The role of the United States in world politics is distorted for most Finns, because the Finnish media is focused on barking at the "rogue" international activities of Russia and, to an increasing extent, China.
The United States can be seen in the news, but almost always as a conflict solver, an omnipresent "defender of democracy and freedom". This was already the case before joining NATO, but especially since then the line has been uncritical admiration, or if no excuse has been found, the solution has been silence.
In the two ongoing active wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the United States appears to be the arming and financial supporter of the other side, but the media's perspective is not to open up the role of the United States and its background factors as measures to maintain power hegemony. We prefer to create an image that Ukraine was "forced to help" because of the Russian attack and Israel is supported because Israel must now be supported in all situations.
In reality, the war in Ukraine is largely planned, provoked, armed and financed by the United States. In the following, however, I will draw attention to the central role of the United States in Israel's aggressive war against the Palestinians.
The relationship between the United States and Israel is nowhere near the normal relationship between two independent states. After the 1967 war at the latest, the United States has financed Israel's social infrastructure with large sums. It is claimed, for example, that the state of Israel has been able to offer its citizens many services free of charge that are not available to the US's own residents.
In addition to money going to peaceful destinations, the United States largely finances Israel's military projects. Also, a significant part of the weapons that Israel cannot manufacture itself comes from the United States.
However, a decisive role in the construction of Israel's secret nuclear arsenal in the 1960s was played by the racist regime of South Africa, which paid for the weapons supplied by Israel with uranium, and France, which mutually helped in parallel with the development of its own nuclear weapons program.
The world's greatest lobbyist distributes millions to politicians
The relationship between the United States and Israel has usually been examined through the actions of the current president. It has been argued that under Barack Obama, relations were cool, while Donald Trump heated up relations so much that the US moved its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018.
In many contexts, Joe Biden has assured eternal and unwavering support, although in some leaked videos, the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mockingly talks about how the United States is in Israel's pocket and obeys his will. However, behind Biden's unconditional loyalty is not pure love for the state of Israel, but an organization called AIPAC.
AIPAC ie American Israel Public Affairs Committee is perhaps the most influential lobbying organization in the entire world. AIPAC is not primarily an organization that pressures information on the side of Israel, but its main task is to buy as many senators and congressmen as possible to "unconditionally" support Israel and its Zionist policy. The same goal applies to the current president and his administration.
According to Wikipedia, AIPAC has declared its goal "to influence the decisions of the US Congress on the following issues: pressuring the Palestinian Authority to compromise with Israel and strengthening the US-Israel alliance and increasing military aid."
The following information is from AIPAC Tracker from an organization called, which is focused on revealing what kind of sums AIPAC has distributed to US politicians or their election organizations. It is good to draw attention to the fact that Democrats have received and received money more often than Republicans. AIPAC is not interested in the party background but in the loyalty of the politician it buys. There are hardly any doubts about those who made it to the million list.
Bob Menendez (D) 2,5 million – Mitch McConnell (R) 1,95 million – Chuck Schumer (D) 1,7 million – Steny Hoyer (D) 1,6 million – Ted Cruz (R) 1,4 million – Josh Gottheimer (D) 1,4 million – Hakeem Jeffries (D) 1,3 million – Ron Wyden (D) 1,3 million – Brad Schneider (D) 1,2 million – Ritchie Torres (D) 1,2 million – Dick Durbin (D) 1,1 million - Shontell Brown (D) 1,0 million - Lindsey Graham (R) 1,0 million.
Donald Trump has received only one million from AIPAC, which does not necessarily buy the full support of a businessman-politician like Trump. In a class of his own is incumbent President Joe Biden, who has received $11,2 million from AIPAC.
When AIPAC "suggests" something, the House, Senate, and White House do what they're told. With these sums, which include the majority of the decision-makers, not a single decision that is objectionable to the Israeli administration can be expected. This is further ensured by the support received from private, wealthy Jewish entities, the amount of which is probably not more precisely known.
Gaza's natural gas fields in the sights
But of course it's not just a matter of US decision-making being in the pocket of Israeli lobbyists. The United States has significant interests of its own, which are both political and economic.
An area like Gaza would otherwise be of no importance to the United States in itself, unless there happened to be a significant and completely unexploited area in the Mediterranean Sea in front of it natural gas field. According to international law, it belongs to the State of Palestine. However, the US is seeking to initiate its use now that Israel appears to be annexing the occupied Palestinian territories into the state of Israel. Here, the US is behaving the same way it did in Syria, whose oil it steals without a peep in the territory it occupies.
The Middle East is the most important region in the world in terms of energy policy, and Israel has a central role in managing it. At the moment, Egypt and Jordan are also loyal allies of the United States, but as the examples of Saudi Arabia and Turkey have shown, the loyalty of the Arab countries to the great power across the Atlantic is of the utmost importance. Israel, on the other hand, is reliable because its internal stability is completely dependent on US financial aid. Military aid is in the order of 3 billion dollars annually, but additional aid packages have been approved during the Gaza war, most recently a total of about 14 billion.
