Is America no longer the land of the free, home of the brave? - opinion

Readers may have noted my absence from these columns since the beginning of the year. The reason? I was again on one of my travels under the auspices of that great organization March of the Living (MOTL), best known for organizing trips to Auschwitz. However, it does much more in the field of Holocaust education, such as promoting knowledge about the Kindertransport, which brought many thousands of Jewish children to the UK some 85 years ago – including me.

This time, my destination was London to speak on that subject at three of the MOTL events. God willing, on Holocaust Remembrance Day in May, I will travel with MOTL to Poland. So you see that my various absences were for the purpose of publicizing recent Jewish history and promoting our country, Israel.

In this column, I want to deal with Iran’s attempt to deceive the Western powers, and to analyze the US pre-election circus. There is no doubt that successive US administrations saw Israel as their most important ally in the Middle East, and that includes the current White House headed by President Joe Biden. Whether it is actually he who is conducting his country’s policy is widely discussed in political circles.

The United States will elect its next president later this year. That fact determines and heavily influences not only its internal strategy but also how foreign policy is conducted. Following their fiasco in Afghanistan, the Americans’ focus has shifted to the turmoil in the Middle East and its principal source of trouble, the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose aim is to exercise hegemony over the whole area and bring it under the influence of Islam. 

America’s major ally in the Middle East – the Jewish state of Israel, with its economic and military strength – is one of Iran’s main obstacles to achieving this aim. For years, the Iranians have worked hard to become a nuclear state, but concerted Western economic sanctions have thus far prevented them from reaching the point of employing advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium to the necessary 90% needed for nuclear fission.

In April 2015, a nuclear deal was reached with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Within this framework, Iran agreed tentatively to accept restrictions on its nuclear program, all of which would last at least a decade or more and allow increased international inspections under the deal. In exchange, the Obama administration secretly arranged the delivery by plane of $400 million in cash, on the same day that Iran released four American prisoners and formally implemented the nuclear deal. The money was flown to Tehran on wooden pallets stacked with Swiss francs, euros, and other currencies, as the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement to resolve claims that emanate from a case at the international tribunal in The Hague over a failed arms deal from the time of the Shah.

As it is highly unusual to settle a debt between states in cash, it can be safely assumed that the money will have been used for illicit purposes to reward and finance their terrorist proxies in their war against Israel – Hezbollah, which operates from southern Lebanon and is led by Hassan Nasrallah; and the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza under its leader Ismail Haniyeh, who since about 2016 has resided in great luxury in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

One of the negotiators of that shameful deal was then-US secretary of the Treasury Jacob Joseph Lew, who is today the American ambassador to the State of Israel. Probably with such moneys, Iran has been able to enroll the Houthis to attack Western shipping transversing the Red Sea, causing vessels to have to reroute around the Horn of Africa to reach destinations in the southern hemisphere and vice versa. The Houthis are officially known as the Ansa Allah movement, a Shia political and military organization that emerged from Yemen in the 1990s. Their attacks result in higher costs for fuel and time that will affect the price of merchandise for the consumer. All that is conducted by Iranian advisers, and the weapons are supplied by Tehran. Such is the spread of Iranian influence today.

Although Hezbollah has thousands of sophisticated rockets pointing at all major centers in Israel, it does not want to escalate the restricted skirmishes about border disputes into a major war because it knows quite well that like Hamas, it can be similarly destroyed and, in the process, drag modern Lebanon into the abyss. Similarly, the Houthis are already feeling the American power and may eventually make their cost-benefit analysis and consider abandoning Iran. So, without the help of their proxy fighters and straining under the imposed sanctions and without nuclear weapons, Iran would be in no position to defeat America and Israel. General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s philosophy sums up what should be Israel’s strategy today, when he said: ”Our real problem is not our strength today, it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.” So much for a quick look at Iran’s transient power. Empires rise and empires fall.

The 2024 US election circus

The land of the free and the home of the brave is no longer living up to its motto. America’s 21st-century champion of these ideals is being stifled and placed into a proverbial strait jacket. Former US president Donald Trump has been the center of legal wrangling over accusations that he caused an insurrection. On January 6, 2021, at a Save America rally, he gave a speech in which he repeated claims of election irregularities and said: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’ll not have a country anymore.” He also said, “I know that everyone here will be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” 

That last sentence has been omitted from most reports, but it is alleged that because of his speech, mobs broke into the US Capitol building and went on the rampage, causing considerable damage. Congress personnel had to flee, fearing attack. If that were not enough to try to prevent Trump from running for the presidency in the November election, there is also the case of the classified documents.

In November 2022, US Attorney-General Merrick Garland of the Biden administration appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith to examine the case against Trump, already opened by the Department of Justice. At the basis of this case, Trump is accused of violating the Espionage Act by illegally holding onto 31 classified documents containing national defense information after he left the White House in 2021. Prosecutors also charged Trump and two others with a conspiracy to obstruct the government’s repeated attempts to reclaim the classified material from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Smith’s team claims that Trump directed one of his personal aides to move the boxes so that the FBI and security forces and allegedly Trump’s own lawyers would not discover some of the classified material. Prosecutors also claim that Trump showed classified documents on at least two occasions to individuals who were not authorized to view them. 

