Wherever he turned in the Middle East, the U.S. secretary of state was met by opposition, reports Joe Lauria.
Antony Blinken in July. (Office of U.S. Department of State Spokesperson Matthew Miller/Wikimedia Commons)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has ended his four-day excursion to the Middle East where he was publicly rebuffed by Israel, schooled by Egypt and Jordan and protested in Turkey.
Blinken will arrive back in the United States where hundreds of thousands of Americans, including many Democratic Party voters, are in the streets eviscerating the Biden Administration for its role in genocide.
He returns to a State Department where one official resigned over the administration’s unconditional support for Israel, and a second Department employee accused Joe Biden on social media of being “complicit in genocide.”
Arab-American voters of Blinken’s party, who helped Joe Biden win the White House in 2020 by delivering him the swing state of Michigan, are openly rebelling this time because they see on their screens what anyone with a half a heart is seeing and they know Biden’s part in it.
He is ahead of Donald Trump in only one of six swing states, according to a new New York Times and Siena College poll. The level of barbarity being unleashed by the rabid, rightwing regime in Tel Aviv has taken Blinken and Biden aback, if only because of the political consequences.
U.S. officials are so used to automatically backing Israel, that they’re having a hard time coming to terms with what it is exactly that they are backing this time. But it’s starting to sink in. If there are embers of a human conscience left in Biden and Blinken they are not unmoved. Lacking normal human reactions, they clearly don’t know what to do other than what they’ve always done: back Israel to the hilt despite what their eyes tell them.
The political calculus is muddied because of the unmistakable power of the Israel lobby to destroy American political careers by “primarying” a candidate or backing a general election opponent. This adds to Biden’s dilemma.
Caitlin Johnstone, in a column republished in Consortium News today comments on a Washington Post article, which says:
“As Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza escalates, the Biden administration finds itself in a precarious position: Administration officials say Israel’s counterattack against Hamas has been too severe, too costly in civilian casualties, and lacking a coherent endgame, but they are unable to exert significant influence on America’s closest ally in the Middle East to change its course. …
With every missile unleashed on Gaza, with every killing of a Palestinian child – and Israel has killed in this war more children than all global conflicts did since 2019 – the whole region is sinking in a sea of hatred that will define generations to come. ”
Given that Washington is Israel’s military underwriter and the White House has asked Congress for another $14 billion for Israel in the midst of its atrocities, Johnstone remarks, “The Biden administration does in fact have tons of leverage it can use to stop the genocidal massacre in Gaza, it just doesn’t want to because it would be ‘politically unpopular’ and because ‘Biden himself has a personal attachment to Israel.'”
Humiliated by Netanyahu
Blinken meets Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on Friday. (Israeli Government Press Office)
Blinken flew to Israel on Friday to press Benjamin Netanyahu to accept what the U.S. had just days earlier vetoed at the U.N. Security Council: humanitarian pauses to get aid into Gaza and foreign nationals out. It’s a little like stopping the torturer for a minute to give the victim a sip of water before encouraging the torture to resume.
The fact that the administration is now pushing these pauses — instead of a ceasefire — where before they exercised their veto against them — not a light matter — shows what a quandary it is in and how desperate it is to find a way out.
The unsophisticated Blinken is no match for a world-class Machiavellian like Benjamin Netanyahu. Still, he had to meet Blinken because after all there’s $14 billion on the table. Pulling that money back would be a major setback for Netanyahu and relief for the Gazans. So he patted Blinken on the head and said thanks for coming, but no thanks to your pauses.
Blinken had to make a statement to the press alone when normally he would be standing next to the leader he’d just met. But Netanyahu was too busy. He has a cleansing operation to run.
Afterward Netanyahu appeared alone in blackshirt to say no to humanitarian pauses, no to fuel, no to everything going into Gaza but death.
