When Norman Finkelstein, an anti-war activist and intellectual (Princeton PhD, 1988), was asked what his mother, who was in the Majdanek concentration camp in Europe during WWII, thought of retaliation on civilians for crimes committed by Hitler her response was, “Since they elected him they are totally responsible for his actions and therefore deserve to be punished.” (But keep in mind that the dictatorship occurred after the election). If the ‘Finkelstein’ rule were applied to Gaza, then there should be no slaughter of civilians since the Gazans live under a Hamas dictatorship; once elected almost two decade ago (in 2006), Hamas has assumed total power of the strip and they have built a military infrastructure (e.g., 500 Km of tunneling) while Israel has denied basic services to the Gazan people, who live in a concentration camp; but since the only way out is by tunnel controlled by Hamas, Gazans are used as shields against Israeli attacks, which this time might cause the death of over 100,000 civilians given the invasion has yet to start and the number of dead is already over 7,000. I say The Hague needs to do something about all this killing of both Palestinians and Israelis by Netanyahu and Hamas. But don’t expect much since the US who is not an International Criminal Court member and who has veto power in the UN has been committing war crimes for a long time (Henry Kissinger of the Vietnam war era is not free to travel just anywhere even at 100 years of age) and you all know the many cases of crimes committed in the name of freedom….Israel is merely a mini-partner in these crimes along with Hamas and its backers from Iran/Russia, all war criminals as well. In short we must ask, “Why are we allowing war criminals to run the world?”
The US foreign policy has a long history of flirting with zionism, notably after the outbreak of the world war. During this period we see several converts to zionism and related organisations (which had obvious interests in palestine), coinciding with the collapse of the ottoman empire, which the imperial powers hawked. Among the converts we see: Louis Brandies, Julian W. Marck, Felix Frankfurter, among others. Brandies himself would later become a supreme court justice (p. 846)
This is testament to a certain political milieu, where the protestant and zionist lobbies were able to exert pressure on american politics. Brandies held particular sway over Wilson(p. 848). The fact of the matter was that this sentiment of american intervention in the middle east was quite lucrative to american interests and to the religious lobbies. The Balfour declaration was also pre empted by Brandies, who had correspondance six months beforehand, proposing in a document that: "palestine is to be recognized as the jewish national home; jews of all countries [are] to be accorded full liberty of immigration; jews [are]to enjoy full national, political residence in Palestine" (p. 847-848).
The further development of zionism in the US, starting with Wilson and Brandies (further reading below), is continual with each president. The simplest answer to the question of why war criminals are supported, even voted for, is that there are both political lobbies and vital american interests resting on the continued existance of Israel. There are not easy solutions to this, but historically it seems to me, there was little actual popular support for the zionist project, and moreso political navigating and delusions of grandeur.
further reading:
Hassan, Shamir (2016)
Politics of the zionist lobby in the united states of America, proceedings of the indian history congress, vol. 77. pp. 846-859 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/26552715?read-now=1&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents)
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