The Myth of Israeli Innocence, Part Twenty-Five
All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. – Israeli general Yitzhak Brick, 2023
Israel as a tool of the U.S. empire
Who’s in charge here? Can geopolitical analysis fully explain the homicidal violence sometimes perpetrated upon their own servicemen or the gleeful sadism with which American leaders have so consistently supported and protected Israel? Similar myths, Islamophobia, evangelical religion, a compliant media and educational system – all these factors are background to the great question: Who is in charge? When we get to the end of this enquiry, we may discover that it has no easy, binary solution. After 18 months of mass war crimes and massive denial by governments and media across the spectrum of former colonial empires, we still confront what appears to be quite obvious. As Caitlin Johnstone wrote months ago, Joe Biden could have ended all this with one phone call,
…in the same way it commanded Israel to restore Gaza’s communications in October 2023 after the IDF cut the enclave off from the world, and in the same way Israel’s 1982 assault on Lebanon was halted with a phone call from President Reagan…The ongoing massacre in Gaza is happening because the U.S. empire wants it to happen.
Does the U.S. continue to send Israel tens of billions of dollars’ worth of armaments (while its own citizens suffer loss of government services), veto U.N. genocide resolutions and mock its own self-described emphasis on human rights because a tiny, distant outpost can dictate to the imperial center? Has the empire knowingly used the Israelis as a foil for sixty years, or has the tail (through a combination of lobbying, financial pressure and, as we’ll see, blackmail) always wagged the dog?
In 1945, the U.S. traded security guarantees for Saudi oil flows. By the time Israel came into being, the U.S. had effectively taken control of the region’s oil sources and was not particularly interested in Israel. But the Chinese Revolution was reaching its conclusion; the U.S. was subverting democracy in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Viet Nam and throughout Latin America; and the second Red Scare was rising domestically. The U.S. empire, in opposition to the Soviet Union in a Cold War that would last into the 1990s, began to look for friends wherever it could find them.
According to Noam Chomsky, there was a split between the notoriously antisemitic State Department and the Defense Department (only recently renamed from the “War Department”), which was impressed with Israeli military potential as a base for U.S. power in the region. But the balance was shifting. Eleven minutes after it was founded, Harry Truman declared U.S. recognition of Israel. Gore Vidal, longtime friend of the Kennedys, wrote:
...in the late 1950s, John Kennedy told me how, in 1948, Harry Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase…“That’s why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.”
I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance…The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders...engaging in political threats – disturbed and annoyed me.
In 1950 Israel established the Mossad, which quickly aligned itself with the CIA under Allen Dulles and James Angleton, who became both chief of counterintelligence and the CIA’s liaison with the Mossad.
The generals were similarly impressed with South Africa, which, like Israel, was quickly losing respect among Third World nations that saw through its rhetoric of “national liberation”. However, Chomsky relates a 1958 conversation in which the South African foreign minister told the American ambassador that he didn’t care about votes in the U.N., because only one vote mattered, that of the U.S. In the following years, alone or supported by a few client states, it would veto dozens of Security Council or General assembly votes criticizing Israel or South Africa, calling for a Palestinian state or demanding an end to the embargo of Cuba.
Also in 1958, says Chomsky, “when there was a serious crisis in the region, Israel was the only state that strongly cooperated with Britain and the United States” in their efforts to undermine or destroy secular liberation movements, and they rewarded it for doing so.
Previously, the U.S. had made good relations with Arab countries a high priority in the region. So AIPAC was founded in 1963 to align U.S. policy with that of Israel. Two years later, Angleton played a key role in enabling Israel to obtain nuclear weapons. Jefferson Morley, his biographer, writes:
With the fissile material diverted…Israel was able to construct its first nuclear weapon by 1967 and become a full-blown nuclear power by 1970 – the first and still the only nuclear power in the Middle East...collaboration with Israel was more important than nonproliferation policy.
