The Electronic Intifada 9 December 2023
Is Genocide Joe any better than Donald Trump?
CQ Roll CallWhy did the American president give apartheid Israel carte blanche to carry out its unprecedented genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza?
Why did he continue to do so with the US veto at the UN Security Council on 8 December?
Why don’t Palestinians register on the radar of the White House and mainstream America?
In other words, why does white America hate us?
One very telling moment in this regard came on 6 January 2021 when a mob of white racists stormed the Capitol in Washington demanding a reversal of the outcome of the presidential election in which their president and role model Donald Trump had lost to the Democrat’s candidate, Joe Biden.
Biden won the election claiming that he would introduce a more democratic, humane and – more importantly – inclusive vision.
Philip Weiss, senior editor and founder of the pro-Palestinian website Mondoweiss, wrote a hard-hitting article titled “America’s whiteness crisis, and Zionism’s,” just a few hours after the mob of white bigots stormed the Capitol.
Weiss wrote that it was no coincidence to see Israeli flags brandished at the Capitol Hill riot because “Israel’s proudly stated principle of Jewish supremacy, higher Jewish rights to land and office, have long been a model for white supremacists.”
He argued, eloquently, that there are glaring contradictions between Israel’s state ideology, Zionism, and democratic ideals. The contradictions are evident in Israel’s more than 60 racist Basic Laws, including the notorious Nation-State Law that defines Israel as the state of Jews only.
As per the definition of apartheid under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Israel’s practices towards Palestinians amount to “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination.”
Who cares about the ICC?
But Trump supporters, like Israeli Zionists, do not give a damn about the ICC and its definitions, nor do they know what basic human rights mean, nor do they see the humanity of the “other” – whether Black, Palestinian or Hispanic.
Neither do Biden and his state and defense secretaries.
Coincidentally, a couple of days after the Capitol riot, The Guardian newspaper ran a piece by Hagai El-Ad, then executive director of B’Tselem, Israel’s most liberal human rights organization, the title of which is very telling: “We are Israel’s largest human rights group – and we are calling this apartheid.”
El-Ad was blunt about Israel’s apartheid and racism based on the “the systematic promotion of the supremacy of one group of people [the Jewish people] over another [the Palestinians],” which, he concludes, is “deeply immoral and must end.”
Soon after that, a number of mainstream human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem itself, issued reports labeling Israel’s regime between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as apartheid.
Different from South African apartheid and American segregation laws, “Israel’s definitions do not depend on skin color.” But that makes no material difference; what really matters, according to El-Ad, is “the supremacist reality which is the heart of the matter.”
He did not mince his words: it is “Jewish supremacy.”
In the case of Make America Great Again (MAGA) it is racial supremacy; in apartheid Israel, it is ethno-religious. Hence the love affair between the two.
The comparison between the apartheid regime of South Africa and the American South under the Jim Crow laws is unavoidable. Ideology has its own way, especially when it is hegemonic – a way that represents the interests of racial supremacists. The whites of apartheid South Africa defined the institutions of the country as democratic – albeit white democracy, i.e., by and for whites only.
The idea of defining the country as exclusively white and democratic at the same time was never accepted by the international community. But that is the model for Trump’s supporters, the bigots who stormed the Capitol and who happened to be overwhelmingly white; that is what “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) is all about.
Model ethnic supremacy
And that, alas, seems to be the driving force behind Genocide Joe’s love affair with apartheid Israel. Biden’s Middle East policy is not in any way different to that of Donald Trump, namely a denial of the very existence of the Palestinian people.
What Trump supporters basically want is a state similar to both Israel and white South Africa, a state where the exclusive right of whites to “self-determination” is guaranteed.
Ironically, the same far-right that admires Israel happens to hate Jews – slogans such as “Camp Auschwitz” and “6 Million Was Not Enough” were spotted, next to the Israeli flag, on Capitol Hill on 6 January.
