Israeli and Zionist influence in the USA is a purposeful choice of the American government. It allows the American government to circumvent many domestic and international laws by allowing Israeli firms to do the spying and dirty work for them. Israel is essentially a rogue state that is entirely controlled by the American intelligence apparatus (and therefore, American capital). This has created a feedback loop of constantly reinforcing settler colonialism and American economic extraction of the Middle East. If America withdrew support to Israel, this feedback loop would cease and Israel would be greatly diminished or completely collapse.
Saying Israel controls America is simply wrong, stop saying this. I will remove your post. ✌️
edit: altered title for clarification and to avoid nonsensical semantic arguments
I’m more inclined to say it’s a mutually beneficial relationship in which the US overlooks Israeli influence (and control) in US politics because of the benefits it gains from Israel. The US could at any time reverse this, by removing its support for Israel, but the issue with this argument is that the US literally never will do this because of both the benefits of Israel to the US in the middle east and the influence(and control) within US politics.
It’s an entanglement. A tangled web of connections that can not be unentangled. They simultaneously control each other and because they will never disentangle they will never cease to simultaneously be controlled by and control the other.
I do think it’s strongly flawed to say the US simple controls Israel by its ability to step back from support though, it’s not a card that can or will ever be used so it functionally does not exist.
Another good, nuanced take that captures why I didn’t like the original post.
the OP is a clumsy attempt to clarify the boundaries of discussion on the site to conform to the comfort of selected individuals. All these nuanced takes are at cross purposes with that. Irrelevant at best because the decision has been made and input not required.
I don’t think the admins are against input. If they were I wouldn’t even be allowed to say this.
What they do from time to time is act clumsy in laying down their boundaries. They’re absolutely right to say it is totally unacceptable to make the far right argument of Israel controlling da wurld. Which is really all that they are saying with this post. The issue is that they get this across in a way that implies there is a problem in the wider userbase’s nuanced takes, which there almost always is not, and when this is taken the wrong way people negatively react because they do not want a chilling effect on debate about the nuanced entanglements.
Yes, I think we need to make an important distinction here. The word “control” is used for two valid, but distinct things: Sometimes it’s used to argue about moral responsibility. Sometimes it’s about strategy in our struggle. Like if one side “controls” the other, are there nodes of control that can be exposed and targeted politically? I think in both cases, the word “control” simplifies the complex relationship, so I won’t use it any more in this. But luckily it’s not needed to answer either question.
About moral responsibility, I think it’s really important to recognize, that powerful people in the US (politicians, generals, billionaires, etc.) are equally responsible for the genocide, just like the ones in Israel. Both can be morally responsible at the same time. The same goes for state institutions. Morally, the ones in the US do have the freedom to withdraw support and that would stop the genocide. It’s not important for moral consideration, that they won’t do that for material reasons. To face this moral truth is important for our propaganda and also a question of respect and solidarity for Palestinians.
The other question is about our strategy. Here, a materialist perspective is needed. From inside the imperial core, pushing for BDS is the obvious strategy, which targets Israel directly. But because of the “tangled web of connections”, which you mentioned, there are also important sides of struggle in the US. And many center around trying to sever at least some of those connections: the ones between universities in the US and Israel for example. US firms with close ties to Israel are another. There are others and these sides of struggle can be understood as an extensions of BDS.
Politically targeting legislature, think tanks, members of congress with ties to Israel is another logical strategy. It’s best to concentrate on few targets instead of spreading our efforts out. Like snipping one strang of a complicated knot at a time instead of trying to rip it all apart at once.
This strategy does not mean, that we believe a complete severance of the connections between the US and Israel is possible. It is not. Even, if Israel was magically destroyed tomorrow, the US would invent a new one. But similar to a labor struggle in which a single strike can’t abolish capitalism, anti-imperialist actions can still gain wins, even if the whole of imperialism isn’t abolished yet.
I also agree with this
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