by Finian Cunninghan via Strategic-Culture
It is, in my opinion, a crucial mistake to view United States-Israeli relations in terms of individual politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv purportedly manipulating each other.
A recent article by my colleague Alastair Crooke contended that U.S. President “wily Joe Biden” is being outplayed by “the fox”, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Alastair is a seasoned diplomat and his views merit respectful attention.
However, that view implies that the catastrophe of genocide in Gaza is a result of Netanyahu hoodwinking and maneuvering the White House to support Tel Aviv’s criminal aggression. Ergo, the escalating conflicts and U.S. involvement in the region, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Yemen.
For a start, to attribute the disaster of U.S. support for Israel to the incompetence of one politician – Joe Biden – is not factually correct. Several senior members of the Biden administration have all given their personal, unwavering support for Israel’s military offensive on Gaza. They include Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
Furthermore, there is overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress from Republicans and Democrats for the continuing massacre by Israeli forces in Gaza, having been conducted for nearly 80 days with up to 28,000 deaths, mainly among women and children, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
The U.S. has supplied over 10,000 tonnes in munitions to Israel since October 7. The Pentagon and State Department have both candidly admitted there is no prohibitions or restrictions on how Israel deploys these explosives in densely crowded areas, which include 1-tonne bunker-buster bombs that have been dropped on refugee camps in Gaza.
Also bear in mind the Washington foreign policy establishment stands full square behind Israel’s de facto Final Solution to ethnically cleanse two million Palestinians from Gaza and forcibly expel them to the Sinai Peninsula. Only, last week the Israeli President Isaac Herzog was applauded by the deep state think-tank, the Atlantic Council, when he outlined plans for erasing Gaza.
What we are dealing with here is a systematic and structural issue of U.S. imperialist power. It is a fundamentally flawed premise to view this unprecedented slaughter in Gaza as somehow the result of Biden being taken for a ride by Netanyahu.
It may be tempting to portray it that way. The Republicans want to use every opportunity to assail Biden. The Democratic president is a contemptible and corrupt individual with an unerring ability to bungle every speech and every step he makes. But to blame what is going on in the Middle East entirely on Biden being outsmarted and outplayed is a grave misconception.
American liberals, on the other hand, may be tempted to blame the Gaza horror on Biden because to do so is a handy scapegoat for what is U.S. imperial policy. Liberals no doubt find it unfathomable and shameful that U.S. power is sponsoring genocide. That upsets their sense of vanity and belief in America as being a virtuous “exceptional nation”.
The truth is that American power has relied on fascist regimes the world over ever since it emerged as the top Western hegemon after the Second World War. During the early Cold War decades, Washington sponsored the most brutal and fanatical dictatorships in Latin America, Africa and Asia to annihilate worker-led liberation movements.
The Israeli regime fits into that historical category. Since it was formed as a state in 1948 through Washington’s sleight of hand at the newly established United Nations, the Zionist entity served as a garrison for the United States in the Middle East. It still functions as Washington’s regional cat’s paw. For 75 years, the oil-rich Arab and Persian region has been divided and conquered by U.S. power for which Israel plays a vital enabling role. Hence, the U.S. bankrolls Israel with $3.8 billion in weapons every year, a total of $263 billion since 1948.
As Biden repeatedly remarks – trying to sound smart and without a hint of self-awareness of how damning his words are – “if the Israeli state did not exist, the United States would have to create it”.
This is why it doesn’t matter who sits the White House. Donald Trump during his Republican presidency was just as obsequious towards Tel Aviv as Biden is. Part of the job means that American presidents have to pander to and appease nasty politicians in Tel Aviv, whose arrogance may at times seem as if they are calling the shots.
Now, this does not in anyway suggest that the Israelis do not manipulate U.S. politics. Of course, they do. Their vast lobbying and sympathetic corporate-owned media are self-evident.
But we should never forget the order of things, that the Zionist regime is an attack dog for U.S. imperialism.
Are the politicians in Washington so pathetic and lame as to not be able to simply pick up the phone to Tel Aviv and inform them that the supply of weapons is to cease henceforth and calling a ceasefire is imperative?
There can be only one explanation for such an appalling incongruity. The United States is fully complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. We are talking about systematic involvement, not the manipulation of hapless American politicians.
What the American people and the rest of the world need to realize is that the U.S. imperial power is – like all imperial powers – intrinsically genocidal. Conquest and war are the essential functions. Israel and Ukraine are not tails wagging the U.S. dog. They are manifestations of the criminal U.S. global power.
The problem is not individual politicians. The problem is the U.S. system.