To explain this “contradiction,” Philip Weiss quotes Jewish Voice for Peace: “Many white supremacist groups both hate Jews and love Israel.”
Depending on their specific ideology, they may admire Israel as a model ethnic supremacist state, share its Islamophobic and anti-Arab views, and/or want Jews to be corralled in their own state far away from the US.
MAGA supporters seem to long for the days of “clearly defined white power and privilege” that would ideally lead to specifying the nature of the US as the nation-state of the white people.
Under this idea, the United States becomes the national home of white people and fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination, (something Joe Biden claims to be opposed to).
MAGA supporters would also dearly want that the right to exercise national self-determination in the United States is unique to the white people (also rejected by Biden).
Sound familiar? That would be America’s nation-state law if those far-right fascists got their way.
But is Genocide Joe better?
“I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist,” Biden reportedly told the Israeli war cabinet in October.
Biden is a self-proclaimed Zionist who is NOT opposed to Israel being the state of Jews only and its right to “defend itself” as an apartheid state.
Palestinians have obviously joined Black and Indigenous people in the “political unconscious” of mainstream America.
White America hates us, then, because we are not born to white mothers. And so does apartheid Israel.
This is exactly like the difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, both lovers of Israel for the same reason, and haters of Arab Palestinians.
Hendrik Verwoerd, Ariel Sharon and some ideologues and politicians of World War II must be applauding with joy in their graves.
Haidar Eid is an educator and independent commentator from Gaza. Twitter: @haidareid
Comments
Biden's white supremacy...
Permalink Adrienne Weller replied on
This article, while accurate on the U.S. and Israel's suppression of Palestinian rights is devoid of the economic motive driving these facts. It is not simply Trump's/Biden's support of Jewish supremacy, it is the U.S.' capitalist ruling class that calls the tune. These two presidents don't want white supremacy, they want rich, white, male supremacy. The article ignores class, and sexism. Excerpt: "The imperialist victors of World War II formed Israel in concert with Zionists demanding a Jewish state. They sought to establish a fortified outpost to protect their oil interests against the threat of Arab revolutions. Exhausted and impoverished Jews displaced by the Nazi Holocaust were among the first citizens." https://socialism.com/fs-artic...
Palestine
Permalink William H. Slavick replied on
Like Trump and his Republican challengers, Joe Biden is a racist who refuses to acknowledge the Zionist superiority posture in determining to forcibly remove the hugely majority of Palestinian Arabs to have an ethnic state there, an enterprise pursued hugely in 1948, 1967, between, and now in licensed violence-murder and terror-- against Palestinians in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza. IT IS TIME FOR ENLIGHTENED NATIONS TO INTERVENE, EVICT ISRAELIS FROM EAST JERUSALEM, THE WEST BA NK, AND GAZA AND DEMAND COMPENSATORY RECONSTRUCTION IN GAZA; RESTORATION OF STOLEN LAND AND DESTROYED PROPERTY IN EAST JERUSALEM AND THE WEST BANK AND RIGHT OF PALESTINIANS TO RETURN TO STOLEN PROPERTY IN ISRAEL. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH; ISRAEL TODAY IS A RACIST CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE, AS JEWISH VOICES FOR PEACE IN THE U.S. RECOGNIZES.
Why Biden is a zionist.
Permalink Richard Cook replied on
Biden is a Zionist because of US politics. He decided years ago, no political opponent would campaign closer to Israel than himself. I'm hoping the lesson learned in Nov. 2024 is the US electorate cares more for a balanced Middle East policy & shows distrust of Zionism - by writing in "Gaza" for Pres.
Tough choice
Permalink John Costello replied on
While I agree that Biden doesn't seem to have much regard for the "0ther", I think he's a politician first, and he's trying to keep voters. At almost 70% for a ceasefire, his veto seems counterintuitive, but that just testifies to the power of the Israel lobby. Especially in Congress.