04-02-21 08:20:00,
Pandering to Israel as part of the political process in the United States has become part of the DNA of both major parties.
The job of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations must have some kind of curse on it as it seems to attract a type of woman who seeks to prove her suitability by running up a tally of how many wars she can start and how many people she can kill. One recalls fondly Bill Clintonâs monstrous Madeleine Albright, who famously declared the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as âworth itâ due to the sanctions that Washington had imposed and enforced. And then there was Barack Obamaâs darling Samantha Power, who was the spokesperson for the completely unnecessary slaughter of Syrians and Libyans to bring them democracy. And, most recently, we have had Nikki Haley, who didnât start her own war but kept the ones ongoing during her watch on the boil while also taking on the task of being the most strident defender of Israelâs war crimes.
And now we have Honest Joe Bidenâs nominee to be the U.N. ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. She is predictably black and is a career diplomat who ended up as head of the State Departmentâs Bureau of African Affairs. Upon retirement in 2017, she took a position, predictably, with the Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington. The Albright in the name comes from Madeleine and the Group is where many Democratic Party establishment foreign policy types wind up. Thomas-Greenfield might not be a drama queen like Nikki Haley or evil incarnate like Albright or Samantha Power, but she demonstrated in her confirmation hearing before the Senate that she knows the lines she has to speak as well as anyone in Washington.
Thomas-Greenfield dutifully spouted the usual cant relating to the Palestinians, which means that she did not mention them at all and is completely indifferent to the gross violations of their human rights by Israel. In response to several queries from legislators about how she would work to fend off international criticism against Israeli policies, she unleashed an attack against the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.) movement which criticizes Israelâs human rights record and urges people to support Palestinian rights by pressuring Israelâs economy through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. It deliberately eschews violence or punishing ordinary Israelis for the actions of their government and itâs economic approach is a tactic that was used successfully against the apartheid South African regime in the 1980s.