US Media and Pro-Israel Antics in Congress
The United States is on the verge of institutionally supporting Israel’s illegal
settlement profiteering, and the mainstream media are saying nothing.
By James Zogby
May 22, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Al-Ahram"
- The New York Times’ coverage of congressional antics related to the Trade
Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation has ignored so many critical aspects of
the bill that it might be time for the “paper of record” to change its motto
from “All the news that’s fit to print” to “All the news we think fits, we
print.”
Here’s why.
On 2 March, the Senate Finance Committee voted unanimously to insert an
amendment into the TPA legislation. According to its principal sponsor, Senator
Ben Cardin (D-MD), the amendment would “include among the principal negotiating
objectives of the United States regarding commercial partnerships ...
discouraging activity that ... penalises, or otherwise limits commercial
relations with Israel.”
The intended targets of this effort are the countries of the European Union that
have called on Israel to clearly mark whether products they export originate in
settlements in occupied Palestinian lands.
For the first 14 years of the occupation, the US called Israeli settlement
construction “illegal”. Beginning with the Reagan administration, however, the
US dumbed down its language and began referring to settlements as “unhelpful”,
“illegitimate”, or “an obstacle to peace.” Europe, on the other hand, has been
consistent in affirming the international consensus position that such
settlements are in violation of international law.
Having wearied of Israel’s refusal to abide by conventions that ban the
expropriation of, or transfer of population into, occupied lands, Europe’s
actions are intended to send a clear message of displeasure with Israel’s
continued flagrant violation of these laws, as well as making a statement that
Europe will not be party to Israel’s efforts to derive economic benefits from
the settlements.
Fearing that European pressure will only grow as Israel’s government rejects
efforts to end its occupation activities, the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC), Washington’s pro-Israel lobby, made it a legislative priority
to suborn the US government, making it a defender of Israel’s settlement
policies.
Enter Ben Cardin and his colleagues. At the behest of AIPAC, Cardin introduced
his amendment, which defines the actions that US trade officials must include in
negotiating trade arrangements with EU partners in order to discourage
agreements with countries that have instituted measures “that are politically
motivated and are intended to penalise or otherwise limit commercial relations
specifically with Israel or persons doing business in Israel or in
Israeli-controlled territories.”
Similar, though more far-reaching, language has also been inserted in House and
Senate legislation governing US customs’ authorisation. It is especially
troubling that the words “in Israeli-controlled territories” have been inserted
in these amendments.
This language, which equates Israel with the territories Israel occupied in
1967, replicates the language recently used by Israel’s Supreme Court in a
controversial ruling against any advocacy of boycott, divestment or sanctions
activity in Israel. The TPA as amended will, for the first time, make the US
complicit in shielding Israel’s settlement activity from any international
scrutiny or penalty.
This effort to defend Israel’s behaviour and to pit the US against its European
trading partners is disturbing. Equally so is the disingenuous way members of
Congress have sought to explain their actions.
Senator Cardin: “Israel is one of America’s closest allies and the only stable
democracy in the Middle East. We may not agree with every Israeli policy, but we
cannot allow our potential trading partners in the EU to fall prey to efforts
that threaten Israel’s existence.”
Senator Rob Portman (R-OH): “This amendment sends a clear message that if you
want to be an economic partner with the United States, you cannot support
politically motivated boycotts [that] attempt to weaken Israel.”
Congressman Peter Roskam (R-OH): “This measure will make combating these
boycotts a principal trade objective of the United States in our negotiations
with the EU ... countries seeking free trade with the United States cannot
participate in ... economic warfare against Israel.”
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR): “We shouldn’t let American trade policy be used in any
kind of fashion that would in some ways show a tolerance for that kind of
anti-Semitism.”
Contrary to these outrageous claims, EU measures are not “economic warfare”, nor
are they intended to “weaken” or “threaten the existence of Israel”, and they
are most certainly not displays of “anti-Semitism”.
Rather they are Europe’s modest attempt to insure that they do not unwittingly
economically underwrite illegal settlement activity that they cannot support. In
this context, it is worth noting that the administrations of both George H W
Bush and Bill Clinton also applied economic pressures to dissociate the US from
Israeli settlement construction by annually deducting the amount Israel spent on
such activity from US loan guarantees that would be available to Israel to
resettle Russian Jews. Were these two presidents also guilty of “economic
warfare” and “anti-Semitism”?
The bottom line is that if Congress passes the TPA legislation and it is signed
into law with the Cardin amendment intact the US will be defending Israeli
settlements against European pressure; we will be making our trade relations
with our European allies conditional on their conducting trade with Israeli
settlements, in contravention of their own long-standing policy; and we will,
for the first time establish, as US policy, the conflation of Israel with the
territory it has occupied, expropriated and settled since 1967.
As momentous as these changes in US policy will be, readers of The New York
Times have been kept in the dark. Since the Cardin amendment was first inserted
in the TPA bill, over 60 articles have appeared in the Times covering the
legislation.
This includes over 20 articles and an editorial that appeared in the “paper of
record” since the debate heated up in the past two weeks. During this entire
period, never once has the Times seen fit to even mention these amendments or
describe their consequences for US-European relations or our overall Middle East
policy.
Instead of suggesting a nefarious cover-up, it may just be that for the editors
of the Times these matters, as important as they are, just didn’t fit the story
line they were developing.
Thus, my suggestion that the more appropriate motto for the Times would be, “All
the news we think fits, we print.”
The writer is president of the Arab American Institute.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly.