rich state and put in place a proxy regime that keeps its eyes closed as its resources are stolen.
The US also supports the Egyptian regime led by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who came to power in a bloody military coup which ousted the country’s first-ever freely elected President Mohamed Morsi. Al-Sisi is the US proxy who is in power to ensure countries neighbouring Israel are ruled by those deemed to be its ‘friends’.
At the same time, the US has its proxies in Syria who are being used to fight Turkiye and maintain an environment which requires US troops to remain on the ground, all the while, it is stealing oil from the country. Links have also been made between the US and organizations it has previously classified as terrorists.
The US is playing the same politics as Iran, the difference is that Iran isn’t a global superpower and can be used as the local boogeyman that needs to be quashed to make the world a safer place. All the while, it is Israel that is damaging regional politics, killing people and breaking international law every day. While the US continues to support it and use it to its benefit.
Motasem A. Dalloul is Middle East Monitor’s correspondent in the Gaza Strip
