Why does the United States support Israel?
Well, there’s a history….
and a very interesting one…
that actually goes back to…
goes back a long time.
one thing to remember is that…
Christian Zionism
is a very powerful force…
which goes back
long before Jewish Zionism.
In England particularly
Christian Zionism was. a..
powerful Force Among British Elites.
It’s part of the motivation
for the Balfour declaration…
and for Britain’s support for…
Jewish Colonization of Israel,
“remember, the bible said….” you know.
And that’s a big part of
British Elite Culture.
Same in the United States.
Woodrow Wilson was a…
devout Christian
who read the Bible every day.
So did harry Truman.
In the Roosevelt administration,
one of the leading officials,
Harold Ickes, once described…
the return of the jews to Palestine
as the greatest event in history.
It’s realizing the lesson of the bible.
These are deeply religious countries…
in which the Biblical command, so-called,
are taken quite literally.
Also, this is just part of colonization.
This is the last phase
of European Colonization.
And notice that the countries that are
most strongly in support of Israel…
are not just the United States.
It’s the United States, Australia, and Canada.
The offshoots of England,
Anglosphere sometimes called.
Unusual forms of imperialism.
These are settler colonial societies.
Coloned societies in which the…
(not like India…
not like the British in India, say.)
Societies, South Africa, was a little like this,
or Algeria under the French.
Settler colonial societies
in which the settlers came in,
essentially
eliminated the native population…
also driven by religious principles,
very religious groups driven by Christian Zionism.
Those are major cultural factors.
There are also significant
geostrategic factors.
You go back to 1948…
There was actually a split…
between the state department
and the Pentagon in the United States…
over how to react
to the new state of Israel.
The State Department was…
it was not committed strongly
to Israeli conquests,
the establishment of the state,
and was concerned about the refugees.
It wanted an implementation
of the refugee problem.
The Pentagon, on the other hand,
Reckitt was very impressed
with Israel’s military potential.
The Israeli military successes.
If you look back at the internal record,
in declassified,
the Joint chiefs of staff described
Israel as the…
second largest military force
in the region after Turkey…
and a potential base
for US power in the region.
That continued.
(I) Can’t run through the whole record,
but in 1958 when there was
a serious crisis in the region…
Israel was the only state that strongly cooperated
with Britain and the United States…
And it won plenty of support from the governments
and the military for that reason.
1967 is when the current relations with Israel
were pretty much established.
Israel performed a major service
to the United States…
by destroying secular Arab nationalism,
a major enemy of the United States,
and supporting radical Islam
which the U.S. supported.
And it continues right until the present.
Right now, we saw an example of that
just during the latest Gaza attack.
You recall that at one point
Israel began to run out of munitions…
during the assault despite the fact
that it’s a armed to the teeth…
that the United States provided Israel
with additional munitions through the Pentagon.
And notice where they were taken from.
These were U.S. munitions
pre-positioned in Israel…
for eventual use by U.S. Forces.
One of many signs of how Israel
is regarded as essentially a…
military offshoot of the United States.
Very close intelligence relations
that go way back.
Many other connections.
And the media tend…
to support the policy of the government…
with very few kind of
little questioning around the edges,
but basically accept the policy.
So for example take another issue,
take the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
You cannot find the phrase
“U.S. invasion of Iraq” in the U.S. media.
There was obviously an invasion.
A blatant act of aggression,
a textbook case of…
what the Nuremberg trials called
“The Supreme International Crime.”
Cannot be mentioned.
President Obama is praised
as an opponent of the invasion
What did he say?
He said it’s a mistake. It’s a strategic blunder.
We’re not going to get away with it.
Now that’s the kind of opposition that…
you heard from the German general staff
during Hitler’s invasion of Russia.
It’s a blunder. Shouldn’t do it.
We should knock off. England first.
That’s regarded as opposition.
The same in Vietnam.
There’s now a commemoration underway.
A big commemoration
of U.S. sacrifices in Vietnam
Try to find the phrase:
“U.S. invasion of South Vietnam”…
there or anywhere in the past years
since 1961 when it took place.
Nonexistent.
Maybe on “Democracy Now”,
by what I write, but way out of the fringe.
And this is not unique
to the United States
Take, say, Britain.
Right now there’s interesting debates
in the British literary journals,
like the times literary supplement,
as to whether britain should finally begin
to recognize the genocidal,
the word that’s used,
genocidal character of British Colonization.
Hundreds of years ago!
Should Britain begin to face it?
You can ask that question in many places.
The tendency
of the intellectual community…
to go along like a herd
in support of…
state power, private power
is just overwhelming
intellectuals like to think of themselves as
dissident, critical, courageous,
standing up against power.
Absolutely untrue.
You look at the historical record,
that’s a small fringe, and they’re usually punished.
The mainstream tends to be…
what was once called
“a herd of independent minds”…
marching in support of State power
Nothing new here.
Unfortunate.
You have to fight against it. Not new.
