Since Donald Trump became president of the United States, it may be an exaggeration to say that all hell has broken loose, but, then again, it may not be. The dismal education system in the U.S. is at risk of deteriorating further, under the direction of a wealthy Trump donor who knows nothing about public education. Regulations protecting the environment are already being eliminated. The Republicans are desperately trying to deprive 21 million people of health care, thus fulfilling one of their more bizarre campaign promises. And white supremacy has become fashionable again, strutting its stuff after remaining mainly (although not entirely) closeted for decades.
Officially-sanctioned U.S. racism, however, isn’t limited to the boundaries of the country. No, under Mr. Trump, it is being enshrined in the United Nations. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, one Nikki Haley, blocked the appointment of former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to lead the U.N.’s Libya mission. In her elegant way, she explained the decision at the recent AIPAC (Apartheid Israel Political Affairs Committee) convention: “So when they decided to try and put a Palestinian in one of the highest positions that had ever been given at the UN, we said no and we had him booted out.” She continued: “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a nice man; that doesn’t mean he wasn’t good to America.” No, the fact that he was Palestinian disqualified him from that role, at least in the eyes of the august ambassador,.
Hot on the heels of that action, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres demanded that a carefully documented report on Israeli apartheid be removed from the official U.N. website. This wasn’t, he hastened to say, due to any criticism of the content. No, it was because it had not gone through the proper channels before being posted. Rima Khalaf, head of the U.N.’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), resigned rather than remove the document herself.
Now, when Mr. Guterres refers to the ‘proper channels’, he apparently means Israel and the U.S., both of which were greatly irritated that such a report could be issued by the United Nations. Never mind that it was factual; it criticized sacred Israel, so it must not be allowed to stand. Ms. Haley was not silent about this perceived outrage. She weighed in on this report, again delighting all and sundry with her polished prose: “And a ridiculous report, the Falk Report, came out. I don’t know who the guy is or what he’s about, but he’s got serious problems. Goes and compares Israel to an apartheid state. So the first thing we do is we call the secretary general and say, this is absolutely ridiculous.”
One might think it worthwhile for the ambassador to do a few things prior to letting loose with her verbal diarrhea. First, she might find out who Mr. Falk is (a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University); she might learn just ‘what he’s about’ (he was the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for six years; perhaps human rights is ‘what he’s about’), and finally, perhaps she might consider reading the report before calling the secretary general and saying ‘this is absolutely ridiculous’.
As Ms. Haley was waxing eloquent at the unholy AIPAC altar, various Congressional bodies and the FBI were busy investigating the Trump White House for ties to Russia, all of which are somehow associated with a belief that Russia attempted to unduly influence the U.S. election. Horrors! Can such a thing even be imagined? Historian and philosopher Noam Chomsky commented on this in an interview with Truthout. Said he: “Much of the world must be astonished — if they are not collapsing in laughter — while watching the performances in high places and in media concerning Russian efforts to influence an American election, a familiar US government specialty as far back as we choose to trace the practice. There is, however, merit in the claim that this case is different in character: By US standards, the Russian efforts are so meager as to barely elicit notice.” As Truthout said: “…the US has blatantly interfered in the elections of many other nations, with methods that include not only financial support to preferred parties and the circulation of propaganda, but also assassinations and overthrows of even democratically elected regimes.”
Russia does not have nearly the influence in the U.N. of those two rogue nations, the U.S. and Israel, both of which are guilty of unspeakable human rights violations at home and abroad. They actually wield sufficient influence with the U.N. to get things done their way. Actually, it is the U.S. influence on the U.N., and Israel’s on the U.S. And how does Israel manage to have so much sway in the hallowed halls of the U.S. Congress? Well, among U.S. elected pseudo-representatives, money talks, and Israeli lobbies are flush with it, which they are willing to dole out to any member or potential member of Congress who is willing to jump through whatever hoops it chooses to hold. And those hoops usually demand acquiescence to Israel’s brutal occupation and persecution of the Palestinians.
And how that cash does flow into the campaigns of U.S. ‘representatives’! Between November 29, 2010 and November 28, 2016, Israeli lobbies donated a whopping $14,283,115.00 to members of the U.S. Senate. In the two-year period of November 29, 2014 to November 28, 2016, members of the House of Representatives received $5,910,402.00 in the form of pro-Israeli-lobby largesse. Members of Congress have one priority, and one priority only: holding onto their jobs. Human rights? Who needs them! Integrity? What will that get you! Acting on the will of the people? What do they know! The amount of blood staining the money doesn’t matter, as long as the cash keeps flowing in.
At the very close of former President Barack Obama’s administration, the United Nations passed a resolution condemning the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump notwithstanding, revoking a U.N. resolution is next to impossible, especially when one considers that the representatives of the member states of the Security Council erupted in applause when the U.S. abstained from voting, rather than vetoing the resolution. They can all bow and scrape as much as they want to their Israeli masters. The U.S. was the last country to condemn South African apartheid, yet that was defeated; it may be the last to condemn Israeli apartheid, but that, too, will be defeated.
Originally published by Counterpunch.