Electoral meddling

“THE American people,” the US attorney general Merrick Garland declared recently, “are entitled to know when a foreign power engages in political activities or seeks to influence public discourse.” He was pontificating in the context of a well-publicised pushback against Russian ‘influence campaigns’ in connection with November’s presidential election.
Russia was widely seen as a culprit eight years ago, after its hackers purportedly passed on concealed Democratic National Committee (DNC) documents to WikiLeaks, in facilitating Donald Trump’s 2016 triumph. The hitherto secreted emails showed how hard the Democratic Party establishment had striven to derail the campaign of Bernie Sanders, the socialist alternative who might have defeated Hillary Clinton in the primaries and proved a more formidable challenge for Trump.
Clinton won almost three million more votes than Trump, so perhaps the biggest culprit in the outcome that year was the uniquely American concept of the electoral college, which can easily be counted among the various deformities that diminish America’s much-ballyhooed democracy.
Unlike 2016, when the mainstream media lapped up the DNC revelations, there has been a reticence to publicise the contents of what purportedly Iranian hackers threw up after virtually infiltrating Trump’s campaign and leaking internal documents. In a mafia-like omerta, the contents remain concealed. The mainstream focus has been on the hack rather than its revelations, notably about Trump’s obnoxious running mate J.D. Vance.
China has also been cited as a source of cyber campaigns, notwithstanding Xi Jinping’s vow at his summit with Joe Biden last year that Beijing would steer clear of interference.
It’s worth pointing out, though, that even if the allegations against Iran and China can be substantiated, they are unlikely to be on the same side as Russia. Moscow might see Trump as an asset in the context of its invasion of Ukraine, but there’s little reason for Beijing and Tehran to be on the same page, notwithstanding the broad convergence of views on foreign policy between the political rivals in America.
Nowhere is this more evident than on the policy towards Israel, which has lately revolved around mild admonitions against the ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, while providing the Netanyahu regime with the means of mass murder. Kamala Harris represents continuity with the Biden tendency of shedding a few crocodile tears and pretending that a Washington-sponsored ceasefire is imminent, and then blaming the failure to secure it on Benjamin Netanyahu’s intransigence and Hamas’s obduracy.
Handwringing over the genocide is meaningless as long as the US goes on providing the means of conducting it. The extension of Israeli Defence Forces operations into the West Bank could be seen as both a reflection of the IDF’s failure to obliterate Hamas in Gaza and the intention of the nation it represents to conquer all of historical Palestine. Some Israelis even harbour ambitions of establishing Jewish settlements in southern Lebanon — hence the desire, it seems, to provoke yet another war with Hezbollah.
Unabashedly Israeli-affiliated groups in the US remain determined to ensure that anyone sympathetic to the idea of justice for Zionism’s victims, whether on campuses or in Congress, is silenced. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) poured millions of dollars this year into what became the most expensive Cong­ressional primary campaigns, contributing to the defeats of incumbents such as Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, thereby ho­­ping to ensure that the humanitarian impulse towards empathy for Palestinians is diminished in the next House of Representatives. The Democratic establishment colluded with the Zionist tendency to deny the numerous ‘uncommitted’ dissidents a platform at the party’s national conference last month.
Unrelenting interventions in US politics by AIPAC and its ilk are not considered foreign interference in mainstream US political discourse. Sure, it can be argued that while Russia, Iran and China are considered adversaries, Israel is the tightest of allies, hence its motives are not malign. But could any other close friend of Washington — from Canberra to Riyadh — get away with similar efforts to shift the dial? The negative answer is, perhaps, blowing in the wind.
Back in the 1950s-60s, Israeli efforts managed to tame American Jewish organisations that were appalled by the parallels between European antisemitism and the Nakba. Zionists have yet to find the means of subduing the wrath of younger generations of American Jews who are horrified by what is being done in their name. So far, though, they can count on the blind bipartisan support of the American establishment as the killing goes on.
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Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2024