Tuesday, April 2, 2024

From the Israeli Press - Who Really Controls Current U.S. Foreign Policy? - Sally Zahav

 

​ by Sally Zahav

"The Americans are willing to abandon Israel and the hostages just as they abandoned Afghanistan. The Israelis, to their consternation, refuse to hang onto the wheels of the jets as they leave the ground."

 

The article below is my translation from Hebrew of an article by Amnon Lord, taken from the Yisrael Hashavua section of the Israel Hayom newspaper, March 29 issue. Original title: 'היד שמנענעת את ההריס'

Hebrew is a marvelous language. It is extremely logical and concise. In fact, it is accepted that an English translation of a Hebrew article will comprise 20% more words than the Hebrew, as a result of  the difference in conciseness, as well as other factors. 

Word play is quite common in Hebrew, also owing to the conciseness of the language. In fact, the original title of the article translated below is a play on words, literally, "The Hand that Rocks the Destruction", because the word for 'destruction' differs by only one letter from the word for 'cradle'.

U.S. President Joe Biden is, or at least was, reputed to be a "great friend of Israel", but the actions and policy of the present U.S. administration have taken on a decidedly unfriendly tone of late. In fact, the recent U.S. abstention from the U.N. Security Council vote on a Gaza ceasefire is depressingly reminiscent of another U.S. abstention that occurred toward the very end of Obama's second term as U.S. president (the U.N. Security Council vote condemning Israeli settlements in 2016). 

Here is my translation of Amnon Lord's excellent article:

Who Actually Controls Current U.S. Foreign Policy?

Biden is the  head of the nation and is again a candidate for the presidency, but the one who is managing things behind the scenes is Obama, who controls the party machine.

A Parallel Power

The Americans are willing to abandon Israel and the hostages just as they abandoned Afghanistan. The Israelis, to their consternation, refuse to hang onto the wheels of the jets as they take off.

Oren Nahari and Nadav Eyal, two senior analysts, certainly remember what happened in 2016, right before the peoples’ referendum in Britain on Brexit, when President Obama came to London. The objective was to openly interfere in English politics. He threatened that “Britain will be pushed to the end of the line” in everything related to economic agreements and trade agreements with the U.S., if it decides to proceed with Brexit. Obama never actually left the field. Now he has returned to London. To 10 Downing Street. 11 days ago, he appeared suddenly for a visit to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak - uninvited, but certainly not without forewarning. It became clear, because of a report that received relatively wide media coverage on both sides of the ocean, that this was an important political event.  In Israel it was not reported, in general, but this is the event that preceded the U.S. proposals for a cease-fire, when the U.S. abstained, thus resulting in the great betrayal.

Although there is no smoking gun to affirm the assumption that Barack Obama is the one running U.S. foreign affairs policy, there are clues. The photo of him on the way to the British Prime Minister’s home and then as he waved for the cameras at the black door of number 10; This is extremely significant and is a reminder of endless British prime ministers and of course, world leaders in a similar pose on the way to a meeting with the Prime Minister. They spoke for about an hour (!).

Additional clues pointing to Obama’s appropriation are the declarations by Kamala Harris and AOC. While Biden has been taking a back seat in recent weeks, Harris voiced a blatant threat to Israel that the operation in Raffa would have consequences. Ocasio-Cortez announced in Congress that Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza. This is the new mantra. And I am just waiting to hear about this genocide from Ami Ayalon’s lips. In the New York Times it is reported that Obama is in close contact with the White House Chief of Staff and the managers of the election campaign.

Obama’s power over Biden, the current president is clear. The Democratic Party is not Biden’s party. He indeed was elected as president but he has not transformed the party into his own organization. The organization, the mechanism and especially the powers on the ground in Biden’s election campaign are under Obama’s control. Biden does not have an independent political organization. The hidden but clear message is: if you don’t do as I say in American policy, you have no campaign. It could very well be that this is the reason that Joe is running for a second term in the first place – in order to allow Obama to continue to control American policy and continue the anti-American revolution, the revolution of the disintegration of American culture and tradition. If there was a candidate with the proven the ability to win – he would have become independent, and Obama would have lost his hold. The prominent image in the Democratic campaign in recent weeks is Vice President Harris, and less of the President himself. The mission of the campaign is to stir up the Latino and Black voices and it seems that the thinly-veiled anti-Semitism of incitement against Israel is considered to be an effective tool in the Democratic toolbox.

