Israel has become a monster in Jewish clothing
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) Visiting Scholar, Watson Institute, Brown University
Address to the Arab Center, Washington, DC on 16 October 2025
Photo: UNWRA
I served my country for thirty years as a diplomat. Diplomats are realists who seek to solve problems and advance national interests by measures short of war. For diplomats, optimism is what courage is to soldiers. A public looking for alternatives to warfare helps diplomacy succeed. The current, highly visible horrors in West Asia (or the Middle East) may at last be creating such a public.
I am honored to speak to the Arab Center in Washington, DC on your tenth anniversary. I commend you for your efforts to improve American understanding of West Asia. Keep it up! The level of understanding we Americans have of the region remains appalling, but our ignorance and prejudices are now suffering from a close encounter with unpalatable realities. Your programs to educate Americans about the region have never been as important or as impactful as they are now.
I wish I could use my brief appearance before you today to outline a realistic proposal for a just peace in the Holy Land and beyond. But honesty compels me to admit that I have little faith in our country’s current amateurish and manifestly incompetent diplomacy. Washington’s collaboration with Israel has for long effectively precluded peace in Palestine. It has now implicated the American people in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Israel’s captive Arab populations, as well as in Isreal’s unending aggression against its neighbors. Awareness of this is rapidly changing American views of the region.
I am delighted that, under pressure from President Trump, Israel agreed to a ceasefire and exchange of hostages with Hamas. But everything tells me that our jubilation about this should be short-lived. What was implemented on Monday was a transaction with no agreed follow-up. It is a fantasy palace built on quicksand. It was solemnized in a spectacular signing event at Sharm al Sheikh that no representatives of either Israel or Palestine attended. If this is a path to peace, it is not one between the absentees.
No one can point me to a previous ceasefire that Israel did not find a pretext to break. In the past few days, Israel has killed more unarmed Palestinians in Gaza and unilaterally halved the food supplies they were to get under the Trump-brokered “deal.” I very much hope for peace, but it is hard to believe celebration of Israeli-American solidarity or the eunuch-like subservience of Arab states to Israeli hegemony and American military power will produce it. We shall see. Pray for peace!
How is peace to be achieved? الله أعلم God knows. It is not here, and it is not imminent.
Like most Americans, I began with sympathy for the victims of the European Holocaust whom the Soviet Union and the United States had liberated as World War II ended. Like many Americans, I thought it just that European Jews should enjoy self-determination and refuge in their own state. I did not question where that state should be.
Like all but a few Americans, I was oblivious to the sordid history of Palestinian ethnic cleansing that the establishment of the State of Israel had entailed, and I was vulnerable to Zionist propaganda. Like most Americans, I had not only read Leon Uris’s majestic work of Zionist propaganda, “Exodus” but seen the film. Like at least some, I had also read and been impressed by Martin Buber’s celebration of Jewish ethical thought, “Ich und Du,” or “I and Thou.” I imagined Israel as the realization of that tradition. I did not know any Palestinians or other Arabs. Therefore, I had no concern or empathy for them. Martin Buber would justly condemn me for that, as he would now utterly reject what Israel has become.
I have traveled some distance since my first visit to Israel in 1993, as assistant secretary of defense. By then I had been sufficiently exposed to both Arab culture and Islam to be nauseated by the condescending racism Ashkenazi Israelis evidenced toward their captive Arab populations. I also found their denigration of Israeli Jews of Arab origin – the Mizrahim – disturbing. It was clear that Israel saw itself as an outpost of European civilization inconveniently resident among the hostile natives of West Asia. Until recently, Europe accorded Israel honorary status as such. No more.
As a diplomat, I dealt with apartheid-era South Africa. There, white supremacists professed a self-serving desire to promote the separate development of the country’s Indigenous ethnic groups in multiple states and thereby divide and rule. In Israel, by contrast, Jewish supremacists have always rejected self-determination or economic development for Palestinians, plotted to expel them from their homeland, and murdered them if they would not leave. Until recently, the Zionist state dangled the possibility of a two-state solution before the world, but only to gain time to produce a Palestinian-free Palestine.
