Israel/Palestine is the model of the world Americans want to achieve. It has peasants and their flocks dying of thirst, and on the hilltop there are villas and swimming pools for the chosen folk. It has a huge army and it has many labourers without any rights. In order to turn all the world into Palestine they began now World War 3 against the Third World.
The Israel American alliance is more than just a Jewish Lobby. It’s a shared view of the world via two settler colonial states with an “exceptionalist” view of themselves. Good, solid majorities of Americans, mostly Whites, stand hard and fast behind the Jewish state. They don’t just do that because of the Jewish Lobby or media brainwash. There’s something more going on there.
And let’s not forget White racism – Israel as a Euro-White state besieged by violent hordes of dark skinned 3rd Worlders.
Toss Islam versus “Judeo-Christianity” into the mix and the souffle is ready for the hot war oven.
Yeah, and a lot of those chosen folk with the hilltop villas and swimming pools are rich Arabs. Forget about the Jews for a minute (I mean, if you could, which you can’t). Look at the distribution of wealth among the Arabs. And these rich Arabs aren’t Horatio abu Alger types who earned their wealth through honest labor of their own. They got rich by being the people with power (guns), or friends or relatives of the people in power. You could grant Palestine statehood today, expel all the Jews, and what would Palestine be? An egalitarian paradise? Please. It would be peasants and their flocks dying of thirst, and on the hilltop villas and swimming pools for the chosen folk.
“”. You could grant Palestine statehood today, expel all the Jews, and what would Palestine be? An egalitarian paradise? Please.”"
drawing people into a pointless hypothetical to justify current immorality is kind of lame Aaron.
Fair enough, point taken. But I was talking about an actual, too: there are many rich Arabs in the territories who live a lot more luxuriously than the average Jewish settler, not to mention the average Arab peasant. This is typical of today’s left: they don’t care about economic class or the relations of production; all they care about is identity, in this case national identity. Shamir isn’t complaining about the rich exploiting the poor; he’s complaining about middle-class Jews exploiting poor Arabs.
I’m not trying to justify Jewish settlement, by the way. Just suggesting that people look beyond Shamir’s fashionable Jews-are-devils, Arabs-are-angels world view.
As you yourself implied, it’s not a Jewish lobby, it’s an Israel lobby. The vast majority of pro-Israel fanatics in America are Christian. Evangelical Christians like those in CUFI are more Zionist than the Jews. I mean that literally – a lot more Zionist than American Jews. The mainstream evangelical Christian Zionist position would be considered extreme right in Israel.
I don’t think these Christian Zionists are white racists. Many are anti-racist. I do think you’re right, though, that it has a lot to do with American Protestant history and identity: the Puritans, the New Israel, and all that. Not to discount the power of the (Christian and Jewish) Israel lobby, but they already have very fertile ground on which to plant.
What crap Israel Shamir writes with all the foreign aid and donations the Palestinians have received the average Palestinian would probably be a millionaire.
The US foreign policy and ideology which includes Neocons like Pearle is to implement economic shock therapy free market policy on countries like Balkans, Russia and Ukraine and elsewhere destroying the domestic production capacity and with MI6, CIA, etc backing putting the country and economy under western aligned oligarchs and organised crime creating networks between that and Islamic terrorist separatist groups who ethnically cleanse and commit genocide against the native Christian/non-Muslim population just like what happened in the formers Yugoslavia and Russia/Chechnya.
That is what the new NWO states are free market, Islamic mafia fiefdoms into a global economic union. One big US/British created and orientated caliphate.
Ah Aaron, with his usual denials of the Jewish lobby, and his usual attempts to make Christian Zionists out to be equal partners in the so-called “Israel lobby.”
Christian Zionists are not the ones giving the Democrats 60% of their money, they’re not the ones writing syndicated pro-Israel columns in the U.S, they don’t occupy top spots in the government, etc.
I’m not saying the Christians are equal partners, just important partners. The Jews give money and the Christians give votes. But it’s not just Israel, of course. The Christians would give the votes to elect Rick Perry if he were nominated, and the Jews would give the money to defeat him. On the other hand, Christians and Jews together ensure that everybody’s within the Perry-to-Obama range on Israel.
