Ruler: Israeli Ambassador in the United States, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

30 August 2025

Donald Trump is a reprehensible individual who excels at abusing power. Before taking office, he made a conscious decision to facilitate Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Partly to overcome the belated ceasefire reached by an outgoing administration, and partly because he is Trump. His team, namely Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio, who is 22d on the list of American politicians’ recipients of Israel lobby donations, far behind the leader of this list Joe Biden, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have been making an effort in their public statements to portray Trump as a diplomat of peace while attributing the decisive decisions to him as commander in chief. Closely monitored intention that does not absolve them from their complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide. Their individual criminal responsibilities will be detailed in the near future.  

Trump’s populism is beyond grotesque, serving his New York corporate personality that seeks to take over locations and realize personal greed. Nevertheless, Trump shares a common trait with most American politicians, that is the realization that there is no genuine counterweight to the Israel lobby in the domestic American political scene. Whereas Trump may not possess and project any admirable principles guiding his politics, he has a strong defense in the form of promoting Israel by American cultural and academic elites, chief among them Harvard University, his purported nemesis politically, culturally, and intellectually.

Martin Peretz’s lifelong intellectual project, which has placed Israel at the center of its factors reflects Harvard’s. Messianic fascination with Israel, joined by ordinary American Zionism, liberal or not, completed the traditional role of the American University as an instrument of the lone empire’s foreign policy during the heydays of the Cold War and after. Individual intelligence, certainly at Harvard, benefited from the ideas espoused by hedge fund successes originating from Manhattan’s financial district and the illuminating rigor of the Anti-Defamation League’s directors. Harvard produced Al Gore, probably the most pro–Israel democratic politician after Biden who, together with Joseph Lieberman, exceeded evangelical admiration of and attachment to Israel.

Trump’s executive financial punishment of private top-ranked universities for failing to crush pro-Palestinian rights protests aimed at bringing Israel’s genocide to an end is a nationalization policy of private Israel lobby donors. The latter have consistently tried to transport significant elements of the American political systems to the limited but persistent study of Palestine and, necessarily, the development of anti – Zionist mood against Israel, a colonial and apartheid state that ought to be abolished. The vulgarity of Harvard’s support for Israel sidelined Walzer’s embarrassing writings about his beloved second country and the Israeli authors from the Hebrew University hosted by the New York Review of Books over the years to supply philosophical insights from a righteous Israel.

But the task of Israel’s ambassador in the United States is a diplomatic one not intellectual. He represents his country before American institutions and audiences. The Ambassador reaches out to various groups and individuals in the American Jewish community to foster a troubling and racist relationship, hoping for assistance in advancing his goals, particularly before the most influential decision makers in Congress and the White House.

Risking generalization, American Jews’ relation to Israel is anchored in their identification as Americans, transforming with the concept of this identity as necessary. When it was about the melting pot, American Jews managed to preserve an illogical relation to a location that is not theirs within the framework of a republican notion of Americanism. With multiculturalism gaining ground, American Jews still considered Israel as the source of their diaspora, thus able to mingle with the various diasporas in the American realm, albeit with less historical grounding.

Peculiar was the anger that engulfed influential segments of the American Jewish community because of Jimmy Carter’s book that included the word apartheid in its title, despite its extremely mild content. The uproar against Mearsheimer & Walt’s book on the Israel lobby’s influence over America’s foreign policy in the Middle East demonstrated what the dissent sought to challenge. Although painstakingly detailed, the authors of this important and not the first of its kind book did not identify the Israeli lobby’s dominance as reaching to Kissinger’s era and the unjustified United Nations partition plan of Palestine. With the help of sources such as the Open Secrets website, it is difficult to deny the prominence of the Israel lobby in the American political system.

AIPAC is the most obvious arm of the Israel lobby in the United States. It is regarded by the Israeli government and various Israeli strategic think tanks as Israel’s most important asset not only in the United States but globally. To justify the unreasonable, a small country’s practical domination of an empire, AIPAC has utilized and American politicians and presidents have followed every misrepresentation possible about Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle.  

In its international card-playing strategy, the CIA has considered Israel as a valuable ally, notwithstanding Israel’s espionage activities in the United States that have culminated through the years in several publicized espionage incidents involving persons such as the Pentagon’s Jonathan Pollard and individuals from AIPAC. Pollard was eventually pardoned by Trump following lobbying on behalf of Israel. He now resides in Israel preaching certain sets of values and policies. Since the signing of the vague and unbinding 1993 Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, with the enthusiastic support of Palestinian official Mahmoud Abbas, both Democratic and Republican Presidents and Congress were under strict control and domination of the Israel lobby.

Bill Clinton’s and successive administrations placed little to no pressure on Israel to abide by international law. Every attempt by the Palestinians to resort to the International Court of Justice, the U.N. Security Council, the U.N. General Assembly, the International Criminal Court, and the U.N. Human Rights Council was vehemently opposed by America’s State Department. During Trump’s first administration, he practically bullied developing Arab countries (except the United Arab Emirates) either with threats or incentives to make peace with a rejectionist Israel, sidelining and sanctioning the Question of Palestine. Calling this process the Abraham Accords bears only cynicism manufactured in Trump’s and the Israel lobby’s imaginative world. During this period, Ron Dermer occupied the Israeli Embassy’s post in Washington, facilitating the Israel lobby with directions for Israel’s desired objectives. Dermer also played a key role as a cabinet member for strategy in perpetrating the genocide in Gaza.

After hasty and unimpressive aggression against Iran, Israel found itself in an awkward position on the verge of losing a war it started illegally. It was no other than the Israeli ambassador who sounded rescue alarm bells seeking the intervention of the Israel lobby to compel America to save Israel from defeat and absolute diplomatic embarrassment. America intervened shamefully and unconvincingly, leaving Israel with the unintended consequence of an important and lasting lesson.

Israel’s embassy and its long arm the Israel lobby were behind America’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the lies promoted at its beginning. Total diplomatic and legal shielding abroad also through its G7 allies especially the schizophrenic former British Empire, unwavering and unprecedented military backing materially and operationally, and utmost mobilization among American Jewish groups, media outlets, and individuals. Troubling historical comparisons and lack of accurate legal characterizations managed to stir basic instincts in ordinary, politicized, and scholarly American Jews. As long as American Jews collectively and as individuals do not disavow Israel, they will maintain their significant contribution to its status as an illegitimate political entity that is committing genocide.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer. Source: Jerusalem Post, 22 December 2016

 Martin Peretz joined by Anthony Blinken. Source: New York Times, 24 January 2011.