Aug. 14, 2025
U.S. or Israel: Who’s Daddy?
U.S. military aid to Israel funds the occupation of the West Bank, the destruction of Gaza, and the genocide of the Palestinian people. The American government's unconditional support for Israel chills free speech and represses pro-Palestinian activism, making open criticism of Zionism taboo.
In our very first episode, we explore the power dynamics in the U.S.-Israel relationship and take a hard look at who decides, who benefits, and who pays the price. We examine the influence of the Zionist lobby, the role of evangelical Christian support for Israel, and historical truths of this “special relationship.” Is this a mutual strategic alliance, or a lopsided patron-client arrangement? Who’s really in charge? Is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling the shots in Washington? Or is U.S. foreign policy based on strategic imperialist interests?
For you and me to stand up for ourselves.
Welcome to Unwatched and Unruly, where we scrub the lives out of politics, culture, and history.
Today, we'll be airing history's dirty laundry on the relationship between Israel and the US.
Who's the top and who's the bottom?
I'm your host Lola Michaels with history buffologist Ezra Saeed.
0:29
Hi, Lola.
Hi everyone.
And professional brain Fogger Cam cruise hey.
Friends.
You can reach us at unwatchunruly@gmail.com.
Do we live in the United States of Israel?
the US rulers provide Israel with nearly 4 billion and unconditional military aid each year.
0:48
Over the last several decades, that money has funded Israel's military occupation in the West Bank.
Over the last several years, it's funded the destruction of Gaza and extermination of the Palestinian people.
Uncritical support for Israel has chilled free speech.
It's led to the repression of pro Palestinian activists, created a climate where any criticism of Zionism or theocracy is taboo.
1:09
It's indefensible.
But why does it exist?
Some argue that the US Israel relationship is a strategic alliance where they need each other equally and some argue that it's A1 sided patron client set up.
So who's the horse and who's the rider in this relationship?
1:25
Who calls the shots?
Ezra.
With that question, the US calls the shots.
You mentioned the US provides Israel with nearly $4 billion of unconditional military aid.
It's actually conditional.
And what I mean by that is it's $3.8 billion a year, and that money is earmarked that Israel has to spend it on military equipment, but military equipment bought from only American companies such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and others.
1:53
So what that means is your tax dollars and my tax dollars are not only financing the state of Israel, they're also financing private American companies that produce arms.
So what you're saying is that the public is putting money into the pockets of these US gun manufacturers and weapons manufacturers?
2:14
Yes, the aid that the US sends, and it's not just to Israel, but believe it's the number is 2.1 billion a year to Egypt carries the same earmark.
That money can't just be spent on anything, nor can it be spent on buying, for example, Chinese or French or British weaponry.
2:29
It has to be American weaponry, and so it becomes a very useful tool by U.S. companies, manufacturing companies to make profit.
Having said all that, that's not the main reason for the alliance between the United States and Israel.
2:46
That is a secondary benefit for American manufacturers out of that alliance.
The main reason for that alliance is because Israel is a very good and committed servant of American interests in the Middle East.
So Israel sometimes described as like America's unsinkable aircraft carrier.
3:07
So is that still a valid metaphor?
I think so.
And I think Joe Biden and 2013, when he was a bit more lucid than he is today, captured it very succinctly when he said if Israel didn't exist, we would have to invent it.
If you begin with the assumption that the Middle East is an important part of the world and not only for oil but also because of its strategic location, you then have to assume that if you're a powerful country like the United States, the world's most powerful country, you want to maintain a foothold there and control what's happening there.
3:39
Well, Israel has been enormously beneficial to the United States in both maintaining that foothold and bringing to heal virtually every regime in the region that has been hostile to the United States.
Obviously, a couple of exceptions remain.
3:56
Really, only one exception remains today, and it's Iran.
Yeah.
And I think you're, I mean, you're making me think a little bit about the 1980s and then going into obviously much later, the War on Terror and why Israel became a strategic ally.
