Let’s call it from now on the United States of Israel. Because many times when someone looks at the relations between Israel and the United States, one might ask, who is really the superpower between the two? And those questions become much more valid in the recent days when you see what is going on in Iran. We are dealing now really with almost questions of sovereignty. We are dealing, needless to say hat no state in the world would have dared to do it, and no statesman in the world. And I will tell you frankly, it’s not Israel’s fault. Israel is doing whatever it can, it’s the one who enables it”.
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, speaking in Washington DC, April 10.
Gideon Levy, Israel’s most well-known journalist outside of Israel, and the most controversial inside of it, was referring to the royal welcome given to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a joint session of the US Congress a month earlier and to his announced plans to pressure the US Congress to kill any deal that might be negotiated with Tehran over its nuclear enrichment program that would leave Iran with any semblance of national sovereignty.
Levy made his remarks at an all-day conference on the Israel lobby at the National Press Club, organized by the Institute for Research/Middle East Policy and the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs which, despite its venue and distinguished cast of speakers, received nary a mention in the nation’s mainstream or leading alternative media outside of a commentary by Ralph Nader in CounterPunch remarking on that very fact. More