07.06.2010 12:16:50

Radical Socialist

Matt Siegfried

The current situation has again raised the issue of Israel’s legitimacy and the power of its American lobby.  Here are some thoughts in response to some of those issues.  And again, they are thoughts not meant as a full analysis.


The Israeli lobby obviously exists.  AIPAC and the ADL being the most prominent examples.  They have huge resources and influence.  You cross them in bourgeois politics at your peril.  However, and I think this is so often overlooked as to make me wonder why, the power that the lobby holds stems not simply from its money and the influence that brings, and certainly it doesn’t stem from any supposed “great love of the Jewish people” on the part the good citizens of the United States.  It has the influence it does because its aims, more or less, are the aims of US imperialism.  Even when the aims momentarily diverge, the logic doesn’t.  That their actions often undermine their aims is only testimony to the illegitimacy of their aims.



If the lobby decided tomorrow that, instead of Palestine they demand the US sponsor the reestablishment, support and defense of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of the former USSR does anyone think that they would get support, let alone an ear to listen?  Most of the pro-Israel sentiment, including the crazy pro-Israel sentiment, reflected in the power of the lobby stems from entirely US phenomenon; that particular brand of Christian millennialism that crosses more denominations than I can name combined with a racist, War of Civilization mentality born of empire and our own history of genocide and slavery.  The Soviet Union formerly fit the profile as civilization’s enemy, now Muslims do, but the profile is only a projection of the besiegement empires, and the imperial populace, always fear.  When you have made enemies around the world, the world is full of enemies.  When an AIPAC lobbyist engages in a conversation with John McCain over Iran, he doesn’t have to raise the Holocaust to get the old geezer’s blood up over the danger to “our way of life” threatening from East, I assure you. Though – and this underlines my point I hope – Saudi Arabia (a bête noire only a spot below Iran in Israeli eyes) remains as key to US interests in the region as Israel (though in different ways).  The close ties to the Wahabi monarchy, a bulwark of civilization, go back much further than those with the Zionist state, they preceded it in fact.  The US supports Israel (in part) to defend it against….its other most important ally in the region.  But on the grounds of public opinion the Saudis don’t even bother to try (except in the financial press) to exert their influence….and yet they retain it fully.  That most of the participants in the attacks of 9/11 were Saudi, curiously, didn’t lead to a single Tomahawk or drone attack. Go after the lobby, of course, but the ideology at the heart of  support the majority of Americans (and it is a majority) have for Israel has next to nothing to do with whatever Abe Foxman or Howard Kohr might do or say.  Can we really imagine, given the history of US imperialism, that if it weren’t for the lobby the US would be embracing the Arabs as equals in a brotherly hug?  Hardly a “Jewish lobby”, the Israeli lobby appeals to folks whose only interest in Israel is that she might usher in a Biblical Armageddon (which unfortunately, Jews, being unsaved, would not survive).  With friends like these….. If Israel is a mill around the neck of US foreign policy (in its own terms), than isn’t also its own “War on Terror”?  Its own occupations?  The US defends Israel as vehemently as it does, not because it is blindly following Israel, but because it is blindly leading the imperialist world order.  While I share the outrage, as must be obvious, over Israel’s crimes and wish fervently for the end of the racist Zionist project, I must take up the issue of legitimacy.  Is the racist colonial, settler state of the United States more legitimate than Israel?  Or for that matter “republican” France or “multi-national and democratic” Belgium.  Weren’t all of these built on a rapine that make the worst of Israel’s crimes pale by comparison?  Don’t they all continue to uphold the bloody imperialist world, one made in their own image?


And what of Turkey, whose government is now so praised for standing up to Israel?  Turkey, that denies Kurdish aspirations with the same zeal as the Israeli’s deny the Palestinians?  The same Turkish regime that houses hundreds of leftist, Kurdish and human rights campaigners in its prisons? Turkey, who even in the midst of this crisis, ensures a military deal with Israeli for those insidious drones to suppress Kurdish resistance?  The Turkish government, who violently denies the rights of its own citizens a protector of Palestinian rights?  The Turkish government is not an ally of the oppressed.  That they have reacted as they have is an indication that it is the oppressed of Turkey, the working class men and women, whose rage and solidarity have forced the Turkish government into its present position that are the real allies of the Palestinian people.  Demand, yes.  Rely on, not a chance. I write this not at all to deflect or criticize the current mobilizations now happening, nor the campaign to isolate and punish Israel for its crimes.  That folks are gathering to make demands on their governments while at the same time taking action into their own hands means that an alternative foreign policy, a genuine “international community” built in opposition to imperialism, is not just possible, but happening.  Will it be co-opted, like so many before?  Or will it generalize from the experiences of the last, horrible, days and see the power inherent in, not relying on the governments of those who do not share our interests, but themselves and their own actions?