4:11
But we know now that support for Israel is very bipartisan, But it wasn't always that way.
You had the Democratic Party being more of a staunch ally of Israel in the past.
And the Republican administrations, like Eisenhower's, for example, tended to be like more critical of Israelis actions at the beginning.
4:34
But then you have this surge of evangelicals in the 80s, like, how did this all change?
What are we looking at in terms of like the 60s, seventies, 80s and then going into like the War on Terror era and then today?
In very brief, I would argue that it has been bipartisan.
It simply expresses itself in different ways with each party.
4:52
And if you go back to the beginning of the fighting of the state of Israel, the US was supportive but at a bit of arm's length from the from from the Israeli state because it was looking for different ways of maintaining its control and power in the region, including through the various Arab regimes there.
5:08
One of the famous examples is with 1956 when Israel, along with France and Britain invaded Egypt after the Egyptian regime Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalize the Suez Canal.
It was the US that stepped in and basically brought all three to heal.
5:25
The reason for that was not because the US cared about Egyptian sovereignty.
The reason for that was really because the US cared about the idea that France and Britain would operate in the Middle East independent of the US.
5:42
They basically this was that.
Was our way of exerting hegemony.
Yes.
Basically this was a way of the US exerting hegemony over what it saw as two rivals in the Middle East.
In the case of France and Britain, Israel was seen really as just a camp follower of those.
6:00
So at the end of the day, France and Britain were told to get out of Egypt, and Israel, which had conquered the whole of the Sinai Peninsula, was just told to get out of the Sinai Peninsula and to get out of Gaza.
And they did, because they're not going to go up against the US What really shifted the situation was the 1967 war.
6:22
Now you have to go back in time and think what was happening at the time was the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.
That was the overarching question.
The overarching question for the whole region was, were these various governments and regimes in the in the Middle East going to ally themselves with the United States or the Soviet Union?
6:45
And if you were the United States, you were looking for a powerful, strong ally that could act in your interests against pro Soviet governments in the Middle East.
Among those, for example, were not Nasser's government in in Egypt.
7:03
In 1967, Israel launched a war.
The background to it is not important for the moment, but Israel launched a war against Egypt, against Syria and Jordan, and in the matter of actually less than six days, it's called a six day war.
7:19
But it really took fewer days than that managed to destroy the entire Egyptian Air Force, conquer the West Bank and E Jerusalem, conquer the Golan Heights and conquer Gaza as well as the Sinai Peninsula and go all the way up to the Suez Canal.
7:34
And was this war also funded by the US?
Not that much really.
And in fact, the US initially was very unenthusiastic about the war.
The main weaponry that Israel was using at the time was French.
I'm not saying that the US sent no support to Israel, but it was pretty minimal.
7:49
It was after that war, when Israel demonstrated that it is indeed a very powerful country, that the US then changed tack and said that's our ally, that's the country that we're going to basically use to further our interests in the middle.
8:08
East.
And did they just bypass the French in terms of support to win favor?
Yes, and frankly, the Israelis were more than happy to drop the French Zionism from its origin, and I mean from its origin as a movement, once it goes beyond the initial founders, which were really Christian Zionists when you talk about the theater rehearsals and so on, understood that for this movement to survive and exist, it needed to have imperialist patrons.
8:36
And initially that imperialist patron was Britain, which was at the time, in the early 20th century, the most powerful country in the world.
The early Zionist movement, for example, had its biggest activity in Britain, where it had the least support among the Anglo Jewish population.
8:56
They had very little support there.
So you wonder, well, why would you have such heavy activity in a country where you have very little support among the Jewish population?
Well, it was because it wasn't really aimed at the Jewish population.
It was aimed at the British ruling class.
And the way it was aimed at the British ruling class is we can serve your interests in the Middle East.
9:17
What you have to remember with the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which Britain publicly committed itself to Palestine being a homeland for the Jews, is that one, that author Balfour was a notorious anti Semite, despised Jews, was actually the author of an early 1900s law in Britain to exclude specifically Jewish immigration.
