Mitchell Plitnick
Mondoweiss / September 6, 2024
The desire for a ceasefire in the United States, certainly among Democrat voters, is clear. Yet, as the slaughter in Gaza enters its twelfth month, why does the US continue to act the way it does?
After long months and rivers of Palestinian blood in Gaza, the Western world is finally grasping the fact that the proposed ceasefire in Gaza is not taking hold because Israel’s government is preventing it.
The desire for a ceasefire in the United States, certainly among Democrat voters, is clear. If one is to believe President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and, to her discredit, even progressive leader Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the administration is working “around the clock” to secure one. Yet, as the slaughter in Gaza enters its twelfth month, the world’s only superpower appears helpless in the face of Israeli intransigence.
If that sounds absurd, it is. So why isn’t the U.S. stopping Israel, as it surely could simply by pausing the constant flow of weapons?
According to an interview with +972 Magazine, former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy’s answer is that the U.S. doesn’t want to stop the war because “it is their war, too.”
He’s right. Levy discusses both the Israel lobby and geopolitical forces that lead Washington to behave as it does. The interview bears unpacking if we are to fully grasp why the United States has acted as it has since Israel began its slaughter in Gaza.
Domestic political forces
While Republicans—who are targeted by pro-Israel propaganda as well—are predisposed to favoring Israel because their religious, right-wing, and often overtly racist views align well with Israel’s agenda, Democratic voters need more convincing.
Using spurious accusations of antisemitism and the influence of money drawn from both conservative Democrat and Republican donors, Israel’s defenders are attempting to counter the growing sympathy for Palestinians among Democratic voters.
As Levy put it, “Israel has largely lost the narrative, but don’t underestimate how much things can still be policed by the brutality of money and pro-Israel forces … The Anti-Defamation League is very important in the weaponization and instrumentalization of antisemitism and the criminalization of Palestinian freedom of expression.”
Israel, which once aspired to be seen as egalitarian, recognized years ago that this effort was incompatible with its reality as an ethno-state, built on the displacement and persecution of that territory’s inhabitants, and governed by a complex web of laws that amounted to apartheid.
Given the choice between changing the nature of that state, genuinely reckoning with its history and making amends to those it had wronged in its struggle to establish and maintain its state, and doubling down on its reliance on brute force to sustain a racist regime, Israel chose the latter. As such, its attempts to hold onto its appeal to Western liberals were doomed. Over the years, Israel has, therefore, moved away from such efforts and applied its brute force model with much greater intensity on university campuses, in courts, and in legislative bodies.
These activities smother legitimate debate, create an atmosphere of fear, and isolate and expose to attack those more radical speakers who decline to allow these tactics to silence their outrage at the genocide in Gaza and the escalating violence in the West Bank.
Yet for all those efforts, the money and weaponization of antisemitism do not wholly account for American policy. Those factors are most powerful in Congress, but they are less impactful (though not meaningless) with the Executive Branch.
American geo-strategic interests
As Levy said, Gaza is the United States’ war, hand in hand with Israel. It is not pursuing this genocide against its will, and it is not being dragged into it by Israel or its lobbyists.
It’s worth noting that every time Israel has pushed the region to the brink, where it would have taken just one more strike in Tehran or Beirut against the right target to spark a regional war, Israel has not taken advantage of the opportunity, even though it had brought the opportunity about.
It is also worth noting that the United States needs no lobbyist to engage in murderous wars where civilians are the primary targets. The thousands of drones launched by the administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the massive bombing and man-made famine in Yemen, and the destruction of Libya are just a few of the most recent examples. The massive interventions in Southeast Asia and Latin America of earlier years, whose effects are still profoundly felt, show the long-term dominance of this approach in American foreign policy.
Any effort to change American policy in the Middle East faces entrenched thinking. This can’t be entirely separated from pro-Israel advocacy; indeed, the two are completely intertwined. But looking only at the so-called “Lobby” misses important parts of the picture.
Levy touched on this in his interview, saying, “The Realist school of American national security thinking considers [the U.S.’ blind backing of Israel] to be a disaster for American interests and deeply damaging to America’s reputation…This has generated yet another global round of anger against America, because this is America’s war as well.”
Those that the Realists argue against include pro-Israel ideologues, as well as staid foreign policy thinkers who see the world through a binary lens that is an artifact of the Cold War. Those thinkers tend to favor Israel not out of passionate zeal but out of a view that deems it necessary to support allies against nationalist or independent movements.
