US leaves Hurricane Helene survivors behind while funding Israel’s genocidal war. As the death toll from the storm climbs to 204, Congress has made no efforts to secure more disaster relief funding.
Poor israelis with zero agency whatsoever. They just have to genocide Palestinians and treat them like vermin because the US has to funnel money into the MIC
Both things can true at the same time. The system ear marks groups like this, arms them, and cultivates these beliefs.
The beauty of this particular scheme is that there's a whole history of doing this with these particular people in the west. A dynamic that has shaped both that culture by magnifying it's features as an ethnoreligion, and the surrounding culture by providing a release valve for internal contradictions without completely implicating the ruling class structure. As such, the reality is blended with "tropes" that can be used as an instrument in whichever way is convenient.
When this geopolitical blunder becomes too much to deny, expect them to tell you to hate Jews.
I hadn't even considered how jarring the political switch to antisemitism will be. Dems through a lens of nauseatingly misused left-adjacent points, and Reps with more overt racism and exciting language. If the NYT runs an article called "Were the Alt-Right right about Israel?" I'm putting my fucking head right in the lathe next
That's what has prompted my ruminating about this whole situation. My husband is ethnically Jewish, by 3rd Reich standards so is my son. We have had strained family and friend relationships as a result of the whole ordeal. I have nothing to do with any of this. I could tolerate a situation where I am a political prisoner, but anything with my child I just can't fathom.
And of course, I can't talk to any of my in laws or estranged Jewish friends because they are just conditioned to be like "yeah that's why we need Israel at all costs" while they just further dissociate and double down and contribute to fomenting a situation that affects me and mine. It's maddening.
I don't think the power dynamic is the other way. Netanyahu, Biden and every other American politician are just conjoined in their principled zionism and genocidal tendencies. The US has some interest in keeping the entire region destabilized, yeah. But that's hardly the point.
I'd argue that the power dynamic is the other way, but the more important fact is that "Manifest Destiny" and all the other genocidal tendencies of the west cannot be untangled.
Zionism is the expression of "Manifest Destiny" (and "Rule Britannia" and other European imperialism) in west Asia; it is part of their larger system of global imperialism, genocide, and destabilization. The US and the collective west does not have "some interest" in keeping the region destabilized- it has its entire interest there (while also having its interest simultaneously elsewhere), because it is pursuing global domination and hegemony, a hegemony that will only ever be secure if they were to genocide off or enslave and cull much of the entire rest of the planet. The US (and the collective west, all of which also is banking on the Eurocentric/Atlanticist system of genocide and imperialism remaining) cannot hope to maintain global hegemony if west Asia- the crossroads between Africa and east and west Eurasia- falls out of its grasp. They also cannot hope to maintain global hegemony if the Pacific does, or Latin America does, or the natural resources of Africa does, etc- or if large nations like China, Russia, India, and the rest of BRICS are allowed to develop such that their peoples have the same means, the same dignity and opportunities as the west- well, you get the gist. They require dominance (and that dominance can only be secured through mass destruction/genocide) and destabilization across the entire globe, or their free ride off the rest of humanity's backs is over.
American Manifest Destiny may have had its differences with Zionism in the early days- and it had its differences with Nazi Lebensraum, and Rule Britannia, Francafrique, and the Spanish/Portuguese empires and their worldview of the "treaty of Tordesillas" dividing the world between the respective nations- but eventually, they all coalesced together (with the US championing and marshalling the western nations in trying to maintain their dominance over the majority of humanity).
Netanyahu, Biden and every other American politician are just conjoined in their principled zionism and genocidal tendencies.
It's pretty obvious what I actually said. Nobody 'controls' anyone. The zionist political project is something that unites all sorts of american politicians, be they the President of the US or a brooklyn born Prime Minister of Israel. There's no seniority between neighbors. Which is why, for an example, John Mearsheimer only argues that the american president needs to be more forceful towards Israel in the preservation of of the Zionist colonial project. That's the greatest divergence you can find in US politics.
Right, like, of course the US more or less rubber stamps Israel’s decisions and funds them but this idea that Israel doesn’t direct its own policy in the region is lunacy.
You have it backwards though, the US does this because it finds the destabilization of the middle east convenient to its strategic interests. Israel is the US's rabid attack dog that the US has given a very slack leash. Materially there's no way for Israel to control the US's actions. BurgerPunk is correct.