9:41
But two, what it was really about was an anticipation in the midst of the First World War that the Ottoman Empire was going to collapse and all this land in the Middle East that included Palestine, but also Syria and Jordan.
What's now Jordan and Syria and Iraq and elsewhere needed to be divided up between the powerful states of Europe, namely in this case France and Britain.
10:05
Britain worked on really 3 fronts. 1 was working out a relationship with France as to who gets what. 2 was working out a relationship with various powerful Arab luminaries as to who would be their men in a post war Middle East.
10:22
The Hashemite family was originally from the Arabian Peninsula.
For an example of that to this day they ruled Jordan and for a long time they ruled Iraq.
And a third one were the Zionists.
And what the Zionists could offer that no one else could offer is not only will we serve your interests in the Middle East like the Hashemites would, but we are culturally European.
10:47
We are one of you.
We will bring European civilization into the vast sea of dark barbarism that is the Middle East, and so we can be a permanent foothold for you in the region, because we are one of you.
11:06
Yeah, so they offer the more palatable choice.
Yeah, and again, and it's not like it was 1 to the exclusion of the other.
The British worked on both fronts.
The reason it was very important for the British is not oil.
At that point, oil hadn't been discovered yet.
The reason it was important for the British is because the real crown and the jewel for the British was India.
11:24
Yeah, and this is at the time where they're transporting a lot back and forth by sea.
It's sea and land, and so Palestine was right, the crossroads between India in the east and Britain in the West and the Suez Canal in Egypt, and that's where you get the sea trade.
11:41
So beyond the imperialist interest, like when we're looking at the kind of shift right now or where we're really seeing, you mentioned Christian Zionist, and there's a whole history of that going way back.
But right now we see this very intense evangelical movement, of course, that's very pro Zionist, pro Israel and seeing this kind of biblical prophecy fulfilled or you know, what kind of role Israel would play in like the second coming, right?
12:11
So what, how do you situate beyond the kind of imperialist interest, this kind of religious interest in Israel, Like the the cynicism that we see among Republican politicians, for example, in terms of their evangelical base, they obviously don't love Israel because they love Jewish people or anything like that.
12:30
It's clearly something else is going on.
Well.
I would say in 1967, the basis was by both Republicans and Democrats was was overwhelmingly secular.
It was not really driven by Christian theology.
Remember, the Republican parties changed over the decades.
12:48
The first time you really get that coming into the equation is actually under the Democrats with Jimmy Carter, who sort of brought Christian fundamentalism into the mainstream of American politics and then picked up and taken to the NTH degree by the Reagan administration.
13:05
Because it worked, it worked winning votes, it worked for mobilizing people or the silent majority, all that stuff.
And in Christian theology or specifically evangelical Protestant theology, is this idea that the second coming of the Christ is going to happen once certain events happen in the world.
13:29
And one of these events supposedly is the in gathering of the Jews into their supposed homeland.
Their supposed homeland is Palestine, the land of Israel, Dia, whatever you want to call it.
So what you want to do is, if you adhere to this theology, is to do everything you can to get Jews to move out of wherever they are into this piece of land.
13:56
And once they move into this piece of land, something is supposed to happen that is then supposed to result in the second coming day of Judgement Armageddon.
The end result is some will convert to Christianity, some of these Jews who were moved there and will therefore be saved.
14:17
The majority will not, and will in fact burn for all eternity in hell.
That's pretty insensitive of these Christians.
Yeah.
And that is really the theology.
So when you hear these Christian fundamentalists talk about the reason they support Israel is because they pick a line from the Hebrew Bible that says I will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel.
14:42
You can argue about the context of the line and what it really means and all that, but that's not really the real reason.
Because Christian Zionism, like I said, predates Jewish Zionism by a long period actually.
And it certainly predates the existence of the state of Israel.
14:59
And it had nothing to do with blessing Israel or cursing Israel.
It had to do with get them over there.