In 2015, a defense contractor quietly released a previously classified document confirming Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
In 1967, the foreign policy establishment quietly gave the Israelis the green light to invade several Arab countries, and in the process, very nearly started a nuclear war. The result was the conquest of Gaza and the West Bank, a second Nakba and the turning of the remaining Palestinian population into prisoners. During that conflict, after the unprovoked Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, the U.S. media, as I have mentioned, covered up the investigation.
Chomsky continues: “1967 is when the current relations with Israel were pretty much established. Israel performed a major service to the U.S. by destroying secular Arab nationalism…and supporting radical Islam, which the U.S. supported, and it continues right until the present”.
I will address the more controversial topic of Israel and John Kennedy below. But there is no denying that changes in U.S. policy were instituted after his assassination. Lyndon Johnson told an Israeli diplomat: “You have lost a very great friend. But you have found a better one.”
As Senate majority leader, Johnson had opposed Dwight Eisenhower’s plans to cut off assistance to Israel. Dennis Ross, a Middle East negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations, has said that “Johnson was the most emotionally committed to Israel of any American president – a fact that is not popularly known but is clear from his background.” Ciudong Ng writes:
Raised by Christian Zionists in the Texas hill country, Johnson himself identified with Israel, regarding the country through the haze of the frontier mystique. Presidential aide John Roche explained that officials viewed “the Israelis as Texans and (Egypt’s) Nasser as Santa Ana.”
During the 1967 war, Johnson ordered warships to within 50 miles of Syria’s coast as a warning to the Soviets not to interfere. Afterwards, he made it clear that the U.S. wouldn’t pressure Israel to give back the lands it had captured. He laid down the “land for peace” formula that would inform subsequent U.N. Security Council resolutions and made it clear that any formula had to ensure Jewish access to Jerusalem’s Old City. Johnson was the first president to invite an Israeli prime minister on a state visit. He abandoned pressure on Israel to come clean about the Dimona nuclear reactor. In 1968, after France, Israel’s primary arms supplier, imposed an embargo as a means of cultivating ties in the Arab world, the U.S. became Israel’s main supplier. Ng writes:
Johnson approved massive shipments of A-4 Skyhawk warplanes, while portraying the U.S. as an impartial mediator – arousing anger among Arab leaders. American officials argued that military aid would soothe Israeli security concerns, allowing Zionists to negotiate a peace agreement. But privately, they acknowledged that arms sales tipped the military balance in Israel’s favor, allowing it to colonize Palestinian territory and drag out peace negotiations.
Ng continues:
In late 1968, US-Israeli relations reached another turning point, as (Prime Minister) Eshkol pressed Johnson to send the F-4 Phantom: one of the most sophisticated fighter jets in the American arsenal. Senior US officials almost unanimously opposed the request…Previously, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze emphasized that these shipments could “escalate the arms race”…UN mediator Gunnar Jarring warned that the sale would undercut peace talks…Yet Johnson caved to the pressure of AIPAC and other lobbyists, agreeing to sell 50 F-4 jets…The tone of Israeli leaders changed overnight. Yitzhak Rabin, at that time Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., refused to relinquish territory occupied in 1967…Ultimately, the Nixon administration consolidated the military aid pipeline, while forging a structure of permanent war in the Middle East.
In 1981, Reagan’s Secretary of State Alexander Haig explained, “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk”. Every succeeding administration has concurred, guaranteeing ever-rising stock values of the arms merchants and record profits in 2023.
Meanwhile, in the years following 9/11/2001, writes Max Blumenthal, a process of “Israelification” of American police began, culminating at the point when federal and municipal officials beseeched Israeli security leaders for advice and training on counterterrorism measures against Occupy protesters in 16 cities and monitoring of Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods:
America’s Israel lobby exploited the climate of hysteria, providing thousands of top cops with all-expenses paid trips to Israel and stateside training sessions with Israeli military...By now, police chiefs of major American cities who have not been on junkets to Israel are the exception…personnel from 220 federal and local agencies including the FBI and CIA have been trained by Israeli police and intelligence commanders…The ADL claims that they have trained over 45,000 American law enforcement officials.
