Israel Runs the U.S. No, the U.S. Runs Israel. No, Wait …

The occasion of Netanyahu’s address, his fourth before a joint session, puts all the complexities before us. Who was, in that hour, in charge — the insane man from the periphery, driven by rage, or his audience of adoring lawmakers at the imperial center, driven by… driven by what? I would say driven by greed, ideology and the work of running an imperium that is failing but has not failed yet. Who controlled whom that day? .

This is power.

Joe Biden, in this same line, accepted more money from the Israeli lobby than anyone else on Capitol Hill during his decades in the Senate — $4.2 million according to Open Secrets, and I understand this is a very low estimate if we count Biden’s post–Senate political career. Code Pink, in a signature-gathering campaign, says Harris has received $5.4 million from the Israel lobby, although it does not indicate at what stage in her career she accepted this extraordinary sum.

August 10, 2024 By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost

That deranged speech Bibi Netanyahu delivered to a joint session of Congress last month: I cannot get it entirely out of my mind. It did not change anything — neither the Israeli prime minister nor his hosts seem to desire or intend to change anything in U.S.–Israeli relations. And in this way, there is not much to say about that weird hour the world’s No. 1 terrorist — yes, think about it and tell me I’m wrong — spent at the podium under the Capitol’s rotunda. But the speech did clarify certain things, and then it raised an important question. Let us see about these matters.

There is, to begin with, the question of Netanyahu’s mental stability. If we consider his many outlandish assertions — Israel has minimized civilian casualties in Gaza, Israeli soldiers are to be commended for their moral conduct, those protesting in behalf of Palestinians are probably in Iran’s pay, and so on — we must conclude that the man given to such preposterous misrepresentations is, let’s say, perpendicular to reality.

I am sure Netanyahu spoke in large measure for effect. This must be so. But I am equally sure — note the demeanor in the videos, for instance — he was certain of the truth of what he had to say. Dr. Lawrence’s diagnosis: A man consumed with resentment and hatred, who has led Israel to the brink of a cataclysmic war at the irretrievable cost of its international standing, while dragging the U.S. into it (at similar cost), suffers from severe psychosis with symptoms of paranoia and obsessive-compulsive megalomania.

I do not say this to indulge some cheap denigration of one of the many contemptible political figures now walking around the Western world and its appendages. After Netanyahu’s notably strange performance in Congress July 24 — at times he seemed pure id — I say this diagnosis would hold in a clinical setting. We should all take note of this and brace ourselves accordingly. Never mind who’s driving the bus: It would be better in this case if no one were driving it.

There is also the reception Netanyahu enjoyed on Capitol Hill. Seventy-two ovations by my count, 60–odd of them standing, for a war criminal, a flouter of international law, a man who commits to waging “a seven-front war” across the Middle East?

Bibi’s big theme, running all through his remarks, was congruence, the perfect alignment of Israeli and American interests. Remember? “Our enemies are your enemies, our fight is your fight, and”—here the left fist pounded—“our victory is your victory.”

The response among those in attendance tells you all you need to know about what America’s lawmakers think of this idea. Netanyahu was looking merely for reaffirmation of standing arrangements at a moment when when terrorist Israel’s conduct had begun to turn more stomachs than he had bargained for. And he got what he wanted, needless to say.

This brings us to the question Netanyahu’s speech forces upon us. Does the U.S. control Israel or does Israel control the U.S.? Is the apartheid state another of Washington’s client regimes, albeit — let’s borrow a little from the Chinese — a client with Zionist characteristics? Or is Israel a case — rare, if not unique — of a distant outpost that dictates to the imperial center? The periphery exercises power over the metropole, this to say: This would have to be something new under the sun, surely.

This is not a new question. A lot of people have pondered it for months, if not longer —

This is power.

Harris is now wowing all the dreamy liberals in our midst with gestures here and there intended to suggest that she will be tougher on the Israelis than Joe-the-Zionist and more sympathetic to the Palestinians. Follow the bouncing ball, please, as those honorable Arab–Americans up in Michigan follow it: Harris makes it quite clear, on those occasions she fails to avoid the topic, that she has no intention of making any meaningful adjustment in U.S. policy toward the terrorist state. Let the murdering go on, as long as the Israelis want it to continue.

This, as I say, is power—perversely acquired and perversely exercised………………………………………..

What is at issue in all this is the question of responsibility. Israel exercises considerable power over the U.S. — yes, we all know this — but this is by dint of a corrupt abdication on America’s part. We must not miss this. Washington’s whorish elites have sold U.S. policy to the Israelis, and Congress has sold itself similarly………………………………..

……………………………………..America could sink Netanyahu’s boat any time it chooses to do so. Don’t let the moment fool you: Bibi, as history will show, is at bottom merely a passing punk.

This, to finish the thought, is the power that matters most — imperial power.

Here’s the important thing about the distinction I draw. The ephemeral power Israel asserts in the U.S., accumulated over the eight postwar decades, reaches an historic impasse. It is waning, in a word.

In his final days as a public figure, Joe Biden will continue to carry on about the Zionist state as he has the whole of his political career. “Without Israel, no Jew in the world is safe,” he declared the other day, and hardly for the first time. Kamala Harris is not saying anything about Israel and the Gaza crisis in part because she has little to say about anything, but mostly because, when circumstances require her to break this silence — “weird” indeed, this — it will not be good news for those anticipating even a millimeter’s worth of change.

………………………………………………………………….there was an interesting item at the end of last month on WMAC Radio, the NPR station broadcasting in Upstate New York and western New England. Kamala Harris was just then raising hundreds of millions of dollars, cashing in on the irrational exuberance by then evident among Democrats. At a typically boisterous campaign stop in Pittsfield, Mass., she also faced protesters carrying placards that read, among other things, “End the Genocide” and “All This Money Will Not Wash the Blood Off Your Hands, Kamala.”

What are we looking at here? Pittsfield is a small postindustrial city struggling back to life after General Electric abandoned it decades ago. But this is just the point: Anger about “the Biden–Harris administration” for its participation in Israel’s genocide seems to run right down to this nation’s broken sidewalks. Harris has since gotten the same treatment at a big campaign rally in Philadelphia, and again the other day in Detroit, where she high-handedly dismissed protesters with “I am speaking.” You come away with the impression Americans are simmering — virtually everyone I know is simmering, now that I think about it — and the major media, complicit with the Harris bandwagon, are doing their part to keep this out of sight. Let us not forget: American campuses are quiet after the honorable demonstrations this past spring, but classes resume in a month.

You can bribe some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t bribe all of the people all of the time. I think I have my Lincoln right. And I think the Israelis, who, I imagine, don’t bother much with Abe, are on the way to learning that the power they have long exerted over U.S. politics and policy will eventually, in however long, prove ephemeral. https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/10/patrick-lawrence-israel-runs-the-u-s-no-the-u-s-runs-israel-no-wait/