1. Why the best explanation of Western support for Israel is ‘Jewish power,’ not ‘Imperialism’

I started with Mearsheimer & Walt’s 2007 The Israel Lobby. I used their argument in a critique of Chomsy’s Fateful Triangle, which was published online in 2010, first on Palestine Think Tank, then on Dissident Voice, and finally, The Jay Report: https://thejayreport.com/2020/05/17/an-article-of-mine-from-2010/. Mearsheimer & Walt are more moderate than I am – they don’t talk about ‘Jewish power.’

But the three of us agree that the main reason the USA backs Israel, is the power of the Israel Lobby. Since all the Western countries, bar Israel, are submissive to the USA, I only discuss the American branch of the Lobby.

Why do I defend the ‘Jewish power’ explanation? Because it is less complex, and requires fewer assumptions, than the alternative. To summarize:

American politicians fall over each other to propose laws giving special rights to Jews. The university sector is under assault, driven by the claim that Jews don’t feel safe on campus, following peaceful protests against genocide. Several people have been arrested, and some threatened with deportation, for allegedly saying they support Hamas.

1. No evidence has been produced showing that any of the accused have said anything in favour of Hamas, and
2. it is legal to say “up with Hamas.”

In May 2025, Congress briefly considered a bill which would make it a criminal offence, punishable by up to twenty years imprisonment, to advocate a boycott of Israeli products. The less draconian, but still unconstitutional, Antisemitism Awareness Act, has a better chance of becoming law. 

These examples of politicians’ behaviour are clear attempts to violate the First Amendment to the Constitution. Legislators know this, yet they continue to attempt to make an exception; to ban speech which might undermine Jewish interests. 

Is the above

1. an elaborate charade to make it look as if the Lobby can determine US policy regarding Israel, or
2. is the most economical/parsimonious/likely explanation that Jewish power trumps American interests?

I can’t prove that this grovelling is genuine; one could believe that it’s fake. I can only argue that the more parsimonious explanation is that it is what it appears — the USA’s relationship to Israel is dictated by Jewish interests.

The right mostly claims Israel is an ally; the left tends to argue it is in the interests of US imperialism to throw money at the Jewish state. The right-wing and left-wing arguments prop each other up.

Consider the vacuity of the responses from left or right to the question of what Israel actually does for the empire it allegedly serves. They are reduced to waffling about oil, hegemony, democracy… but Israel is not a ‘forward base.’ It does not contribute troops to US adventures. It does not protect oilfields. Caitlin Johnstone, who defends the view that Israel serves the USA, points out that Israel attacks countries in the USA’s crosshairs. What she doesn’t see is that this ‘evidence’ is equally compatible with 

1. Israel attacks countries the USA considers enemies, on behalf of the USA, or
2. the countries Israel attacks are considered enemies by the USA, because the USA supports Israel. 

To find out whether the dog wags the tail, or vice-versa, we need to look at the internals of US politics. Other allies really are allies; they actually serve US interests. Israel needs a powerful, well-funded lobby to bribe, cajole, blackmail and threaten anyone who makes even accurate, mild criticisms – “it’s the Benjamins” – because it is not really an ally. 

2. Avoidance of the ‘Jewish power’ hypothesis

I have defended the ‘Jewish power’ hypothesis to left-wing critics of Zionism many times. But they never try to answer it – they just continue assuming that Israel is acting for US imperialism. 

‘It is important to stress the primary role of imperialism in this analysis, which means rejecting explanations that emphasize the supposed power of a “Zionist lobby,” or, worse, a “Jewish lobby.”’ – International Socialism 181, 2024, page 45. 

I suspect the reason for leftists’ inability to respond rationally is that their real motive is emotional. They have internalised the idea that talk of ‘Jewish power’ and a ‘Jewish lobby’ is ‘antisemitic.’ This signals to Jewish supremacists that they take the allegation seriously.

The Gaza genocide is the greatest crime committed by a Western country since world war two. The most notorious American crime in Vietnam was at My Lai. Since 7/10/2023, there has been a My Lai every day in Palestine. The sadism with which Jews celebrate the deaths and injuries they are causing exceeds that of the Nazis. Jewish racism is in a league of its own.

It might be objected that the rulers of the Western countries support Israel to the hilt, and are therefore just as culpable. True – but there is a big difference between being a member of the racial group with power, and one of its poodles. Gentile supporters of Israel are like Chief Buthelezi, the Zulu politician who served the white apartheid regime. This means one might be able to help undermine support for Israel by persuading goyim that it is not in their ethnic interests, and that they are being used. It is difficult for the anti-imperialist left to argue like that. 

3. The eternal victim narrative

I know that not all Jews are racial supremacists. I just encountered a number of anti-Zionist Jews at the first Jewish Anti-Zionist conference in Vienna, in June 2025: https://www.juedisch-antizionistisch.at/en.

Reuven Abergel, founder of Israel’s Black Panthers, narrated a variant of the eternal victim story. He is a Moroccan Arab Jew who migrated to Israel in the fifties. His main schtick was to point out how the Arab Jews (Mizrahi) provided cheap labour for Israel, and suffered from racial discrimination. He said the European Jews (Ashkenazi) drove a wedge between the Mizrahi and Palestinian communities – “they sent us to the same villages where Palestinians had been expelled.” The Ashkenazi did this because they suffered from a “disease” which they got from living in Europe. 