Reputational damage puts a strain on the relationship
It seems that a militarily strong and aggressive Israel could not exist without the long-term, large-scale and formally gratuitous support of the United States. Of course, everything has its price, and therefore it is not to be assumed that any administration in Israel would significantly deviate from the international policy of the United States at the time.
However, it is known that formally the countries disagree on the future of Palestine, for example. The US supports a two-state solution in principle, while Israel has announced that there will never be one.
The United States also does not like the negative attention generated by Israel's brutal apartheid policy and the Gaza war-like terrorizing of the Palestinian population that goes beyond everyday subjugation. It is likely that the US political leadership also knows how contemptuously politicians like Netanyahu view their closest ally, and support for Israel should therefore not be interpreted as praise or support for Netanyahu's politics and career.
However, it is clear that there are more ties that contribute to the permanence of the US-Israeli alliance than there are ties that separate them. Iran, publicly named by Israel as its main enemy, is also at the top of the list of targets of American state hatred.
The United States is an important buyer of Israeli products, and the country's numerically smaller (about 6 million or about 5,5% of the total population) but much more influential Zionist Jewish community ensures that the United States does not grow cold towards Israel. There are also influential far-right, racist and openly anti-Semitic organizations and their members in the country, but this has had no impact on national politics.
An expensive and unpredictable ally
So, is Israel taking on a much bigger US superpower than itself, which can at most fail in the spin? Hardly, although it may seem that way at times. I am sure that the US administration understands the disgustingly realistic facts of the relationship with Israel that are not suitable for the public, the buying of decision-makers and the pumping of gratuitous support by exaggerating threats.
Joe Biden has certainly also had time to see and experience how ruthlessly the Israeli secret service Mossad works when necessary, even though it has tried to avoid e.g. assassinations on US soil.
From the US point of view, the state of Israel is an expensive, but valuable and sometimes irreplaceable ally in the Middle East, which is important in terms of energy and transport policy.
The genocidal war in Gaza, which from the outside seems rather senseless, is meaningful from the point of view of exploiting the aforementioned gas field, and the United States does not tend to feel bad conscience because of the nations it destroys. It started with the destruction of the native inhabitants of the Americas and it has continued at any time in any corner of the world as the destruction of those native inhabitants, if the interests of the empire have required it, such as in Vietnam or Iraq.
We can safely assume that in supporting and enabling the war in Gaza, the United States also sees an opportunity to weaken Iran's influence, which is why, at least from the public, it also supports the construction of Greater Israel at the expense of neighboring countries.
The United States is the most important and leading country of world capitalist imperialism. Israel is the most suitable weapon for it, a military and police state obsessed with racist ideology, which is ready to play at great risk in order to realize the ethnically cleansed dream state in the territory of Palestine, which is much older than itself.
11 comments on the post “The United States and Israel - who takes, who doesn't even win"
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There is nothing more to add to this than the correction of the percentage calculation. Six million Jewish residents in the United States would be about two percent of the population, not five. In my opinion, Jews were second-class citizens in the United States until the 1960s. Excluding representatives of financial families such as the Goldmans and the Sachses, who already started building their empires in the 1800th century.
In addition, this could be hinted at by the much-talked-about anti-Semitism, so much so that Wikipedia (eng) has quite an enlightening history on the matter. The term Semitic originally meant language base, and these languages included Arabic and Hebrew, i.e. the languages of the Middle East. Then, in the 1800th century, a racial aspect was added to it. And just as in terms of languages, also in terms of race Arabs and Jews were lumped together. So everything went right except for the conclusions that the Semites were an inferior race compared to the Aryans. Only later has Semiticism become a political weapon and the Arabs and the original Hebrew-speaking Jews of the Middle East have been separated from each other. The Ashkenazi Jews, who are religiously converts and not racially Semitic, nor originally speaking Hebrew, have acquired a dominant position in politics. They cannot change their ethnicity, but as well as adopting a religion, they have also been able to adopt the Hebrew language. The current US administration and the academic world are full of these Ashkenazis.
So is it the case that the Palestinians are the descendants of those original Jews who spoke Hebrew and lived in Palestine, who also at one time adopted the faith of Islam, which spread to those areas?
Thanks Jan for the correction in the chapters, math is not my strongest area! It's also good to say out loud that even though Jews have influence, especially through the media and the economy, I understand that they still prefer to work in the background because of open anti-Semitism. From the beginning, Israel was not the chicken under the arms of the USA, it took time and effort to achieve that position.
The questions of Judaism, Semiticism and Palestinianness are such a complicated matter that I myself would not want to worry about it any more. In any case, there is no "Jewish race" any more than "Palestinians" or "Arabs". We are all complex mixtures of different ethnic backgrounds. Based on the DNA test, I also have a small, but real "Jewish" element, i.e. somewhere in my grandfather's grandfather's Russian family there was also a Jew. Judaism should be understood as a religion that also has differences.
