{"id":264923,"date":"2024-06-24T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2024-06-24T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=264923"},"modified":"2024-06-23T08:26:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-23T07:26:05","slug":"israel-is-a-core-pillar-of-u-s-dominance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/06\/israel-is-a-core-pillar-of-u-s-dominance\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Is a Core Pillar of U.S. Dominance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The Wire<\/p><\/div>\n

19 Jun 2024\u00a0<\/em>– Over the last eight months, Israel\u2019s genocide has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and reduced most of Gaza to rubble.<\/p>\n

In the face of all this horror, many of us are asking ourselves: How could the U.S. government continue to support this?<\/p>\n

To answer that question, you need to understand one thing: Israel is a <\/strong>core pillar<\/em><\/strong> of U.S. dominance in the Middle East.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In \u201cFraming Palestine Israel, the Gulf states, and American power in the Middle East,\u201d Adam Hanieh breaks down<\/a> why the U.S. provides billions each year in military funding to Israel. The answer? It\u2019s all about U.S. empire.<\/p>\n

Why imperialism matters<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Limiting our focus to Israel\u2019s occupation of Palestine misses the key role Israel plays in protecting U.S. imperial interests in the wider region. \u201cSolidarity with Palestine is frequently reduced to the question of Israel\u2019s\u2026ongoing violations of international law,\u201d writes Hanieh. This approach cannot account for what drives U.S. and Western support for Israel. And thus, it also wrongly assumes that the U.S. government will be moved by appeals to respect human rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cA major bulwark of American interests in the region\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Hanieh contends that Israel has historically acted to protect American imperial interests in the so-called \u201cMiddle East,\u201d a region whose economic and geostrategic importance to maintaining U.S. global hegemony cannot be understated.<\/p>\n

Successive U.S. governments have sought to protect and expand U.S. empire, er, American interests<\/em> in the Middle East \u2014 chief among them, maintaining a stable supply of oil and ensuring the longevity of the \u201cAmerican-centered global system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel serves as a core pillar of this strategy, acting as \u201ca loyal partner and a bulwark against threats to American interests in the region.\u201d And it benefits greatly from this relationship, too. After all, it could not maintain a \u201cpermanent state of war\u201d or an indefinite military occupation over millions of Palestinians without American political and economic support, and a lot<\/em> of it.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s \u201cinternal character as a settler colony\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There\u2019s another factor driving the U.S.-Israel \u201cspecial\u201d relationship: settler colonialism. Hanieh writes, \u201cSettler colonies must continually work to fortify structures of racial oppression, class exploitation, and dispossession. As a result, they are typically highly militarised and violent societies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why does that matter? It means settler colonies are even more likely to be reliant on external support to survive, as is the case with Israel. That makes them, in Hanieh\u2019s words, \u201cmuch more dependable partners of Western imperial interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

Normalization and evolving U.S. imperialism<\/strong><\/h3>\n

It is in this context that we should understand calls to \u201cnormalize\u201d relations between Arab states and Israel.<\/p>\n

According to Hanieh, U.S. strategy in the Middle East has focused since the 1990s on Israel\u2019s economic integration with the wider region. It is for this reason that the U.S. has pursued normalization between the two pillars of U.S. hegemony in the Middle East \u2014 Israel and the Gulf monarchies, as well as Jordan and Egypt.<\/p>\n

Though often held up as such, calls for normalization have nothing to do with the U.S. wanting \u201cpeace.\u201d Normalization undercuts the cause of Palestinian liberation and is nothing more than a transparent attempt to shore up U.S. imperial interests, especially recently, in the face of declining U.S. power and a rising China.<\/p>\n

What does this mean for our movements?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Material interests<\/em> drive continued U.S. support for Israel. In our movement\u2019s fight to end U.S. support for Israel\u2019s oppression and murder of Palestinians, our mandate is explicitly anti-imperialist.<\/p>\n

Today, unprecedented numbers have joined the fight against Israel\u2019s genocide, what Hanieh describes as a \u201cglobal political wakening\u201d with Palestine \u201c at the forefront.\u201d At the same time, more and more U.S. Jews agree that Jewish safety can never be achieved through the oppression and slaughter of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Pushing to send billions in weapons to Israel while it commits genocide should be an untenable political position. And it will be, as we grow our movement. People power can<\/em> defeat special interests. That\u2019s why we must protect the progress we\u2019ve made and keep organizing toward bigger wins.<\/p>\n

Tell Congress: Stop arming Israel\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Together, we\u2019ve already sent over 26,000 emails to our members of Congress demanding that they support an immediate arms embargo on Israel.<\/p>\n

Will you help us hit 30,000 emails today? It only takes a few clicks. <\/strong>Email now<\/strong><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Go to Original – jewishvoiceforpeace.org<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 Jun 2024\u00a0– Over the last eight months, Israel\u2019s genocide has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and reduced most of Gaza to rubble.\u00a0In the face of all this horror, many of us are asking ourselves: How could the U.S. government continue to support this?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":264925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[2435,87,865,88,767,2571,427,2159,880,70],"class_list":["post-264923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-domestic-terrorism","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-palestine","tag-rogue-states","tag-state-terrorism","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264926,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264923\/revisions\/264926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}