There’s a debate that goes like: America supports the Zionist cause because of strategic interest in the middle east, to test weaponry, to park aircraft, etc. The other side says America supports Zionism because of powerful lobbying from organizations like AIPAC and the ADL. Then I guess there’s a third explanation involving American evangelicals and their religious doctrines, along with their own lobbying and campaigning.
For me personally it seems like it’s all of those things at the same time, with perhaps strategic interest being the most pressing. I say that because of the multiple instances of the CIA discovering things like Israeli spying equipment in Washington DC, and yet nothing is done. There are literal Israeli intelligence assets working as aides to senators and nothing is done. I only ever see feds do that when they’ve been instructed something is off-limits.
I also know this wasn’t always the case, because people like Johnathan Pollard got thrown in jail. And I know the Bush Sr admin was less amicable. So what’s yall’s stance here
Imperialism is international capitalism. I’m sure this is well understood but its important to start by defining it. The USA is the seat, the core of global capital since WW2. But prior to that, the seat of imperialism was the UK, basically where capitalism was first fully developed.
After WW1, the Ottoman empire was busted up and split into various countries. It was clear that the middle east was extremely mineral rich, and British capital wanted to control it. Its easier to exploit many geographically divided states, as they can be made to compete with each other. But given their closeness and shared interest, they can not become united. Something has to destabilize the region, and the imperial powers can’t get their hands dirty with direct colonial control.
The Zionist nationalist movement, led by Lord Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, was well established and well connected within the UK ruling capitalists. Enter the Balfour declaration. The UK had already identified a strip of land on the Mediterranean, that could function as the base for imperialism in the region, under the guise of an independent but westerns friendly nation. For the next 40 yeats, the UK and their allies aided Zionists to settle in the region of Palestine which already had a fairly large Jewish minority.
WW2 and the holocaust gave the impetus to create “a nation for the Jewish people.” In 1957, the Naqba and the establishment of the nation of Israel. The UK however was decimated after WW2, whereas the USA had drastically increased industrial capacity before and during the war. They also gutted the power of the legal unions established 13 years earlier. When the USA took up the mantle of the center of global capital, they also took on the existing imperialist projects, such as ensuring a destabilized and exploitable middle east, with a major part of that project being to ensure the existence and continuity of Israel as a destabilizing base for global capitalist imperialism.
A lot of the political realities you describe are downstream of the persistence of this project.