In 2016, Obama resupplied bombs dropped on Gaza and promised Israel $3.8 billion per year for ten years. By 2024, the U.S. had given Israel about $310 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance, including $18 billion in the year after 10/7/23. This infinite blank check has caused the national debt to balloon while insulating Israeli political elites from any consequences for their actions. Without it, Israel would have had to practice actual diplomacy with its neighbors decades ago. In September 2024, a senior Air Force official admitted that without U.S. military aid, Israel could not sustain operations in Gaza for more than a few months. Rashid Khalidi argues that peace might be possible only
…when and if American interests regarding Palestine change. The U.S. has forced Israel to do many things that the American strategic or national or economic interest dictated… Kissinger forced disengagement agreements down the throat of the Israeli government. James Baker forced Shamir to participate in Madrid [the 1991 peace conference]. Obama forced them to accept the [nuclear] deal with Iran. Eisenhower forced them out of Sinai [in 1957]. It's been our misfortune that Palestine doesn't represent an important American national interest.
U.S. military aid to Israel had rarely exceeded about $13 million/year until the Six-Day War, after which it exploded into the hundreds of millions and then multiple billions – with the proviso that almost all of it had to be bought from American arms manufacturers. The U.S. didn’t engage directly with the U.S.S.R., but Israel’s wars on Lebanon, Syria and Egypt pitted U.S. advanced military hardware against Soviet hardware. This made Israel the only actor who could use American weapons against Russian weapons (essential for testing them under battlefield conditions) without risk of provoking world war. The U.S. has stockpiled billions worth of munitions in Israel, ready for deployment against real or perceived enemies, without congressional appropriation.
When Israel developed its own defense industry, it specialized in selling arms to dictators that U.S. presidents supported but could not admit to doing so. Now, it is a major exporter of civilian control weaponry. According to the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence, Arabic-speaking IDF soldiers have habitually infiltrated peaceful Palestinian demonstrations to provoke violence, then deployed multiple types of tear gas or weapons to see which works best. After the IDF reports the results, it markets these products internationally as “battle-tested”. Israeli manufacturer Elbit Systems sells so much advanced surveillance technology for use at the U.S.’ southern border that Elbit has opened a subsidiary in El Paso.
One would logically conclude from this history that the U.S. regularly approves of Israel’s thuggish behavior because it has always served the interests of the Empire, that as Alan Wagman writes, Israel is “a military colony”, or as Netanyahu rhapsodizes, “a mighty aircraft carrier of the U.S.”
The upside of such a tragic and genocidal pattern, if we are to believe this line of thinking, is that any American president could have, and still can force Israel to make peace with the simple threat of plugging the pipeline of free money. The eternal mystery is why it has never done so.
But as a transition to the next section, we need to consider whether that behavior and all that money have accomplished anything all these years. Diana Johnstone and Jean Bricmont argue that the massive expenditures and loss of political capital have resulted in very little gain for the empire:
A common myth shared by both champions and critics...is that Israel is a major U.S. strategic asset. But the crucial evidence, totally missing…is the slightest example of Israel actually serving American interests in the region…Israel has never fired a shot on behalf of the U.S. or brought a drop of oil under U.S. control…the fighting and dying in the Middle East has been done by the U.S. itself and certain NATO allies, while the only people Israeli soldiers are actively fighting are the Palestinians, whose destruction provides no advantage to the U.S …the end of apartheid had no dramatic effect on capitalist imperialism in Africa. If Israeli apartheid were to disappear in Palestine, oil and trade would still flow from the Middle East towards the West…
Indeed, as Trita Parsi writes,
Biden’s support for Israel…is often described as a continuation of a long-standing U.S. policy…In reality, it is a break with tradition…Biden has refused to press Israel to show restraint in the manner that presidents such as Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Obama often did. It is also a break from the previous position of firmly rejecting attempts by Israel to drag the U.S. into war with Iran.
