Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on Saturday condemned Israel as a racist state, warning activists that there is an organized opposition against progressive critics of Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians.
The sharp criticism from the lawmaker from Washington state marks among the highest-level condemnations of Israel, as several members of her caucus plan to boycott Israel President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint session of Congress later this week.
Speaking on a panel at Netroots Nation, an annual progressive activist conference in Chicago, Jayapal was addressing pro-Palestinian attendees interrupting the session.
If you want to get real nuanced, realize that a lot of people are missing the point. Our aid to Israel has nothing to do with their human rights record. They’re a foothold for Western hegemony in a geopolitically significant region. Stop aiding Israel, or Saudi Arabia for that matter, and that is a retreat from the global conflict between West (USA/Europe) and East (China/Russia).
Withdrawing from the Middle East cedes control of the region to the Eastern proxy, Iran. Is a Middle East controlled by Eastern interests preferable to one controlled by Western interests? Does that result in Palestinian liberation? Does it result in peace? Or do we end up with a genocide in the opposite direction?
Of course, there are smaller adjustments that can be made that may pressure one side or the other into pursuing a brokered peace. That’s what we’ve tried and failed at for decades, up until Trump anyway. We were quite close until Netanyahu riled up the crazies and caused the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
This sounds like a lot of good reasoning that could have been used to respond to the original poster of this thread ; ¯_(ツ)_/¯