The Metropolitan Police Letter Which Encouraged Residents to Complain About the Demonstrations Against Israeli Ambassador, Tzipi Hotoveli

 A Reply to Susan Caplan, a Zionist Who Wrote That the Demonstrations ‘Must Not Be Allowed to Continue’ 

There was a time when the Police professed to be politically neutral. However that has gone out of the window as the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, openly boasted of how he is cracking down on Palestinian demonstrations in London.

Rowley’s reasons are really quite touching for someone who is in charge of an organisation which has been found to be institutionally racist by numerous inquiries, including by the historic MacPherson Inquiry into the murder of Black teenager, Stephen Lawrence.

Although the Inquiry didn’t get to the bottom of the Police’s links with his killers, subsequent further information emerged from Victoria and Naomi Smith, who were related to the Norris family, whose son David Norris was eventually gaoled for Stephen’s murder. Clifford Norris, the father of David Norris, used a network of corrupt Metropolitan police officers to protect himself and his close relations from justice.

To this day there has been no investigation into these claims of police corruption. But rest assured. Although the murder of a Black teenager didn’t impact on the Met until the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry reached its damning verdict, the Met are however very sensitive to the impact of demonstrations against Genocide in Gaza on Zionist Jews. So much so that they go out of their way to get them to make complaints.

The Met’s assumption that all Jews are supportive of Genocide in Palestine and Israeli Apartheid is itself anti-Semitic. And why not? In the 1930s from my own research Brighton Police entertained visiting delegations of the German Police, even when, after 1936, Heinrich Himmler was put in charge of both the German Police and the SS.

Of course attacks on free speech and the right of assembly aren’t confined to Britain. In Switzerland two weeks ago the Executive Director of Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah was kidnapped off the street and held incommunicado for three days before being expelled from the country. Ali had been invited to address a meeting on Palestine.

Last Tuesday police and politicians in Germany tried to cancel a meeting in Berlin featuring Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories. Organisers were forced to move the event to a smaller venue.   

The organizers, DiEM25, said in a statement on its website: 

“In a deeply concerning escalation, the organisers of ‘Reclaiming the Discourse: Palestine, Justice, and Truth’ – an event featuring UN Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese – are facing ruthless attacks on their fundamental rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and expression.

The venue, Kühlhaus Berlin, faced immense pressure from German politicians and the Berlin police to cancel the event. This is not only a disgrace but a direct assault on the rule of law and the core principles of democracy. It also represents an attack on businesses coerced into submission through mafia-like tactics, where intimidation has reached alarming extremes. …

LIVE FROM BERLIN: Palestine, Justice and the Power of Truth with Francesca Albanese and more

In the 1930s when anti-Semitism was a real issue, the Metropolitan Police sided with the fascists and at the Battle of Cable Street did its best to force thousands of fascists on the Jewish East End. However working class solidarity and a demonstration of 200,000 forced them back.

Today the Police purport to be concerned about anti-Semitism when it comes to protest against Genocide and War Crimes in Gaza. Of course they could try implementing the International Criminal Court Act 2001 which makes being ancillary to or participating in war crimes, even when abroad, an offence.

However British complicity in war crimes doesn’t disturb the Met but evidence-free allegations that Jews are afraid to walk the streets because of Palestine solidarity demonstrations, does concern them.  In other words the Met has adopted the Zionist narrative that to support the Palestinians is in itself anti-Semitic. 

We had the absurd spectacle of the Jewish Bloc on a Palestine Demonstration in London in December 2023 being separated off from the rest of the demonstrators because the Police found it difficult to accept that Jews could support the Palestinians.

Where does this racist nonsense come from?  Perhaps Mark Rowley could answer and explain the nature of the briefings that are given to his officers. This is a legacy of colonial divide and rule. As part of this false narrative anti-Zionist Jews suddenly become invisible.

Suddenly the only genuine Jews are racist Jews like Susan Caplan. Ms Caplan, did respond to the invitation of the Met to complain about the demonstrations. We know this because the Met, in complete disregard of the Data Protection Laws, distributed her email to all and sundry! Caplan’s response is interesting, not because it contains any gems of wisdom but because of the insight it provides into the Zionist mind.