As I came to understand what was happening in Palestine, I began to speak out against Israeli violations of the norms of human decency and international law, and to question where they were leading both Israel and the United States, the faithful enabler of Israel’s suicidal tendencies. The Zionist Lobbies responded with the usual smear job they levy on any critic of Israel, proving that, while antisemitism once denoted someone who hates Jews, it has since been reduced to meaning someone that some Jews feel they must demean and bring down to preclude criticism of Israel. But Israel’s criminal behavior, once concealed by the pro-Zionist self-censorship of the American corporate media, has now been revealed for all to see on social and alternative media.
So, the world has belatedly made the same journey I traveled in my understanding of Israel. No amount of hasbara – Zionist self-exculpation – can obscure the realities in the Holy Land. Everyone can see what Israel is doing and what it has become. Israel denies that it is conducting genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, ‘who you gonna believe, Israel or your lying eyes?’ Nobody now believes anything Israel says.
Palestine is where the humane traditions of Judaism went to die. There, it has been reborn as Zionism, a cruel ideology of ethno-religious supremacy that retains the rituals of Judaism but celebrates a search for Lebensraum and the sadistic persecution and mass murder of all who stand in its way. Israel is now not, as the Prophet Isaiah proclaimed, “a light unto the nations.” It has instead transformed itself into an abomination – the bad apple that poisons the rest. Israel is now a rogue state that is a pariah everywhere outside a few countries of the West. It has not only erased the humane traditions of Judaism but butchered the legal protections enacted to prevent any recurrence of the Holocaust. The transatlantic community’s unflinching support for Israel’s detestable behavior has extinguished the West’s moral authority, isolated the West internationally, besmirched the reputation of the United States, and enfeebled American global leadership.
What Israel is doing is reawakening long dormant threats to the world’s Jews. The government of Israel baselessly professes a right to represent world Jewry. But Israel’s embrace of a Zionism that resembles nothing so much as the murderous extremism of ISIS – Daesh, the so-called “Islamic State” — is giving new life to the historic evil of antisemitism not just in its original Western homelands but in many societies with no prior history of it.
That is why, at this year’s Venice Film Festival, a film telling the story of a five-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, who was trapped in a car among six dead relatives for three hours before she too was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, drew 21 minutes of standing ovation. Chants of ‘Free Palestine’ echoed through the theater. They are now heard throughout the world. The attempt to silence them is ferocious but failing everywhere outside a few countries, including our own, with politics corrupted by unscrupulous Zionist lobbying.
Few now question that the United States has been taken hostage by Zionist ideologues and partisans, who control the commanding heights of our transparently corrupt politics and biased media. There appears to be no act of political sycophancy or deceit aimed at gratifying plutocratic Zionist donors that venal American politicians will not now perform.
The consequences of this for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been fatal. The consequences for Israelis also promise to be dire. As a human being, I am distressed about the suffering and diminished prospects for the pursuit of happiness of both Palestinians and Israelis. But, as an American, I am mainly concerned about what American subservience to Zionism means for the sovereign dignity of the United States.
