Holding a Congressman at Gunpoint: Israeli Settlers Backed by the IDF

An old saying advises against “looking a gift-horse in the mouth.” Another says, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” At least as of mid-June, 2026, Israel had not received either memo, because the country’s military, the IDF backed up the position of Israeli settlers who had just illegally detained—technically “kidnapped”—Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) while he was on a trip in the West Bank. U.S. President Trump had recently told the media that without the United States, Israel would not exist. The lack of gratitude shown to the U.S. by making sure that a visiting Congressman was treated well during his visit was palpable.

The full essay is at "Israeli Settlers Hold a Congressman at Gunpoint."

Why a Stronger E.U. Is Needed in International Affairs

As 2023 and the following year made clear, the world still faced additional challenges in rebuffing incursions that violate human rights, including crimes against humanity. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s military incursion into Gaza both demonstrate how easy it had become, especially with advanced military technology, to kill civilians so as to decimate an entire population so the land could be filled with the people of the aggressors. If this sounds like Hitler’s policy to make room for the German people in Eastern Europe, you are not far from touching on the real motives behind the aggression. It would be a pity were such motives to become the norm while the world looks on. I contend that the U.S. enabling of Israel has unwittingly contributed to the establishment of such a norm, and that therefore a stronger E.U. was needed not only domestically, but also internationally, as a counter-weight in defense of the human rights of civilians in Gaza.

The full essay is at "Why a Stronger E.U. Is Needed."

As U.S. President, Was Obama Really Anti-Israel?

In a poll in 2011, only 22% of Jewish voters in the U.S. said they approved of President Obama’s handling of Israel. Dan Senor pointed to the erosion of Obama’s Jewish fund-raising as another sign that the president was losing Jewish support in the United States. A poll by McLaughlin & Associates found that of Jewish donors who donated to Obama in 2008, only 64% had already donated or planned to donate to his re-election campaign of 2012. While a politician would undoubtedly try to placate and mollify the unsatisfied electorate, a statesman acting in the American interest might conclude that those voters were wrong in their assessment that the president’s policy was “anti-Israel.”

The full essay is at "Was Obama Anti-Israel?"

American Foreign Policy on Pakistan: Balancing Foreign Aid and Duplicity

Osama bin Laden “lived and died in a massive, fortified compound built in 2005 and located on the outskirts of Abbottabad, some 60 miles from the capital of Islamabad. It stood just a half-mile from the Kakul Military Academy . . . and close to various army regiments. . . . (C)ongressional Republicans and Democrats questioned whether bin Laden was hiding in plain sight, with Pakistani military and intelligence operatives either totally unaware of his location or willfully ignoring his presence to protect him."  Had it been smart of the U.S. to extend foreign aid to Pakistan?  That is, does this case point to the futility, even weakness, that attends foreign aid in general? 

                                                              

The full essay is "American Foreign Policy on Pakistan."

Knee-Jerk Reactions: On the U.S. Government Enabling Dictators

While in the U.S. Senate, Paul Kirk, the interim U.S. Senator who took Ted Kennedy’s seat, said, “Without a legitimate and credible Afghan partner, that counterinsurgency strategy is fundamentally flawed. The current Afghan government is neither legitimate nor credible. . . . We should not send a single additional dollar in aid or add a single American serviceman or woman to the 68,000 already courageously deployed in Afghanistan until we see a meaningful move by the Karzai regime to root out its corruption.” 

The full essay is at "Enabling Dictators."

Did Obama Press Israel to Compromise for Peace?

Seeing to “capture a moment of epochal change in the Arab world,” U.S. President Obama delivered a foreign policy speech on May 19, 2011 in which, according to the New York Times, he sought “to break the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” by “setting out a new starting point for negotiations.” In particular, he suggested that the Israelis go back to the 1967 borders, adjusted somewhat to account for settlements on the West Bank. Meeting with Obama on the following day, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “We can’t go back” to the 1967 borders, according to MSNBC.com. This put the U.S. at odds with one of its foremost allies. Considering the amount of financial and military aid involved, Netanyahu could have been accused of biting the hand that was feeding Israel. Yet due to lobbying no doubt, the Obama administration did not fully play its hand in pressuring the ally. 

The full essay is at "Pressing Israel." 