There was a time when Israel claimed to be ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ however Genocide, Mass Murder and Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank combined with incidents like the raid and arrest of two bookshop owners in East Jerusalem have put paid to that myth.

In her email Caplan complained ‘as a Jewish person’ that ‘it is unacceptable to allow this protest to continue with it’s (sic) inciteful behaviour.’ We are not told who is being incited and against whom but we can guess.  Inciting against Israel’s racist and genocidal Ambassador Tzipi Hotoveli is clearly unacceptable to the said Caplan.

Not only this but the protests ‘have become uncontrollable’ and ‘cause more divide (sic) rather than peace and unity.’ There is nothing in the way of evidence to back these assertions but I suspect that evidence is the last thing the Met are looking for. As for peace and unity one wonders whether Caplan really expects the demonstrators to hand out white doves to the supporters of Genocide and unite with them.

And then we come to Caplan’s real concern. ‘Calling for the end of Israel, the end of Zionism is unacceptable [Caplan loves this word] hate speech and must not be allowed.’

As I wrote in my letter to her, Zionism is a political ideology which is based on hateful racism and calling for it to go is no different from calling for Apartheid South Africa or the Nazi state to disappear.

Caplan’s final flourish was to allege that political demands for an end to Zionism constitute ‘hate speech’ – and of course we are all against hate speech, an all-embracing term which includes those who hate capitalism, racism and oppression.

Ironically, the victims were Israeli tourists. And right after being shot, they took to social media chanting 'Death to Arabs.' You can't make this up.

This is the result of anti-Palestinian hate & indoctrination that sadly runs deep in Israel and pro-Israel communities in U.S. pic.twitter.com/y13D6aM96Y

— Kashif Chaudhry (@KashifMD) February 17, 2025

Forbidding demonstrations against racism is what the Israeli state does all the time. What Caplan and those who put her up to this really want is for Britain to adopt the norms of the Israeli state which allows demonstrations calling for ‘Death to the Arabs’ but which bans anything which opposes Genocide or Israeli state racism.

I finished my letter by referring to an incident in Miami Beach, Florida when a Jewish Zionist shot up a vehicle containing two Israelis, who he mistook for Palestinians! This is not the first time that Israelis have attacked other Israelis in the mistaken belief that they were really Palestinians.

The New Yellow Star?

It is rather unfortunate that some Israelis, especially Arab Jews, look like other non-Jewish Arabs. Perhaps Israel should make it compulsory for Palestinians to have a distinguishing mark on their clothes in order that assailants don’t keep mistaking Jews for Arabs. The Nazis used the Yellow Star. Perhaps Israel could use the Watermelon?

The injuries to the two Israelis were minor and didn’t affect their racism. The father took to Facebook to complain of their ‘anti-Semitic’ experience and true to his Zionist sympathies finished with the slogan ‘Death to the Arabs.’  You really could not make it up.

Tony Greenstein

18 February 2025

 

Dear Ms Caplan,

 

Thank you for your email to the Police complaining about the weekly demonstration at Swiss Cottage against Israel’s Ambassador, Tzipi Hotoveli. Despite doing their best to engineer complaints (or ‘victim statements’) the Police nonetheless had the good manners to send your response to other interested parties.

 

I hope you won't take offence if a Jewish anti-Zionist replies to you. Your email is a good example of the Zionist mindset and is indicative of everything that is wrong with Zionism, Zionists and supporters of Israeli Apartheid.

 

You say that 'calling for the end to Israel, the end to Zionism is unacceptable hate speech and must not be allowed to continue'. Thus speaks the authentic voice of the Israeli Police State.

 

Zionism is a political ideology, like fascism. It is perfectly appropriate to call for an end to it. Its origins lie in Christian Zionism. Its aim was to form, in Theodor Herzl’s words, a state which would  ‘form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.’  

 

Zionism when it first began was welcomed by anti-Semites, as a means of being rid of the Jews in their midst, and was seen by most Jews as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. That was why the Balfour Declaration was proposed by Arthur Balfour, a Christian Zionist and anti-Semite who, when Prime Minister, introduced the 1905 Aliens Act designed to keep Jewish refugees out of Britain. It is noteworthy that the only person to oppose the Declaration in the Lloyd George War Cabinet was its only Jewish member, Sir Edwin Montagu.

