Welcome.

The world has just witnessed a genocide, and it has watched without being able to do anything to stop it because the United States and the United Kingdom have refused to do so. Like many Americans, I am frustrated that my taxes are funding an occupation, apartheid and genocide. I was taught about the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust, how the post world-war II rules-based order was meant to institutionalize the famous words held aloft in placards by famished prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp, "never again." I was taught to believe that "never again" means that never again will the world allow ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, regardless of which ethnicity is being cleansed.

Why have we allowed the horrors in Gaza and the West Bank to occur? There is no more pressing question today. The United States has consistently refused to vote with other countries in the Security Council to resolve to stop Israel's apartheid and genocide. The United States has refused to honor the warrants by the International Criminal Court ("ICC") against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza. President Donald Trump yesterday vowed to dismantle the ICC. Trump has also attacked the United Nations and has threatened to stop funding it. What has caused the U.S. to turn its back on the rules-based order that it established after the Second World War? The answer cannot be about a single president, as quixotic and erratic as he might be, because Democratic President Joseph Biden likewise did nothing to stop the genocide. What has caused the Democrats, which is supposed to be the party of the Left, to be such staunch supporters of an Israeli state that has carried a rule of racism and apartheid for decades?

This brings us to the current state of paradoxes. Polls suggest hat most Americans have an unfavorable view of Israel, no doubt caused in part by witnessing the genocide in Gaza. In a democracy, one might be forgiven for assuming that Congress and the media would highlight the abusive, racist, and entitled nature of the the Israeli government and that the world would stand unified and take action by stopping funding and voting for a Security Council resolution to stop the genocide, backed by the military might of the five permanent members of that Council. This did not happen. Another paradox is that Congress in the world's loudest (if not the largest) democracy votes to fund Israel militarily when 1) the majority of voters have an unfavorable view of Israel , 2) when Israeli acts undemocratically toward its occupied people, and 3) when Israel is a relatively wealthy country with universal healthcare, which many voters would like to see in the U.S.. What are the reasons for these incongruities?

The media has been unfair and biased against Palestinians. In the U.S., the mainstream media refuses to portray Palestinians in any positive light. Where are the interviews of Palestinians whose homes were stolen by Israeli settlers? Where are the interviews of the children who have lost their parents and brothers and sisters, of the parents who have lost their children? The mainstream media continues its pro-Israel talking points, its imbalanced interviews, and its oft-repeated refrain that October 7 was a terrorist attack that gives Israel carte blanche to kill Palestinians ad infinitum. And now we have descended into a deplorable state in which supporters of Israel in the U.S and the U.K. have weaponized the word "antisemitism" in order to stifle discussion about our governments' roles in the crimes against humanity in Gaza and human rights abuses in the West Bank.

Criticism of Israel and America's relationship to it is not antisemitism. It might sound like an uncontroversial thing to say, but there are forces that are willing to conflate criticism of Israel and antisemitism., as though one is antisemitic as long as they do not support all Israeli policies unconditionally. This is absurd, yes. However, the media and our politicians would have us believe that we are antisemitic for questioning Israel. There is nothing inherent about our relationship with Israel. Israel is not mentioned I the U.S. constitution. Students erupted in protests across the U.S. as the bombardment of Gaza continued and the death toll grew greater and greater. No mainstream media outlet interviewed the students to even ask why they were protesting. The answer is that they protest because the mainstream media misreports on Israel and Palestine, so they were compelled to scream out their collective outrage over human rights abuses, which they are taught to respect. In response, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, instead of holding a congressional hearing on the deranged support for Israel by our government that allows a genocide to unfold, accused university presidents of not doing enough to stop antisemitism. Unfortunately, those university presidents gave poor answers to the interrogation by Stefanik. They should have stated unwaveringly that while their institutions protect against antisemitism as much as they protect against discrimination in all its forms and that students have the right to call attention to the bad things that governments do without being called antisemites for it. With the Trump administration, the Department of Justice and the State Department have been weaponized into internal enforcers of pro-Israel policies. Secretary Marco Rubio revoked visas of students who have spoken out against American support for Israel, detained and deported them. Some have fought back in the courts. Mahmoud Khalil has just requested that his case be heard by the Supreme Court after the Third Circuit failed to reverse an order of deportation. One of the questions there may be whether the government can take action against someone for the exercise of First Amendment rights concerning Palestine and Israel.