Netanyahu at the Ramon Air Force Base on Sunday: “There will be no ceasefire without the return of the hostages. We say this to our friends and to our enemies. We will continue until we defeat them.” (Israeli Government Press Office)
Lectured by Egypt & Jordan
Next it was off to Amman where Blinken was totally outmatched by the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt, who schooled him on the massive crimes Israel is committing around the clock. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi talked about “the importance of abidance” to
“international humanitarian law … and the rejection of the displacement of Palestinians, of their land. … We consider that this is a war crime that we will stop with all our strength. … The killing must stop, and also Israeli immunity from committing war crimes must stop. … How can we even entertain what will happen in Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left after this war is done? Are we going to be talking about a wasteland? Are we going to be talking about a whole population reduced to refugees?”
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry could not have been blunter when he said, with Blinken in the room:
“The collective punishment – Israel targeting innocent civilians and facilities, medical facilities, paramedics, in addition to trying to force migration for Palestinians to leave their lands – this cannot be a legitimate self-defense at all. … I would like to ask for an immediate and intensive ceasefire in Gaza without any condition, and that Israel would stop … its violations of international law and the laws of war.”
There is a severe disconnect in Blinken’s thinking, when he says, “We believe pauses can be a critical mechanism for protecting civilians, for getting aid in, for getting foreign nationals out, while still enabling Israel to achieve its objective: defeat Hamas.”
Does he not get that Israel’s objective is the destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza en route to defeating Hamas?
Completely unaware of where he was or who he was appearing with, Blinken thought out loud, justifying the monstrous Israeli policy of bombing civilian targets like hospitals because of an alleged Hamas presence and their use of “human shields.”
Tamer Smadi of Al Jazeera asked Blinken: “What are the results that Israel has achieved, and what is the number of victims exactly, of civilians, that would make the United States to stop and think and look at this most open massacre and to ask Israel decisively to stop this bloodshed in the Gaza Strip?”
All but explicitly justifying Israel’s war crimes, Blinken answered:
“Hamas cynically, monstrously embeds itself in the midst of civilians; puts its fighters, its commanders, its weapons, its ammunition, command and control in residential buildings, under schools and in schools, under hospitals and in hospitals, under mosques and in mosques – monstrous.”
Getting Stuffed in Turkey
?NATO base at ?? Incirlik, #Turkyie used for ??UK-??US-??EU-armed #GazaGenocide
stormed by protestors.Context: https://t.co/Sfw6bEZfPh pic.twitter.com/b9XzfhmSZv
— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) November 5, 2023
After an unexpected detour to Baghdad, Blinken flew to Ankara, where just a week earlier President Recep Tayyip Erdogan led a rally of nearly a million people at the airport, which roundly condemned Israel.
Two days before Blinken’s arrival, Erdogan embarrassed him by recalling Turkey’s ambassador from Israel. (Of course he won’t cut off 40 percent of Israel’s oil supplies that pass through Turkey). Blinken came to the Turkish capital but Erdogan didn’t have time to meet him. Turkey is demanding a ceasefire and isn’t buying Blinken’s belated pauses appeal.
Before Blinken’s meeting with the Turkish foreign minister, Turkish police had to use tear gas and water cannon to stop hundreds of protestors from storming the Incirlik air base, which houses U.S. troops. About 1,000 protestors also demonstrated outside the U.S. embassy in Ankara.
It was a weekend that should seize minds in Washington.
As Blinken said in Amman,
“When I see a Palestinian boy or girl pulled from the wreckage of a building, it hits me in the gut just as it hits everyone’s gut, and I see my own children in their faces. And as human beings, how can any of us not feel the same way?”
Then act on it. Stop Israel.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe
I recommend that people read “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” a book by John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, Professor of International Relations at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. It has been updated to include recent events, and gives insight into this powerful lobby group. Also, I would direct the attention of Americans to the “Hannibal Directive,” which was Israeli government policy (supposedly rescinded), which states that if a member of the Israeli army, or any civilian, is captured by Hamas, or Hezbollah, that complete force would be used, even if it meant the death of the Israeli military. Its objective was crystal clear: prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers by enemy forces at all costs, even if it meant placing the captive’s life in jeopardy.
The stakes were high, and the message was unequivocal — the IDF would not negotiate, nor would they allow their soldiers to be used as bargaining chips.