 

Calling for an end to the Israeli state is no more a form of hate speech than calling for the end to the Nazi State or the Apartheid State of South Africa. It is only fascists and racists who cannot distinguish between a state and the people who live in that state. I call for the end to the Israeli state because it is a state of Jewish Supremacy and Apartheid.

 

Why is it unacceptable for people to express views in public that you disagree with?  This isn't Israel where Palestinian speech is repressed and anti-racist protests are met with police batons and bans. Have you not heard of the raid on the Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem this past week when the owners were arrested and books were carried away in plastic bags? I seem to remember there was another European state in the 1930s which also didn’t like books of the wrong kind.

 

But perhaps you have forgotten where you are living?  Freedom of Speech and the Right of Assembly are basic democratic rights which haven't yet been extinguished in Britain. I realise that you and your fellow Zionists are doing your best to achieve this, with the complicity of the Metropolitan Police, Starmer and Yvette Cooper but we are there to resist you.

 

The present genocide in Gaza is something that should be protested against, in particular by Jewish people. You should hang your head in shame that after the genocide of Jews by Hitler that you support the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

 

You probably know nothing about the genesis of the Holocaust so let me remind you that on October 4 1943 at Posen (Posnan) in Poland, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS justified the extermination of Jews to a group of senior SS Generals thus:

            We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude to animals, will         also adopt a decent attitude to these human animals...’

 

On 9 October 2023 Yoav Gallant spoke in similar terms when he said:

            “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel,    everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” [Times of             Israel, 9.10.25]

I don't wish upset you with too many uncomfortable facts Susan, but on 6 October 1943, also at Posen, Himmler explained why Jewish children also had to be killed:

            ‘I did not assume to have the right to exterminate the men… and have the avengers personified in    the children to become adults for our children and grandchildren.’ [Raul Hilberg, The Destruction           of the European Jews, fn. 3, p.294]

Compare this to what Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, head of the pre-military Kiryat Moshe Yeshivah, said on 7 March 2024: 

            “Today’s terrorists are the children of the prior [military] operation that left them alive. The women are essentially the ones who are producing the terrorists,” he said, adding that when        someone comes to kill you, you should be quick to kill them. “It’s not only the 14- or 16-year-old      boy, the 20- or 30-year-old man who takes up a weapon against you but also the future           generation. There’s really no difference,” 

So you can see how similar is the ideology behind the Zionist genocide in Gaza and the Nazi genocide of Jews.

Is this inciteful as you alleged?  No it is educational. The only question really is whether you wish to be educated or would you rather wallow in your ignorance? The Israeli state is Hitler's bastard offspring which is why genuine anti-Semites like Trump love Israel.

Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi who organised the Charlottesville march where those taking part chanted “Jews will not replace us’ even described himself as a White Zionist. Who could possibly disagree with him?

But let me finish this on a lighter note. Yesterday in Miami Beach, Florida a Jewish Zionist mistook two Israelis for Palestinians and opened fire on them. The ‘victims’, who survived unscathed immediately posted on Facebook describing their attack as anti-Semitic and finishing their post with ‘Death to the Arabs.’

‘Death to the Arabs’ is the slogan that is chanted by the Israeli right. In Germany and Poland  before the war Death to the Jews was the slogan of the anti-Semites. Perhaps now you understand why there is a demonstration against Tzipi Hotoveli, who is on record as saying there is no Palestinian history and who called for the murder of 600,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

Kind regards,

Tony Greenstein

The Only Thing Israel’s Police Forgot to Bring When They Raided a Palestinian Bookshop in Jerusalem was a Can of Petrol

 In Israel Selling Palestinian Books is ‘Act of Terrorism’ – But If You Sell Books that Explain How to Legally Kill Non-Jews then that’s Fine

Sky News Report - Why have two bookstore owners in Jerusalem been detained?

