By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
19 May 2021
Despite The
‘Righteous Resistance’ Of Liberals Against Trump, Biden Continues To Support Israeli
Oppression
Main
Points
1. The change from Trump to Biden was just an
image makeover, primarily for the liberal American establishment.
2. They have singularly failed to call out the
structural problems in American policy.
3. The State of Israel helped Hamas in order to
finish the secular resistance by PLO.
4. Israel wanted it this way to de-legitimize
the Palestinian struggle.
----
During an
earlier time, the liberals in America and elsewhere made it appear as if
whatever was wrong in the world was because of Trump’s policies. Trump is no
longer in the White House but the massacre of Palestinians continues unabated.
Israel continues to evict Palestinians from their homes, bombard them at will,
kill and maim scores including children and women. And yet the American
establishment under Biden is standing solidly behind Netanyahu, justifying his
murderous rampage. Not only is America supplying arms to Israel which is
killing civilians, it is also defending it by whitewashing the crimes of a
cruel and morbid regime. What Israel is doing is simply inconceivable without
American support and therefore America is equally complicit in whatever is
happening to the hapless Palestinians.
This is not
to say that Trump shouldn’t have been opposed but to point out the hollowness
of the ‘resistance’ of the left-liberal establishment for not calling out the
structural faults in American policy itself. The reasons are simple: for the
liberal Americans, Trump became too much of an embarrassment internationally.
The liberal establishment wanted to portray themselves civilized caring people
who were concerned about the ills of the world.
An old Palestinian couple in front of
their stolen home now inhabited by Jewish settlers from Brooklyn, New York.
-----
But more
fundamentally, they were more worried with regard to the manner in which things
were being done. Just look at the liberal establishment’s support for Obama.
The man was singularly responsible for putting in place the drone warfare and
surveillance system which killed thousands all over the Muslim world. But then,
Obama was sophisticated and conducted himself in a way which appealed to the
self-image of the liberals. It did not matter if under the veneer of this
sophistication, Obama did pretty little to change the way America conducted its
business. It is therefore reasonable to argue that it is not the content but
only the form which matters to liberals. We will therefore not see any
outpouring of grief even though Biden is continuing the policy of American
establishment. When it comes to Israel, there is no real choice between an
Obama, a Trump or a Biden. If the liberal Americans were as conscientious as
they want to project themselves, they should have really been rallying now in defence
of Palestinians. But of course, that is not going to happen.
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In the
meantime, there is no stopping Israel from pummelling the lives of
Palestinians. The one-sided use of force continues as the world looks on with
studied apathy. The continued eviction of Palestinians from their homes goes on
unabated. Jewish settlers are simply walking into these homes and making them
their own. Most of these grabbers are Jews from New York looking for a second
or a third home in the ‘promised land’. In the process, they are divesting
Palestinians of the only home they have ever known. The non-humanity of the
Palestinians can be gleaned from the fact that it is they who are forced to pay
the legal fee of these criminal settlers. There are a number of US based
organizations, most of them registered as non-profit, who are facilitating this
land grab. But certainly, now that Trump is gone, this is not an issue that
will even remotely disturb liberal Americans.
The liberal
prevarication to condemn the brutalities of Israel without in the same breath
also condemning Hamas is also representative of their skin-deep understanding
of the issue. First of all, such a false equivalence is largely designed to
tell us that the Palestinian misery is partly of their own making. Secondly,
they are trying to create a camouflage to argue that there are two parties in
this ‘conflict’ whereas in reality there is only one party which has been
calling the shots since the very beginning. And that party is the state of
Israel, backed by Americans and guilt-ridden Europeans. The Palestinians have
merely been adjusting to whatever Israel has been doing to them.
The
righteous umbrage over Hamas’ use of rockets is entirely misplaced. It is as if
those rockets constitute the entirety of violence. What gets deliberately
overlooked is that the state of Israel itself is the first act of violence. As
if one rocket fire by Hamas is enough to negate the systematic violence that the
Palestinians have been experiencing through decades. What can be more violent
than being dispossessed of your own homes, alienated from your history and
memory?
The
liberals even pretend of not knowing how Hamas was helped by Israel during its
initial years. It is a travesty to think that Hamas arose to fight the Israeli
occupation. If that was the case, then it should have helped the Palestine
Liberation Organization which was spearheading the intifada. Instead, by its
own admission, Hamas arose to counter Fatah, the strongest faction within the
PLO led by Arafat. The Hamas leader, Sheikh Yasin, before he was assassinated
by Israelis, made it clear that the arms it was stockpiling was to fight the
PLO and not the state of Israel. After finishing the staunchly secular Fatah in
Gaza, Hamas became the sole representative of Palestinians which only helped
the Israeli righteous discourse of fighting against the scourge of Islamic
terrorism. If today Hamas is haunting Israel, it is because Israel wanted it
that way. It was difficult to fight the PLO morally; with Hamas at the helm,
the killing of Palestinians can continue without any remorse.
And for the
liberals all over, it is easier to talk about Israel and Hamas in the same
breath, while treating the lives of Palestinians as collateral damage.
----
Arshad
Alam is a columnist with NewAgeIslam.com
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-west/american-liberal-israel-palestine-israeli-oppression/d/124848