Israel's Legitimacy and the Power of its Lobby in the US Matt Siegfried
"..Though – and this underlines my point I hope – Saudi Arabia (a bête noire only a spot below Iran in Israeli eyes) remains as key to US interests in the region as Israel (though in different ways). The close ties to the Wahabi monarchy, a bulwark of civilization, go back much further than those with the Zionist state, they preceded it in fact. The US supports Israel (in part) to defend it against….its other most important ally in the region. But on the grounds of public opinion the Saudis don’t even bother to try (except in the financial press) to exert their influence….and yet they retain it fully. That most of the participants in the attacks of 9/11 were Saudi, curiously, didn’t lead to a single Tomahawk or drone attack... The bedrock of public support in the United States for Israel are not Jews, or liberals cowed by the ghosts of Auschwitz, but reactionary Christian fundamentalists... The US defends Israel as vehemently as it does, not because it is blindly following Israel, but because it is blindly leading the imperialist world order... Israel would be forced to make peace tomorrow if the US closed her accounts... New legitimacies are urgently needed. Ones based on justice, on solidarity and on the interests of workers: that vast majority of humanity, that only force capable of truly uniting peoples. Otherwise we’ll forever be trapped in making demands on those who do not share our interests. On occasion we may be able to force them to accede, but they accede, in part, to relegitimize their illegitimacy in the eyes of those making demands... I write this not at all to deflect or criticize the current mobilizations now happening, nor the campaign to isolate and punish Israel for its crimes. That folks are gathering to make demands on their governments while at the same time taking action into their own hands means that an alternative foreign policy, a genuine “international community” built in opposition to imperialism, is not just possible, but happening... Will it be co-opted, like so many before? Or will it generalize from the experiences of the last, horrible, days and see the power inherent in, not relying on the governments of those who do not share our interests, but themselves and their own actions?.. " http://www.radicalsocialist.in/index.php/component/content/article/34-blog/186-israels-legitimacy-and-the-power-of-its-lobby-in-the-us?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:%20radicalsocialist%20%28Radical%20Socialist%29 -- Y -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "humanrights movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/humanrights-movement?hl=en.