So we can get these end times going exactly.
So we can get those end times.
Going Yeah, we all know how horny Christians are for the end times.
Especially those evangelical Protestants.
15:17
I remember seeing this come play out a little bit in that recent debate that we looked at with Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz, where there was reference to the Bible and blessing Israel, blah, blah, blah.
And then you start to see kind of a not necessarily fissures, but nuance in terms of support for Israel and what it means financially and so on.
15:38
Yeah.
I mean, it was it was a discussion that went viral and for good reason.
I mean, I thought Tucker Carlson, right wing commentator that he is, made a bit of a fool of Ted Cruz, which is really not that hard to do Ted Cruz is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he made a fool of him specifically really around Iran especially where Ted Cruz didn't know the most basic things about a country he wants to destroy.
16:01
But what was very interesting to me is when we got to why the US should support Israel in his own not very bright way.
Ted Cruz was, I thought, making the correct argument.
And that argument was Israel serves America's interests.
16:22
And I think he's right.
If you're an American imperialist ruler, Israel serves your interests.
And in his own way, Ted Cruz was conveying the same thing that Joe Biden was conveying those 12 years ago.
What they both had in common was this country is vital for American interests.
16:40
So let's let's actually look at it in some specifics, OK?
Because of Israeli strength, a country like Egypt has been brought to heel and is now under the orbit of American influence and imperialism in the region.
Because of Israeli strength, Jordan has been brought to heel and is now under the influence of American power in the region.
17:04
Because of Israeli strength, the alliance between the Gulf States and the United States has become ever stronger, as indicated by these Abrahamic Accords.
Under Israeli strength, just in the last year, Hezbollah was destroyed, and the US didn't have to fight Hezbollah.
17:21
Israel did it for it.
If you're the United States and you want to go to war with Iran and you want to test out how strong Iran really is, well, the US didn't directly really go to war with Iran.
Israel did.
Well, I I think that's something I wanted to mention too, because we're talking about who's in control here.
17:39
And I think a lot of people see Israel as pulling the US into war with Iran for their own interests.
So what is your opinion on that?
I believe Israel wanted to go to war with Iran.
Don't get me wrong, this wasn't something the US forced Israel to do.
This is something Israel wanted to do.
17:54
But Israel doesn't get to do very much that it wants to do unless the US wants it to do it.
If you recall, when the war began, the US came out with a statement that the US had nothing to do with it and knew nothing about it, and this was just between Israel and Iran.
Within a day or two, it became patently obvious that this was utter bullshit, that everything was worked out with the US in advance, that every detail was worked out the US in advance.
18:19
That this was basically the US and Israel working together to attack Iran.
And.
And if there was any doubt about that, the coda of the war was the US directly bombing Iran itself.
Yeah.
So the idea that Israel somehow was dragging the US unwillingly into a war with Iran is ludicrous.
18:38
What I can believe is that Israel thought the war would be easier, that Israel thought Iran's response would be more muted, or that Iran would have less capability than it actually did and therefore was begging for an American entry more quickly.
18:55
Or or maybe they thought initially that they could handle it, that American support, but the idea that this is just an Israeli operation, the US had nothing to do, then suddenly the US finds itself being dragged into it.
I think it's ridiculous.
It's just a misconception, huh?
Yes.
And, and I think here's the biggest thing of all this.
19:13
If your assumption is the real force in charge is Israel and not the United States, what you're effectively doing is letting the United States off the hook for everything that's happened in the Middle East.
Let's look for an example at the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
19:31
Israel would not be able to get away with doing what it's doing if not for the unadulterated American support that they're getting.
I think that was really clear even from the very, very beginning when with Biden's unconditional support, that there were a lot of folks who were seeing what was happening and what this was going to turn into.
19:54
And that this was going to be the end game for the Palestinians in Gaza living in this concentration camp who've been completely controlled and repressed, all these refugees, Palestinian refugees.
But people were still like believing this narrative that.