Day of Rage

Friday, August 16, 2013: A day of anger as proclaimed by Morsi supporters in Egypt. A day of death and carnage. A day of intransigence on both sides. Just a day earlier, the U.S. government had cancelled planned joint military exercises. Besides being largely symbolic rather than real sanction, the exercises were due to be downsized anyway due to the ongoing, across-the-board, sequester of the U.S. Government’s budget. Can something so convenient be counted as even “sending a signal?” Meanwhile, American foreign aid to Egypt, $1.3 billion—second only to what the U.S. gives Israel—continued, as if there were no sequester. As a direct result of the financial complicity, thousands of protesters in Turkey were shouting anti-American slogans. The protesters were so well informed that they were protesting the decision of the Obama administration not even to decide whether there had been a coup in Egypt when the military deposed Morsi. Turkey had emerged as one of the fiercest critics of what it has called an “unacceptable coup.”[1]

It is not as though the American aid gives the U.S. much leverage with the Egyptian military; aid from Middle East states, including Saudi Arabia (whose statement on the Day of Rage voiced support for the military), dwarfs that of the United States. Meanwhile, the U.S. Government, fearful of something worse (for the U.S.) in Egypt than its military, was not fooling the Turks or the rest of the world. The sad truth is that Americans could be harmed as a direct result of their government’s attempt to hold onto whatever leverage existed.

                                           The Egyptian military's "No Tolerance" in action on the Day of Rage.  AP/Hassan Ammar 

It is not as though cutting off foreign aid to Egypt would be so “radical” that the option was not realistic. On the Day of Rage, Germany, ein Land—wirklich Staat—auf die Europäische Union, suspended $25 million in aid to Egypt for climate and environmental protection projects.[2] Meanwhile, Germany, Egypt’s largest trading partner, joined with the French Government in calling for a federal response from the E.U.’s Council of Ministers and presumably the E.U.’s Foreign Minister. Indeed, one of the reasons for creating the E.U. had been that the states would have more influence together than separately. The states’ rights ideology was yet again obstructing Europe from attaining that goal.

I suspect that the difference in the respective reactions of the E.U. and U.S. with respect to foreign aid have to do with the power of the Israeli lobby being greater in the U.S. than the E.U. The U.S. Government was thus vulnerable to the accusation of hypocrisy on its democratic principles out of a rather obsessive concern for Israel’s safety. Had both unions withheld both foreign aid and trade with Egypt, the question would be whether the foreign aid from within the Middle East would be sufficient to sustain the Egyptian military in power. Ich weiß es leider nicht. At any rate, it is unfortunate that democracy and human rights can be so eclipsed by politics in the U.S. and even the E.U., the latter behaving as though it had one arm tied behind its back.

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1. Clare Richardson, “Hundreds in Turkey Protest Against Egyptian Crackdown,” Reuters, August 16, 2013.

2. Associated Press, “Germany Suspends Egypt Aid As World Continues To React To Crisis,” The Huffington Post, August 16, 2013.

Obama: Egyptian Coup? What Coup?

In late July 2013, the Obama administration decided that it was not legally required to determine whether the Egyptian military had led a coup in ousting President Morsi. The decision permitted the administration to continue $1.5 billion annually in American aid to Egypt. One senior official said only, “The law does not require us to make a formal determination as to whether a coup took place, and it is not in our national interest to make such a determination. We will not say it was a coup, we will not say it was not a coup, we will just not say,” the official said.”[1] I’m reminded of one of Captain Renault’s famous lines in the film, Casablanca. “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” Coup? What coup? To be sure, the administration had its reasons, strategic of course, yet a bigger picture perspective could be helpful here, considering that an effort to violate at least the spirit of a law is involved here.

 

 

Administration officials said the U.S. Government would continue to use financial aid as a lever to pressure Egypt’s new government to push through a transition to democracy. Yet what cost to the U.S. Government would this intent to manipulate the Egyptian military exact?

 

                                                                                            A Coup or a Book-Signing?

                                                                 Refusing even to decide if this is a coup reflects on the refuser.

 

On July 3, 2013, Egyptian generals deposed President Morsi, put him under arrest, and suspended the constitution. “Under the terms of the Foreign Assistance Act, no aid other than that for democracy promotion can be given to ‘any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup d’état.’ The law does not allow a presidential waiver, and stipulates that aid cannot be restored until ‘a democratically elected government has taken office.’”[2] Refusing to decide whether a coup took place is essentially refusing to enforce the law, given the events in Egypt on July 3, 2013.

 

 

Fittingly, one of Morsi’s senior advisors, Wael Haddara, accused the administration of “verbal acrobatics,” and asked, “With the entire world calling this a coup, why isn’t the American administration calling it so?”[3] The reference to “verbal acrobatics” is particularly important, for it hints on the discrediting long-term impact on the U.S. Government by its president’s decision to take an easy out. Generally speaking, political convenience can come back to bite even if the pain is not ever felt directly. In other words, the Obama administration sacrificed some of the U.S. Government’s credibility to be able to manipulate another government through money.

