United States President Joe Biden has finally owned up to being a Zionist. This is no surprise.
He wears his apathy for the Palestinians like a Victorian Cross.
Besides, American presidents are either pro-Zionist or like Biden, a Zionist.
What is troubling, though, is how pleased he is in helping Israel stay an apartheid regime.
Again, we shouldn’t be surprised.
The US is fast becoming another Israel. There, criticising Zionism is considered antisemitism, like in Israel.
Boycotting Israel is also turning out to be against the law as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), a movement for Palestinian justice, is finding out.
Last month a US appeals court upheld an Arkansas law that bars the state’s contractors from boycotting Israel.
The court cleverly sidestepped the idea of free speech guaranteed by the US Constitution’s First Amendment by calling it a commercial activity.
Will the US Supreme Court be similarly clever? We will see, but know this.
-
Four Palestinians killed in Israeli raid on Jenin
Tel Aviv afraid ‘Farha’ will expose Israel’s crimes
There isn’t an institution in America that the Zionist lobbyists haven’t reached.
According to a Middle East Eye analysis by Azadeh Shahshahshani and Assal Rad, as of July 5, 33 states in the US have enacted some form of legislation targeting boycotts of Israel.
This is not all.
Some 245 bills have been introduced at the state or federal level to prevent any form of advocacy for Palestinian rights.
This is what being a Zionist means. Behind every anti-BDS or anti-Palestnian rights sponsor is one infamous corporate lobbying group: American Legislative Exchange Council.
And it helps draft and codify the bills into law.
People who see the Palestinian cause as legitimate are rightly worried about the Supreme Court’s decision when the case finally heads there.
If it upholds the Arkansas law as the appeals court did, it would mean an end to all challenges to such anti-BDS laws.
Or even other anti-boycott laws. Here is the puzzle.
Apartheid is a political evil.
And the US acknowledges this as its fight against the South African apartheid demonstrated.
BDS is about ending the brutal occupation of Palestine by the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv.
It is also about saying no to Israel’s settler colonialism. International law treats both as illegal.
Under what logic are both legal in the US?
Let’s not forget what the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu said about BDS.
His conscience compelled him to stand with the Palestinians as they sought, like the South Africans, to get their rights through non-violent means.
Biden’s and the US’s conscience must be similarly compelled.
The lawmakers know many US companies are complicit in violating the rights of the Palestinians in the territories occupied by Israel.
Is it wrong to ask American companies to withdraw their investments from a country that practises apartheid?
Or to call on the American public to divest from US companies that are complicit in such practices.
Passing such anti-BDS laws says only one thing: that the US is okay with the practice of apartheid.
We take this to be the meaning of Biden’s confession of him being a Zionist.
If so, he should not be trotting the globe hawking a rules-based world order or human rights.
He shouldn’t be so false.
But America must know this.
It is presidents like Biden who earn a bad name for America.