Several articles outline how this policy was used: hxxps://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/11/3/whats-the-hannibal-directive-a-former-israeli-soldier-tells-all
hxxps://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/hannibal-directive-did-israel-kill-its-own-15574953
hxxps://plateforme-palestine.org/The-Hannibal-Directive-A-Recipe-for-War-Crimes
There is also a YouTube documentary about this controversial policy, which you can access by typing “Hannibal Directive” in the search bar.
All these foreign officials know that Blinken is the step-son of a good friend of Robert Maxwell, the Mossad spy and father of Ghislaine Maxwell, the hands-on manager of Jeffrey Epstein’s Mossad pedophile sex blackmail operation, directed at VIPs in government, media, and academia. Which makes America’s Secretary of State just 3 degrees of separation from a Mossad blackmail operation.
As someone who took an oath to defend the US Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic, I find myself wondering of Antony Blinken is an Israeli agent. Many will consider this an impolite question, but it appears to me he is acting more in Israel’s interest than America’s. And upon reflection, I would ask the same question about his chief deputy Victoria Nuland, and Biden’s national security advisor Jacob Sullivan.
America is in dire straights, and it seems to me much of it comes directly from the policies pushed by these neocon Zionists.
No matter how luxurious the car you drive, you’re doomed if the brakes don’t work.
Everyone’s blaming Blinken and Biden for Israel’s over-response while there are Republican US representatives saying that Israel ought to just bulldoze the Gaza strip into the ocean. If tRump were in power, how much better do the liberals abandoning Biden think it would be for the Palestinians?
The ol’ “lesser of two evils” argument, eh? Joe Biden, or whoever is left of Joe Biden’s mind that is being directed by Blinken, Nuland, etc, is a neoliberal neocon supporter of global war and US “full spectrum dominance” hegemony. If Trump were president, Israel policy would be the same, but he might put his finger in the wind and decide not to foment a regional or global conflict, which the current Administration seems to welcome.
I suggest you look up the concept of “the more effective evil” …
How much better? Well, it couldn’t get much worse for the Palestinians, could it? I mean, what are you asking – whether it would be better to be discovered by Allied soldiers in a pit, or whether it would be better to be dug up and hidden by the same people who killed you in the first place? Blaming the idiot Blinken and the codger Biden for the Israeli “over-response” is actually the correct response. We possess the purse strings on the continued destruction of Palestine. It isn’t a political contest. It’s a genocide in which we pay the tab. The two-party system in the US is actually a one-party system of complete control over what actually happens in our interactions with the world at large. When the bombs you buy fall, you are responsible for the actions of those dropping them. That would be us, by the way.
STOP ALL LOBBYING by anyone. Bring Netanyahu to the world court for crimes against humanity. We have let Israel get away with so much. Any other country would have had funding stopped long ago for the same or less infractions. Now that the good citizens of Israel can see what their govt is doing maybe they will vote accordingly and get rid of this far right extreme bunch of savaages. Netanyahus intent has always been obvious to me.
No one who cares about the Palestinians will change their vote from Biden to Trump. Trump has a history with Israel…lovey dovey. A total sucker for Israel. However, I can see liberal Jews changing to Trump due to that….just because he’s SO Pro Anything Israel does is Great! Crimes against a whole population? No problema.
By our silence in this mass murder we are every bit complicit, especially as these “Made in the USA” contraptions for mass death are dropped from the skies onto the civilians of Gaza.
Mr Blinken reminds me of nothing but a soulless ghoul, his impassive ‘eyes that swallow the light’-technocratic countenance reflects an inability to meaningfully emote, as if he really cannot feel something like any kind of remorse in the light of what the Joe Biden administration is aiding and abetting. This, even as his counterpart Adm (really?) John Kirby emotes and squeezes out crocodile tears that even Glenn Beck couldn’t pull off w/o Vicks VapoRub. What is this? Some kind of “bad cop-good cop” act? As they perpetrate and participate in heinous WAR CRIMES! “I was only following orders…”
These people, these administrators of government policy for both Israel and the U.S., are stealing from us, sapping the higher, elementally civilized meaning of lives well-spent, attacking as a malevolent cancer eating away at “the better angels of our nature” cultural norms and values still (tenuously for many) held. A sick furtherance of attrition of previously-held standards that said to good men and women at a certain point: “No more. This is too much!”
