Election interference – Newspaper – DAWN.COM

“THE American people,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently declared, “have a right to know when a foreign power is engaging in political activities or attempting to influence public debate.” He made his pontificate in the context of a well-publicized backlash against Russian “influence campaigns” in connection with the November presidential election.

Russia was widely blamed eight years ago after its hackers reportedly passed hidden Democratic National Committee (DNC) documents to WikiLeaks, helping facilitate Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. The previously secret emails revealed the Democratic Party’s efforts to derail the campaign of Bernie Sanders, the socialist alternative that had defeated Hillary Clinton in the primaries and was proving to be a greater challenge to Trump.

Clinton received almost three million more votes than Trump. Perhaps the biggest culprit for the outcome that year was the typically American concept of the Electoral College. It can easily be counted among the many distortions that undermine America’s much-vaunted democracy.

Unlike 2016, when the mainstream media picked up on the DNC revelations, there has been a reluctance to release the contents of what Iranian hackers allegedly released after virtually infiltrating Trump’s campaign and leaking internal documents. In a mafia-like omerta, the contents remain hidden. The mainstream focus is more on the hack than the revelations, particularly concerning Trump’s pesky running mate J.D. Vance.

The US ignores some interventions in domestic politics.

China has also been cited as a source of cyber campaigns, despite Xi Jinping’s pledge during his summit with Joe Biden last year that Beijing would stay away from interference.

It is worth pointing out, however, that even if the allegations against Iran and China can be substantiated, they are unlikely to be on the same side as Russia. Moscow may see Trump as an asset in the context of its invasion of Ukraine, but there is little reason for Beijing and Tehran to be on the same page, despite the broad convergence of foreign policy positions between the political rivals in America.

Nowhere is this more evident than in policy toward Israel, which has of late revolved around mild admonishments against the ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, while simultaneously providing the Netanyahu regime with the means to commit mass murder. Kamala Harris represents the continuity with Biden’s tendency to shed a few crocodile tears and pretend that a Washington-sponsored ceasefire is imminent, then blame the failure to secure the ceasefire on the intransigence of Benjamin Netanyahu and the stubbornness of Hamas.

Hand-wringing over genocide is pointless as long as the US continues to provide the means to carry it out. The expansion of the Israeli Defense Force into the West Bank can be seen as a reflection of the IDF’s failure to eradicate Hamas in Gaza and the intent of the nation it represents to conquer all of historic Palestine. Some Israelis even harbor ambitions to establish Jewish settlements in southern Lebanon — hence the apparent desire to provoke another war with Hezbollah.

Groups blatantly aligned with Israel in the US remain determined to ensure that anyone sympathetic to the idea of ​​justice for the victims of Zionism, whether on campus or in Congress, is silenced. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) poured millions of dollars into what became the most expensive congressional primary campaigns this year, contributing to the defeats of incumbents like Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, in the hope of diminishing the humanitarian impulse for empathy for Palestinians in the next House of Representatives. The Democratic establishment colluded with the Zionist tendency to deny the many “non-committed” dissidents a platform at last month’s party national conference.

Incessant interventions in American politics by AIPAC and its ilk are not considered foreign interference in mainstream American political discourse. Of course, it can be argued that while Russia, Iran, and China are considered adversaries, Israel is its closest ally, and thus its motives are not malicious. But could any other close friend of Washington—from Canberra to Riyadh—get away with similar attempts to turn the dial? The negative answer may be a matter of the wind.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Israeli efforts succeeded in taming American Jewish organizations that were shocked by the similarities between European anti-Semitism and the Nakba. Zionists have yet to find the means to quell the anger of younger generations of American Jews who are shocked by what is being done in their name. So far, however, they can count on the blind bipartisan support of the American establishment as the killing continues.

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Published in Dawn, September 11, 2024