Not only has Biden been more deferential to Netanyahu than any other president – Bush Sr.’s secretary of state, James Baker, famously barred Netanyahu from even entering the State Department – he has committed himself to two contradictory goals: preventing a regional war while proclaiming ironclad support for Israel in the case of war, even if Israel initiates it…Biden’s logic has incentivized Netanyahu to attack Iran. He knows that while the U.S. would not participate in the attack, it will become drawn into the fighting the second Iran responds to Israel’s offensive. Either way, Washington will be pulled into a war in the Middle East that does not serve U.S. interests…
Much of the mystery revolves around the question of what exactly are “U.S. interests”. Who’s in charge? Whom do they work for? Who profits? Does a nation’s “interests” overlap with those of its privileged minorities?
Wag the Dog: The U.S. as an Israeli tool
The Israel lobby
John Kennedy attempted to push the UN plan to repatriate the Palestinian refugees from the Nakba, long after Ben-Gurion had refused. As I mentioned above, most Jewish Americans did not identify with Israel and the Holocaust narrative until the late 1960s. Well-funded lobbying, however, had been going on for years. Before Kennedy was killed, in the summer of 1963, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee concluded that Israel was operating "one of the most effective networks of foreign influence" in the U.S. Its chairman, Senator William Fulbright found that Israel used tax-free dollars donated to the United Jewish Appeal for charities in Israel to influence American opinion, revealing "placement of articles on Israel in some of America's leading magazines," arranging for radio and TV programs sympathetic to Israel, and subsidizing trips to Israel by public opinion molders, Christian clergymen, academics and media representatives. Kennedy’s death, as we’ve seen, cemented this situation.
Fulbright, a Senator since 1945 and Kennedy’s original choice for Secretary of State, had the ultimate insider’s view. Ten years later, during the 1973 war, he said that the best path to peace was for the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to refuse weapons to both Arabs and Israelis. However, he complained,
Somewhere around 80% of the Senate is completely in support of…anything Israel wants …Instead of rearming Israel, we could have peace in the Middle East at once if we just told Tel Aviv to withdraw behind the 1967 borders and guarantee them…We should be more concerned about the U.S. interest rather than doing the bidding of Israel.
Fulbright, who was defeated for re-election in 1974 by Dale Bumpers, believed his criticisms of Israel largely caused his loss, noting that "any member of Congress who does not follow the wishes of the Israel lobby is bitterly denounced and can be assured of finding his opponent richly funded in the next election." Indeed, an aid to Bumpers shamelessly admitted, "I could have bought central Arkansas with the offers of money from the Jewish community that came particularly from…New York and California”.
In 1984, as the IDF was invading Lebanon and two years after an Israel-backed Christian militia, slaughtered up to 3,500 people in two refugee camps, Zionist lobbyists and advertising leaders convened to refine Israel’s narrative strategies, creating a sophisticated propaganda campaign – Hasbara (Hebrew for propaganda) that sought to sanitize Israel’s actions and cast its military operations in a favorable light. Kit Klarenberg writes:
The story of how Western media was transformed into Israel’s doting, servile propaganda appendage is an educational lesson in how imperial power can easily subordinate supposed arbiters of truth to its will…The Conference hoped such efforts would mean “our American friends will be able to take a more activist posture as amplifiers of our policy” and assist them in “tucking away the house problems in a back room.”…Zionist activists (would) serve as a rapid reaction force, deluging news outlets with complaints should their coverage of Israel be at all critical...creating a “training program” to bring carefully selected Israeli information specialists into U.S. advertising, PR agencies and major news outlets…Since then, a dedicated Hasbara program aimed at cultivating skilled Zionist advocates in the U.S. has operated continuously…Buoyed by its success, the operation expanded to include school and university students worldwide, training them to act as vigorous advocates for Israel in classrooms and on campuses…To a significant degree, the portrayal of…“the gallant little underdog democracy fighting for survival against all the odds” has been firmly reestablished. Despite the ongoing crisis in Gaza, mainstream outlets seldom provide context for Palestinian resistance to Israel’s policies of annexation, occupation, and military actions. Coverage nearly always frames Israel’s actions as “self-defense” against “terrorist” threats, with Western journalists keenly aware of potential repercussions for diverging from this narrative.
