The U.S. government’s unconditional financial and diplomatic support of Israel is harming America’s global standing, national security and domestic interests, according to a new report by a policy group focused on U.S. policy toward the Middle East.
A New Policy’s report, first obtained Wednesday by HuffPost, describes more than a dozen reasons why the country’s unconditional support for Israel, particularly its actions toward Palestinians in Gaza over the last 15 months, is not in America’s national interest, contrary to bipartisan political messaging.
“Whether we’re talking about American taxpayer money or whether we’re talking about American freedoms, there’s this assumption across much of the political establishment, again on a bipartisan basis, that unqualified support for Israel is the right thing. And the answer is, not for America it’s not,” said Josh Paul, who with Tariq Habash co-founded the lobby group A New Policy after they resigned from the Biden administration in protest of its Gaza policy.
“Why we’re putting out this paper is in order to help Americans engage in that conversation and understand how the policy approaches and the political approaches that have been taken have been so harmful,” Paul said.
The report’s release comes just one day after Israel and Hamas agreed on a long-awaited ceasefire that involves pausing the violence in Gaza and exchanging captives. Though the deal has brought a sense of relief to those desperate to see the fighting end, some are more cautious about whether Israel will hold up its end of the agreement ― and for Palestinian Americans like Habash, frustration that the Biden administration could have helped achieve such a plan months ago.
“Joe Biden, coming into office, was expected to reestablish America’s role on a global stage, right? He was supposed to bring us back into the fold, to bring honor back to America,” Habash said. “And yet, despite that, ends his presidency overseeing and facilitating ― indirectly, directly, however you want to say it ― a genocide of the Palestinian people.”
There was no immediate response Wednesday night to a HuffPost request for comment from the Biden administration.
However, in a speech Tuesday before the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, Secretary of State Antony Blinken affirmed President Joe Biden’s stance on Israel, saying: “America’s allies and partners, particularly in the Middle East, have taken note of who they can rely on to stand by their friends and who they cannot, which powers work to defuse crises and which powers stand back and do nothing — or make problems worse.”
As the U.S. prepares again for an incoming Trump administration, both Paul and Habash stressed that the arguments in their report against unconditional support for Israel transcend political parties and individual short-term leaders. Instead, they said, the U.S. requires a much bigger upheaval of its foreign policy that over the past year has led to the country’s isolation at the United Nations, projected weakness for letting Israel cross red lines without accountability and loss of international credibility for acting in defiance of the democratic values it preaches.
“I think now what you have enabled is the world to believe that they have to move forward without the United States ― and I think that is extremely dangerous for America on a global stage, when people feel like America should not be the first ally they think about,” Habash said.
The U.S. sends billions of dollars to a foreign country’s military, a military that has never been held accountable for harming an American. But at home, Americans who feel as if their government has failed them in its Mideast policy can face punishment for criticizing Israel.
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“At the end of the day, there is no American interest or value more fundamental than the freedoms available to the American people. And when those are jeopardized ― when students cannot peacefully protest, when academics cannot peacefully write papers, when members of Congress cannot freely speak their mind, when people lose their jobs because of what they say ― that is, first of all, undermining of the ability to even get to a set of policies that are in our interest,” Paul said.
“And, second of all, it is very concerning as a precedent because what is applied first to the debate around policy on Israel and Palestine will be applied to debate in other areas,” he said. “And that is something that should send a chill down the spine of every freedom-loving American.”