We Americans have not just outsourced our foreign and domestic policies to Israel and its American fifth column, we have allowed Israel to exploit the venality and careerism of our politicians to enable Israel to
- extract enormous, ongoing taxpayer giveaways for the wealthy and powerful Zionist state,
- to oppress both Christians and Muslims and desecrate their holy places,
- to murder Americans, both at sea and on land, without fear of retribution,
- to intimidate and induce members of Congress to applaud the bigots and war criminals who now lead the Israeli government,
- to defy both international and American law with impunity,
- to disrespect the sovereignty of the Zionist state’s neighbors and attack them at will,
- to compel the endorsement and amplification of shameless Israeli lies and deceptions,
- to demand that we tear up solemnly negotiated, internationally approved agreements like the nuclear deal with Iran, while taking no notice of Israel’s clandestinely developed nuclear arsenal,
- to use American diplomacy as a cover for the assassination of anyone it has designated as an enemy, even those seeking to negotiate peace with it,
- to replicate the horrors of the European Holocaust in a genocide on Arab soil,
- to engineer the arrest or deportation of critics of Israeli behavior in American universities,
- to override the U.S. Constitution by suspending free speech, academic freedom, and other liberties of Americans to protect Israel from reproach,
- to sanction or censure American access to objective reporting about anything involving Israel or its actions,
- to ostracize or fire anyone who voices even mild criticism of Israel and its Lobbies, and, finally,
- to deny entry to foreigners critical of Israel and cancel the visas of those already here.
In 1965, when I began my thirty-year service to our country, I swore an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” I thereby committed myself to “America first.” I did not agree to serve the interests of any foreign country. Israel is not just a foreign country, it is one with interests and values that have become increasingly odious and foreign to those of Americans, not least Jewish Americans. Demanding that Americans place Israel’s interests above those of the United States is to demand treason.
In 1988, I had lunch with a senior Israeli diplomat. I had enjoyed collaborating with him to good effect on various issues of concern to both Israel and the United States in Africa. He asked me what I wanted to do in the incoming Bush administration. When I replied that I had no idea, he said: “let me know. We can get it for you.” I had to restrain myself from leaping over the table and assaulting him. I had every reason to believe that, with the subversive power of the Zionist Lobbies, he could indeed arrange an influential position for me. It is ironic that, with all the attention to the alleged clandestine efforts of Russia to skew the results of American elections in its favor, it remains taboo to call attention to the undisguised efforts of Israel and its senior officials to direct our politics to its and their unilateral advantage.
American subservience to the dictates of the Zionist state and our adoption of an Israel-first rather than an America-first approach to foreign relations have had major consequences for our country. These consequences include but are not limited to the political corruption that has brought our republic low. Americans have witnessed the erosion of our liberties in service to Zionism’s fallacious equation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Washington’s unconcealed application of double standards to Israel has progressively reduced to a mere handful the number of countries willing unskeptically to follow America’s lead on other issues of importance to our national security and wellbeing. This, and our switch from enablement to active participation in Zionist genocide and aggression in West Asia have done huge damage to our international stature not just in West Asia but all around the world. It is not insignificant that our European and English-speaking allies have recently felt obliged to break with us by recognizing a Palestinian state.
Israel’s Arab neighbors have long been prepared to accommodate it. But Israel has never responded to Arab offers of peace with anything but silent disdain. Israel ignored both proposals for acceptance of a legitimate place for it in the affairs of its region put forward by the Arab League under Saudi auspices, first at Fez in 1982 and then, again, at Beirut in 2002. It has become clear that the Israeli definition of peace is subjugation, not respectful coexistence.
Israel has never put forward a peace proposal of its own. Such peace as Israel enjoys with its neighbors has been brokered – or forced upon it – by the United States. Israel has never indicated a willingness to pursue peaceful coexistence with its Christian and Muslim Arab cohabitants in Palestine. It has instead assassinated their leaders so that it can claim there is no one for it to talk to.
Israel’s neighbors are practitioners of Realpolitik. They have been willing cautiously to normalize relations with the Zionist state, but they are well aware that, if they were to cease suppressing their subjects’ objections to pitiless Zionist pronouncements and behavior, the relationships they have with Israel would become unsustainable. I recall attending a meeting between the late King `Abdullah bin `Abdalaziz Al-Sa`ud and a delegation from the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. They asked him what they should advise their Israeli friends. The king replied: “tell them that, if they want to be loved, they should do something lovable.” But Israel has not followed this advice. It has done the opposite. From “Camp David” to the so-called “Abraham Accords,” the agreements the United States has brokered for Israel are now all on life support.
