On July 18, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution by the kind of lopsided vote (412 for, 9 against, 1 present) normally reserved for proclamations lauding members’ hometown Little League programs. Unlike most legislation, Concurrent Resolution 57 is short enough to fit comfortably into newspaper op-ed length:

“Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that —

“(1) the State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state;

“(2) Congress rejects all forms of antisemitism and xenophobia; and

“(3) the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel.”

The billions Congress wastes annually on xenophobic nonsense like “border security” and “countering China”  belie the resolution’s second point, and the third point is simply bizarre — ask the Lakota or the Cherokee about how trustworthy the US is when it comes to “always” commitments.

But what about that first point, which was what the resolution was really intended to get across after US Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) stepped on a political third rail by contradicting it on July 16 (Jayapal quickly turned tail, apologized, and voted for the resolution)?

Well, there’s a problem with that point as well:

Israel IS a racist (at least if the concept of “race” encompasses ethno-religious groups) and apartheid state.

Israel was expressly founded as a “homeland” for people of a specific ethnic/religious group, and its “basic law” clearly and unambiguously affirms that “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it.”

Non-Jews, and especially Palestinian Arabs, are legally treated as second-class citizens, when they’re treated as citizens at all. For example, a “right of return” to Israel is offered to all Jews, no matter where they were born, but not to Palestinian Arabs who may have actually been born right there.

That’s racist, period. Disagree? Substitute “Montana” for “Israel” and “white” for “Jewish.” How does it read now?

As for the “apartheid” allegation, no other term fits a state which has spilled outside its internationally recognized borders (as codified in 1948 by United Nations Resolution 181) and set up a two-tier system based on race/ethnicity in territory it occupies. A system where Arabs are subject to Jewish rule without representation in the Knesset, where Arab property is subject to legalized theft by Jewish “settlers,” where roads and other infrastructure facilities are segregated into “Arab” and “Jews Only” use, and under which a menial class of Arabs are allowed to cross into Israel proper from their designated “homelands” to work, but not to live.

The usual defenses I see of Israel on these matters is that its existence as a “Jewish state,” and its apartheid treatment of Palestinian Arabs, are justified and must therefore not be considered “racist” or “apartheid.”

Presumably American supporters of racial segregation and South African supporters of the original “apartheid” considered their systems justified as well.

Claiming something’s justified doesn’t magically make it something other than what it is.

Neither does lying about it in a congressional resolution.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Over the last seventeen months, it’s become customary for those who disagree with US foreign policy  on the Ukraine war to preface every objection to that policy with at least one, possibly two, disclaimers.

Disclaimer #1: The Russian invasion, they’ll concede, was “unprovoked.”

Optional Disclaimer #2: The Russian invasion, they’ll say, was “unjustified.”

I understand the impulse. They’re trying to preemptively communicate that they are “anti-war” or “anti-intervention” without being mistaken for horror of horrors, “pro-Russia.”

But those disclaimers are neither necessary nor wise.

The Russian invasion was not “unprovoked.”

For one thing, to “provoke” is, per Merriam-Webster, “to incite to anger” or to “arouse to a feeling or action.” Who decides whether Party A has been “incited” or “aroused” by Party B? Party A.

For another, Ukraine, NATO, and the US had been put on notice for quite some time (at least eight years, and actually more like 20) that Russia considered their actions provocative … and chose to continue down the same route rather than backing off or negotiating an amicable solution. The provocations were, in other words, both ongoing and intentional, not just occasional accidents.

To say that an action is “provoked,” though, is not the same thing as saying that the action is “justified.”

You might “incite me to anger” by singing loudly every time you walk past my house, but that doesn’t mean I’m justified in getting out my 12-gauge and sending you to your grave. Cutting me off in traffic may justify a honk of the horn and a selected obscenity or two. It doesn’t justify following you home and burning your house down.

Was the Russian invasion “justified?” I don’t think so, but arriving at that conclusion is not some kind of automatic slam-dunk. Opinions do vary on what constitutes an acceptable casus belli, and on the truth or falsehood of various underlying factual claims.

My own opinion on US meddling in Russian/Ukrainian relations doesn’t depend on an assessment of whether the invasion was provoked, unprovoked, justified, or unjustified, so I don’t need any such disclaimers.

Rather, my opinion is based on the notion that even if the US government has one or more legitimate purposes (in my opinion it has none), those purposes don’t extend to stealing money from you to buy weapons and sending them halfway around the world in the hope of helping one authoritarian gang win a turf war versus another authoritarian gang.

If you think I’m engaging in “moral equivalence,” you’re absolutely right. There’s nothing wrong with moral equivalence statements if the people/actions being described are morally equivalent. Looking at you, Putin/Zelenskyy/Biden.

I’m not “pro-Russia,” “pro-Ukraine,” or even “pro-US.” I’m pro-peace and anti-war. Stick that disclaimer in your pipe and smoke it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

Former US Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut sat down with Washington Post newsletter The Early, in mid-July to answer questions about the new organization he co-chairs. It calls itself “No Labels,”  and it’s in the process of lining up ballot access for … well, something.

“Democratic strategists and anti-Trump Republican operatives have concluded,”  David Corn writes at Mother Jones,  “that its effort could siphon more votes from President Joe Biden than Donald Trump.”

Cue the Election 2024 season premier of Spoiler Theater!

The TL;DR on “spoiler” worries:

Votes don’t belong to, and can’t be “siphoned from,” candidates. Your vote belongs to you, and only you, until you cast it. Only then does it belong to someone else, and that someone else is the candidate you cast it for. Neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump is magically entitled to it. If you decide to vote Libertarian, or Green, or even write in my name (yes, really), that other candidate isn’t “stealing” your vote from Biden, nor are you “spoiling” the election of Trump.

That said, No Labels is not a typical third party or independent campaign. In fact, it’s not even a campaign yet. Lieberman refers to it as an “insurance policy project” that congressional candidates might use and that could, but won’t necessarily, “be the basis of a campaign by a bipartisan unity ticket that No Labels would offer its ballot access to.”

Who, precisely, is No Labels an “insurance policy” for? It advertises itself as “centrist,” which is code for the existing political and policy establishment.

This isn’t Joe Lieberman’s first “third party” rodeo.

In 2006, after having occupied one political seat or another since 1970, he lost the Democratic primary for re-election to a fourth term in the US Senate.

So he formed a third party to stay in the race. He named it “Connecticut for Lieberman” — rather a Freudian slip, in my opinion. Candidates usually go with e.g. “Smith for California” to pretend that they’re there to “serve” their states. Lieberman’s opinion was, quite obviously, that the great state of Connecticut existed for the sole purpose of providing him with an office, a paycheck, and a pension.

No Labels is pretty much Connecticut for Lieberman writ large. Its purpose is to extort the Democratic Party into sticking to a “centrist” campaign platform: If Joe Biden  colors outside those lines in a “progressive” direction to coalition-build with, for example, a less aggressive foreign policy, they’ll run some half-Republican, half-Democrat “centrist” (prime suspect: Joe Manchin of West Virginia) on their line as a “spoiler” candidate.

They’d rather have a Republican in the White House for four years than a Democratic Party that rocks the policy boat or even, horror of horrors, stops providing cushy Capitol Hill sinecures exclusively to the members of an elite club. No wonder, as Corn notices, that “media reports have identified several major donors with GOP ties.”

But their prospective candidate is still exactly as entitled to your vote as any other, which is to say not at all.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY