Biden Administration, Campaign 2024, Commentary, Human Rights, Israel, Trump Administration, U.S., U.S. Congress

Capitol Hill: Netanyahu’s Second Home

The appearance again in Congress of the Israeli prime minister makes it seem as if he is the American president and Israel and the U.S. are one country, writes Corinna Barnard.

Netanyahu addressing U.S. Congress for third time on March 3, 2015.
(Speaker John Boehner, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

By Corinna G. Barnard
Special to Consortium News

A man whose arrest warrant is being sought by an international court prosecutor for war crimes is making his triumphal return to Washington.

When Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress on Wednesday for the fourth time,  some representatives and senators will boycott the event in protest against the genocidal devastation in Gaza that the Israeli prime minister has, for months, been directing.

But the chamber where he delivers his speech is sure to be filled with ardent admiration bestowing on him the legitimacy he is rapidly losing at home.

Given the grizzly crimes against humanity that Netanyahu’s armed forces are committing, and the International Court of Justice’s ruling last week about the illegality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, the Israeli prime minister’s celebrated appearance on Capitol Hill will evoke  images worthy of Federico Fellini’s surrealist Satyricon.

Imagine the rousing applause, the elbow rubbing, the pomp and protocol while the devastation in Gaza grows direr by the day and hour.

Netanyahu arrives on the tailwinds of a historic vote in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, on July 17, in which lawmakers voted against Palestinian statehood and in the process, put the kibosh on the long-standing talk by U.S. policymakers about a two-state solution, while rebuffing White House plans for a ceasefire.

The Knesset vote represents a defiant rejection of U.S. influence over Israel’s affairs. But in the U.S. House of Representatives, it’s just the opposite; whatever Israel wants, for now and the foreseeable future, it gets.

How the American public, broadly speaking, feels about this, is hard to say. The numbers of Americans who disapprove of Israel and its conduct move around in polling data like a great unknown beneath the surface of the news.

Sometimes a majority of voters back Israel, sometimes a majority disapprove. But whatever the U.S. public thinks, it doesn’t seem to matter, as far as the election season goes.

Neither of the leading candidates offers anything to stop Israel’s barbaric slaughter. Vice President Kamala Harris, now contending for the Democratic nomination, will follow in the footsteps of President Joe Biden, “aka Genocide Joe,” who was the leading recipient of cumulative pro-Israel funding over the years and continues to arm Israel’s genocide.

The Biden-Harris administration has worked to expand the Trump administration’s so-called Abraham Accords, which were helping Israel sideline the Palestinian cause by removing it as a thorn from Israel’s relations with regional neighbors. Biden himself credited Hamas’ fear of normalized Israel-Saudi relations with motivating the Oct. 7 attacks. 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump, for the Republicans, meanwhile, is awash in millions from Zionist mega donor Miriam Adelson, who is hoping to see Trump push for the Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

While in office, Trump, 78, — who has advised Biden to let Israel “finish the job” in Gaza — escalated Palestinian-Israeli tensions. In addition to helping Israel normalize relations with the U.A.E, Bahrain and Sudan, the Trump White House moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the flashpoint of Jerusalem, reportedly to please Sheldon Adelson, before his death in 2021.  

Leading independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. opposes a ceasefire in Gaza, where people, Al Jazeera reports, are now drowning in sewage due to Israel’s wholesale destruction of the territory.

With support for the Israel genocide in Gaza ironclad across all three of those rivals, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is positioning herself as staunchly anti-genocide, but her campaign’s ballot-access map, last updated on July 10, shows only people in Idaho at this point having a chance to vote for her. So far, pro-Palestine independent  candidate Cornel West is on the ballot in six states. 

Instead of any serious confrontation over the horrifying events in Gaza, an election cycle flooded with money from groups backing Israel is effectively ignoring them. 

Doubts on Ukraine, But Never on Israel

Some Republicans at their convention last week in Milwaukee, such as venture capitalist David Sacks, blasted the White House for provoking Russia to enter the war in Ukraine and for subverting peace initiatives there.

