The savage attacks Hamas inflicted upon the Israeli military and civilian population last week are utterly without justification, but not without explanation. The Arab/Israeli bloodlust has been going on since the end of World War I, most pointedly since 1947 when Zionist militias used violence to force 750,000 Palestinians from their villages and ancient homeland.
That process resulted in the establishment and international recognition of the State of Israel and the confinement of the Palestinian people to the Gaza strip in the west and to the West Bank in the east. Rather than amalgamate these folks into a democratic society -- where individual rights are equal and the government respects them -- Israeli governments have established an apartheid.
Gaza became an open-air concentration camp, doomed to poverty and cultural repression. The West Bank, meanwhile, keeps shrinking, as the Israeli government keeps encouraging and funding illegal Israeli settlements on land that the Palestinians have believed, because Israeli governments told them, was theirs.
The Israeli government repression of Palestinian natural urges for freedom, cultural identity and prosperity has resulted in extremists on both sides, and these people have fomented unspeakable violence. How did Hamas come about? Hamas was the brainchild of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu fomented and caused the Israeli government to fund Hamas so as to resist the political influence of Netanyahu’s long-time foe, the late Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Netanyahu and his government separated the Palestinian people not only geographically but also politically. His creation of Hamas was far more successful than he envisioned. As the Israeli repression of Gaza grew, as it became more of an open-air concentration camp, Hamas sought and received the political support of Gazans. It fomented the resistance Netanyahu hoped for, and that resistance morphed into violence, and that violence erupted savagely last week.
What role has the United States played in all this? The U.S. has been Israeli’s best and most faithful friend since Israel’s creation. Israel is about the size and population of New Jersey. New Jerseyans pay hundreds of billions in federal taxes each year and receive about $800 million annually in return. Israel, which of course pays no taxes to the U.S. government, receives $4 billion annually in what the feds euphemistically call foreign aid.
Foreign aid is nowhere authorized in the Constitution. But we all know that the federal government does what the folks who control it believe will keep them in office, whether countenanced by the Constitution or not. The feds believe that they can enact any law, tax any event, regulate any behavior, fight any war, insinuate government into any relationship and spend money that they don’t have -- the Constitution be damned.
In furtherance of that extra-constitutional behavior, the feds have supported Israeli governments no matter what they did. Israeli governments spy on the U.S. government, the White House and American citizens -- no problem. Israeli government jets bombed the USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 171 American sailors -- no problem. Israeli intelligence knew of 9/11 beforehand and didn’t warn the U.S. -- no problem. The Israeli government wants to suppress and partially annihilate an ethnic group using American weapons -- no problem. The Israeli government wants to kill more innocents than Hamas crazies did -- no problem. The Israeli government wants American cash to do all this -- no problem.
This unstinting U.S. support, just like the U.S. military support for the government of Ukraine, has brought about the deaths of innocents, and it has brought Israel and Ukraine to the most dangerous and unstable precipice that either country has stood upon in the past 50 years. Since the recent Hamas attacks and Ukraine military defeats, American politicians have called for more borrowing from the Chinese so as to give the Netanyahu and Ukraine governments more cash. This will add to the federal government’s $33 trillion debt and push American prices up and employment down.
Instead of negotiating or even spending for peace, the U.S. has encouraged and paid for wars. Instead of using its enormous economic might to facilitate prosperity, the U.S. has, quoting U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, “projected power on both fronts,” meaning in the Middle East and in Ukraine. Power? It has projected and caused death and destruction, just as the U.S. did with its “power” in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Is that the goal of U.S. foreign policy -- to project power? If it is, it is not working.
My friend and colleague, former Rep. Dr. Ron Paul, has argued eloquently not only that Russia has won the war in Ukraine despite U.S. efforts to use Ukraine as a battering ram to impair Vladimir Putin’s presidency, but that Hamas has won its war with Israel. How so? Hamas’s goal was to bring out the worst in the Netanyahu government and to arouse support for a Palestinian state among Arab and Muslim peoples. In that respect, Hamas has succeeded. Israeli rage is justified. But the intentional slaughter of innocents -- Israeli or Palestinian -- is not.
Where does all this leave the United States and the American people?
We have a president who cannot put two sentences together, much less credibly negotiate with foreign heads of state for peace. We have a Congress beholden to the intelligence community and the military-industrial complex. We have one big government party in Washington. It is pro-welfare, pro-warfare, pro-deep state, pro-security state and pro-administrative state; but it is not pro-Constitution or pro-limited government or pro-personal liberty or pro-peace.
U.S. foreign policy -- no matter who is in the White House or which major political party controls Congress -- stokes festering rage wherever it goes. What will that bring us? As of this writing, it is bringing 2,000 American troops to Tel Aviv. History shows indisputably that when all else fails, governments bring us to war.
To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
COPYRIGHT 2023 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
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