A comment on this weblog asked if I might be overemphasizing the Zionist/Israel Lobby influences on American foreign policy and overlooking other explanations for America’s intrusive and bellicose behavior toward the nations of the world.
Additionally: “Why is a pro-Israel policy predominant in a country where Jews are in a minority? Is this a proof of the failure of democracy?”
Those are pertinent questions which I look forward to discussing in more than one weblog post.
First, I wrote a kind of statement of purpose in the initial post in VIEW FROM THE MOON which begins to answer the first question:
“What is missing from daily news coverage in the United States is often more important than what is in it, especially since the big news media are designed to be more opinion-forming than informative. That is largely what this blog will be about: What is being omitted from the U.S. news reports that logically should be there? When you look at the jigsaw puzzle assembled for you by the TV news editors, why is there a piece conspicuously missing from the middle of the picture? What was the motive for leaving a hole in the picture? Who benefits from the omission?”
In addition, the description of VIEW FROM THE MOON states: “I discuss dimensions of power and influence which are rarely covered by the U.S. news media.” There is no point in a blog which simply repeats what every American can see on television and the news services.
By far the most important thing conspicuously and consistently missing from the U.S. news is the Israel influence. That is my reason -- along with recent American wars having been in the Middle East on behalf of Israel -- for placing so much emphasis on Israel and the U.S. Israel Lobby and its supporters. Additionally, Israel and its multilayered lobbyists are daily pushing the United States to attack Iran – yet another Middle East war plan which would harm rather than serve U.S. national interests, not to mention the damage that would be inflicted on Iran.
If I were writing during the Spanish-American War I would be talking about entirely different “hidden factors”.
Of course most of the explanations which governments give for their foreign policies are tales “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” We always have to look beyond the sound and fury to find the real motivations. Nowhere is this more true than in the United States. Often, however, we cannot get at the underlying truth behind the tales unless we study what is NOT being said as well as what is being proclaimed.
Here, briefly, is the background:
President F. D. Roosevelt flouted international law and majority American opinion and manipulated the United States into wars with Germany and Japan. Jewish agitation and pressure for war against Adolf Hitler’s government was a decisive war factor both in the U.S. and in England, as was the leaning of many Jewish immigrants to support for Communism.
The United States, having gone from Depression to an economic powerhouse because of the war, and having suffered no damage within its borders, came out of World War II in 1945 as the world’s dominant nation. England was technically a winner but had been severely weakened and soon gave up the empire which had not long before been the planet’s greatest power. Meanwhile, Stalin’s Russia, thanks to the U.S. and Britain, occupied huge portions of Europe and had become a rival to the United States.
Zionism – the Jewish movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine to which the Jews of the world would immigrate – had existed since the late 19th Century, but only during and after the Second World War did it begin to have practical success with its program. Germany, eager for the Jews leave Europe, contributed to the increasing flow of non-Palestinians to Palestine, but the floodgates of Zionist colonization of Arab land did not fully open until after 1945, when the long efforts of the Zionists resulted in their proclamation of a Jewish state in Palestine called “Israel”.
The bloody conflicts between the Zionist colonists and the people whose land they were taking and occupying are not the topic of this post. In terms of American foreign policy, “Israel” was not yet a major factor, but it would soon become one, not least because of the large number of European Jews who had recently moved from Europe to the United States and because of the soon ballooning “Holocaust” story.
I do not claim any original insights into what formed American foreign policy right after World War II, but the accepted wisdom is that the U.S. came out of the war as the world’s “superpower” by default. Because of the physical and economic ruin that had been inflicted on formerly strong nations on the altar of Jewish and Communist hatred of the German government, the U.S. found itself the only nation with military bases and forces spread all over the globe, and with the economic strength to dominate the world economy.
The main pressure on U.S. leadership was to maintain American world power, to enhance the benefits to U.S. corporations, and to deal with the one major rival, the secondary “superpower”, Soviet Russia. Now the questions asked repeatedly by German prisoners of war -- “Why are you fighting against us. We’re fighting the Communists to save Europe, so why aren’t you fighting with us?” – had to be answered, unfortunately belatedly. Faced with the aggressive Russian colossus, the U.S. realized that the Jewish “Morgenthau Plan” for keeping Germany in a primitive condition was creating a dangerous vacuum, and so revenge was replaced by rebuilding. The supposed enemy, Germany, was – presto chango – replaced by Soviet Russia and all the European states it had absorbed.
The American focus became the “Cold War” and the “struggle against world Communism”. We know that this mentality led, among other things, to the Korean and Vietnam wars, and eventually to “victory over Communism” during the time of Gorbachev -- the pulling down of the Berlin wall, the reunification of Germany, the freeing of Soviet slave states, and the transformation of the Russian economic system. America was now declared “The Only Superpower”, and the fantasy was floated that it could whatever it pleased with the world.
Thus a new era in American foreign policy began -- a logical time to
end this post.
