A friend of mine recently wrote an essay about AIPAC’s toxic effect on American politics and much of it was spot on. However, one line caught my attention (and I paraphrase): “The Zionist lobby has bought the Democratic Party leadership. That’s why Democrats refuse to do anything about Gaza.”
Her argument was buttressed by an absolutely accurate list of the considerable sums of money that AIPAC has directed to a variety of U.S. politicians.
But things are not quite so simple.
There is no denying that AIPAC is a triumph of the Israeli state’s international reach. Since being spawned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1963, AIPAC has undergone numerous organizational changes, most designed to skirt U.S. laws prohibiting the operation of foreign agents in the United States. But its mission has remained exactly the same: to serve Israel’s foreign policy objectives.
AIPAC has resolutely refused to register as a foreign agent and, thanks only to the congruence of American and Israeli foreign policy interests, it alone is permitted to operate so freely within the United States. Imagine a Chinese or Russian “lobbying” outfit enjoying such impunity. Democrats would wet themselves. Even a French lobbying behemoth would be unacceptable.
Besides masquerading as a domestic lobbying group, when in fact it takes orders from Israel and has many times been called out for violations of FARA laws and even found guilty of espionage, the funds AIPAC directs to members of both imperialist parties are raised almost entirely from the U.S. ruling class while being allocated by Israel. For billionaires and the rightwing foundations that know exactly what side of the bread they want buttered by American foreign policy it’s also a win. They get to make donations to an ostensibly “American” lobbying group — even though the funds benefit only Israel and are shamelessly, if not seditiously, used to undermine American interests, particularly those of the working class.
Formulations like the one my friend made are technically correct but don’t go far enough in explaining why politicians get the money. Certainly for someone like Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has netted almost $2 million from AIPAC, it’s a plausible enough argument. MA-5 Congresswoman Katherine Clark, the House Minority whip, has pocketed going on $600K from AIPAC. Yet, even serving on committees less important to Israel, MA-4 Congressman Jacob Auchincloss has nevertheless deposited almost $700K in AIPAC funds, apparently to reward him for his overt support of Zionism, imposing the IHRA definition as a legal standard, and for crackdowns on critics of Israel.
While there is an exceedingly thin line between reward and inducement, I would argue that politicians are named to AIPAC’s Honor Roll and given gold stars for having learned what imperialist foreign policy, Israeli or otherwise, expects of them.
For a politician like MA-9 Congressman William Keating, it’s not so clear.
Keating, who serves on two militaristic House committees that benefit Israel directly — Foreign Affairs and Armed Services — and who has performed yeoman service in obtaining all manner of weaponry for Israel (also rewarding himself greatly in the process), has pocketed only $38K from AIPAC.
Despite occupying critical committee seats, Keating just can’t throw his weight around like a Jeffries or a Clark. And while he’s a flag-waving, bomb-dropping imperialist he’s less the committed Zionist as a Joe Biden or a Jacob Auchincloss. So the piddling sum AIPAC mails him and 90% of all members of Congress is simply intended to remind them all of AIPAC’s power and reach. It’s also a cash-based tool that parties use to maintain party discipline — in primaries and in general elections.
So, while it may sound like all this makes the case for my friend’s original argument, there is an important detail that should not be ignored: both parties have always pursued imperialist and militarist foreign policy. They hardly need to be induced.
There was no AIPAC when the U.S. invaded Mexico in 1846-1848. Or Argentina in 1890, Chile in 1891, Hawaii in 1893, China in 1894, Panama in 1895, Nicaragua in 1896, China again in 1898, and Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, and the Philippines the same year, Samoa in 1899, Nicaragua again in 1899. All this was before the dawn of the 20th Century.