A minor point: I don’t think either Jews or evangelical Christians occupy top US government spots that determine US-Israel policy. It’s determined at the White House and at Foggy Bottom, each of which has goyim running US-Israel policy. That’s not to deny the strength of Jewish and evangelical Christian pro-Israel influence, though.
The US government at various levels is insanely pro-Israel probably mostly because of the Lobby, however the American people themselves are very pro-Israel for a variety of reasons. I don’t think the evil Media Jews done brainwashed all of them. I talk to American supporters of Israel all the time. They’re not all media brainwashed. They just either love Jews (incredible numbers of Americans are Judeophilic) or else they think that the Palestinians are a bunch of scummy Arab Muslim terrorist shits. Israel is basically a bunch of nice White people defending their land against Arab terrorist animals. That’s the way people see it, and you really can’t convince them otherwise.
Also, a very large number of White liberals support Israel.
Yah, that pretty much is the case.
Oh, and I don’t agree with the whole “America supports Israel because of its similar racist colonial setter origins, so they identify with Israel as a state besieged by dark hordes.”
If that were the case, why aren’t Australia and New Zealand major Israel supporters? Or why aren’t Canada or Argentina for that matter?
They’re all colonial settler states.
You’re right about settler states, but don’t forget the settler states of white South Africa and Ulster, two very strong supporters of Israel. I think that in those cases the settler thing really was an important factor. But in America, it’s also the Protestant theology that was tied in to the whole settler project from the start, with the vision of America as a New Israel.
I don’t think there’s a single grand theory that explains all these data points. Here’s a start at two theories. America: settler + Protestant theology, all mixed together. Ulster and white South Africa: settler “states” where the settlement is still a salient feature, maybe even the most salient feature (as in Israel). The states you mentioned, along with the US, have long since subdued or exterminated the indigenous population. Here’s a third ingredient: in those settler “states” (quotation marks because I’m including Ulster) that support Israel, the settlers identify with the West, as do Israelis.
@ Aaron
Good points.
Israel is interesting regarding the “West.”
On the one hand, Israel is located in the Middle East, and the majority of its population is non-Western (ie. non-white, even among the Jewish community itself, since the Mizrahim and Ethiopians combined outnumber the Ashkenazim).
And yet at the same time, Israel has identified itself as a Western country from day one.
Raises interesting questions regarding what constitutes “The West.”
Hey Aaron, since you’re here, I just have a question: As someone who has studied Israel/Palestine and is interested in the Israeli scene, I’m curious about the Ashkenazi/Mizrahi relationship.
Historically, the Mizrahim were made to live in “development towns,” and their anger over economic marginalization and social/religious disrespect at the hands of the Ashkenazi dominated labor elite led them to voting Likud in 1977 (though of course they have Shas now).
At the same time, they tend to be more right wing and religious than the Ashkenazim.
I hear that the Ashkenazi/Mizrahi divide has loosened as of late, but what’s your take on this?
My impression is that the ashkenazi/mizrahi divide has practically become insignificant. There are definitely a few bitter mizrahim, mostly lower-class, but nothing like the bigotry I’ve heard that there was a couple generations ago. As in the US, I think it’s the “people of color” who are the more bigoted, but even so it’s a small minority. There are real cultural differences – for instance, hardly any ashkenazim listen to “Middle Eastern music” (muzikah mizrahit) – but ethnicity is no barrier to friendship or marriage as it once was.
The ashkenazi-mizrahi “intermarriage” rate has been high for many years. A large number of Israelis are mixed, including my own ex-wife and children. The categories of ashkenazi and mizrahi are going to continue getting less and less significant. Ethnic humor is still acceptable, thank God.
By the way, I object to your equating white with Western. I don’t think Russia, an Orthodox Christian country, is Western (Poland is more arguable). Therefore only a small number of Israelis came from Western countries. But Israelis strongly and consciously identify with the West, including those whose ancestors came from Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, etc. That’s from surveys and from anecdotal evidence as well.