The goal of the Obama and Biden pair in the Middle East is to erode Israel’s power - to come to a balance of power vis-à-vis Iran. The heads of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizb’Allah can go on pilgrimage to Tehran in broad daylight to the heads of the Ayatollahs and the Biden administration would still claim that there is no connection between the arms of the octopus attempting to harm the State of Israel over and over again and the head of the octopus in Teheran.

The goal of Iran and Hizb’Allah in strengthening the Shi’ite militias, from Iraq to the Red Sea with the Houthis is similar, even if not totally, to the U.S.’ goal as led by Obama and Biden. The U.S. goes along with Iran to a certain point in order to degrade Israel’s power; the Americans view the 7th of October attack on Israel and the war that Israel is waging as an opportunity. Not an opportunity to eliminate Hamas and its role in the axis of evil, but an opportunity to weaken Israel and undermine it internally as was openly stated by Chuck 50-ways-to-abandon-Israel Schumer.

The U.S. is attempting to erode Israel’s internal strength and it has massive support in its efforts from elements that are working toward its own interests. For instance, one of the heads of “the protest” expressed happiness over the fact that the Americans did not veto the UN resolution this week because it hopes the Americans are taking over the war, and for them, this is a reason for optimism. The legal system, including the law enforcement system, allows those criminal subversives to carry out actions that constitute a clear threat to the Prime Minister by attempting to place a siege on the Prime minister’s home in Caesaria, to light a fire and penetrate the compound from several directions. If this is not a conspiracy against the Prime Minister and the rule of law, it is very much reminiscent of the process of eroding and blurring of the Gaza border – a continuous activity that eroded the IDF’s vigilance and led directly to the invasion on October 7.

The Democrats’ idea is that Israeli society must undergo what (the liberal newspaper) Ha’aretz would perhaps call “de-Bibization”. It is, of course, is much more far-reaching. They want to take Israel on as a project, similar to South Africa. They want to liberate Israel from “the occupation”, to establish a Palestinian state next to it, and thus, liberate the state from its Zionist, Jewish identity and leave it as “a state with democratic values”. For this idealistic Bonapartism the Democratic administration has many partners in Israel.

There is a chance that the far-reaching betrayal by the Democratic administration will weaken Biden’s administration. This is not only because of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s unique staying-power, but because Netanyahu has something that other, dull leaders who are partners in the war, do not have. He knows Israel’s true strength; he also knows the strength of the U.S. and how parallel powers in the U.S. work. The Americans are ready to abandon Israel and the hostages in Gaza just as they abandoned Afghanistan, which caused a chain reaction leading the world, as we see at the end of March 2024, to a world at war.

The Americans have lit the fire and now they are trying desperately to extinguish it at any price. The Israelis refuse to hang on to the wheels of the jets as they take off. Paraphrasing the words of Churchill – Netanyahu has the luck to give the People of Israel its roar. Someone in Jerusalem tweeted on Twitter that Netanyahu is “an enemy of the state”, because he decided to stop the explanatory delegation to Washington. Israel, even without Raffa, is continuing to cause Hamas heavy losses. It is taking over wide areas of Gaza, has leveled and flattened areas, is paving streets and roads and the IDF is settling key points with strongholds and outposts. In parallel, even though the media is already yawning, the IDF continues its excellent combat activities and continues to eliminate terrorists and trap apprehend key people of Hamas.

 

Sally Zahav is a retired software engineer, currently free-lancing as a translator from Hebrew to English. You can contact her at sally.zahav@gmail.com

Source: Middle East and Terrorism Blog

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1 comment:

Theodore Brandley said...

You are right on, Sally. This has been Obama's third term.

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