20:13
You know, the US behind the scenes was somehow working hard to try to mitigate Israel's aggression, whereas I felt like all it takes is a freaking phone call.
Yes, and it has in the past taken just a freaking phone call.
20:30
So are those who are the people who are critical of Israel, rightly so, but they see the problem is Netanyahu is the puppet master.
Are they just mistaken or are they trying to convince themselves of something by having that framework?
20:51
Like by believing that, you know, the problem is that Netanyahu is the devil and that he's manipulating the US and that Israel's really could be.
Because there's a lot that goes into that in terms of people nervous about, oh, Congress has this loyalty to a foreign power.
21:09
And that's what, you know, the US population should be most concerned about, that, you know, politicians are more loyal to a foreign entity than they are to America First or whatever.
And that doesn't really work for me as a criticism of Israel or doesn't feel accurate.
21:27
Different people come from different perspectives on this question.
Some are just honestly mistaken.
And it and it's, I think it's easy to be honestly mistaken about this because every day of our lives for the last two years, we just, we just see the most grotesque sociopathic barbarism in Gaza being celebrated.
21:45
And with the Israeli military and its soldiers acting like just unstoppable ghouls.
How could you not think this government was evil?
And it is.
And that's not at all what I'm challenged.
It is evil.
Or or or they see it being celebrated, or they don't see it because it's being suppressed in the mainstream media.
22:08
It is being suppressed in the mainstream media, but for a lot of young people and a lot of people in general, certainly.
They're seeing it live streamed.
They're seeing it live streamed and basically if you're outside the US, you're seeing it everywhere.
Billions of are seeing these images on a daily basis.
22:25
There's multiple levels of problems with this view.
First of all, Netanyahu is merely an expression.
This is not Netanyahu's war, this is Israel.
Netanyahu is merely an expression of Israel.
There's nothing peculiar about him other than the fact that he somehow has an amazing ability to maintain power in the state of Israel.
22:45
But that's peculiar to him and the power structure of Israel.
But in terms of relations to Palestinians, he is fundamentally no different than any other Zionist leader.
Labor, Kood, A Mapai, her roots, whatever they were called, they're all the same because the whole basis of the state of Israel is we want the land and we don't want the people.
23:09
And the land is, by the way, river to the sea.
So Netanyahu just happens to express that.
But look at look at every opposition politician in Israel.
They're fundamentally no different than Netanyahu.
The second thing is, is it is designed to let the Americans off the hook.
23:28
This is America's genocide as much as it's Israel's genocide.
This is not simply Netanyahu's genocide.
This is not simply Israel's genocide.
That blood is on the hands of the American ruling class, the American politicians, the American government, Democrats, Republicans from the top down, and has been apologized for by the American media, whether they represent the Democratic side of the establishment or the Republican side of the establishment.
23:56
This is America's genocide.
The bombs are all American, the money is all American.
This would not happen without the green light from America and there is actually a logic for it to happen.
The third thing is it is useful for anti Jewish bigots and it feeds into, by the way, the second point that, you know, letting the US off the hook that somehow some mythical Jewish cabal controls America.
24:21
No, America has a ruling class.
It's overwhelmingly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
It has interests in the Middle East and it uses Israel for its interests.
I think then you're touching on a very specific question that's going to come up with our audience, which is about the Zionist lobby.
24:41
Yeah.
I think that we have to talk about APAC.
And like my questions are is how did APAC become so powerful?
Where does the money come from that funds APAC?
How did APAC become so influential in our government?
And can you be a politician and not get money from APAC today?
25:04
And if you do get money from APAC, how much does that influence your policy, your public face, and your your policy loyalty?
The best way I can answer that question or those questions is to go back to 2006, to go back to a paper that was issued by John Merchheimer.
25:26
He is a professor or was at the time a professor at the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science.
And Stephen Walt, who was part of, at the time, again part of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
And they both wrote a paper that later became the basis of a book published a year later on the Israel lobby and US foreign policy.
