Hurray for Haley. Hurray for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. You and she deserve each other.
Gideon Levy 02.04.2017 02:38 Updated: 2:39 AM
Analysis Nikki Haley, rock star to the Jews and their knight in shining armor
Opinion Even Nikki Haley, the pro-Israel hero, can’t save Israel at the UN
At AIPAC, UN envoy Nikki Haley vows no more resolutions against Israel
Raise a cheer, fellow Jews, for your new envoy, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Cheer the false propaganda, cheer the imaginary reality. Wallow in the false friendship with Israel and in recklessness toward the whole world. Cheer the lies and fabrications behind the Colgate smile.
Hurray for Haley. Hurray for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. You and she deserve each other. How fitting that you should fall in love with her. Together you can say that night is day and think it’s true. That’s why Haley is your rock star: That’s how you’d like to see Israel and the world, but the world, and especially Israel, aren’t as Haley tells you they are. And so your cheers, fellow Jews, are cheers for a lie.
Haley’s appearance at AIPAC last week was particularly embarrassing and ridiculous, even in the land of infinite opportunity. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wouldn’t dare express himself that way, Education Minister Naftali Bennett would have been more restrained, even Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid would have been less treacly. We don’t need UN Ambassador Danny Danon and Consul General of Israel in New York Dani Dayan — we’ve got Haley, ambassador to the UN of the Israeli government’s extreme right. U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, friend to the Beit El settlement, can stay in America. Haley will use her heels to kick all the Israel critics, as she subtly promised. After all, she said the Indians and the Jews have a common culture, a culture of aggressiveness.
Haley is also proud of her shameful act of blocking Salam Fayyad, the most moderate Palestinian on earth, as head of a UN mission to Libya, and she admitted that it was just because he is a Palestinian.
And AIPAC gave her a standing ovation. A boycott of the Palestinians is of course legitimate as far as she and they are concerned. As governor of South Carolina, Haley was the first to pass laws against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, another shameful act to be proud of.
What is the basis for all this goodness that she bestows upon us? She apparently has never visited Israel. She certainly has not been to the Gaza Strip, and she only hears about the West Bank on Fox News. Her parents’ Sikh culture is not exactly supportive of occupation and colonialism. One might have expected more sensitivity to human rights from the daughter of immigrants, even if she is a Republican.
But Haley is apparently ignorant and brainwashed as to what has happened here over the last century. She also knows nothing about the current situation in the region, if she caused the chairman of a UN committee to resign after a report by that committee determined that there is apartheid in Israel. Does Haley know what apartheid is? Does she know what Israel is? “There’s a new sheriff in town,” she said in her poetic way, to the cheers of the Jews, as if the United Nations were a crime-ridden neighborhood that had to be cleaned up. But Haley is an American and Americans can say anything they want.
Haley is also misleading when she presents Israel as a victim in the UN. The state that was founded in part thanks to the United Nations, thumbs its nose at UN resolutions and international law more than nearly any other state, excepting Russia and North Korea. Does the vicious civil war in Syria somehow justify a brutal 50-year occupation, Madam Ambassador? Does the war in Yemen detract from the right of a fourth-generation Gazan refugee to live free? Does the fact that Iraq is being bombarded by your country legitimize less serious war crimes?
The ambassador of the occupation almost compared UN Security Council Resolution 2334 with the Holocaust when she pledged: “Never again.” Never again what? The United States will never again abstain (!) in a vote on a resolution that states the obvious, that the settlements are illegal? Have you read international law, Madam Governor? And what will you say to the Palestinians, that their fate is sealed to live like this forever, among other reasons because of people like you?
The Jews of AIPAC cheered all that. In Israel, too, people rejoiced at this grotesque hallucination. But this hallucination is now reality: There’s a new sheriff in town. We’d better watch ourselves.
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