The U.S. Congress’s servility to Israel and its domestic lobby, AIPAC, is by now the stuff of satire, and the most bipartisan action in Congress. Congress will debate for months the merits of expanding, say, childcare funds, but little discussion attends military aid and arms sales to Israel. Few special interest groups can marshall the Congressional expediency and +90% Yes votes that AIPAC has come to depend on.
And as we near the eighth month of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Congress has decided to embark on two key actions to demonstrate their utter subservience.
First, the leaders of both parties have invited the Israeli prime minister and indicted war criminal Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress. The bipartisan appeal is meant to signal solidarity with Bibi in the face of the International Criminal Court’s indictment. Ironically, Dem. Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had previously called on Netanyahu to resign his post, but apparently couldn’t resist obediently bowing down one last time. And applaud like polite puppet parliamentarians they will. This will be Bibi’s fourth time addressing Congress (a record for a non-U.S. president). The last one was at the behest of the then-GOP Speaker John Boehner, who invited Bibi to lambast then-Pres. Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, the so-called Iran nuclear deal.
Even though a foreign head of state was coming to our shore to insolently attack a sitting president, most Democrats still attended the speech rather than boycott it in support of their party leader. Notably, Netanyahu got more standing ovations from both sides than the standing ovations Obama received just from his party during any of his eight State of the Union speeches.
Netanyahu’s symbolic speech — a vulgar demonstration that most members of the American Congress are happy to thumb their noses at international law and cheer on a genocide — is, as noted, one of two actions the U.S. Congress is taking to shield Israel from accountability and demonstrated the undying, unbroken, interminable bond that we hear so much about on political stump speeches.
More worryingly, the U.S. House recently passed a bill that would sanction the ICC for daring to issue indictments against Israeli leaders. The GOP-led bill was supported by 42 Democrats who were happy to endorse the law’s premise that U.S. allies credibly accused of war crimes are entitled to impunity.
U.S. Senator and neo-con hawk Tom Cotton has introduced a companion bill: Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act.
The bill is co-sponsored by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and even so-called moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine.
The bill’s odds of passing the Senate are deemed minimal now given that the Democrats control what’s up for a vote on the Senate floor. But, it’s worth remembering, that none other than Biden’s Sec. of State Antony Blinken endorsed taking actions against the ICC in front of a Congressional hearing.
When it comes to Israel and Congress, it is always a safe bet to assume that there is no red line, no depravity, no shilling for injustice that is beneath the vast majority of members. A
ADC has called on the Senate to spike the absurd bill.
