Israel and the US : A “Master Blaster” in the Global Thunderdome
Saying that America and Israel are “joined at the hip” is the wrong metaphor as it implies partnership and equality — and such is not the case.
The US has been submissive towards Israel since the start
America has been bending the knee to Israel since the earliest days of the Jewish state. In the aftermath of World War II, America inherited much of Britain’s role as a global empire, and a deferential attitude towards Israel was part of that inheritance.
Indeed, one should remember that the Jewish Zionists who established Israel had literally chased the British out of Palestine through a brutal and audacious terror campaign, highlighted by the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946, which killed 91 people including dozens of British citizens. The Zionist militants also bombed the British Embassy in Rome in 1946, and British Army HQ in Vienna in 1947.
The terror campaign subsided only after the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. This apparent “victory” left the Israeli leadership with a very arrogant and dismissive attitude towards their Anglo-Saxon benefactors.
That arrogance erupted in 1967, when Israel brazenly attacked the USS Liberty in broad daylight. The Liberty was an American Navy surveillance vessel patrolling the eastern Mediterranean area to perform a signals intelligence collection mission in international waters during the Six Day War. Over 30 American sailors perished under the fire of Israeli guns and rockets. Recent declassified documents prove that the Israelis knew it was an American ship, but attacked it anyway.
And what did America do? NOTHING. Instead of retaliating, or even protesting, LBJ quietly ordered the ship to leave the area, and the incident was officially “memory holed” in Washington.
Israel learned a lesson that day: namely that they could do literally ANYTHING — even attack the US Navy — with COMPLETE IMPUNITY.
Israelis view Americans with “disdain”
In 2015, The Forward, America’s foremost Jewish media outlet, published an article entitled: “What Do Israelis Think About Americans? Start With Disdain”. In the article, author Naomi Zeveloff explained that Israelis see Americans as “inherently dupable people”.
Zeveloff quotes an Israeli comedy writer: “Most Israelis think Americans are pro-Israel and we can sell them anything, especially mud from the Dead Sea — or just regular mud with a ‘Dead Sea’ sticker on it”.
A history of sabotaging American diplomacy
In a secretly recorded video of a 2001 discussion with a group of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, now-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out what Zeveloff calls a “widely held perception” of American malleability: “I know what America is,” he said. “America is a thing that can be easily moved, moved in the right direction.”
“I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily” — Bibi Netanyahu
Netanyahu was not the first Israeli Prime Minister to say the quiet part out loud about Israeli control of the United States.
On October 3, 2001, I.A.P. News reported that according to Israel Radio (in Hebrew) Kol Yisrael an acrimonious argument erupted during the Israeli cabinet weekly session last week between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Peres warned Sharon that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and “turn the US against us”. Sharon reportedly yelled at Peres, saying “don’t worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America.”
“Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” — Ariel Sharon
Bill Clinton was “radically pro-Palestinian”, according to Netanyahu in 2001. Bibi was determined to fight “tooth and nail” to avoid having to implement the Oslo peace deal struck under Clinton’s guidance.
Since the 1990’s, Israel has mounted a massive campaign of hasbara (misinformation) claiming that it was the Palestinians who “walked away” from the deal.
In reality, it was Israel, and Bibi Netanyahu specifically, who scuttled the agreement — according to Netanyahu himself.
Bibi explained to the group of illegal settlers that they had nothing to fear from either the Americans or the Palestinians, because he single-handedly destroyed all hope for the Oslo Peace Accords:
“They asked me before the election if I’d honour [the Oslo accords]”, he went on. “I said I would, but … I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the 1967 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones — as far as I’m concerned the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue.”
In this way, he concluded, “I de facto put an end to the Oslo accords.”
US support for Israel is “absurd” (Netanyahu)
Bibi continued to placate the settlers, saying he was going to launch a huge military campaign against the Palestinians in the West Bank. When asked what the US would say to such a brutal assault, Netanyahu scoffed.
“They will not bother us,” he said of the Americans. “Let’s suppose they [the Bush administration] will say something. So they say it — so what? Eighty per cent of the Americans support us. It’s absurd!
Indeed, the level of support for Israel in the halls of Federal and State governments in America is exceedingly absurd. Unprecedented. Outrageous.
But for Israel, the overwhelming support it enjoys in the USA is just another tool in its geopolitical toolbox. Bibi himself asked rhetorically:
We have such [great] support there! And we say… what shall we do with this [support]?”
The answer is almost hard to believe.
America’s Policy of “Israel First”
When Mike Johnson was recently elected as House Speaker, the conservative “MAGA” Republican was stalwart in declaring that his top priority was … ISRAEL.
“The first bill that I will bring to this floor…will be in support of our dear friend Israel”, Johnson declared to wild applause in the chamber.
With 300,000 Americans homeless, fentanyl and other drug deaths reaching epidemic proportions, trillions of dollars in deficit, and a crumbling infrastructure, Johnson’s number one priority was to funnel still more US money to Israel.
