by James M. Wall
Updated: Tuesday, September 8, 2015:
Benjamin Netanyahu’s AIPAC-controlled U.S. minions lost their battle to destroy President Obama’s nuclear accord with Iran and the P1-5 world powers.
A final, crucial vote was announced when Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md) became the 34th Democratic Senator to support the carefully constructed firewall needed to sustain a Barack Obama veto.
One day later, Senator Cory A. Booker (D-NJ) padded Obama’s veto-proof party vote with his support of the accord. With Mikulski and Booker on board, Obama now had 35 Senators who will vote to defeat a Republican-backed resolution of disapproval.
On Tuesday, September 8, the Los Angeles Times reported:
“Three more Democratic senators announced their endorsement of the Iran nuclear pact [Tuesday], creating a 41-vote firewall of support, but it remains unclear if Democrats will use their numbers to filibuster and block a vote on a GOP-backed resolution of disapproval.
Ron Wyden of Oregon, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Gary Peters of Michigan announced they will back the deal. President Obama has all but locked up support to sustain a veto of the disapproval resolution in both the House and Senate, but the Democratic senators now backing the president could deny opponents the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the measure to the White House.”
In his statement, which echoes other statements made with nervous glances toward AIPAC, Booker said, “Backing away from the nuclear pact at this point would leave the United States and its allies with few options to restrain Iran’s ambitions.”
One by one, as the days dwindled down to a precious few before a final vote in mid-September, Democratic Senators are stepping forward to endorse Obama’s decision to choose diplomacy over military action.
The White House worked with Senate and House Democratic leaders to orchestrate this drip-by-drip destruction of Netanyahu’s plan to control U.S. foreign policy.
The New York Times described a meeting between undecided Democratic Senators and senior diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. The meeting occurred before the Senate left for its August break.
The diplomats delivered a blunt message to the wavering Senators. The nuclear agreement with Iran was the best the Senate could expect. Furthermore, the five world powers had no intention of returning to the negotiating table.
So much for the AIPAC demand for a “better deal”. The diplomats unanimously agreed in their meeting with the Senators, “this is as good a deal as you could get and we are moving ahead with it.”
Somewhere, President George Washington smiles in appreciation. In his final address in 1796, Washington uttered these prescient words:
“a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils.”
Washington continued: “Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification”.
These are words for reflection by both Democrats and Republicans when the Congressional vote to reject the agreement reaches both chambers before September 17.
In the same week that Prime Minister Netanyahu lost his battle with Obama, Israel received a second serious blow to its already sagging world image. A video of an Israel soldier trying to arrest a 12-year-old Palestinian boy with a cast on his arm during a protest, went viral.
The boy resisted. His family rushed to free him from the soldier’s grip. One teenage girl pounded on the soldier. The soldier was rescued by another soldier who dragged him away.
When media reports swept across international social media, millions of viewers viewed the military occupation in action. The viewers also saw how furiously Palestinians fight to protect their young.
The Jerusalem pro-government Times of Israel described what happened.
“Their faces covered in bandanas, a group of adolescent Palestinian boys led the march from the West Bank Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh toward the neighboring Jewish settlement of Halamish. Behind them was a large crowd of villagers — some older and some younger — activists and members of the media. Some were waving Palestinian flags; some were holding gas masks; many had cameras.
Down the road, Israeli Defense Forces soldiers awaited them, as they do every Friday, in an effort to prevent the demonstration from reaching Halamish and the main road.
This routine protest against settlement construction in Nabi Saleh set the stage for an incident that was caught on video and made news headlines worldwide: Palestinian women and children preventing an IDF soldier from arresting 12-year-old Muhammad Tamimi, who was suspected of stone-throwing. The altercation left the soldier with light wounds, and Israel with a black eye on the world stage.”
An Haaretz editorial expressed its anger and frustration over a scene of an occupation soldier holding a 12-year-old Palestinian child in a chokehold.
“The scene from Nabi Saleh encapsulates all the insanity, injustice, stupidity, purposelessness and pointlessness of the occupation.”
And let the people say, Amen.
The picture of President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a Reuters picture from Mondoweiss. The video of the Nabi Saleh encounter is from the Arabic site, www. RoyaNews. The picture of the soldier holding the child appeared in Ha’aretz. It is by Reuters.
Wallwritings 
Hey Jim, good anecdote to finish with. I thought the really interesting point in the video was at the very end when the soldier, obviously shamed more than anything else, callously flipped a tear gas grenade towards the women and the boy and walked away with a smirk on his face as it burst. I once knew a bully in a schoolyard who did things like that when he was pulled off a smaller kid. Comeuppance, may it come more often as the soldiers understand that they cannot keep up the sometimes deadly bullying.
You’re right, Jim. You’re right once again. The President of the United States has outsmarted the Prime Minister of Israel. And, at the same time, he has outsmarted AIPAC, also, by bringing those mischief-makers out of the shadows. Publicity = Exposure.
Obviously, it makes me feel better, now that our own President Obama has won against demagogue and war criminal Netanyahu.
American interests in the Middle East/North Africa are different from Israel’s in all primary aspects, even though Israel and its supporters make it sound otherwise.
How is that?
American interests are to win the minds and hearts of the Arab people; to have Arab allies in one of the most strategic geographic areas of the world, stretching right at the belly-button of Europe;
to enhance American dominance in oil, gas energy resources; and to ensure a dominant share of the vast Arab markets.
By contrast, Israel interests are focused on continued occupation, and eventual annexation, of all of Palestine; maintaining an Apartheid state that ensures subjugation and eventual eviction of the non-Jewish majority in all of historic Palestine; regional strategic dominance to solidify Israeli occupation and annexation of lands belonging to neighboring countries it continues to occupy (such as the Syrian Golan Heights); to maintain its regional monopoly over the nuclear bomb and traditional weapons which prevent a nuclear-free Middle East; efforts to Balkanize Syria and Iraq and the rest of the Middle East and North Africa region and turn them into weak mini-states.
Not only are all of these Israeli interests “different” from US interests. They actually “destroy” US interests, due to repeated US support for Israel-right-or-wrong.
George Washington said it all, in this matter.
I’d like to hear opinions on ‘Whither AIPAC?’
It all seems so obvious, Jim. More so when YOU say it! Thanks.
The United States cannot make a constitutionally binding commitment in foreign affairs, except by treaty which requires two-thirds of the Senate. If we followed the Constitution, Israel would be just another foreign power with no dangerous special relationship, and there would be no irregular procedure now followed to approve the Iran deal which is merely a measure required in our enlightened national interests. I do not believe that Obama has defeated Netanyahu whose sway in American politics derives from the AIPAC-bought disloyalty of American politicians to the United States. I am glad that, a little at a time, we are breaking free of our unnatural bond with Israel, — an unnatural bond which is dangerous to Israel, the United States, and the world. The sooner we treat AIPAC as the voice of a ruling faction of a foreign power, the better. AIPAC does not speak for American Jews, not even all Israeli Jews. It is not a domestic lobby, but a cancer which is destroying the United States, — John Remington Graham of the Minnesota Bar (#3664X)
Well done, Jim
Money, money, money. War is profitable to Israel and large multi-national corporations whom the Republicans cow down to. Peace is not. This fight is as simple as that.