BY SAEED NAQVI
The brutal realism of Tarantino’s Django Unchained may well cause the weak of stomach to throw up. A white plantation owner in America’s deep south, seated on a sofa in his living room, watches two burly slaves wrestle to the grim end or atleast until one of them has gouged out the eyes of the other.
Outside, a pack of hungry dogs, larger in size than wolves, are let loose on a slave who tries in vain to clamber onto a tree.
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods” laments Lear in the wilderness, “they kill us for their sport.” Replace “Gods” with “Whites” in Shakespeare line and place it in the mouth of a bleeding black slave at a climactic moment on Broadway or the Westend and the actor would probably receive multiple standing ovations.
All standing ovations would pale before what Benjamin Netanyahu coaxed out of US Congressmen on the Capitol Hill. They wouldn’t stop rising like there were nails on their seats.
This is not the first time Netanyahu has had the joint sessions of Congress riveted on him. The Congress has submitted to Netanyahu’s choreography on four occasions. He has thereby beaten Winston Churchill’s record for the number of appearances before Congress.
On one occasion President Barack Obama was opposed to his presence in Washington. Netanyahu defied the White House and addressed the joint session, one standing ovation after another. Eggs on Obama’s face were impossible to count.
What explains Israel’s extraordinary influence in Washington? I have interviewed Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Netanyahu. There is no doubt that Netanyahu knows his America better than all the others. For this there are simple reasons. His having studied at Harvard and MIT gave him a wide, influential network which he has assiduously cultivated. His stint as Israel’s ambassador at the UN from 1984 to 88, helped him boost and consolidate his links with the Jews in New York and California. After Tel Aviv, New York has the largest population of Jews and the world’s most influential.
Analysts casually cite the Israel lobby in the US as the body that keeps US foreign policy aligned with Israeli interest. In fact “Israel Lobby And US Foreign Policy” , a seminal work on the subject by Prof. John Mearscheimer of Chicago University and Prof. Stephen Walt, Harvard, explains how deep the lobby’s tentacles are in all branches of the US establishment.
Shameful is a mild word to describe representatives of the American people doing jumping jack exercises, with a mixture of military precision and uncommon obsequiousness. Do people not matter in American democracy in matters concerning Israel? Is it exclusively a circus of capital, donors and lobbies. The National Rifle Association will successfully thwart any reform even though gun violence kills 12 school children every day in the land of the free.
The Nakba or the catastrophe of 1948 when Israeli villages were emptied of Palestinians was horrible. There have been similar horrors down the line. But the endlessness of current brutalities are, quite ironically, a harbinger of better future for the Palestinians.
All previous Nakbas were a function of Israeli self confidence. Israel knew that all its tantrums would be overlooked, sometimes encouraged by the sole superpower. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger’s definition of Israel as the US’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East was apt – only so long as the US was an uncontested super power.
In 2008 after Lehman Brothers came down like the Titanic, there has been no arrest of the hegemon’s decline. Many US institutions have lost their sheen – the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), for instance.
This much touted “COMPLEX” has not enabled the US to win Vietnam, Iraq and we remember vividly the messy departure from Afghanistan in August 2021 after 20 years of occupation. The MIC can help destroy countries, not win wars.
One purpose of provoking Putin into the Ukrainian theatre was for the US to recover lost prestige. The opposite has happened. Joe Biden has to bow out for unfortunate reasons; Putin, holding Xi Jinping’s reliable hands, is looking plausible as a global statesman, the two navigating BRICS way beyond G7.
Against this perspective the Nakba 2024 is different. On all previous occasions Israel could take for granted absolute support from the sole superpower.
Today the hegemon, which carried Imperialism on its shoulders, is in free fall. The Israeli establishment is aware of the altered circumstance.
Meanwhile Netanyahu has placed himself in a corner. He cannot dismount the tiger because the tiger will devour him if he does. So he must fight on, albeit keep bombing Palestinians. He must keep fighting for another reason: he has promised total victory over Hamas, an impossible proposition by all calculations.
Ceasefire short of total victory will be tantamount to defeat. The Palestinians will be in wild celebration (1,860 deaths according to Lancet’s calculation) notwithstanding. The US, which is staring at defeat in Ukraine also, cannot allow the Israeli aircraft carrier to sink. That will be a nail in the collective coffin of the West.
Folks forget that the US’s relations with Saudi Arabia predate the creation of Israel in 1948. It was in 1945 that President Roosevelt and Shah Saud, founder of Saudi monarchy, met on USS Quincy in the Suez Canal to ratify agreements on how Arab oil will be shared by the West in exchange for guarantees of security in the context of the Cold War.
When the Cold War ended in 1990-91, the Iranian revolution, the Shia axis, Islamic terror were brought into play to scare the Arabs – to keep the oil for security policies in place. But now scarecrows no longer scare the avions. Therefore Saudi Arabia, nudged by China, has shaken hands with Tehran. It has, effectively joined the Global South. This Israel cannot do. At China’s behest again, all Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah included, have agreed to join hands for managing Gaza the day after the war.
Wait a minute. The other day the Ukrainian Foreign Minister was sighted in Beijing, a capital most friendly with Putin. What on earth is going on?
(Saeed Naqvi is a senior Indian journalist, television commentator, interviewer, and a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation. Mr. Naqvi is also a mentor and a guest blogger with Canary Trap)
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