We’ve already lost so much to these same thieves after 9-11: “We tortured some folks.” FFS! So many found that acceptable!
And now, today, this is how the larger and longer fall from grace takes place in a rapidly deteriorating society.
Bit by bit, with every innocent Palestinian life they imperiously snuff out, we diminish. It’s our own morality and sense of justice under assault by these most pernicious soul-sucking sorts. And it’s the theft of our mutual humanity and our love for one another, the most paramount of survival mechanisms, our reason for being—that recedes inevitably as the days go by and the ‘normalization’ and consequent apathy assert their heedless and amoral presence. And you can bet there are professional number crunchers in diverse fields keeping score, highly-attuned to the public pulse, testing of just how far they can go. This time.
You can also bet there will be a next time, if we make it through this one. Taking it to the limit… one more time.
Biden and Blinken, and the whole body of the American government are guilty of the Murder of a Nation. There is no excuse for them, they know what they are doing.
Tearful Blinken: “When I see a Palestinian boy or girl pulled from the wreckage of a building, it hits me in the gut just as it hits everyone’s gut, …”
Lauria: “Then act on it. Stop Israel. ”
A crocodile acting on his tears. That would be a first.
In Joe Lauria’s article, what stood out for me was when he was talking about all the acts of Erdogan’s opposition to what Israel is doing in Gaza, but then in parentheses, ” [ Of course he { Erdogan } won’t cut off 40% of Israels oil supplies that pass through Turkey. ] Can anyone explain this to me: If Erdogan is so opposed to what Israel is doing in Gaza why can’t he cut off Israel’s oil supplies that flow through Turkey? Am I naive? Someone please explain this to me.
In the US there are two political parties and one choice; war.
Even before he was elected, I knew that the Biden administration was going to be bad… very bad. But I didn’t realize that they could be possibly the worst administration of my lifetime (My first presidential vote was for Jimmy Carter). The Biden gang came into office claiming that “diplomacy was back!”. We should have known right then that meant the exact opposite, that diplomacy was out the window. Even Trump did more diplomacy (e.g., North Korea) than Biden/Blinken/Sullivan/Nuland have. There is zero diplomacy, and lots of sabre rattling and war. I can’t wait until these psychopaths are in the dustbin of history (though we will continue to suffer for their arrogance for decades to come, I’m sure).
I’ve been reading up on Mr. Blinken on Wikipedia. I hadn’t been aware that, “(Anthony Blinken) advocated for the 2003 Iraq invasion while serving as the democratic staff director at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.” Well, 2003 was a different era, and as horrendous as the slaughter of IRAQI children was under G.H.W. Bush, Clinton and W, Bush, there were no smart phones back then, and CNN et al didn’t show much in the way of the atrocities carried out in the name of the American people vs. Iraq. Cell phone cameras were relatively poor back then, and most western journalists in Iraq were complicit by virtue of being “embedded.”
Only a few heroes like Bradley/Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange were eventually able to get through the media blackout, and call to the world’s attention the genocide being inflicted by the US and it’s often-reluctant “coalition partners.”
That won’t fly anymore. The US/Israel Axis can no longer hide the slaughter it’s committing, so a few top villains, Mr. Blinken included, cry crocodile tears while doing their utmost to maintain the vicious status quo.
But at least we’re seeing a few signs of hope – port workers here refusing to load the ships carrying more implements of death and destruction to Israel, massive demonstrations over there, in Europe and the Muslim World – even in Grand Central Station -screaming: “STOP KILLING PALESTINIAN CHILDREN!” and “NOT IN MY NAME!”
I just hope we, the people who even care about this, who are even AWARE of this, can make a real difference this time. I live in small town America, and I know whereof I speak; there’s a horrible disconnect here. Too many folks around here, especially the sordid Trumpers who proliferate, eagerly support the bombing. Perhaps most disgustingly, the vast majority of Biden supporters are either zealous “My Israel Right Or Wrong” types or just downright ignorant/apathetic.
Let’s all do what we can to intensify the pressure. Write your local newspapers, even call your complicit congressional reps… yet again!