But nowhere, on either side of the main partisan contest, is much of anything being said against Israel or the war crimes for which Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, is seeking the arrest of Netanayhu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with some Hamas leaders.

Politicians’ reluctance to raise the ICC’s pursuit of Netanyahu is not surprising. The U.S. House of Representatives made it clear, a couple of months ago, that such subject matter is taboo.

Most of the world became aware of ICC Prosecutor Khan’s application for arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and defense minister, along with three leaders of Hamas, after he gave CNN’s Christiane Amanpour the scoop on May 20.

[See: ICC Prosecutor Seeks Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu]

But Israel’s vigilant Republican allies in the U.S. House of Representatives, alert to early press reports in late April about the move Khan was mulling, were on the job before the news broke on CNN.

By May 7, almost two weeks before Khan’s official announcement, they had drafted the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, which imposes sanctions on anyone involved with the ICC prosecution. Approved by the House on June 4, the bill, which was ultimately opposed by the White House, stalled in the Senate.

But it made its point. With the support of 42 Democrats it served as a bipartisan renunciation of the ICC and its criticism of Israel.

The bill targeted “foreign people” linked to the pursuit of Netanyahu and Gallant with a number of restrictions. It blocked and revoked visas. It barred property transactions. It served, essentially, as a big “No Entry” sign to the Israeli leader’s pursuers. 

“This land is Netanyahu’s land” it said and he’s welcomed anytime.

In December 2023, the U.S.-based human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), founded by the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was assassinated in 2018, submitted a dossier on 40 commanders of the Israeli Defense Forces to the ICC for war crimes.

[See: Israeli Commanders Reported to ICC]

In June, Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s advocacy director, issued a warning about lawmakers’ handiwork on their anti-ICC legislation.

“The House bill exposes U.S. lawmakers themselves to the risk of ICC sanctions and arrest warrants for violating Article 70 of the Rome Statute which prohibits intimidation, retaliation, or obstruction of the court’s judicial proceedings,” Jarrar said in an email statement to Consortium News.

Before the vote, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, the Texan Republican who sponsored the anti-ICC bill, hyped it as a means of protecting nothing less than U.S. sovereignty.

“And let’s be clear, this isn’t just about Israel, this is about ensuring that our nation’s sovereignty is protected, as well as our service members,” Roy said on Twitter/X to promote the bill. “Absent decisive leadership at the White House, Congress must stand in the breach defending our allies and our sovereignty.”

U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster, a Florida Republican, echoed the sovereignty claim.

“This bill sends a clear message to the ICC,” Webster wrote on Twitter/X. “The United States will defend the sovereignty of our country and will protect our allies against illegitimate attacks by sanctioning ICC officials.”

To say that the ICC’s interest in Netanyahu and Gallant for committing war crimes in Gaza somehow constitutes a threat to U.S. sovereignty demonstrates a confusion about the difference between Israel and the U.S.

Israel does, of course, exert undue influence over U.S. politicians, as overwhelming congressional support for the Israeli military’s genocidal operations in Gaza has made clear. 

On top of that, Netanyahu repeatedly shows up for joint sessions of Congress in the manner of a U.S. president delivering a state-of-the-union address.

As a result, Israel and the U.S. appear to be blurring together into one country for many in Congress. That’s the real sovereignty problem; the willing conflation between Israeli national interests and those of U.S. lawmakers’ own constituencies.  

Corinna Barnard, deputy editor of Consortium News, formerly worked in editing capacities for Women’s eNews, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. At the start of her career she was managing editor for the magazine Nuclear Times, which covered the 1980s anti-nuclear war movement.

Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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2 comments for “Capitol Hill: Netanyahu’s Second Home”

  1. Drew Hunkins
    July 22, 2024 at 18:22

    What percentage of Congresspersons will pull muscles getting up and sitting down, getting up and sitting down, getting up and sitting down for the standing ovations? Seventy percent, 80%, 90%?

    Reply
    • JohnB
      July 22, 2024 at 18:59

      How does fascilatating genecide benefit our soverienty?

      In what way is the genecide convention illagitamate??

      Maybe ground (impound) limos for the duration of Nastyonyu’s visit

      Reply

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