25:49
That was the title of the paper and the title of the book where they argued that basically the Israel lobby or the Zionist lobby has inordinate control of American foreign policy, especially as it pertains to the Middle East.
26:09
In response to this and to the question of the power of the Zionist lobby, Joseph Mossad, a professor at Columbia University, who himself was a victim of the Zionist lobby who wanted him to lose his job at Club University, wrote a response titled Blaming the Lobby where he argued that.
26:34
Well, one of the points he argued was a similar point to the one I made, which is this is just letting the US off the hook.
And basically I would say the bottom line of his argument was this.
The Israel lobby is powerful.
You would be a fool to question, of course it's powerful.
26:51
AIPAC is powerful and it's not just AIPAC.
J Street is is the liberal version of that is powerful.
These are all very powerful lobbies, but they are powerful because the US ruling class wants them to be powerful.
It needs them.
They are powerful because it's in the interests of the US ruling class for them to be powerful.
27:10
So I will just quote a little quote from the article by Joseph Mossad where he writes the arguments put forth by these studies.
These studies, being by Mersheimer and Walt, would have been more convincing if the Israel lobby was forcing the United States government to pursue policies in the Middle East that are inconsistent with its global policies elsewhere.
27:31
This, however, is far from what happens.
While US policies in the Middle East may often be an exaggerated form of its repressive and anti democratic policies elsewhere in the world, they are not inconsistent with them.
So it's really a symbiotic relationship.
27:48
Yes, it's a symbiotic relationship.
And his point is the driving force here is not Israel, it is the US.
Now again, I want to emphasize the Zionist lobby is powerful and Israel wants to do what it's doing.
28:07
It's not that Israel is being forced into it, but it but the force in charge of what's happening is the US.
This is why I also think that any attempt to put pressure on the US rulers to cut their funding or their ties with Israel on a moral or ethical basis is never going to work.
28:32
Honestly, I'm very cynical about that.
I mean, what would it actually take for the US to seriously consider, like reconsider its military and diplomatic support to Israel?
Like, is there actually a red line or is it just because it that would only happen if the US stops, if Israel stops serving its interests?
28:55
I don't think there's a red line that I could think of.
I mean, we are literally watching a genocide unfold before our eyes.
What?
What other red line can there be?
The only way I can envision American support shifting vis a vis Israel is if Israel no longer serves American interests.
29:12
Right.
For one reason or another, it could be that Israel becomes too weak to serve the US interests, or it could be the decline of American power.
An American empire reaches such a point that they can no longer sustain that level of support.
For Israel and any and any attempt by the US, like any show by the US government or it's very loyal media mouthpieces, to say that Israel is doing too much with this Holocaust currently that is waging would be an attempt to like cover its own ass basically.
29:47
Oh, of course.
I mean, we've we've all been watching it for two years or what?
They just notice it now.
Yeah.
I mean, it could also have other, other purposes such as they prefer someone else besides Netanyahu.
And this is a way of pushing someone else, obviously, that the Trump administration doesn't.
Trump administration clearly likes Netanyahu.
30:04
The Trump administration is not the whole of the American ruling class.
And this is something that cuts very deep the the the support for Israel, whether it's expressed through more liberal ways such as Israel shares our values, Israel is a democratic country, Israel is a secular country, Israel has LGBTQ plus rights, etcetera, etcetera.
30:27
Whatever the bullshit nature of all these claims are, claims that are often expressed by Democrats more, or whether it's expressed out of religious reasons like those who bless Israel, be blessed, or, you know, whatever other Christian Zionist mythology you can come up with is bipartisan.
30:47
You simply choose how you want to express it.
And Israeli hasbara or Israeli propaganda, yeah, is very good at knowing who it's appealing to.
So when it's talking to the democratic side of the American establishment, it will emphasize the supposed liberal values of Israel and democratic values of Israel and all that.
31:09
And when it's talking to the Christian Zionist, it will talk about how you should come and walk the same streets that Jesus walked.
