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,

By Corinna G. Barnard, Consortium News, 25 July 24

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 grisly 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, three third party candidates are staunchly anti-genocide, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, independent candidate Cornel West and Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver……………………………………………………………………….more https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/22/capitol-hill-netanyahus-second-home/