As I have pointed out before, Blinken is a moron. He is only there to fulfill the role of a diplomat in a situation (all situations in fact) where there will be no diplomacy. He thought it would be an easy job with excessive pay and influence – but just like with Clinton, the job held no guarantees except blowback from the stupidity of your policies (taken care of by the corporate media) and the evil propagated by your own decisions against people who can’t fight back. I mean, look at the picture of him meeting with little Bibi – they both look like Muppets in a bad sketch on Saturday Night Live. When you’ve been told that being the bully is okay and that your military/industrial complex owners expect it, you don’t know what to do when being a human is the only option to choose going forward.
Another crisp and timely piece by Lauria on how the blinking Blinken is being schooled in the Middle East while the poor mostly innocent Palestinians are being mowed down. No use, under the DemocRATs U.S. foreign policy is effectively being over ruined by pure jerks who are nothing but biological zombies thriving by depressing and befooling the American masses. The nut Netanyahu has the nuts of American elites in his tight grasp; the challenge for the American masses is to free those sickening nuts from his grasp first !
American women were murdered in what is known as Israel—and per Blinken, “There was nothing he could do.”
Yes, there was something you could do—-YOUR JOB—but then I think that Blinken thinks that Israel is his job…even though it should be America
Israel controls our elections by purchasing candidates. The inhumane behavior by Israel will not be stopped by American leaders. It will take a coalition of nations which care enough about Gaza to save the remainder of the Palestinians. As far as Israel is concerned they are just mowing the lawn and lack the empathy required to help any other peoples.
I agree.
I agree. But, do listen to Chris Hedges on the Marc Steiner Show podcast re: Gaza and his predictions about its future. He is clearly saddened, exhausted, and despairing, but, realistic.
The Blinker’s quote about Hamas using human shields is an interesting and well-worn one and deserves evisceration. Basically, what they are saying is that we have to bomb a hospital or school or refugee camp full of innocent women and children and men because a few people we want to kill/capture are nearby.
Does this make sense in any other field of police and military work? Where does this kind of “argument” stop? I mean, Israel could completely eliminate Hamas by dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza (and some Israelis in govt have said they should). Isn’t this just an extension of the argument that Israel and the Blinker are using?
I’m reminded of the great Fr Daniel Berrigan:
“Can any of you place before you a single child, smiling squirming in your arms; and say the death of this child is a fact of modern war; I accede to that death. I regret it of course; but what can one do? We have to destroy in order to save; villages, women, children. The system traps us all . . .
The system; horrible word! Can the system trap the conscience of a free man? Traps are for animals; freedom is for men. I cannot speak for you but I will not wait upon Caesar to instruct me in God’s word. I am a man. I can read:
If a man will save his life, let him lose it.
If a man will save his life, let him lose it.
I say to you, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.
Whatever you do to the least of these my brothers, you do to me.
Blessed are you who suffer persecution for justice’s sake… “
We and all our allies minus France and Germany supported an illegal war against Iraq and everyone in NATO against Afghanistan for what could be more attributed to our CIA support of mujaheddin from all over the Middle East than Afghans themselves. So our humanitarian example is ruined.
Add to that the reports on Global Research that natural gas deposits off share of Gaza may be a contributing factor. After all our war against Russian gas lines means gas lines from the Mediterranean would be cheaper for Europe than LNG which is in high demand too in other areas.
As for wars going back to Roman era creating a religion of world antisemitism may be contributing factor over millennia. Wars of high technology highly expensive warfare increasingly against civilian populations for profits and prophets is one of the existential threats to human civilization among may others in this new age. 20th century logic is immoral and illogical.
Blinken is humiliated? Gee, it’s about time, couldn’t happen to a nicer guy …
That’s what happens when you choose a puffed up lightweight, thinking he can swing it around, as the spokesman for the “indispensable nation” – when he mixes it up with those clearly his superiors ….
Is it gonna hurt Biden in the election who knows – but it doesn’t really matter because Trump is just as bad re Palestinians – so when are we gonna wake up, get behind, and choose someone who will stop all this warring s**t
We don’t know who the powers behind our elected officials are, they must be the same powerful people controlling the US and the EU, NATO, and international institutions like the UN and the ICC and others as well as the think tanks and the so-called free press. How else could there be such silence in the face of the war crimes, and the killing of a nation, that the whole world knows about but the leaders of the Western powers are silent?
That’s why I’m voting for the only HUMANE, smart candidate: Cornel WEST!
I agree. I don’t agree with Cornell West on 100% of what he says but there is no lesser of two evils between Biden and Trump
furthermore, Robert Kennedy Jr. disqualified himself when he opened his mouth about Israel. Max Blumenthal says write in ” a watermelon ” which is the colors of the Palestinian flag and 0thers say don’t vote for president, just vote locally. Unless anything changes, I’ll vote for Cornell West.
?
Excellent summary of a? embarrassing representation of US diplomatic incompetence by Joe Lauria!
As Usual,
EA
Have there been any leaks of reporting on the US State Department’s “dissent channel”? I recall reading that there are many strong dissenters sending strong messages there, and US may cancel the channel it’s so bad. We need a Wikileaks intervention!
Each day, the most influential Australian print media publishes, ad nauseam, the number of Israelis killed on 7 October. It does not publish any details of the carnage in Gaza other than an occasional picture of an injured child and images of destroyed buildings, always balanced by a picture of Israelis attending the funeral of a 7 October victim. Those who rely solely on the print media (and broadcast media for that matter) would conclude that the Israeli bombardment of Gaza is a clinical operation resulting in few casualties.
The real humiliation came when Biden visited Israel AFTER the hospital bombing (prompting Arab governments to cancel Biden visits) –
Instead, Biden should have turned Air Force One around in flight and came home. Instead, Biden met w/Bibi the baby killer and he green lighted genocide (and became Bibi’s bitch).
He’s got his own SecState airplane which is a Boeing 757 I believe.
It is refreshing to see some of the lesser powers make symbolic and rhetorical snubs toward the empire and the rather pathetic Blinken.
To back up these gestures, Turkey could withdraw from NATO, and ask all US military to leave the country. Jordan, KSA, and the Gulf states could do the same: close down the US bases and ask all US military to leave. That would cause an international shock wave.
I don’t see how there can be peace in the Middle East as long as the US maintains such a large military presence in the area. Yes, Turkey telling the US to get out would be good. Better would be Saudi Arabia to do the same. According to Wikipedia, the US has 2,700 military personnel at 5 locations in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi’s apparently agreed to the arrangement as a form of protection against their “enemies” in the ME, but US presence seems at this point to cause more problems rather than resolving problems. I’m convinced that for at least the last 30 years the unofficial US policy in the ME is create turmoil, chaos, distrust, and war in the region. All benefit the MIC and the MIC has undue influence over our State Department and CIA. Like a fox is living in the hen house.
But that is wishful thinking. Will Turkey Quit NATO? No one has replied to my question that if 40% of Israel’s oil passes through Turkey, why doesn’t Turkey shut it off. So their opposition to Israel’s bombing of Gaza is words only. The Turkish police still protected the American base in Turkey from Turkish protesters with water cannon. Brian Berletic on The New Atlas, his show on youtube, says that we should see the world as it really is, not as we wish it were. He also gives an analysis of Hamas and its history that is quite realistic. I listen to Scott Ritter, the Grayzone, Chris Hedges, Garland Nixon, Andrei Martyanov, RT and read Indian Punchline and Consortiumnews, plus others. I’m for a Palestine, ideally that is one secular state, with the right of return, to dismantle the Zionist State of Israel, to go back before 1948 and start again. Any Zionists that cannot accept that should go elsewhere, But if that is impossible now. then I would follow Russia and China’s plan for a two state solution, but all settlers would have to leave the West Bank and Gaza and the Palestinian state would have to have full sovereignty equal to that of Israel and Israel nor the US would have absolutely no power at all over them, not military, economic, financial, cultural, nothing at all, completely sovereign, completely free, and Israel would have to give up nuclear weapons with inspections.
Netanyahu and his cohorts’ goal is to drive every Palestinian out of Palestine, and blot out their memory forever. With a purely Jewish/Fascist state that controls major transit routes, that entity will be worth trillions of dollars, and those who own the USA and UK governments can taste it.
We in the West are all ruled by a cult of evil, bloodthirsty , mercenary bastards, who will stop at nothing to retain their solitary superpower status and hegemony.
What a clown show. Blinken goes from country to country with his hat in his hand, and accomplishes absolutely nothing. Can we expect anything but the mealy-mouthed “concerns” about the slaughter in Gaza (it has now topped 4000 children massacred) Does anyone in this administration have the least feeling for these thousands of murdered innocents? This empire is in the death throes, like all previous empires. The sad thing is, without the endless interference around the world by the U.S., the world might stand a chance to survive.
“Administration officials are unable to exert significant influence on America’s closest ally in the Middle East to change its course.”
And this is why we are Israel’s stooge and not the other way around! They can rid Congress of people such as Cynthia McKinney and Dennis Kucinich, but our scum has to kowtow to their every desire. Do Israeli areas have to swear a loyalty oath to the U.S.? No, but over 27 US states have anti-boycott Israel laws.
AND, US Congresspersons are required to sign an oath saying that they will always vote to uphold Israeli military superiority in the region! Plus, Jews in government, both elected and career and appointed officials, are DUAL citizens of US/Israel! (I am fine with people of a certain faith being over-represented in public office but NOT when they are dual citizens of a FOREIGN country!)
NONE of these people know what ‘shame’ is. They hear no evil and see no evil – only see and hear what benefits them at the expense of too many others. Civilized?
No. Corporate. Corporatized. Who was it that sold their soul for money?
Selina, it was Judas Iscariot, for “30 pieces of silver.”
We are now living through the end stage of government by ruling class. They have so calcified the national government that losers like Biden, Blinken and the rest of the clueless crew are all we are allowed for leadership. There are consequences to fascism thinly disguised as democracy.
The international blowback for continuing to prop up the Apartheid state of Israel is going to bite us hard. But our “betters” as always, think “the price is worth it.” We shall see.
Very Well Said Lois!
The insiders of the correctly described? “uni-party” are a sham that “We The People” can no longer tolerate. To begin with, they can not be allowed to continue to secretly choose all the candidates for elections?, or prevent “third-parties” from participating in any elections!
As Usual,
EA
Right on, Thom….Entirely insufficient notice has been given to the clique dictating our un-choice candidates. Time to democratize and make transparent that process. How to spring that crew loose from their domination?
As an American citizen, I’m embarrassed every time Joe Biden goes before a camera and babbles on and on, and especially on the few occasions when he is in a foreign country and speaking without a teleprompter.
And Biden’s primarily foreign policy guy brings me the same reaction. Blinken is the Gold Standard of a Deep Stater. And that’s not a compliment. Blinken is the most unqualified and unsuccessful Secretary of State in my lifetime. He has had zero success in attempts to bring peace and stability among countries with a dispute needing resolution. My conclusion: Blinken doesn’t want peace anywhere in the world. Blinken, and the MIC he works for, want what they are getting which is chaos and war everywhere he goes.
Keep in mind that Blinken works as an arms broker when he’s not cycling thru the State Dept.
“Blinken is the most unqualified and unsuccessful Secretary of State in my lifetime.”
Were you not alive when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State? Condoleeza Rice? Henry Kissinger?
You beat me to it. Even Jimmy Carter said Killary never even talks about peace.
Compared to all of those you mention, Blinken is well below the bottom. Kissinger and Clinton may have been jerks, but they had the chops for the position. Condi Rice, not so much. And Blinken, compared to Rice, looks like Raggedy Andy next to Captain Marvel.
Yes. Very much alive.
Patrick Lawrence described Blinken to a tee in an article here about two years ago:
“Blinken is not the worst secretary of state in my lifetime — that distinction goes to John Foster Dulles. But he is the most ineffectual, and possibly the stupidest. His function is to portray, to put across, carefully, a nonexistent America.
Again, it is the consequences of America’s chief diplomat advancing this Disneyesque version of what America stands for and does that must concern us. No one in corporate media calls Blinken on all his silliness: They pretend the world according to Blinken is just as he says it is. There are consequences there, too. The unlawful, often atrocious conduct abroad continues in the name of people who do not even know it is occurring.”