This is where Palestine has been situated since the post-World War II period, whether the contesting forces were Communists, Arab nationalists, “Islamists,” or even broader movements like the Non-Aligned Movement or BRICS.
That sort of thinking, which divides the world into two competing blocs, is reflected in Joe Biden’s approach to foreign policy in general. This accounts for his turnaround from his campaign rhetoric in 2020 on Saudi Arabia, for example.
Biden may have a religious zeal about Israel but there is also a sense that, flowery rhetoric aside, movements for justice and human rights are only acceptable if they are in line with the aims of “our side.”
Refusing to adapt to a changing world
As the United States’ unipolar influence continues to wane, policymakers and those who influence them either adapt to a changing world or desperately cling to outdated strategies that become increasingly ineffective and even detrimental.
Adapting to new realities takes time, especially in a country with a huge policymaking bureaucracy like the United States. Changes in overall policy are not universal, but happen one policy at a time. Barack Obama, for example, saw the need to change the approach to best pursue U.S. interests.
Obama’s initial, naïve attempt to press for a final agreement to end Israel’s occupation through a settlement freeze was quickly rebuffed by the entrenched support for Israel in his own party. He then shifted to diminishing tensions with Iran with the long-term goal of bringing Iran into a stable, diplomatic relationship with American allies in the region. Despite massive pushback from the Saudis and Israelis—which Obama criminally dealt with in part by enabling both countries’ massive violence against Yemini and Palestinian people respectively—the plan seemed to be working until Donald Trump scrapped it.
Joe Biden has continued Trump’s policies rather than trying to return to Obama’s more effective, though far from human rights or justice-based approach. The result has been the genocide in Gaza, the increasing danger of a war with Iran, escalating Israeli aggression in the West Bank, and threats to shipping in the Red Sea. One need not be a Palestine advocate to see that this is detrimental to the world, including even to American imperial interests.
But not everyone agrees. The far right in Israel has always believed that the solution to all of their problems is military force. They have always objected harshly to other tactics, like an endless peace process. But now they have the opportunity to enact their preferred strategy and they’re pursuing it.
The United States has a similar group of foreign policy warmongers, though unlike in Israel it draws from liberal hawks and other militarist sectors as well as from the radical right. As in Israel, there is a debate about the tactics, though not about the ultimate goal: confronting Iran and undermining any Palestinian movement that seeks to establish a truly independent, self-determined national entity.
Those from the Realist school of international relations, as well as others who see the problems with the status quo, argue that our myopic support for Israel harms American interests. Yet the argument fails because, as Levy noted, “America says: yes, people have been telling us that for ages, and it doesn’t happen. America still thinks that it can absorb the cost it is paying.”
The loss of American credibility over its backing for Israel has reached new heights as the genocide in Gaza has continued, but, like Israel, the material effects we have felt have been well short of what it would take to change the minds of those who believe that opposing independent national movements and unconditional support for our allies is fundamental to American global power.
Other countries, including American allies, are not so closed-minded. Saudi Arabia has been working to maximize its benefits from the U.S. while simultaneously broadening its relationship with China and seeking its own accommodation with Iran.
While the Saudis’ reestablishing diplomatic relations with Iran has received considerable attention, they are not alone. Bahrain has also been working to improve its relationship with Iran. Iraq is becoming increasingly hostile to the ongoing American presence within its borders, and they have played a key role in bridging differences between the Arab world and Iran.
The BRICS organization has expanded to nine members, including Iran, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia has been invited to join as well. Eighteen other countries, including Turkiye, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Palestine, have applied to join.
The balance of global power is shifting, and, tragically, the effects of the old powers struggling to hold onto power include both a sharp rightward shift and a lot more violence against civilians.
While activists in the United States and Europe can only continue to press for change in their own government’s policies, it must be hoped that Palestinian leadership learns from the failures of the PLO and moves away from the futile hope that change can come from the U.S.
Levy is correct when he states “If I was designing a new peace effort today, I would do everything to break the American monopoly. That means that Palestinians have to fundamentally shift their thinking away from a U.S.- or Western-centricism, and have to use geopolitics to their advantage.”
This applies not only to the Palestinians but also to that small sector in Israel that wants to see fundamental change, including true equality for all. It is also a guidepost for strategies for all of us who are working to change American and European policy. Ultimately, the best thing we can do is get our governments out of the way. Their involvement has always done far more harm than good.
Mitchell Plitnick is the president of ReThinking Foreign Policy; he is the co-author, with Marc Lamont Hill, of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics
