America’s Unconditional Support for Israel: A Flawed Policy

There hardly seems to be any compelling moral rationale for what has become an uncritical and uncompromising rapport with Israelis, more so under the present Netanyahu government.

PUBLISHED ON

October 2, 2024

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“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

Such were the words of the controversial, and at times provocative, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who warned that in fighting evil one risks becoming the very evil he is fighting. This is something the United States of America stands accused of for its unconditional support for the State of Israel, including the latter’s past human rights abuses and the casualties in the Gaza Strip caused by the latter that have reached a genocidal level. As evident, the modern State of Israel’s political prowess, based on the illusion “that the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland is part of a messianic fulfilment,” has gone beyond the observance of the rule of law as established by the international community. 

This summer, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel was in breach of international law with its occupation of the Palestinian Territories in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The ICJ ordered the Israelis to both bring this to an end and make reparations for damage they created. In like manner, the U.N. General Assembly, in September, overwhelmingly voted—124 nations in favor, 14 against, and 43 abstentions—that Israel should withdraw from its illegal occupation. The U.S., as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, vetoed the measure, thus rendering it null.

Indeed, even fellow Israelis have called out Israel’s crimes. For example, according to B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, under Itamar Ben-Gvir, the incumbent Israeli Minister of National Security, Palestinian detainees have been subjected to “systematic, institutional policy of unrelenting physical and psychological violence,” which is on par with the escalation in Christian persecution in the Holy Land. Also, this past May,  a self-proclaimed soldier from Israel’s infamous Netzah Yehuda battalion gloated of his unit’s killing of a 78-year-old Palestinian-American and likewise flaunted his genocidal views. After announcing plans to sanction the battalion, the Biden administration inexplicably pulled back. 

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And just this past month, multiple videos showed  personnel of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) kicking and pushing four Palestinian bodies off a roof of a building during a military raid in the occupied West Bank town of Qabatiya. With all likelihood, just as with Shireen Abu Akleh, a Catholic Palestinian journalist who was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while covering a military operation in the West Bank, there will be no accountability.

One then inquires why U.S. presidents and lawmakers are reticent to criticize Israel when its own citizens have been saliently critical of its present policies, like the hundreds of thousands who protested last year against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reform. Or, his inability to both end the war in Gaza and liberate the hostages that are still being held captive by Hamas.  One then inquires why U.S. presidents and lawmakers are reticent to criticize Israel when its own citizens have been saliently critical of its present policies.Tweet This

A rationale for Washington’s unequivocal support is that it argues Israel has a “shared-democracy” surrounded by hostile dictatorships, which must be safeguarded at all costs—interesting, since the U.S. has both overthrown democratic governments and supported dictators in the past. In other words, Washington parallels Israel’s governmental structure to American liberal democracy, where people of any race, religion, or ethnicity are supposed to enjoy equal rights. This is spurious because the State of Israel was explicitly established as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. As a result, Israel denies Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens from becoming citizens themselves, and consequently, it does not grant such spouses the right to live in Israel. 

The aforementioned B’tselem called this restriction “a racist law that determines who can live here according to racist criteria.” Such laws may be understandable given Israel’s founding principles, but they are inconsistent with America’s image of democracy. 

Like any other nation, Israel has the right to defend itself against threats from its enemies, including the terrorist organization of Hamas. But as France’s President Emmanuel Macron has said: ‘The fight against terrorism does not justify the sacrifice of civilians.”

This is not to say that the U.S. should break off ties with the Israelis, quite the contrary. Yet there hardly seems to be any compelling moral rationale for what has become an uncritical and uncompromising rapport with Israelis, more so under the present Netanyahu government. This exclusivity has been detrimental, as it has only fostered contempt in the Arab world, nay, in America, thereby complicating the chaotic situation in the Middle East even more, as is seen with the latest confrontations between Israel and Hezbollah.

On November 5, Americans will elect the 47th President of our United States. The lines that have long defined the Democratic and Republican parties’ policies have been a bit of a conundrum, as former President Donald Trump has vowed to cap credit card interest rates and force insurance companies to cover in vitro fertilization, and Vice President Harris has talked up gun ownership and promised tough border security measures.

Regardless of who wins, one thing is for certain: the U.S., at the risk of becoming complicit in Israel’s violation of international law and human rights abuses, will most definitely continue its unconditional support for the Jewish state. And history will judge us for that, though it does not have to be that way if we only hold the foreign policy elitists accountable.

[Image Credit: Shutterstock]

Author

  • Fr. Mario Alexis Portella

    Fr. Mario Alexis Portella is a priest of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Florence, Italy. He was born in New York and holds a doctorate in canon law and civil law from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He is the author of Islam: Religion of Peace?—The Violation of Natural Rights and Western Cover-Up (Westbow Press, 2018).

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7 thoughts on “America’s Unconditional Support for Israel: A Flawed Policy”

  1. Who are the Palestinians? Are they the people on top of the trucks stealing the humanitarian aid contributed the the world and shooting the people approaching the trucks? Or the people being shot at on the ground? And why is this even happening? Because on October 7, 2023, Hamas and other terrorist groups invaded Israel killed over 1,000 and took over 251 hostages. Fr. Portella didn’t mention it, but I think its relevant. This is what war is. When the hostages are returned and the threat of terrorism eliminated, we can get all nuanced on the marital citizenship laws of Israel. Until then, that’s a debate we can defer.

  2. As a devout Catholic, and also the daughter of a Jewish father, I must say that it is always different for the Jews. Ask yourself, how many Jews are on earth? Most people think hundreds of millions. Well, there are 14 million Jews on the whole earth. And roughly half live in Israel and half in the United States. Very few live anywhere else because it is always different for the Jews. Nowhere is safe and if you start to let down your guard and believe that you are safe – well, look what happens? You get massacred at a music festival, beaten on a college campus, and thrown under the bus by a black president of Harvard who should seriously know better.

    So, back to numbers – there are over:
    1 billion Muslims on earth
    500 million Arabs
    50 Muslim countries
    22 Arab states
    and 1 Jewish state of 7 million people

    And Israel is the problem? …

    Please pray.

  3. Maybe Father should conduct an experiment by building a steeple with a cross higher than the adjacent mosques.

  4. I’m thankful for what the last two people said in opposition to this article, and with the details they provided to do so. I’m up late reading this and am too tired to write something as clear and succinct as they did. Thank you both! However, I will say that this priest sounds a lot like Steve Jalsevac at LifeSite News.

  5. Excellent insights by Fr. Portella.
    “…the State of Israel was explicitly established as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. As a result, Israel denies Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens from becoming citizens themselves, and consequently, it does not grant such spouses the right to live in Israel.”
    Exactly. Palestinians, in this case, include Christians. So, it’s an anti-Christian policy in a Jewish theocracy. That’s what America is supporting and the supposed benefits we gain from this relationship are greatly outweighed by the miseries that result from it. Would the US support a Catholic nation (if such a thing could exist) because it was suffering threats to its independence? I don’t think so. We fought against the Catholics in Mexico and supported the Masons. Supporting the Jews in Israel doesn’t make a lot of sense. There’s the whole theological issue, that nobody seems to want to deal with also. The “chosen people” are those who accept the Messiah sent from God and all of the doctrines of the Church He established.

  6. When Fr. Portella cites the International Court of Justice and the U.N. General Assembly in support of his argument, he tells me to not take his argument seriously. Israel is and has been under a continuous assault on its very existence since its founding. Are they always right in what they do? No, no nation is. Are they justified in actively defending themselves? You betcha. Fr. Portella is just another in a long line of Catholic pearl-clutching handwringers. His argument has no legs.

  7. Fr. Portella’s analysis is based on the supposed credibility of the terrorist Hamas casualty numbers (which is like citing Black Lives Matters numbers), the UN Generally Assembly (which placed Iran head of its Human Rights Council), and the International Criminal Court (which only takes action against Israel while closing its eyes to real human rights abuses being perpetrated by dictatorial regime.) I do not support blank check support by the United States for any nation. But at this time I favor supporting Israel as it fights our common enemies – radical Islamicists aligned with Iran whose hands are stained with the deaths of 240 U.S. Marines on a peace seeking mission as well as other atrocities against Americans.

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