I was shocked when I heard that Mahmoud Muna had been arrested. Mahmoud was a student at Sussex University and was well known to members of Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Mahmoud and supporters of the Palestinians worked together for some years to enlighten people about what the Palestinians endure. After graduating from Sussex Mahmoud went back to Jerusalem to his bookstore. However none of us realised that selling books or certain books would become a crime in occupied Jerusalem.

For a long time Israeli propagandists got away with the lie that Israel was the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ and to be honest Israel was very good at hiding the fact, as Ahmed Tibi MK put it, Israel was Democratic towards Jews and Jewish towards Arabs.

Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna in court in Jerusalem on Monday. Photograph: Mahmoud Illean/AP

Israeli raid on Palestinian bookshop sparks outrage

Since 2018, Apartheid has been entrenched in statute in the Jewish Nation State Law which states in clause 1(c) that:

The realization of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People.

The existence of a Jewish state in a land whose indigenous people were Palestinians could not mean anything other than an apartheid state. It is this that explains the extreme racism of the Israeli police which resulted in them raiding a Palestinian bookshop, which has been established in Jerusalem for 40 years, in order to seize a children’s colouring book amongst others with the slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ on its front cover.

I am reminded of what took place in Nazi Germany where the authorities organised book burning ceremonies. I am also reminded of Heinrich Heine’s prediction that “Wherever they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings.” Except that in Israel they first burn people alive in Gaza and then they turn their attention to books.

Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Judge Chavi Toker approved the warrant for the raid on the bookshop despite the fact that the Police never sought permission from the prosecution, which is required by law to open an investigation into suspected incitement.

Hence at the bail hearing they changed their suspicions to "undermining the public's safety" The most damning evidence they produced was a colouring book for children "From the River to the Sea,"

Although another Magistrate's Court judge, Gad Ehrenberg, rejected the police's request to keep Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna in gaol for 8 days he decided to keep them in jail for another day so police could continue their investigation. This despite the illegality of the whole operation.

Jerusalem District Court Judge Eli Abravanel reprimanded the police for not obtaining permission to open an incitement investigation, but still allowed the decision to keep the two men in gaol for 2 days. After all they are Palestinians, so what is there to complain of?

Protesters outside court in Jerusalem on Monday. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Ha’aretz, which the Police also took exception to, commented in an editorial:

Due to the police's aggressive and undemocratic behavior and the judges' cowardice or naïveté, Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna spent two nights in jail. This is even more absurd given the fact, which emerged following their release on Tuesday, that the police never even bothered questioning them again, despite keeping them in jail.

The bookshop however isn’t an anonymous back street shop.

There is no diplomat, journalist or scholar of Jerusalem who isn't familiar with the store and its intellectual treasures. Evidence of this is the fact that the bail hearing at the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court was attended by diplomats from nine countries, plus the European Union.

Mahmoud Muna inside a branch of the Educational Bookshop chain in July 2024. Photograph: Sally Hayden/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

Ha’aretz’s editorial observed that

The raid and the arrests show how deeply the rot has propagated within the police and the legal system. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara must tell the police that their behavior was illegal, and that if they want to open an incitement investigation, they can find thousands of calls for mass murder, obliterating the Gaza Strip, starvation and many other incitements for war crimes on social media, in interviews with politicians and in rabbis' sermons.

Which entirely misses the point of course. Incitement to violence and death against Palestinians is not a crime in Israel but any manifestation of Palestinian identity, culture or history is a crime. That is why Israel today is a fully-fledge police state as far as Palestinians are concerned, even for those who are Israeli citizens.

However Mahmoud and Ahmed aren’t entirely blameless. If they had stocked a wider range of books perhaps they wouldn’t have offended Israel’s racist police.

For example they could have stocked that well-known book Torat HeMelech authored by Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elizur. Shapira was head of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the settlement of Yitzhar. The Jerusalem Post explained that the students at Od Yosef Chai saw Israeli army ethics as ‘problematic’ because they were ‘based on "western" or "Christian" morality that equates Jewish lives with those of non-Jews’. The whole basis of Torat HaMelech is that Jewish lives and non-Jewish lives are not the same.

Nathan Thrall at the protest on Monday. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Indeed Torat Hamelech was a mine of useful information if you want to wipe out non-Jews without incurring the displeasure of the legal authorities. Replete with quotations from the holy books and Talmud it explained how

The prohibition 'Thou Shalt Not Murder' applies only “to a Jew who kills a Jew,”... Non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and attacks on them “curb their evil inclination,” while babies and children of Israel's enemies may be killed since “it is clear that they will grow to harm us.”

You may scoff but books like this are invaluable if you want to commit a genocide in Gaza. Unfortunately the International Criminal Court, run as it is by non-Jews didn’t see it that way although, to be fair Keir Starmer, Joe Biden and now Donald Trump have given it their seal of approval.

CCTV shows Israeli police raiding Jerusalem bookshop – video report

No doubt if Mahmoud and Ahmed had stocked books like Torat HaMelech they would not have suffered the ignominy of having their bookshop raided and spending two days in custody.

Israeli police raid Jerusalem bookshops and arrest Palestinian owners

Anger over Israel's arrest of East Jerusalem bookshop owners

Despite many calls for the prosecution of the authors of Torat HaMelech

Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein said that the investigation was being closed because there is not enough evidence that the book was published with the intention to incite racism.

Weinstein was of the opinion that

works pertaining to rulings on religious law or publications of religious sources should not be dealt with in criminal proceedings in order to preserve freedom of religion.

One wonders how a Muslim cleric would have fared if he had written a book detailing how Muslim religious law permitted the killing of Jews. Well actually we know because Raed Saleh, the leader of the Northern Islamic League received a sentence of 11 months in 2015 for a sermon 8 years previously. Saleh was convicted of incitement to violence and racism.

Saleh had, in response to an attack on Al Aqsa by the police said:

“May the streets of Jerusalem be purified with the blood of the innocent, who shed it in order to separate from their souls the soldiers of the Israel occupation, also in the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque,”.

 Clearly that was far worse than calling for non-Jewish children and infants to be killed in order that they might ‘curb their evil inclinations’

In Israel the only people who get convicted and gaoled for incitement to racism are Palestinians. When thousands of Jewish settlers march to the chant of ‘Death to the Arabs’ the Police do all they can to protect them. And if you call Israel an Apartheid state?  Why you must be anti-Semitic!

Tony Greenstein

Israel and the United States - No the Tail Does not Wag the Dog

Those Who Argue That Israel Controls American Foreign Policy Are Letting US Imperialism Off the Hook

I understand why, for many people, it seems as if Israel controls US foreign policy. After all Israeli politicians, Netanyahu included, boast of how much power they exert and in all probability they believe it.

Donald Trump is a Puppet of Israel

Follow the money…. @Lowkey0nline pic.twitter.com/04srLHU9Cy

— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) February 4, 2025

I must confess that I was surprised by the video of Lowkey whose title was ‘Donald Trump is a Puppet of Israel’. In the video Lowkey explained which billionaires and Israeli/Zionist individuals and organisations had financed Trump’s successful election campaign.

xxxx

This is political idiocy. Trump isn't a puppet of Israel, nor was Biden @doubledownnews - it is such a fucking stupid thing to say

Israel is the attack dog of US imperialism. Israel does what the US can only dream of. Why the fuck do you think Biden said that if Israel didn't… https://t.co/LW5uomYv10

— Tony Greenstein tonygreenstein.com (@TonyGreenstein) February 5, 2025

The heading on the video from Double Down News was ‘Donald Trump is a Puppet of Israel’. Although Lowkey didn’t actually say these words in the video, I assume that he was nonetheless happy with the title..

It was on this basis that I posted a comment making it clear that this was ‘political idiocy’ and that it was a ‘fucking stupid thing to say’. I went on to say:

Israel is the attack dog of US imperialism. Israel does what the US can only dream of. Why the fuck do you think Biden said that if Israel didn't exist it would have to be invented. Christians evangelists wanted an Israel when Jews didn't. Read up on your fucking history and use your brain

@lowkeyonline

the US controls Israel or rather supports her because an unsinkable aircraft carrier is in its interests - that's why the most rabid anti-Semites love Israel

For this I was duly reprimanded by Asa Winstanley of Electronic Intifada who said there was ‘no need to abuse @Lowkey0nline over a political disagreement. He’s a good man and doesn’t deserve to be sworn at like that.’

