By Alison Weir: British journalist and author Owen Jones recently made a video describing in excruciating detail Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. Many others have also reported on this. Medical Aid CEO Melanie Ward says that “children are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen.”
He points out that “Western governments have openly facilitated some of the worst crimes of our age” and concludes: “I don’t think the West is ever going to recover from this.”
It’s important to examine why the West is taking such irrational, immoral, and self-destructive actions.
The causation is clear, although relatively few are willing to mention it, and there’s always a cost in stating it. The major factor in this potentially catastrophic situation is the pervasive and extremely powerful influence of the pro-Israel lobby.
There are highly influential lobbies for Israel in many countries, including the UK, France (also see this), and Europe in general.
In this piece I will focus on the United States. Since in today’s world the US is considered the world’s most powerful country, the lobby is especially active here.
However, as I document in my book, the importance of the United States to the establishment of Israel was recognized even before that – over a century ago, in the early years of the movement to create a Jewish state on land that was 95% non-Jewish. As I report:
One of the founders of political Zionism, Max Nordau, wrote a few years after the [1897] Basel conference, “Zionism’s only hope is the Jews of America.”
At that time, and for decades after, the large majority of Jewish Americans were not Zionists. In fact, many actively opposed Zionism. In the coming years, however, Zionists were to woo them assiduously with every means at hand. The extent to which Nordau’s hope was eventually realized is indicated by the statement by a prominent author on Jewish history, Naomi Cohen, who in 2003 wrote, “but for the financial support and political pressure of American Jews… Israel might not have been born in 1948.”
To this might be added Zionists’ success in influencing American politicians, the media, and much of the general public.
For years, ambitious politicians from both parties have competed to be more pro-Israel than anyone else, repeatedly vowing their loyalty to Israel and its alleged right to exist.
Numerous pro-Israel billionaires (some of them are listed here) donate to political parties with the condition that they support Israel. (It is difficult to find any American billionaires who donate on behalf of full rights for Palestinians.)
In addition, Israel partisans are embedded in the government and successfully promoted the devastating Iraq War. Pro-Israel organizations and individuals have similarly long pushed for war against Iran.
Individuals close to Israel have repeatedly been investigated for leaking classified information to Israel, but these investigations are almost always quashed.
Pro-Israel individuals play a major role in news media, sometimes at the top.
The situation is similar for popular media, where Hollywood plays a significant role in influencing attitudes about Israel, Arabs, and Muslims. Top movie producers have worked with Israel to defend its actions.
Similarly, social media and internet companies include numerous Israel partisans and periodically shadow ban or outright ban organizations and individuals that provide factual information on the situation.
A study found that advocacy organizations supporting Israel spent roughly 100 times more than their opposition.
A number of books have documented the influence of the Israel lobby in the US, including: They Dare to Speak Out, by Paul Findley; The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt; and The Lobby: Jewish political power and American foreign policy, by Edward Tivnan.
Lobby organizations also target campuses.
While there are many Jewish Israelis and Jewish Americans who oppose Israeli actions, their efforts are eclipsed by virtually all the national Jewish establishment organizations in the US with multi-million dollar budgets and enormous reach, who continue to support Israel even in the midst of today’s carnage in Gaza.
Meanwhile, intelligence, military, and diplomatic experts have periodically pointed out the damage Israel is doing to the United States, but the media rarely report their statements. Below are a few:
(More videos on the topic are here and here.)
It is time for more Americans to learn these facts and to speak out. It is time to stop allowing Influential groups of all sorts to cancel those whose information they dislike.
If Americans are to avoid their country’s decline and protect their families from its impact, it is essential to diagnose the cause and address it.
Until more people stop being intimidated by being called antisemitic and instead speak about these uncomfortable facts, this lobby on behalf of a ruthless, supremacist foreign country will continue to dominate US policies, causing Intolerable tragedy abroad and potentially fatal destruction at home.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel. She first spent time in Gaza and the West Bank in early 2001 as a freelance journalist.
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