As a result, the Gulf Arabs are being driven into a grand coalition with Iran and other Arab and Islamic states to balance and counter Israel. Arab states that once expected the United States to manage the Palestinian problem and protect them from Israel and Iran have been disillusioned. They have learned the hard way that Israel’s dependence on the United States does not translate into American willingness to prevent the Zionist state from attacking them. They now see the US-managed “peace process” as a diplomatic deception designed to gain time for Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Once the enabler of Israeli transgressions, the United States has become a full participant in them. No one in the region – neither Arab nor Israeli — has any confidence in American impartiality, diplomatic competence, good faith, or willingness to stand behind commitments to protect them.
This has left the Gulf Arabs with no alternative to turning toward countries like China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia and pursuing rapprochement with Iran as well as patching things up with Türkiye. Saudi Arabia has just formalized a defense relationship with Pakistan both to deter Israel from using its nuclear arsenal against the Kingdom and to cooperate in a regional effort to reduce dependency on American military supply chains. Other countries whose existence has historically been underwritten by the United States are likely to join this initiative. In doing so, they will be building a bridge to the Chinese industries and technologies on which Pakistan has based its formidable defenses. In West Asia, America’s subservience to Israel benefits America’s adversaries, not the United States.
The Gulf Arabs no longer imagine that their engagement with either the United States or Israel can protect them from assault. Rather than reining in Israel, the United States is emulating its open contempt for international norms, assassinating foreign leaders, decapitating foreign governments and political parties, and exploiting the presence of negotiators at peace talks to murder them. President Trump followed Israel’s treacherous attack on Qatar with assurances that such violations of sovereignty would not be repeated. Israel immediately refuted him and underscored American impotence by threatening to continue to conduct such attacks wherever and whenever it sees fit Mindful of the Arab proverb: “kiss the hand you cannot bite,” only those with no alternative, like the Al Sharaa government in Damascus, Syrian Kurds and Druze, or desperate Christian politicians in Lebanon now see any point in appeasing the Zionist state.
The United States remains the only great power willing or able to project decisive military power to West Asia. But it has decreasing reasons to do so. Israel’s relationship with America is openly exploitative – all take and no give. Isael pays no attention to U.S. advice or U.S. interests. It has become a terrorist state that rules Palestine and adjoining countries through violent intimidation and the culling of their populations. America’s association with Zionism weakens us both at home – through the curtailment of our freedoms and the rule of law – and abroad – by embroiling us in forever wars with the enemies Israel has created for itself and for us. Israel’s cruelties are the major cause of terrorism against the United States as well as itself.
Those of us who tried to protect Israel from itself and the Palestinians from Israel must now admit that we failed. Our failure, and that of Israel and the United States, has been accompanied by the obliteration of the pretense that the West exemplifies and espouses superior moral standards. The State of Israel will never be forgiven for its cruelties to other human beings in Palestine, nor will either the West or the world’s Jews be forgiven for enabling, still less joining in these atrocities. Israel has played a major part in ending the hegemony of the West. It will not be alone in paying a price for this.
Israel has become a monster in Jewish clothing. Courageous American Jews have made it clear that Israel cannot speak for them and does not act for them. It is time for other Americans also to distance ourselves from Israel and insist: ‘not in our name.’
To live in security and prosperity, we Americans must work out a new modus vivendi with the global majority in a post-colonial world. We cannot do that without an undistorted understanding of the realities of the Israel-Palestine tragedy and the regional theater in which it takes place. That is where organizations like the Arab Center come in. The marginal utility of your work is now greater than ever before. Israel’s outrageous behavior has opened previously closed minds to reconsideration of long-established misconceptions.
It is always darkest before the dawn. But the dawn is coming. And the Arab Center in Washington, DC and its sister organizations are part of the reason it will come sooner than most expect.
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