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'Lockstep' Support of Israel Doesn't Represent US

By Harry Kimball, Newser Staff

Posted Jan 3, 2009 12:50 PM CST

(Newser) – You wouldn't know it to hear our political leaders talk, but the country is deeply divided over Israel’s attacks on Gaza, writes Glenn Greenwald on Salon. Most Republican voters support the action, while most Democratic ones do not. Yet Democratic bigwigs such as Pelosi and Reid offer "blind, uncritical" support, demonstrating “the suffocating, fully bipartisan orthodoxy which typically predominates in America when it comes to Israel.”

Israel is the only issue in the US in which “the leaders of both parties adopt identical lockstep positions which leave half of the citizenry with no real voice,” writes Greenwald. America's unflinching support of Israel quashes any meaningful debate about the efficacy of that support. “The notion that the two countries may have separate interests,” Greenwald writes, “is the one issue that, above all else, may never be examined.”

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Palestinians react after seeing the bodies of relatives that were killed in a missile strike on a mosque. (AP Photo)

An explosion from an Israeli strike in the northern Gaza Strip. (AP Photo)

An Israeli watches fighter planes fly over the northern Gaza Strip. (AP Photo)

Israeli Arabs wave Palestinian flags as they join a demonstration of tens of thousands of protesting Israel's military operation in Gaza, in the northern Israeli town of Sakhnin. (AP Photo)

Smoke from Israeli artillery strikes is seen over the Gaza Strip. (AP Photo)

Jordanian activists holds a banner during a sit-in protest against Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. (AP Photo)

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators take part in a protest against Israel's military operation in Gaza today in Duesseldorf, Germany. (AP Photo)

An explosion is seen after an Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip. (AP Photo)

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It's the American taxpayer, with their incredibly consequential yet never-debated multi-billion-dollar aid packages to Israel , who are vital in funding this costly Israeli assault on Gaza. - Glenn Greenwald

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