Another contributor argued that, because Arabic is the first language of the Mizrahi, and because they’d lived happily in Arab lands until Western colonialism spoiled everything, the real oppression is Arabs being oppressed by Europeans. This ignores the fact that, as soon as you are born, you are either a Jew or a goy, in the eyes of the Israeli government. You might be Tunisian, but if you are also Jewish, you have the privilege of automatic citizenship of a Western economy, backed to the hilt by all the other Western countries. And, for whatever reason, those people who classify themselves as ‘Jewish’ tend to have a strong sense of ethnic identity.

Abergel added that, after the 1967 war, the Arab Jews became as racist as the rest. Another speaker, a woman from an Jewish-Egyptian family, said the Mizrahi are the most vicious Zionists.

At the other extreme, some anti-Zionist analysts appeal to Jews to stop supporting Zionism because it is harmful to Jews:

• Caitlin Johnstone goes beyond the observation that Zionism generates antisemitism, claiming “Zionism IS Antisemitism.” Her evidence for this includes a Jew saying that ethnic cleansing is normal for Jews: https://x.com/caitoz/status/1917335624748785791?t=ckkP7Xt5nBct2nrrJXvrvA&s=19.

• The US peace group Code Pink tried to persuade a Jewish journalist that supporting the genocide in Gaza is “antisemitic”: https://www.tiktok.com/@medeabenjamin/video/7437537518087720235.

• I wrote that Jonathan K Cook tried to persuade influential Jews to “stand foursquare against Israel.” I have a screenshot, but he appears to have deleted the tweet, so I won’t post it.

For the most part, Jews aren’t listening to these sincere, but naive, anti-Zionist voices. The genocide in Palestine is not antisemitic, but philosemitic – it’s in Jewish interests. By exterminating the untermenschen, they get more lebensraum. 

It is not necessarily true that, if you give a racial group special rights, it will take advantage. Since the end of world war two, Europeans have voluntarily relinquished all their ethnic advantages. But the same period saw the rise of Jewish privilege; while white apartheid states were abandoned, the Jewish equivalent was backed to the hilt.

The fear of stating the obvious – the existence of Jewish power – is a consequence of Jewish power. We need to lose that fear. 

Have you noticed the adjacency of

— the terminology of the woke left, and 

— the language used by American conservatives to justify the current crackdown on free speech?

Republicans opposed cancel culture in academia and elsewhere. Now they are in government, they lecture Europeans about freedom, while organising the biggest crackdown on free speech since McCarthyism: hauling college presidents to inquisitions, firing dissidents, and deporting legal immigrants, for their alleged opinions. There are narrow exceptions to constitutionally protected speech, but these are limited to planning crimes, and incitement to immediate violence. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression explains:

https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/unprotected-speech-synopsis

Chutzpah isn’t just a jokey term in Yiddish for breathtaking hypocrisy; it’s a strategy for advancing Jewish interests. It means the only criterion for deciding what to say, write, or advocate, is not “is it true?” but “does it advance Jewish interests?” 

How else to describe the Orwellian inversions which we hear and view every day? 

— There have been numerous protests in universities, against the Israeli genocide. Zionist Jews and their politicians claim these protests are for the genocide of Jews.

— Politicians have claimed “Israel doesn’t need America; America needs Israel”: the opposite of the truth.

— Zionists claim their critics say “Zionists” when they mean “Jews”; in reality, Zionists say “Jews” when they mean “Zionists.” 

— In a double lie, they falsely claim students are breaking the law by expressing sympathy for Hamas, and persuade administrations and government departments to expel and arrest them. 

  — It is not illegal to express sympathy for Hamas, and 

  — no evidence of any of those targeted expressing such sympathy has been produced. 

The claims of Zionism are ridiculous, yet the most powerful government on earth is completely committed to them. 

Government and Zionist proclamations on the “antisemitism crisis” in academia bear a striking resemblance to the campaign against “racism,” which reached a climax during 2020. The premises of both campaigns are false. There is no evidence that George Floyd was murdered for being black. Black students at Yale, Evergreen, etc. have not experienced racial discrimination. Neither have Jews at Harvard, Columbia, etc.. Every protest against the Israeli genocide has included a significant Jewish contingent. What has upset some Jews — the racialists — has been the criticism of Israel. It makes them feel unsafe:

https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2023/11/02/i-am-a-target-dozens-of-jewish-students-report-feeling-unsafe-on-campus/

The women who run the universities have accommodated the Jewish supremacists as cravenly as they did other minority activists. But the Jewish assault on freedom is worse than woke. It is backed by the government, and reinforced by the withdrawal of funds from non-compliant institutions, expulsions, arrests, and the threat of deportation. Most importantly, it helps Israel commit genocide, by undermining opposition to it within its most important supporter.

The manipulations of America and other open societies by different minority activists look similar because they exploit the same weakness: the eagerness with which people of European descent, despite, or because of, their unique efforts to end discrimination, are prepared to accept allegations of harbouring prejudice. The nearest thing I am aware of, to an explanation of that weakness, is Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition, by Kevin MacDonald; I don’t know if I agree with it.

https://www.amazon.com/Individualism-Western-Liberal-Tradition-Evolutionary/dp/1089691483