 

 

A similar trade-off existed at the time in Europe regarding the matter of Turkey’s possible accession an E.U. state. Turkey would be the largest state by population, and thus would have tremendous influence in the E.U. Government. The added cultural and political diversity to the E.U. could cause it added strain, if not compromise the very viability of the Union. So why would the E.U. admit Turkey when doing so could put the E.U. itself at risk internally? Similar to the Obama administration’s desire to have more influence in the Egyptian military, the European Commission would like to use Turkey as a “way in” to influence Middle East international relations.

 

 

Both cases evince putting one’s own federal government at risk in order to manipulate other governments. At the very least, the strategy of undercutting oneself to extend one’s influence seems counterproductive. That the influence comes well before “the bill comes due” creates the illusion of a costless choice. Looking out for the long-term governing of a union of diverse states, whether in Europe or North America, is easily shirked when the opportunity to pull more levers externally presents itself. A federal government willingly undercutting its own credibility or ability to govern for a short-term advantage is not only short-sighted; it is also indicative of a certain lack of character. The question is perhaps whether that lack of character is societal in nature or merely in ruling elites.

 

See the video made to accompany this essay: http://youtu.be/_1yuvnOq5YE

 

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1. Mark Landler, “Aid to Egypt Can Keep Flowing, Despite Overthrow, White House Decides,” The New York Times, July 25, 2013.

2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Aid to Egypt vs. Paying Down Debt

The debt of the U.S. Government—some $16 trillion in 2012—can be difficult even to grasp conceptually. One does not run into a trillion of anything in daily life, much less sixteen times a trillion. Without any tangible examples that can give us some inkling of the magnitude of the number, “sixteen trillion” can easily become a number one rattles off as if a “oh, by the way,” as in, “Oh, by the way, that sort of number will never be paid off.” One can point to the debt as a symptom of a systemic imbalance, as in that of consolidation over the constitutional federalism. That is to say, the magnitude of the debt can point to the lack of limitations facing Congress in its appropriating capacity. It could be argued that the ballot box is such a limitation, but what if the electorate themselves have a similar imbalance in terms of spending what they don’t have. With student loan debt at $1 trillion as of 2012 and a third of the amount in default, the federal debt can easily be seen as a manifestation of a more basic or fundamental imbalance of the psyche that transcends yet subtly fuels policy.

 

 

In reading of the Obama administration’s preparation of a pact to cut $1 billion from what Egypt owes the U.S. Government for agricultural purchases, I was stunned to read that “money that would otherwise pay down the American debt” would instead be spent on “training and infrastructure projects in Egypt intended to attract private investment and create jobs.” To be sure, rising unemployment in Egypt could undermine the democratically-elected Morsi government, so a strategic argument could be made on behalf of the American aid. However, the almost cavalier attitude toward paying down the federal debt is rather strange, and misplaced, given the gravity of the problem. Put another way, to put a strategic objective primarily oriented to the unemployment of a state that is not in the U.S. above paying down U.S. debt can be viewed as a questionable priority. It seems to indicate a desire to fix another’s problems at the expense of making a dent in one’s own. The scenario of the homeowner who lets his own grass grow out of control yet lends his mower to his neighbor whose lawn is has become “unbecoming” captures this sort of mentality.

 

In short, the debt of $16 trillion can be read as a mirror of sorts of a certain mentality—one that falls far short of that which a virtuous and responsible citizenry would have. It is no accident that Jefferson and Adams agreed in their later correspondence that such a citizenry is necessary for a republic to remain viable.

Source:

Steven Myers, “U.S. Is Near Pact to Cut $1 Billion from Egypt Debt,” The New York Times, September 4, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/world/middleeast/us-prepares-economic-aid-to-bolster-democracy-in-egypt.html?pagewanted=all

 

U.S. “Foreign Aid” Enabling Pakistani Betrayal

Officials speaking on behalf of Pakistan’s government claimed that Pakistani officials did not know that Osama bin Laden had been living in Pakistan, and yet a Pakistani court sentenced a Pakistani to a 33-year prison sentence for treason in having conspired “to wage war against Pakistan” by aiding the CIA in its hunt for bin Laden.[1] If trying to find him constitutes treason, it follows that the Pakistani government was opposed to the Americans finding him. Meanwhile, that government accepted hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid from the U.S. Government.  The reaction of an appropriations committee of the U.S. Senate in 2012 was merely to cut $33 million from $800 million in foreign aid to Pakistan. It would seem that the U.S. Government wanted it both ways—to castigate Pakistan for essentially hiding bin Laden while seeking to retain some influence with the Pakistani government by bribing it with foreign aid.

The full essay is at "U.S. 'Foreign Aid' Enabling Pakistan."

1. Jonathan Weisman, “Senate Panel Holds Up Aid to Pakistan,” The New York Times, May 24, 2012.