If the Israeli attack on Gaza that started 18 days ago was designed partly to send a message to the incoming Barack Obama, the United States Congress in the past week seems to have joined the battle to handcuff the new president and lay down the law for him, even before he takes office.

Obama has tried to remain aloof and stay out of the political battle over the Gaza war by making no substantive statements about it. Israel and its supporters in Washington have different plans. Obama has stayed away from the war, but they brought the war to him - shoving it down his throat as his first pre-incumbency lesson in how American presidents must behave with respect to Israel´s desires, if they wish to remain in power.

The House of Representatives voted last Friday by 390-5 for a resolution that backed Israel in its Gaza onslaught, affirming "Israel´s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza." A day earlier, the Senate overwhelmingly supported Israel and its right to defend itself against terrorism.

Such extraordinary one-sided support for Israel by Congress mirrors the same position taken by the administration. Both President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared on Monday that Hamas was to blame for the current war and for the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, and that any ceasefire had to guarantee that Hamas stopped attacking Israel. They seemed incomprehensibly blind to Israel´s combined strangulation of and assault on Gaza.

This almost irrational absolute support for Israel in both the legislative and executive branches of the US government occurs amid a chorus of international condemnation of Israel for using excessive force. This includes calls by some United Nations officials and respectable non-governmental organizations to investigate whether Israel has committed war crimes.

Israel is using the two arsenals it is most comfortable with - military force to kill, injure, terrorize and displace thousands of Palestinian civilians; and the equivalent political overkill to bludgeon the American political establishment into total submission. After six decades of trying, Israel has been unable to turn Palestinians into vassals and subservient slaves - but it has succeeded in transforming an otherwise impressive American political governance system into a herd of castrated cattle who cower before the threats that Israel´s Washington-based henchmen and hit men direct at them. Gaza will get its ceasefire soon, but will Washington ever find relief from the stranglehold of Israel´s political thugs?

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