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Hi Lajany thank you for the very thoughtful comment on my post. I hope my tone came across as tentative. It was certainly meant to. Now what do we agree on? Quite a lot actually - above all we agree on the characterisation of Israel as a settler nation beholden to a super power. I would add here the ideological important absence of the "mother country". What makes Zionist colonialism unique is that after some prevarication it settled on the myth that it constitutes a return But where we part company is in the cost benefit analysis. I am genuinely puzzled by what goods accrue to the USA because of Israel. The metaphor you employ here of Israel as the "bedrock" tends I believe to somewhat mislead you. Israel is anything but a bed rock. Rather I tend to see it as something like the source of recurring infections. It is the guarantor of continuing instability and war. Even when through bribery and corruption leading Arab states are neutralised - rendered "stable" as the State Dept would have it, the instability moves to another site and eventually even stable entities like Egypt erupt into instability. The loyalty of Israel to the US is by no means an eternal given. Perhaps the sinking of the USS Liberty was a 'tragic error' but there are other signs that the Israelis are far from the grateful clients that the metaphor of bedrock suggests. An interesting parallel to consider here is the use that Stalin made of communist movements in the countries he was allied to. He had a bargaining chip against Roosevelt and Churchill because important sections of their societies were primarily loyal to the Soviet Union. Similarly with the Zionist entity, Netanyahu has significant elements within the USA who are more loyal to him and Israel than to the USA. It seems to me that Israeli leaders can and do use the Zionists within the USA to bully USA politicians into prioritising the interests of Israel. Though here you would probably deny my basic premise that there are Israeli interests which are not the same as American interests, even American Imperial interests. comradely regards Gary ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
