Antiwar.com brings us news that Israeli minister Yossi Peled is seeking sanctions and regime change… against the USA!
Peled is calling for the Israeli government to seek to influence American elections and cutting trade ties with America. This, let’s remember, is coming from a minister of the country that has received more aid from the US than all of Sub-Saharan Africa combined. Israeli politicians are now so comfortable with their relationship with America they talk about America in the same way America talks about minor Latin American rogue states.
For those, like me, who are skeptical of whether the Obama Administration is going to offer any real change on US policy towards Israel, stories like this offer cause for optimism.
Team Obama may not do enough to pressure Israel, but with fundamentalist misanthropes filling every cabinet post in Israel, there is every chance that it is the Israelis who will bring about an Israeli-American split with their antagonism.
If the most banal actions by Obama are being met with such belligerence from Israeli ministers, we could be soon witnessing a dynamic of escalating disagreements and tensions, bringing about a real schism. Politicians on both sides could drift further from one another in increasing acrimony. And Americans may finally realize they have had enough of pampering, funding, supporting and enabling Israeli crimes when Israeli leaders react with this petulant sense of entitlement. American patriotism, after all, does not take kindly to anyone meddling in American affairs—let alone when this meddling is coming from America’s biggest beneficiary.
Israeli right-wingers like Peled, Netanyahu and Lieberman are so drunk on their power and on their belief that they can get America to do anything they want that they might just push their luck a little too far. Hubris may well be the worst enemy of the powerful.
P U L S E 