Source: Max Blumenthal via Twitter
A campaign that began as a defiant broadside against the war state and censorship industrial complex has suddenly pivoted to a bellicose exercise in pandering to rich Likudniks who seek war with Iran, the permanent violent warehousing of Palestinians and the criminalization of activism that challenges Israeli apartheid.
RFK Jr’s host was Shmuley Boteach, a professional race hustler and alleged financial fraudster who owes the existence of his one-man political operation to the fortune of Sheldon Adelson, the late ultra-Zionist oligarch who called for dropping a nuclear weapon on Iran.
If RFK was not handed a massive wad of Benjamins to suck up to Shmuley, he was embarrassing himself for free, because he was clearly out of his depth.
During a rambling, militaristic diatribe, he referred to hijabs as “habibs,” pronounced Chechnya as though he hadn’t heard of the place until twenty minutes before the event, and offered a history of Israel’s creation so cartoonishly propagandistic, it made Alan Dershowitz look like Ilan Pappe.
RFK Jr took it upon himself – or was taken on – to defend the Israeli army’s brigade-sized invasion of Jenin, during which it bombed buildings with fighter jets and ran bulldozers through the middle of a refugee camp. He referred to the entire city as “a bomb factory,” justifying the invasion because, in his words, “virtually one hundred percent of the people there are supporting terrorism.” According to RFK, “everybody [in Jenin] is involved in bomb making” – there are no civilians there at all, therefore all are legitimate targets.
He did not seem to know that the Palestinian campaign of suicide bombing ended well over 15 years ago, or that the Palestinian Authority is legally forbidden from defending Palestinians from Israeli violence – its primary function is to act as an occupation subcontractor. According to RFK Jr, the PA has an official “pay-to-slay policy,” in which “if you kill any Jew, you are going to get awarded with pay for life.” Even professional AIPAC lobbyists shy away from this kind of baseless invective.
The half-baked hasbara escalated from there as RFK Jr cited Richard Kemp, a former British army officer who subsists on Israel lobby speaking fees, to claim “the conduct of the IDF, the Israeli defense forces when they go into Palestinian territories, is beyond anything in the world.”
While Israeli army commanders openly adhere to the Dahiya Doctrine, named for the Beirut neighborhood Israel leveled in 2006, and which calls for targeting Arab civilians in order to turn them against their leadership, RFK Jr insisted that Israel’s policy is to “avoid civilian casualties” – it exclusively attacks military targets.
It is hard to believe RFK Jr’s ahistorical, belligerent line on Israel-Palestine was not bought and paid for by some pro-Israel billionaire. Which means he’s just as corruptible as any Democrat or GOP hack. But if he actually believes what he’s saying, he’s also at least as pro-war as they are.