Absurd indeed.
Pledging fealty to foreign power?
In 2020, former US lawmaker Cynthia McKinney explained in an interview that “every candidate for Congress has to sign a pledge to vote for supporting the military superiority of Israel”.
“You make a commitment that you would vote to support the military superiority of Israel that the economic assistant that Israel wants that you would vote to provide that,” she added.
In the wake of the 10/7 Hamas attacks in Israel, the US Senate passed a resolution affirming their support for Israel, its right to self-defense and condemning Hamas’s attacks on civilians. The final vote count was 97–0.
The House passed a similar resolution declaring that the US “”stands with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists”. It passed 412–10.
Using language reminiscent of Pearl Harbor, Senate Majority Leader Schumer declared, “October 7, 2023, will go down as a day of infamy. And as Israel faces the darkest hour of its 75 year history, the bipartisan resolution we are about to vote on proclaims that as long as there is a United States of America, the people of Israel will never stand alone.”
Sacrificing American Rights for the Israeli Regime
America’s blind support for Israel is leading it to overturn and abrogate some of the most basic rights and freedoms that Americans have traditionally enjoyed.
Across the USA, universities and other organisations are forcing employees, instructors and even guest speakers to sign pledges forbidding them from saying anything that is anti-Israel, or supporting in any way the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) which aims to pressure Israel to treat the Palestinians better.
In Texas, all government contractors are required to “sign an oath promising they will not boycott Israel”. Georgia also has a similar law.
In New York, the governor signed an executive order requiring state agencies to divest from organizations that support calls to boycott Israel.
In one outrageous instance, a Texas city required residents who were seeking government disaster relief funds in the wake of Hurricane Harvey to pledge not to boycott Israel.
In 2001, Netanyahu asked what the Israelis should do with the “absurd” level of support they enjoy in the US. The answer has since become manifest: Israel, operating through a vast array of NGOs and PACs, has turned the US government into a bottomless source of money, aid, weapons and military support for Israel.
Moreover, the so-called Israel Lobby has managed to impose an “Israel First” policy framework on the US government and American society at all levels, and has, in effect, “criminalised” all anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian speech and social initiatives.
Bibi Netanyahu explained this succinctly:
The Israel Lobby is not what you think
The “punishment” that Netanyahu mentions in that video clip can come in many forms. US politicians live in fear of being hurt by the Israel Lobby, who is known for funding primary challenges and negative ad campaigns against those who are deemed to be insufficiently supportive of Israel.
AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, is best known for launching lavishly funded campaigns against Israel’s “enemies” in Congress — especially Democrats of colour.
For example: The 10 — mostly black and brown — Congresspeople who voted against the recent resolution in support of Israel are about to face AIPAC’s wrath in the form of a $100 million campaign to fund challengers to defeat them in their respective primaries.
AIPAC is funneling mounds of money to pro-Israel candidates, including in Democratic primaries. Now, all Democrats likely know that expressing anything short of unwavering support of Israel’s siege on Gaza means they might be outspent in the next election.
But AIPAC is not alone. Groups like Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) have spent millions to defeat the progressive House members of “the squad” in the 2020 election cycle.
Another group, the United Democracy Project, spends $1 million every election attempting to defeat Summer Lee, a Pittsburgh-area progressive who once likened Israel to white people who shoot Blacks.
The Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) is another group that is dedicated to defeating progressive Democrats and has, according to the Intercept, launched a “big money operation” that “purged critics of Israel from the Democratic Party”.
The Christian Zionists are supreme
And yet groups like AIPAC and DMFI are not the most powerful component of the Israel Lobby in the US. The 800-pound gorilla within the Israel Lobby is actually a group of conservative evangelical Christians known as Christians United for Israel (CUFI). This organisation boasts over three million members, almost all of whom are conservative voters forming perhaps the largest cohort in the US Republican Party.
As Julian Borger explains in The Guardian:
For many US evangelical Christians, one of the key preconditions for such a moment is the gathering of the world’s Jews in a greater Israel between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. It is a belief, known as premillenial dispensationalism or Christian Zionism — and it has very real potential consequences for US foreign policy.
The power of CUFI and other Christian Zionist groups lies in their ability to swing elections to the most conservative, pro-Israel Republicans on a local, state and nationwide level.
It was mostly thanks to the CUFI that President Trump was persuaded to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018.
Israelis themselves are pleased to have these Zionist Christians as staunch allies in Washington — even though the Christian Zionists’ allegiance to Israel and the Jews is not based on an affinity for Judaism.
Rather, Christian support for Israel is based on some mythical, ideological place that will become once again the seat of power for the risen Christ when Jesus returns.
But this is how Israel maintains an iron grip on US politics. The Israel Lobby has been ingeniously architected so as to make both parties in the American duopoly dependent on unquestioning, unending support for Israel.