During those meetings, Trump allegedly showed off a classified Pentagon document about attacking Iran. It was captured in an audio recording, where Trump can be heard describing the material as secret. The classified documents allegedly in Trump’s possession included White House intelligence briefings, communications containing foreign leaders’ assessments of US and other countries’ military capabilities, and reports on military activity.

Trump faces multiple charges concerning willful retention of national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act, while other cases are related to obstructing justice and making false statements. Under the Espionage Act, it is a crime to retain records containing sensitive national security information. Trump was charged on June 9 and pleaded not guilty at an arraignment in Miami. 

It’s remarkable that Biden denounced Trump for harboring classified documents in his home, yet it was since found that Biden also had classified material on his premises, some of which was haphazardly stored in his garage and freely accessible. That is undoubtedly reason for an independent in-depth investigation, particularly as some of the documents date back to Biden’s time as a senator, whereas Trump as president was authorized to declassify documents.

It is thought that the reason that Biden has not yet been charged is the upheaval, confusion, and uncertainty in the Democratic establishment so soon before the presidential election, scheduled to take place on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. The far Left Democratic establishment is protecting Biden because he is their choice for presidential nominee and he is easy to manipulate. That amounts to weaponization of justice for short-term political gain.

Biden’s so-called frequent gaffes include rather serious memory lapses and are signs of MCI, mild cognitive impairment, the early stage of memory loss and other cognitive ability, such as clear language or spacial perception; all are symptoms publicly observed. The White House is trying to explain all that as the normal behavior of an elderly man with a poor memory. But Biden’s condition raises doubt about his ability to conduct presidential business for another four years. I categorically state that the conduct of the US Department of Justice amounts to clear weaponization of the judiciary for short-term political gain, in the interest of party politics prior to the presidential election.

In yet another legal case against Trump, Fulton County of the State of Georgia has accused him and 18 others of subverting Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. The case actually looks like it is collapsing because of collusion between the attorney-general and the prosecutor, and possible perjury. Commenting on the proposed fine, it must be said that there were neither victims nor did anyone suffer financial loss. It is simply an attempt to damage Trump’s reputation and to disqualify him as a presidential candidate. 

The US election circus has only just begun, and we can expect more surprises from both sides of the political divide.

I have, however, no doubt at all that whoever occupies the Oval Office after November 5 – whether Trump, Biden, or someone else – will be acutely aware that while Israel relies heavily on American support, the military and economic strength of Israel is the primary US asset in the Middle East, and both countries need each other.

Now to matters closer to home, where Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is resolutely resisting heavy pressure by much of the international community to agree to the absurd demand for a a permanent “humanitarian” ceasefire, in light of the situation in which the Gazan population finds itself. Israel will no longer be sacrificed on the altar of humanitarianism, protecting those who raped and cruelly tortured our women, burned our children alive, and kidnapped our innocent civilians on October 7. Remember that hordes of Gazans followed the Hamas terrorists into Israel to take part in the massacre and return with their loot.

The world fails to question the Hamas claim that more than 30,000 of their innocent civilians were killed as a result of Israeli bombardment, while Israel states that at least 12,000 were Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and many others Hamas sympathizers, supporters, and hostile UNRWA operatives. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, said: “We have a unique answer to the Hamas tunnel threat. The terrorists have two alternatives: either to surrender unconditionally or die in the tunnels; there is no third alternative.”

Of course, we must not lose sight of the Israelis who are still held by the terrorists as hostages, and I feel sure that our government will leave no stone unturned to discover their location and to free them. However, the whole country is at one to continue the war until every terrorist in Gaza is dead or has experienced his last day of freedom.

It seems to me that the US secretary of state spends more time shuttling to Israel to lecture us than on other important US matters of state. He appears to be more concerned with the US citizens among the hostages than with the total defeat of the Hamas terror regime. He has already expressed his government’s plan to install the Palestinian Authority (PA) to rule over the whole of Gaza. Even just to suggest this is an insult to all of us. Do they really think that Israel spilled the blood of its bravest and best in order to replace one terror regime with another that financially rewards the killers of Jews and their families?

As for the proverbial “day after,” I refer you to the way Western powers dealt with Germany after it was defeated in May 1945. For the first years, the Germans were under military occupation until every trace of the previous regime was denazified. That was followed by the civilian-Allied Control Commission for Germany, and then – and only then – were German civilians introduced into government. 

Gaza must be dealt with similarly. I fervently believe that the whole of the Gaza Strip must be incorporated as part of sovereign Israel so that a large part can again be settled by Jews. Under no circumstances can we allow the PA or any other entity – Arab or Western – to again control the Gaza Strip.■

Walter Bingham, now in his 101st year of life, holds Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest working journalist and the oldest active radio host.