Scholar advises US to halt unconditional support for Israel due to zero benefits, rising costs

Leading American news publication Foreign Policy says the United States should no longer give Israel unconditional economic, military, and diplomatic support due to the “zero” benefits of such policy and its rising costs.

“Instead of a special relationship, the United States and Israel need a normal one,” Stephen M. Walt, the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, wrote in the publication. 

Consistent with Zionism’s core objectives, it said, Israel privileged Jews over others by conscious design, expanded illegal settlements, denied Palestinians legitimate political rights, treated them as second-class citizens, and used its superior military power to kill and terrorize residents of the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank, and Lebanon with near impunity.

“Given all this, it is not surprising Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem have recently issued well-documented and convincing reports describing these various policies as a system of apartheid,” it said.

In the aftermath of the latest Israeli aggression on Gaza, which began on May 10 and lasted 11 days, Israel has been increasingly described as an “apartheid” regime, including by HRW, B'Tselem, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and last but not least, by the French government.

However, the United States has continued to back Israel’s “right to self-defense” which amounted to heavy bombardment of civilians in Gaza, killing at least 254 Palestinians, including 66 children, and displacing over 72,000 people in the besieged enclave.

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US claim to moral superiority ‘hollow’

According to FP, in the past, it was "possible to argue Israel was a valuable strategic asset for the United States, though its value was often overstated," but that argument holds no water any more. 

“During the Cold War, for example, backing Israel was an effective way to check Soviet influence in the Middle East because Israel’s military was a far superior fighting force than the armed forces of Soviet clients like Egypt or Syria. Israel also provided useful intelligence on occasion.”

“The Cold War has been over for 30 years, however, and unconditional support for Israel today creates more problems for Washington than it solves. Israel could do nothing to help the United States in its two wars against Iraq; indeed, the United States had to send Patriot missiles to Israel during the first Persian Gulf War to protect it from Iraqi Scud attacks,” he added.

According to the publication, the real costs of the special relationship between the US and Israel are political, saying that as demonstrated this month, unconditional support for Israel makes it much harder for the United States to claim the moral high ground on the world stage.

FP also made a reference to the United States’ unilateral vetoing of UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions as well as its authorization of sending Israel an additional $735 million worth of weapons, saying Washington’s claim to moral superiority stands exposed as “hollow” and “hypocritical”.

“With a normal relationship, the United States would back Israel when it did things that are consistent with the United States’ interests and values and distance itself when Israel acted otherwise,” it added.

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Blinken warns Israel over Sheikh Jarrah displacements

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a visit to Israel this week, where he said the Biden administration remains committed to providing Israel with what it needs to defend itself.

President Joe Biden “has been equally clear we're committed to giving Israel the means to defend itself,” Blinken said in an interview with ABC News program This Week on Sunday.

However, Blinken also said he warned Israeli rulers that moving forward with a series of forced displacements of Palestinians from their homes in the occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah could spark renewed “tension, conflict and war.”

“We raised the concerns that we have on all sides with actions that in the first instance could spark tension, conflict and war and also ultimately undermine even further the difficult prospects for two states,” the top American diplomat told the Axios news site on Thursday.

Attempts by the Israeli regime to steal Palestinian lands in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood were one of the reasons tensions soared in the occupied West Bank and other areas in the occupied territories. The Israeli actions subsequently led to the latest round of the Israel-Gaza war.

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