The famous 1796 Farewell Address of America’s first president, George Washington, was actually a letter. First drafted by James Madison in 1792 and then by Alexander Hamilton after Washington’s second term was ending, the text deals in part with matters “foreign to our concerns.”
The president thought it “unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of [Europe’s] politics.”
He asserted that it is America’s “true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” As, in his opinion, America was in a “detached and distant situation,” it could avoid “injury from external annoyance.”
Therefore, it would be unwise for the country to “entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice.”
That was two centuries ago, and a lot has happened since, and America is in another place. The “situation” of Washington’s day is no more. Yet, in another sense, its leaders and politicians keep managing not to avoid unfortunate entanglements.
Former Chicago mayor and Barack Obama aide Rahm Emanuel was in Israel a fortnight ago. He claimed that the US has stood behind Israel “blindly, silently… without conditions, without consequence.” He thinks Israel is in a “strategic pariah status.”
I do not know which web search machine Emanuel used, but I remember when Israel did not have the US behind it.
There was the March 1948 trusteeship betrayal by the State Department, president Dwight Eisenhower forcing David Ben-Gurion to retreat from Sinai in 1957, Henry Kissinger’s delay in rearming Israel in 1973 and, to jump forward, the Biden/Blinken holdup of arms during the Israel-Hamas War, as well as the February 2024 Executive Order 14115 and its sanctions on Israelis and Israeli associations.
Emanuel rejected the “now discredited” two-state solution but then suggested Israel get entangled in a 23-state solution. He thinks that 21 other Arab nations will “stand up a governing [Palestinian] authority capable of accepting the historic Jewish connection to this land.”
Does he really assume those states will further entangle themselves, having mostly avoided President Donald Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan?
Senator Ro Khanna hitched a ride with Breaking the Silence, the anti-occupation activist group, to the Southern Hebron Hills region and got held up attempting to visit a fabricated Arab settlement that had been abandoned. He claimed the “IDF had violent settlers detain American citizens,” in a televised interview with The Hill.
Zanuta, a protected archaeological site, was invaded in the early 2000s by Arabs from the village of Dhahiriya. As Regavim has documented, they erected illegal structures on and near the site and in doing so destroyed antiquities and historical artifacts. Archaeological heritage means little to them, it would appear.
Back in the United States, seeking out support from the more radical fringe, Khanna got tongue-tied after being badgered by anti-Israel Drop News Site founder Jeremy Scahill during a podcast. Scahill tried to get him to admit that Hamas was only targeting Israel’s military on October 7, 2023, and had the right to invade Israel to kill its soldiers. Khanna discovered the beast he is courting is an insatiable one.
Vance's interview
On Wednesday, July 15, US Vice President JD Vance made himself a guest interviewee with Joe Rogan. Just after an hour had passed, Vance responded to questions about the hostilities with Iran, and, as it developed, became entangled.
Acknowledging that America is “obviously very close to Israel,” he nevertheless went on, according to the transcript as I was viewing that section, and said, “You know there’s a lot of talk about how much the Israeli government is influencing American politics, and there are certainly certain people within the Israeli government who hate the deal. And we see exact evidence.”
What was that “evidence?” A Time magazine story that claimed that Israeli government elements want to derail US negotiations with Iran. Trump’s former election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was linked with an Israeli government-funded campaign paying conservative influencers to push audiences to denounce the US-Iran ceasefire.
Vance understood that “certain influencers in America… are being paid in order to attack the deal.” He then added, “a former Trump campaign person who was himself paid by certain elements within the Israeli government” was behind the effort. Parscale denied the story’s truth.
“I know beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Vance went on, “that there have been people within the Israeli government who are trying to, like, actually shift us away from [negotiations] because they want to continue the military campaign.”
He then, perhaps to entangle himself with the Carlson-Candace crowd and the conspiracy theorist twist in current American politics, offered that “There are some people within their system, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, who are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely. Again, not towards any objective, but just indefinitely.”
He mentioned in particular Mark Levin, a personal friend of Trump, reacting, “What has really annoyed me about the hawkish side of this thing is they attack any effort to negotiate.” Levin is unabashedly Jewish, pro-Israel, supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and very critical of Vance’s foreign affairs maneuvers.
It is indeed worrying, after the pro-Israel collapse of the Democrats, to observe some important Republicans imploding on Israel in so irrational a manner.
At the present moment, as the negotiations have only proven an almost total failure, all that Vance is doing is ingratiating himself with the most ugly, hateful, and irresponsible elements within the American right-of-center anti-interventionist electorate. They have become increasingly sympathetic to foreign Islamist goals, not to mention the many millions of foreign Islamist dollars.
That situation is one, I would suspect, with which president Washington would not find favor.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.