Is Israel Worth It?

By Marzieh Hashemi

Marzieh Hashemi is a Tehran-based American journalist, political analyst, and a newscaster and host at Press TV.

Revolutionary is defined as involving or causing a complete and dramatic change. On February 11, 1979, Iran started that  process with the victory of the Islamic revolution. And that would cause a dramatic change in Iran, the region and the world.

On February 19, 1979, the first Palestinian Embassy in the world opened in Tehran. Just over one week after its own revolutionary victory, Iran not only talked about its support for the Palestinians, but acted upon it. The Israeli Embassy was closed and the Palestinian Embassy was opened immediately.   

Even in the middle of a transition of political systems and with so much pressure on this newly post-revolutionary country, the Palestinians were remembered by the Iranian leadership and told that they had Tehran’s support. What a message this sent to the world. However, Tehran had entered a realm that no one or no establishment is allowed to go without paying a price and that is going against the Zionist entity.

But when countries support Israel, they pay an even higher price and that is the loss of their sovereignty. Just ask the American people about this and the cost they have had to pay  for supporting Tel Aviv!

According to “If Americans Knew,” the US supports Israel with 10.5 million dollars in military aid, every day! That is despite the growing economic despair in the United States and having a dilapidated infrastructure. After the increasing popularity of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions Movement (BDS) globally, to put pressure on Israel, at least for its settlements, that according to the United Nations are illegal, 27 states in the United States made it illegal to boycott Israel! It means more than 250 million Americans living in those states or 78 percent of the population of the US, do not have the right to even promote the idea of not buying products from Israel. This is according to Human Rights Watch.

And American academics know that they can criticize their own country easier than they are allowed to criticize Israel. The red lines have been defined and reinforced with the firing or denial of tenure of professors who dared to criticize the regime in Tel Aviv. Just ask Professor Steven Salita, who was denied a tenured position that he had been offered and even he had given up his previous tenured position and  he and his wife were in the process of moving to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. However, in the interim, Salita made the fatal mistake of criticizing the Israeli regime in a couple of tweets, during the summer of 2014, while Israel was involved in a brutal bombing campaign of the  Gaza Strip. He tweeted, “Only Israel can murder around 300 children in the span of a few weeks and insist that it is the victim.” And in another tweet he wrote, “If Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised?” Shortly afterwards, he was informed that the offer for him to join the staff would be rescinded. 

Then there is the case of Professor Norman Finkelstein, who is a renown political science professor, as well as an extreme critic of Israel. He is also the son of Holocaust survivors. After his lectures and writings, criticizing the Zionist entity, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University. This took place in 2007 and since then, he has been unable to get a job at any university or even a high school, for that matter, in the United States.

And then we have the pressure on journalists to acquiesce to Israel’s sovereignty in the United States. There is the case of Helen Thomas, who served 57 years as a White House correspondent and was recorded by a rabbi in an interview, saying  Israelis should go back to their countries, like Germany, Poland, the UK wherever they came from. She was forced to resign after being a correspondent for almost six decades.

Then there is CNN contributor and academic, Marc Lamont Hill. He was speaking at a United Nations session. He called for countries to boycott and divest from Israel in conjunction with the UN's International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

"We have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words, but to commit to political action, grass-roots action, local action and international action that will give us what justice requires and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea," Lamont Hill said. He was immediately fired from CNN. He had crossed the red line. He could have criticized American policy, but he had chosen to criticize Israel and that would not be tolerated. That makes one think that Israel is more of a priority in the United States than Americans and the US itself!

And if we look at some of the US’s political representatives, that certainly seems to  be the case. Whether we start years ago, when Israel attacked a US naval vessel, the USS Liberty in 1967 or we look at the present, we see that American politicians have been compromised. In 1967, when Lyndon Johnson was president, the Israelis attacked an American ship on purpose. Survivors of the ship have testified to this, as they were attacked more than once by the Israeli Air Force, even after identifying the ship as American. More than 800 rounds of artillery were fired at the ship. When word reached the Americans in the region that the Liberty was under attack, the US carrier Saratoga was deployed, along with 12 fighter jets.  However, Washington ordered them to turn around and to stand down. Some 34 crew members of the Liberty were killed and 174 wounded. President Johnson did not allow a thorough investigation to take place of the incident and after only one week declared that it had been a case of mistaken identity! The US government ordered a media blackout and crew members of the Liberty were given a gag order and could not talk about what had happened until many years later.

In 2018, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, while addressing the Israeli American Council in Florida said, “If this Capitol crumbles to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid and our cooperation with Israel.” This definitely sounds like confused allegiance at best! And of course, she is not alone and the majority of politicians in Washington show their commitment to Israel or they are not likely to get re-elected.

And even if we look at the judicial and intelligence realms in the United States, we see that those areas have also been compromised in favor of Israel. There is the case of American intelligence contractor, Jonathan Pollard, who spied for Israel and gave Tel Aviv sensitive information about the United States. He was given a life sentence for espionage, which US defense and intelligence experts said had caused a lot of damage. However, after serving 30 years, he was released at the end of 2020 and he and his wife moved permanently to Israel. He was given a hero’s welcome upon arrival in Israel. Does this not say that in the United States, Israel takes precedence over Americans?

And finally, even during this COVID-19 pandemic, which has left the United States struggling, the government passed the first stimulus package, allegedly designed to help Americans and 600 dollars per person were allotted. In that same package, 500 million dollars were earmarked for Israel, which according to Tel Aviv, has a population of nine million. You do the math on this one. The question some Americans are asking is why. Why does it seem that Israel has pervaded all aspects of American society? Why is Israel more important than Americans themselves? And how much longer will Americans tolerate playing second fiddle in their own country? Those who are in the camp of the resistance pay a price for standing up against Israel, but those who support Tel Aviv, pay a much higher price. Perhaps Americans will  realize what a liability Israel is for them and they too can decide to make a complete and revolutionary change to their system. And once again become a sovereign nation.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)

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