I don’t accept I swore at or abused Lowkey but I didn’t pull any punches either. I agree that Lowkey is a good man and an excellent researcher. However it is one thing to do the research and it is an entirely another thing as to what conclusions you draw from that research.

I have no doubt that rich Jewish Zionists like Miriam Adelson funded Trump’s campaign. So did the Hitler saluting neo-Nazi Elon Musk, who is not Jewish.

Elon Musk’s ‘awkward gesture’ according to the Zionist ADL

But it is an entirely different matter to conclude from this that Trump is Israel’s puppet. Or that United States foreign policy is controlled by Israel. Because if Israel, a relatively small state that is entirely dependent on US weapons and finance, does control the US, a much bigger and more powerful state, then the question arises as to how this is possible. A moment’s thought should tell us that this is highly unlikely. Why would the Pentagon, American multi-nationals and billionaire class allow  the Israeli state or indeed any state to control their foreign policy?

Of course there are conspiracy cookies, of whom there are quite a number who, like Glenn Beck, the former Fox News presenter, will come out and say it’s a Jewish conspiracy as predicted in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. But for more normal and rational people this is an absurd formulation. American Jews are 5 or 6 million. 40% of young Jews believe Israel is an apartheid state and young Jews are in the forefront of the anti-genocide protests.

Of course the Jewish capitalists, who with the exception of George Soros are all Zionists, are pro-Israel.  But is US support for Israel a result of rich Jews conspiring together? That is the only plausible explanation for how Israel ‘controls’ US foreign policy.

Butcher Biden, whilst always telling us of his red lines, funded and equipped Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Without US support Israel would not have been able to destroy Gaza. The question is why the US did this. The answer is not hard to find.

The Middle East is an incredibly important part of the world. It is the gateway to Asia with the Suez Canal and it is a region rich in oil and gas. Both British and US foreign policy is geared to suppressing the Arab populations through compliant comprador regimes. Arab nationalism with its threat to Western control of the oil is a dire threat to the West’s prosperity and Israel has been pivotal in defeating it.

Israel is the United States’s attack dog, used to frighten and police the region. Although the US uses Saudi Arabia in particular to do this in the Gulf,the Saudi regime is not based on popular support and is thus unstable. Israel is a western settler colonial state whose population is every bit as right-wing and racist as its politicians.

But if Israel is the West’s attack dog then it is important that it retains its bite. If you kick your attack dog too often it becomes afraid to do anything. Far better that Israel murders a few hundred thousands in Gaza than that it’s afraid to slaughter Arabs when the US expects it to.

With the settlers of the West Bank now gaining critical mass in Israeli politics we are seeing a shift from the old secular racism of Israel to  Messianic racist politicians who believe they are fulfilling god’s mandate.

Of course the old Israeli Labor Party politicians weren’t really secular. There was no civil marriage in Israel as that would have enabled Arabs, Christians, Muslims and Jews to inter-marry and in a Jewish state based on racial purity that is not kosher. 

Israel prefers to keep its version of the Nazi Nuremberg laws which prevents Jews and Arabs inter-marrying. It was the ILP government which conquered the West Bank because it too signed up to the idea that the biblical territories of Zionist mythology must be conquered.

Noam Chomsky - Why Does the U.S. Support Israel?

As Noam Chomsky explains in the video, Christian Zionism predated Jewish Zionism by hundreds of years. This was the theology of Christian imperialism.  The first imperialist to dream of a Jewish state was Napoleon and he was followed by a variety of British politicians, Lords Palmerston and Shaftesbury in particular.

Why were the British so keen on Zionism that they agreed to sponsor the Zionist project via the Balfour Declaration? The answer is simple. They saw a British run client settler state as being in their interests although things did not turn out as they expected because after 1945 the British and the Zionist militias fought a war against each other. But at no stage did the British arm the Arabs. This was a repeat of the American War of Independence. Even though the British were losing to the American colonists, they never entertained the idea of arming the Black slaves.

When Israel defeated the combined Arab armies in 1967 they also defeated the Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Arab nationalism died with Nasser.

