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Gary wrote:
> 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.
>
Gary,
You are right there is is a recurring infection but wrong to identify Israel as
the actual source. The root cause of the instability is the marginalisation,
underdevelopment and poverty of the region, which is itself an outcome fact
that
those who control, exploit and waste the immense resources of the area cannot
and will not meet not even the most basic interests and aspirations of the
majority of the peoples there. Were Israel to vanish tomorrow this fundamental
problem would remain.
However, within this empire of chaos, Israel performs a valuable function for
the imperialist powers -- that of the wrecker of the dreams and hopes of the
people of the region for a future free from imperialist domination. Just think
of the role that Israeli aggression played in thwarting Nasser's Egypt and Arab
nationalism, compared to its foul record of collaboration with the likes of the
Mubaraks, the Hashemites, the Saudis and Pahlavis, not to mention its support
for the apartheid regime in South Africa, the Mobutus, Kenyattas,
Houphouët-Boignys, the Guatemalan dictatorship, etc.
When I look at Israel today I am reminded of the role of the South African
apartheid regime, much of whose violence and aggression against neighbouring
countries like Mozambique etc was designed to prop up native stooges while
instructing the local people on the futility of resisting imperialism and
attempting to construct their own futures.
Thus Israel's wars and aggression are not the source of the instability of the
region, but part of the strategy of imperialism for managing and containing the
struggles of the people of the region to control their own futures. You can be
sure that if a progressive popular government were again to come to power in
Egypt tomorrow, the first task the US and Europe, and by extension Israel,
would
set themselves would be the destruction of this government.
I would also hardly describe Egypt as having been stable before the present
outbreak. The façade of stability, such as it was, was based only on fear of
the
police, the state thugs and torturers, hardly on the ability of the state to
meet any the aspirations of the people over whom the Mubarak ruled.
Lastly, within the US, the Zionist lobby has surely serves a useful domestic
purpose for the ruling class as a whole, in promoting a generally reactionary,
pro-imperialist and racist tenor in US politics, while weeding out opponents of
the same.
Lajany Otum
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