I am sickened each time US politicians, or public figures, pay homage to AIPAC. Time after time they want to display their credentials as being anti-Palestinian, and in the case of Vice President Biden, willing to re-raise the possibility of war with Iran.

Do we need to remind VP Biden that even the US military has warned that a war with Iran would be worse than silly? It would be disastrous. Do we need to remind VP Biden that the only nuclear power in the Middle East is Israel?

The Obama administration, despite pressure from Israel, has not launched a military assault on Iran. That is good. But the entire framing of the Iranian nuclear matter as one of Iran aiming for nuclear weapons remains based on speculation. Going to war based on speculation is not a great idea…oops, that’s right, that’s what the USA did in attacking Iraq.

The US antipathy towards Iran is quite amazing in light of the fact that the Iranians supported the US invasion of Afghanistan and were not opposed to the US invasion of Iraq. I do not know whether the Iranians assumed that, as a result, the USA would not look upon them with hostility. If that was their calculation they were as wrong as Saddam Hussein was in assuming that his relationship with the USA in the 1980s would give Iraq a pass in invading Kuwait in 1990. Such relationships are of no lasting consequence for the USA.

Biden’s pilgrimage to AIPAC is further infuriating for what it says, again and again, to the Palestinians. The Israeli government can continue to expand settlements, violate United Nations resolutions and international law, and yet the Palestinians are the ones who get the shaft.

Biden and others from the elite will continue to kiss up to AIPAC and the Israeli government until there is a political price to be paid. With Israeli Apartheid Week being commemorated this week in the USA, and with other events during the course of March, this is as good a time as any for those with a conscience to reject the cynical and unquestioning support of the Israeli government in its stand toward the Palestinians and its jingoism toward Iran. It is also time for us here in the USA to insist that we should not be a supply depot for the ambitions of the Israeli government and their front organizations in the USA.

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