Ronald Reagan, who used to be an actor in Hollywood before he became president, still had the skills to entertain his audience as president. He once shared an interesting joke where he made fun of the Russian freedom of speech. The joke was that there was an American and a Russian man talking and bragging to each other about the freedom of speech in their respective countries. The American brags about his country and says that in his country he could go to the Oval Office, pound the president’s office table expressing anger saying Mr. President, I do not like how you are running our country. The Russian tells the American that this was not such a hard thing to do in Russia. The Russian tells the proud American that he could also go to the Kremlin and into the office of the general secretary, pound on his desk and say Mr. General Secretary, I do not like how President Reagan is running his country.
The joke is actually about how in the Soviet Union only critique of the enemy, namely America, was allowed and there was no tolerance for critical voices against the regime in charge of Russia. Dissent was almost unheard of. The joke resonated with many and it also reminded me personally of how one of the litmus tests to know who controls you is to understand who it is that you cannot or are not allowed to criticize.
I want to plagiarize that joke and play it between an American and an Israeli. Imagine an Israeli brags in front of an American citizen about the freedom of speech in his country. Imagine the Israeli saying that he could go into the Knesset and into the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pound on his table and say Mr. Prime Minister I do not like how you are running this country and how you are fighting this war in Gaza. Now imagine the American, as in the original joke told by President Reagan, boasts of the freedom of speech in America and tells the Israeli citizen that he, as an American, could also go into the Oval Office, pound on the president’s table and say, Mr. President, I do not like how Benjamin Netanyahu is running Israel and how he is fighting that war in Gaza.
Except that in this scenario, that would not be a joke but rather an invitation to invite trouble or it could be a true testament to the American freedom of speech because, for an American citizen, it is very easy to criticize their own government and country but it is almost impossible to criticize Israel or Israeli war conduct without also inviting trouble in their career. That is why I asked the readers to imagine that joke because we can only imagine such a situation.
The American presidential campaign is nearing its end and at the time of writing this piece, only a few days are left before the election day. Both the candidates differed on various issues but as expected, on the issue of Israel, both Kamala and Trump went to horrible lengths to prove how much they will support and defend the state of Israel.
For that joke to become a reality one day would either be a cold day in hell or a near perfection of American democracy. Anything shy of that, Israel will continue to control American foreign policy, journalism, movie actors, U.N. veto and so forth.
The only explanation for this blind support, which defies any logic, is the role of the pro-Israel lobbies that have surrounded the American political and media culture like a snake. This is not my opinion but a fact-finding research beautifully compiled as a book titled “The Israel Lobby” by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. I do not know of a better way to understand and make sense of this senseless support that every mainstream American politician is ready to lend to Israel.