In 2006, James Abourezk, congressman (later senator) from South Dakota in the 1970s, wrote:
I can tell you from personal experience that, at least in the Congress, the support Israel…is based completely on political fear…In private one hears the dislike of Israel and the tactics of the Lobby, but not one of them is willing to risk the Lobby’s animosity by making their feelings public…I see no desire on the part of members of Congress to further any U.S. imperial dreams by using Israel as their pit bull. The only exceptions to that rule are the feelings of Jewish members, who, I believe, are sincere in their efforts to keep U.S. money flowing…
The Lobby was determined to suppress even a single congressional voice that might question annual appropriations to Israel, so that
…if Congress is completely silent on the issue, the press will have no one to quote, which effectively silences the press as well. Any journalists or editors who step out of line are quickly brought under control by well-organized economic pressure against the newspaper caught sinning.
Abourezk mentioned a reporter who wrote honestly about what he saw in the Mideast. The man’s newspaper editors quickly learned from several large advertisers that their advertising would be terminated if they continued publishing the journalist’s articles, and he was sacked. Pappé adds:
As we’ve seen, the way AIPAC decided who Israel’s enemies were often had very little to do with the actual policies, which were frequently to Israel’s advantage…they decided simply based on how obedient an administration was to the lobby.
Throughout the 1980s, according to former AIPAC speechwriter M.J. Rosenberg,
… Its main priority was to ensure that the then-$2.2 billion military and economic aid package kept coming and that no conditions of any sort were attached to them. That required utilizing its "enforcers" on Capitol Hill (who were then almost all Democrats)…their spying on left-leaning Jewish organizations lead to people [allegedly] losing their jobs when their employers found out they were secret peaceniks. McCarthyist tactics were always in their bag of tricks. If you got in the way, they rolled over you.
In 2022, AIPAC defeated Reps. Andy Levin (D-Mich), and Marie Newman (D-Ill), outspoken critics of unconditional military funding for Israel. The campaign to defeat Levin marked a significant push from AIPAC to repress criticism of Israel even from Jewish members of Congress, including Bernie Sanders.
It announced that it would spend $100 million in 2024 to oust Congresspersons who criticize Israel’s human rights abuses. Of 469 seats up for reelection, it spent money on over 80%, or 389 races, 363 in the House and 26 in the Senate. AIPAC backed (or attacked) in every state except Ohio. In July, Netanyahu addressed Congress for the fourth time, receiving 60 standing ovations. In just two primaries, it spent $15 million to defeat Jamal Bowman in New York and $8.5 million defeating Missouri’s Cori Bush, utilizing AI ads that darkened her skin and manipulated her facial features. When she criticized AIPAC and promised to work against it, a Biden spokesperson criticized her “inflammatory” remarks. Biden had accepted more money from the Lobby than anyone else during his decades in the Senate, and Harris has allegedly received $5.4 million. Trumpus, not to be outdone, openly bragged about the Adelsons’ influence:
Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House, probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there…And as soon as I’d give them something, always for Israel...they’d want something else...I gave them the Golan Heights, and they never even asked for it.
Meanwhile, the Hasbara machine was generating massive amounts of bots, fake news and social media lies to mine the American tendency to blame the victims for causing their own suffering. We recall, for instance, the account of the 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin that began this essay series. A Google search now includes several “articles” claiming that the event (almost universally acknowledged by historians) never occurred, forcing actual survivors to come forward with their painful memories.
We can conclude without a doubt that the Israel lobby – as massive donations, as political hit jobs, as Birthright indoctrination, as threats to withhold advertising, as unrelenting pressure on and infiltration of upper management in media and academia – has dominated public discourse. But has all this been sufficient to override the natural, moral consciousness of nearly every American public figure for over half a century? Much evidence indicates that other factors have been needed.