US President Joe Biden: “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.”

Alexander Haig was right when he described Israel as an unsinkable aircraft carrier.  Biden was right when he said that if Israel didn’t exist it would have to be invented. A ready made friendly settler state in the region that supported and was dependent on the US fitted in with imperialism’s plans.

The Conversation gets it about right when it describes how:

Regardless of which political party or coalition is in power in Israel, and regardless of where public opinion in the U.S. is moving, the U.S. government’s “commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad,” as Vice-President Kamala Harris put it.

The U.S. sees Israel as a critical “strategic ally” in the Middle East….

Why would the U.S. need to invent an Israel? Biden has always seen Israel as an investment which produces the best returns for U.S. interests.

In 1986, when he was a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he opposed the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia because they were not able to become “agents of .U.S interests in the Persian Gulf region.”

He stressed that his opposition to the weapons sale was not about whether the Saudis were good guys or bad guys, but about the ability of the Saudis to help advance and secure U.S. interests.

He emphasized that the “naked self-interest of the U.S.” should always guide their Middle East policy, and that his support for Israel is situated within that self-interest. As he bluntly explained: “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.”

Biden’s frank comments make clear that the U.S.-Israel “bond” is not about defending democracy. Rather, it has always been, and still is, about American imperial interests in the region.

That is why although the US has cajoled and tried to persuade Israel to come to some form of two-state bantust-type settlement with Israel, they never contemplated forcing Israel to disgorge its territory.

That is why, although Israel is the most powerful actor in the region, American and British politicians have always gone along with the fiction of Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ which really means Israel’s right to attack whoever it wants.

Of course in the United States there is a competition as to who can give Israel the most support, because it is taken for granted that Israel is an adjunct to American power in the region. It may indeed seem at times as if Israel controls the United States but all I can say to those who believe this is that appearances can often be deceptive.

It pays US politicians to pretend that Israel has them by the throat but when on occasion there really is a clash of interests then it is always the United States that wins. When Reagan wanted to sell AWACS surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia, Israel objected.

Reagan bluntly declared that ‘It is not the business of other nations to make American foreign policy.’ he won the battle. Similarly when Bush demanded that $10 billion loan guarantees not be used to fund settlements on the West Bank and Prime Minister Shamir objected,

Bush stood his ground, insisting on delaying the entire loan guarantee for 120 days. ….

Shamir thought that with the help of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, he could force Bush’s hand by mobilizing Congress to approve the aid immediately in defiance of the president.

Unmoved, Bush vowed to veto legislation that authorized the aid before the 120-day delay had expired. He took his case to the media, speaking at length about his stance in a press conference on Sept. 12, 1991. He famously portrayed himself as an underdog against the might of AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, which had recently organized a massive lobbying day on Capitol Hill.

“I heard today there was something like 1,000 lobbyists on the Hill working on the other side of the question. We’ve got one lonely little guy down here doing it,” he said, eliciting laughs from the White House press corps.

Shortly thereafter, Bush prevailed in his game of chicken with Shamir and AIPAC.

Congress backed down. And when the U.S. finally guaranteed the loans in the spring of 1992, it did so using a new formula designed to offset Israel’s spending on settlements. It guaranteed $200 million less for each billion Israel asked for to account for Israel’s projected settlement spending.

Historically the Republican Party has not depended on Jewish or Zionist financial support. That has always been in the Democrat’s pocket although today it is different. But regardless of who supported which party there was never any doubt that when it came to Israel there was total bipartisanship.

In short it is not Israeli control of US foreign policy that is the problem. It is US imperialism and its Israeli watchdog that are our real enemies.

Not only do those who attribute US support for Israel to the Zionist lobbies not understand where power lies but they let US imperialism off the hook. If only the lobby wasn’t so powerful these people claim then US imperialism would be more benign.

Or you do like David Miller seems to be doing and that is chasing individual Zionists in positions of power on the basis that once they are removed from office then Britain will adopt a pro-Palestinian foreign policy.

Such a strategy is a recipe for derailing the Palestine solidarity movement by failing to see where power really lies.

Tony Greenstein