Yeah, I think the main, the main pitch that's just consistent across every supporter of Israel is just to say that they are the victim.
31:28
And that if you have any criticism of the Zionist regime or of the Zionist establishment or how the country of Israel was founded on the dispossession and displacement and repression of the Palestinian people, then you're anti Jewish.
31:43
Yeah.
That's a very convenient way to shut down any criticism of the state of Israel.
You just say anyone who criticizes Israel's an anti Semite and.
Not much makes me hopeful in terms of this situation today, except for the fact that you're seeing a younger generation of people where Israel's being exposed like it hasn't been before.
32:04
In my time as a pro Palestinian activist in college, I've never seen this level of exposure.
And particularly among Jewish activists, I think everyone who is supports Palestinian self determination feels like they're living in a simulation in terms of what they're seeing and the the the messaging that they're they're getting right?
32:29
Like it feels like a completely different world of just pure sadism that so will this ever have an effect on recalibrating the relationship?
American foreign policy is not determined by popular will.
32:48
And so even if most Americans are vehemently against what Israel's doing, that's not what determines what American foreign policy is.
What determines what American foreign policy is, is what the American ruling class perceives to be in the best interest of its class rule and American periods.
33:09
And sometimes they can convince the population of that, and sometimes they can't.
And the best thing they can do is to sort of distract the population on the anti-Semitism.
You have a state that's carrying out a genocide in the name not of Israeli Jews but of all Jews in the world.
33:28
You have American and let's not forget the European governments all saying yes, carried out in the name of all Jews in the world and saying that any criticism of Israel is an attack on Jews.
33:46
How is that not going to make anti-Semitism more acute?
That's my that's my point so that if you you, if you are somebody who doesn't know the history and doesn't understand doesn't understand the history of anti Jewish bigotry and violence in in western society and doesn't understand the history of the oppression of Palestinians.
34:07
It's very easy to fall into the trap of the Jews run America.
It's very easy to fall into the trap of that Jews are killing Palestinians.
One of the top drivers of anti-Semitism in the world is the state of Israel, and I would contend it's not by accident.
34:28
Zionism feeds off anti-Semitism.
It needs it.
It demands it.
Fear is kind of essential to the need for Israel.
Yes, Zionism as an ideology relies on anti Jewish bigotry to exist and prosper.
34:45
So to sum up Ezra, who's the daddy the.
United States, there's no question about this.
There's no, there's no nuance on this question.
I will say again, Israel's very powerful regional power.
Israel has plenty of muscle to flex.
The Zionist lobby is very powerful.
35:02
Even if you're a politician who does not get APEC money, you will still do the bidding of the Zionists.
Oh, snap.
And.
I'll give you as an example Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
As far as I know, she doesn't get a penny from AIPAC.
Now, she may get it from other, more liberal dinosaurs, but she doesn't get a penny from AIPAC.
35:20
But she votes for Iron Dome, and she votes for all those because it's fundamentally not about how much money you get from AIPAC.
Of course it helps to get more money because it helps to cement your support for Israel.
If you want to pursue American interests in the Middle East, a fairly volatile region, you need an ally that is staunch and powerful.
35:44
Don't forget we haven't touched on this.
That Israel also has nukes, is the only power in the Middle East with nukes.
And contrary to what a lot of people think, those nukes were not given to Israel by the US.
They were given to Israel first and foremost by France, as well as by Norway.
36:00
And if there's anything I would argue that people should walk away with this from more than anything else, is that as you watch this genocide unfold, the blood is on the hands of the Americans as much as the Israelis.
36:16
The blood is on the hands of American politicians and American rulers as much as the Israelis.
Not any less.
But.
We don't love.
Anybody who doesn't?
36:32
Love us.
Thanks for listening to our first episode of Unwashed and Unruly where we move left of the left and go off the rails.
Keep listening and join us for our next episode.
For questions, pitches and complaints, reach us at unwashedunruly@gmail.com.
36:48
Thanks for listening.