More important than the legacy is that only a small part of the "Jews" of today's Israel have "always" lived in Palestine, the majority have moved to the region without any ties related to kinship. In contrast, the majority of Palestinians have never had any other homeland. Perhaps the majority of Israelis have dual citizenship, thanks to which they are now fleeing the country in fear of Iranian bombs. Palestinians do not have another homeland, they are already in their only homeland (or in exile, like the Palestinians in Finland).
The problem with the security of the Middle East and indeed the entire world is the Zionist ideology, which has caused the explosion of conflicts in the Middle East because it does not accept the peaceful coexistence of nations, ethnic equality and the borders of the state of Israel established in Palestine in 1948. It's Zionists versus everyone else. Unfortunately, the Zionist group includes not only the US political leadership, but also the EU leadership. The writing of the mainstream media is also according to it, there too it is a situation of Zionists against everyone else, above all the truth.
This persecution of Jews also includes the peculiarity that the Nazis had to persecute them especially on the basis of ethnicity and not religion, which did not particularly interest them. In practice, however, the persecution took place on the basis of religion because that is how they separated. Even when, unlike their parents, they had given up this part of their inheritance. Israel Shamir makes a nest distinction between the Jews of the Mediterranean and the Ashkenazis, as many young people in the United States seem to do now that the cat has been put on the table.
The topic is sensitive for Jews and there are hardly any comments on how these branches have mixed. According to Israel Shamir, the awareness in Israel is high, but I would guess that when the Jews of Spain were expelled in the 1400th century, some migrated to the east and north and mixing took place in connection with this movement. However, this is only a guess.
The main religions in Israel today are fascism and racism. This would be good to say, e.g. to Finnish believers who have closed their eyes to the genocide in Gaza.
Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic were spoken in the region. Was it the case that Jesus was supposed to have spoken Aramaic? In other words, the peoples in the region, whose original home must have been on the Arabian Peninsula, are related to each other and mixed. I can't say to what extent the Palestinians are direct descendants, but the ethnic kinship is obvious. If I remember correctly, it is estimated that the share of Semitic Jews in present-day Israel is ten percent. The others are Ashkenazim or kasars as some say. Israel Shamir says that apart from the Semitic Jews, the attitude of both groups is the same towards the Palestinians.
Thanks for sharing the AIPAC Tracker, always learning something new.
Could you, Heikki, write an article about Poju Zabludowicz, it would certainly be interesting to read and you surely(?) know about the Zionist connections and dalliances of that guy.😊👍
I have read and reviewed a book about Poju Zabludowicz's father Shlomo Zabludowicz, it can be found behind this link: https://heikinvaraventtiili.blogspot.com/2021/11/aika-sutki-mies.html . Poju Z. lives perhaps an even less public life than his father, although his art hobby has been presented with great admiration in women's magazines. There are no solid reasons to assume that Zabludowicz the younger would have left his father's arms business, since the millionaire's income always comes from somewhere. But we haven't seen the harvest of investigative journalism from this direction, the art hobby has been enough.
In this context, I dare to offer the readers of Naapuriseura Sanomat another, very recent blog link, behind which I pondered how the whole so-called the western world is wrapped up as a vocal or silent guarantor of the structural falsehood and violent goals of the Israeli state. The text can be found behind this link: https://heikinvaraventtiili.blogspot.com/2024/04/me-kanssavalehtelijat.html.
In this context, I would also like to emphasize that my strong criticism of the State of Israel and its Zionist regime does not contain any anti-Semitism. I appreciate the Jewish cultural tradition, which encourages studying and promoting the arts. As a non-religious person, I do not value Judaism as a religion any more than any other religion. Based on DNA tests, there have been Jews in my ancestors, not a lot, but still a measurable amount. I do not practice or support anti-Semitism in any form, but I recognize myself as an anti-Zionist here now and otherwise. Zionism is currently the most serious threat to world peace.
Thank you Heikki for your "spare valve"!
"The Middle East is the most important region in the world in terms of energy policy, and Israel has a central role in managing it."
True. Finally, the center of the issue is the region's hydrocarbon quotas.
In connection with the news related to the aid to Gaza (YLE Uutiset 09-03-2024), the spokesperson of the United States Ministry of Defense, Patrick Ryder, announced that the army will start the construction work of a temporary port in front of Gaza.
The primary purpose of building the port is hardly to help Gaza. The obvious purpose is to strengthen the US military presence in the Mediterranean as well.
The port project could be considered a continuation of the Prosperity Guardian operation that started in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea at the end of December, further strengthening the US military presence in the region.
The use of aircraft carriers to "punish the Houthi rebels" works in its own time. To carry out a more extensive military operation, a functional maintenance and a permanent support area are needed.