Professor Zoltán Grossman at Evergreen State in Washington has compiled an impressive list of invasions and “interventions” by the United States:
Afghanistan (1998, 2001); Albania (1997); Angola (1976); Argentina (1890); Bolivia (1986); Bosnia (1993); Cambodia (1969, 1975); Chile (1891, 1973); China (1894, 1898, 1911, 1922, 1927, 1948, 1958); Colombia (2003); Cuba (1898, 1906, 1912, 1917, 1961, 1962); Dominican Republic (1903, 1914, 1916, 1965); Egypt (1956); El Salvador (1932, 1981); Greece (1947); Grenada (1983); Guam (1898); Guatemala (1920, 1954, 1966); Haiti (1891, 1914, 1994, 2004); Hawaii (1893); Honduras (1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924, 1983); Indonesia (1965); Iran (1946, 1953, 1980, 1984, 1987, 2024); Iraq (1958, 1963, 1990, 1991, 1998, 2003, 2014); Korea (1894, 1904, 1951); Kuwait (1991); Laos (1962, 1971); Lebanon (1958, 1982); Liberia (1990, 1997, 2003); Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011); Macedonia (2001); Mexico (1913, 1914, 1923); Nicaragua (1894, 1896, 1898, 1899, 1907, 1910, 1912, 1981); Niger (2017); Oklahoma (1901); Oman (1970); Pakistan (2005); Panama (1895, 1901, 1908, 1912, 1918, 1925, 1958, 1964, 1989); Philippines (1898, 1948, 1989, 2002); Puerto Rico (1898, 1950); Russia (1918); Samoa (1899); Saudi Arabia (1990, 2019); Somalia (1992, 2006); Sudan (1998); Syria (2008, 2014); Turkey (1922); Uruguay (1947); Vietnam (1954, 1960); Virgin Islands (1989); Yemen (2000, 2002, 2009, 2023); Yugoslavia (1919, 1946, 1992, 1999); Zaire (Congo) (1996).
To the list of international victims above Grossman adds military interventions to suppress domestic civil unrest, brutally put down labor struggles, and exterminate indigenous people. If you think Trump’s military occupation of Washington DC is anything new, Grossman’s list reminds you that the U.S. Army was deployed against its own veterans who had gathered in the U.S. capital city to demand long-promised, long-denied military bonuses. Their encampments were dismantled as brutally as those of Palestinian rights advocates on college campuses.
As domestic opposition to all this war-mongering has increased, the war-mongers have tweaked their operating procedures. We no longer have a Draft, so Americans are no longer intimately affected by family members being hauled off to fight and die in foreign wars. Those who volunteer to serve, often simply because there are few other economic options at home, tend not to complain as loudly for their choices.
Imperialists, who exist throughout the world to compete with and prey on weaker Capitalist nations, have always worked in packs like feral dogs — at least until their individual interests diverge, as those of the U.S. and the E.U. now appear to be.
In order to maintain the illusion of the preservation of Western liberal values, they don’t always undertake wars entirely on their own but conduct them in blocs, and not as invasions of weaker, browner nations, but as “humanitarian interventions.” This is the thin veneer that liberals use to justify illiberal policies. It is the same liberal “White Man’s Burden” that brought Capitalism, Christianity, and the missionary position to benighted savages of the global South.
NATO, which includes the U.S. and many of the former colonial empires, is fighting Russia in Ukraine (whether there are boots on the ground or not). Many of these same world powers quickly signed on to the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq and Afghanistan. How quickly their “liberal” parties — from the British Labour Party, to the German SPD, to the U.S. Democratic Party — beefed up “defense” industries to profit from war, paid for it with domestic austerity, and then set about repressing domestic opposition to those wars.
Fast forward 25 years. Little has changed. Only the names and targets of newer wars have changed — and some victims not at all. But the imperialist obsessions of both “conservative” and “liberal” parties remain the same.
So if we are looking for explanations why both major American parties give full-throated support to Israel for exterminating Palestinians, creating chaos and conflagration throughout the Middle East, invading and occupying neighboring countries, and lying about each act of depravity along the way, don’t look entirely at AIPAC. This is what America is. These are American values.
Even if AIPAC had never existed, American politicians of both parties would still commit and condone such war crimes and violations of human rights. As they have done from the beginning.
America chooses its friends and its targets, and it destroys anything in its way. Global Capitalism could not survive otherwise.
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