How Israel directs US foreign policy
Perhaps the most dramatic and consequential example of the Master Blaster relationship between Israel and the US is the way in which Tel Aviv tells Washington which country to invade, surveille or sanction.
The Israeli direction of US geopolitical strategy has been most evident since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The US reaction to those attacks brought US global strategy 100% into alignment with those of Israel, specifically with respects to Muslim nations in the Middle East.
“Taking out” Saddam Hussein
The decision to invade Iraq was not an easy one. With millions of anti-war protesters in the streets and a sceptical Europe resisting the idea, it was Israel that tipped the balance withing the Bush Administration. Buttressed by pressure within the Bush Administration from a group of Zionist Neocons, including Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Dick Cheney, the Israelis promised that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would “radically transform the region” in a way that would be beneficial to both the US and Israel.
According to The Guardian, Israeli PM Ariel Sharon saw “eye to eye with the extremists in the Pentagon”:
With foreign policy experts in Washington becoming increasingly critical of the wisdom of a military strike, and European governments showing no willingness to support an attack, the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, wants to make it clear that he is the US president’s most reliable ally.
“Taking out” Bashar al-Assad
As early as 2013, Israel began to publicly call on the US to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Michael Oren, the American-born Israeli Ambassador to the US, said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post:
“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran”.
He added:
“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc”.
The US obliged Israel by backing the so-called “moderate rebels” opposed to the Assad government, and probably would have succeeded in toppling the regime had not Russia intervened directly to save Assad.
Nonetheless, the US is still doing Israel’s bidding by enforcing crippling sanctions and militarily occupying a third of Syrian territory.
The ultimate enemy: Iran
But nowhere is the heavy handed influence of Israel felt more strongly than when it comes to Iran. In May 2011, Prime Minister Netanyahu gave an address to a special joint session of Congress. This was unprecedented, as Bibi traveled to Washington at the behest of the Republican House Speaker and NOT by invitation of the President, the one who is charged with foreign policy under the US Constitution.
Netanyahu’s speech was 90% about Iran and the dangers that the Iranian “regime” poses to both the US and Israel. His goal was to make the case for dropping the “nuclear deal”, or JCPOA, that President Obama was negotiating with the Iranians.
Iran’s goons in Gaza, its lackeys in Lebanon, its revolutionary guards on the Golan Heights are clutching Israel with three tentacles of terror. Backed by Iran, Assad is slaughtering Syrians. Back by Iran, Shiite militias are rampaging through Iraq. Back by Iran, Houthis are seizing control of Yemen, threatening the strategic straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. Along with the Straits of Hormuz, that would give Iran a second choke-point on the world’s oil supply.
In a rare display of US sovereignty, Obama defied Israel and ignored Netanyahu’s warnings: he signed the Iran nuclear deal.
Nonetheless, Iran eventually prevailed. One of President Trump’s first official acts upon taking office was to pull out of the JCPOA.
Personnel as Policy: Divided loyalties?
In late November, a video went viral showing a white Jewish man harassing an Egyptian halal cart vendor. The video really became news when the harasser was identified as Stuart Seldowitz, a “former Obama administration adviser and State Department official” according to ABC News.
Seldowitz, who was charged with aggravated harassment, hate crime stalking, stalking causing fear, and stalking at a place of employment, was not just any official. Under Obama, Seldowitz actually served as deputy director of the US State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs.
The idea that such an anti-Arab racist could be in charge of “Israel and Palestinian Affairs” for the US seems absurd. But this is not by any means an outlier.
Amos Hochstein, for example, recently made news when President Biden appointed him to mediate and help resolve the long-standing border dispute between Lebanon and Israel. Hochstein has enjoyed a long career in the US government, working as Obama’s “Energy Diplomat” and running the Office of Middle East, Asia and Europe, the Western Hemisphere and Africa. ”Hochstein’s energy diplomacy efforts in the Middle East have been critical”, according to Wikipedia, and yet he probably is not viewed as an impartial broker. He is an Israeli citizen, who was born to American Jewish parents who had emigrated to Israel.
The fact is, the United States has deployed a string of committed Zionists in official positions dealing with “Israel-Palestinian issues”. The Zionist campaigns and initiatives such as “Birthright” and the encouragement of American Jews to get Israeli citizenship under the “Right of Return” have led America to a place where it can no longer portray itself as an “honest broker” in Arab-Israeli affairs.
In fact, there are even American Jews serving in government who actually served in the IDF when they were young. This “cross-pollination” between the US and Israel inevitably leads to the appearance of bias and divided loyalties.
“Israeli-Occupied Territory”
Pat Buchanan, a conservative politician who was famous for presaging the Culture Wars under President Bill Clinton, has been described as ”the father of the MAGA movement”. However, Buchanan
Buchanan once famously described Capitol Hill as “Israeli-occupied territory”.
He was not wrong.
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