Just wondering when this clown will be replaced by Burns or Campbell. But maybe there’s no one in charge to make such a decision.
I think you’re right. If anyone is in charge who knows anything, she/he knows that there will be blowback and it will fall on the Biden administration, the U.S. as a whole for financing this mass murder in Gaza, and Israel. I think Netanyahu is toast so, there’s that. He probably will fight in court though and not commit suicide which, if he had any honor, he would do. Despite the outbreak of anti-Israel protest among Jewish communities in the west, I think also that there may be some blowback against Jews in general. Israel’s campaign of genocide in Gaza has created conditions for the growth of REAL antisemitism. Shame.
Applying some “Kremlinology” to what’s going on in Washington: The fact that Kurt Campbell was named Deputy Secretary of State indicates that the star of Victoria Nuland is waning. Whether this is due to her pet project, the Ukraine War, going off the rails or to major resistance among State Department staffers to her appointment as Acting Deputy (as reported by Seymour Hersh) is unclear. In any event, there is now a “tilt” to the Asian theater, Campbell being a major China hawk. Who’s really in charge in Washington is an enigma – it certainly isn’t the president, who has difficulty reading words off a teleprompter and then finding his way off the stage. Maybe a major role is played by Jake Sullivan, a political operative with strong ties to the Clinton wing – which isn’t good news, as he was one of the principal architects of the Libyan War and of Russiagate.
You make the very good point that there will likely be blowback against Israel and the Biden administration and that, at some point, this could morph into real antisemitism – on the part of stupid people who believe Israel’s claim to represent all Jews. Right now “antisemitism” is used mainly as a dishonest, cynical cudgel to smear and destroy people who criticize the maltreatment of Palestinians or the Zionist ethno-state project – such as Jeremy Corbyn, Roger Waters, not to mention journalists like Max Blumenthal and Glenn Greenwald (who happen themselves to be Jewish). At some point, the Israeli supporters will have cried “wolf” so often, that no one will take their cries seriously when the real wolf again appears.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that the Gaza bombardments will be ended sometime soon, after a few tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, and – like the after the prior Gazan “grass-mowing” operations – we’ll all go back to the old United States of Amnesia. (With the Europeans not having amnesia – as they were never conscious in the first place, having less free speech and a less free press than in the USA.)
Old Master: In a recent semi-heated conversation with some Jewish & Gentile friends about the ethnic cleansing in Gaza by the Zionist regime of Netanyahu, I said if the ethnic cleansing of some of Europe’s Jewish people by the Waffen SS of the Third Reich was wrong (which it was) then the calculated genocide against the Palestinian people by those afflicted by the “Chosen People” Syndrome is just as wrong.
The goal of the Zionists once Palestine was given to them in 1948, was to rid the new nation of Arabic people and other Gentiles as well, and make it a Jewish only nation. Destroying and bulldozing Palestinian homes and those areas to be used as JEWISH ONLY settlements is a human rights violation, but the worthless U.N. condemns it but didn’t calll for sanctions on Israel nor advocate “humanitarian bombing” of Tel Aviv” to stop the illegal action and what the Jewish settlers are doing to unarmed Palestinians.
But as the old saying “Money talks, and b.s. walks is as contemporary today as it was thru the annals of history, so when you control a nations money supply, much of the big corporate media outlets, and the entertainment industry, it becomes easier to “influence ($$$) the politicians in Congress and the White House, which is why members of the Repulsive Party and the DemoRAT Party, swear allegiance to the Neo-Nazi government of Israel. Our politicians love their taxpayer funded paychecks, fringe benefits, nice pensions plus all the perks which come along with the position and won’t rock the boat and rid our government of the greedsters who control it.
Once Germany and Japan were defeated in WWII, no other country stood up to the United States, Great Britain, and their armed mercenaries, aka NATO, to stop their plan for global conquest. At present, only the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China have the means to do it, but so far, have not intervened for the sake of humanity.
I think it’s clear that the invisible “Deep State” is not a conspiracy theory but the Real McCoy on who runs America, England, Australia, and Canada and other nations in their orbit.
Thank you, Joe Lauria, for your fine reporting and outstanding selection of Truth-Telling writers published on Consortium News.
I agree.