The cancer of Israeli influence must be excised

In order to understand the threat that an out of control Israeli government presents, you have to understand what’s probably the most successful infiltration of the American inner sanctum ever.

PREFACE | PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | PART FIVE | PART SIX | PART SEVEN

Let me begin by thanking those who pointed out that the Haaretz article I featured in yesterday’s piece reached its free-sharing limit. I wasn't aware of such a limit; we live and learn. However, if you want to read a stripped-down version of the same piece, it was covered in The New Yorker by Ruth Margalit on September 8th, and you can view that here free of charge, I think.

I remain surprised by how little people understand about the facts surrounding what has become one of the most contentious issues of our time. I’ve written about this subject long before October 7 2023, and I knew on that fateful day how Israel would respond, or so I thought. Never in my wildest dreams did I think Western governments would provide a free pass to murder so many innocent women and children with total impunity. I really should have known better.

In the aftermath of World War I, the Jewish populations of Eastern Europe underwent new suffering as a result of the Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war. Ukrainian Jews were the target. Most historians today would agree that the total number of pogrom-related deaths within the Jewish community between 1918 and 1921 was well over 100,000.

Throughout history, there have been many senseless, violent landmark events, and indeed the Jews have had more than their fair share of persecution, culminating in the extermination of six million under the Third Reich. What happened to them, and the five million Poles, Slavs, Russian prisoners of war, political enemies and the disabled in the concentration camps, must never be forgotten. However, if you want an insight into how we have arrived at where we are, the key is to ask why, in the narrative of the Holocaust, everyone but the Jews disappeared from the story. There’s a very subtle message in that reality.

What the Nazis did to the Jews is beyond evil. There can be no excuse, and it is absolutely right and fitting that we never forget. This is the very reason the United Nations was created with the aim of keeping the world safe from the ‘‘scourge of war’. Its noble aim was to replace the League of Nations and provide preemptive solutions to prevent further global conflict. The UN ushered in human rights laws under the Global Impact of the Holocaust Framework.

In 1948, the UN introduced rules to punish the crime of genocide and protect basic human rights for all individuals. Ironic, given this was the year of the Nakba, when 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their land to create Israel. An event that saw 13,000 - 15,000 Palestinians murdered by Zionist militia led by men who would subsequently lead the new Israeli government.

These noble UN goals eventually led to the 1998 Rome Statute and the creation of the International Criminal Court to prosecute those guilty of war crimes. In its own words:

The Court is participating in a global fight to end impunity, and through international criminal justice, the Court aims to hold those responsible accountable for their crimes and to help prevent these crimes from happening again.

​​The Court cannot reach these goals alone. As a court of last resort, it seeks to complement, not replace, national Courts. Governed by an international treaty called the Rome Statute, the ICC is the world’s first permanent international criminal court.

It must be said that both the UN and the ICC were created with the best intentions, but without considering the human condition. We can argue about the effectiveness of both organisations until the cows come home, but such entities can only function as they should through cooperation and compromise. Unfortunately, the world order has long dictated that the largest predators in the global jungle have the loudest say, and in the case of the UN Security Council, the veto has been the single biggest impediment to meaningful progress in areas like the Middle East and the protection of human rights.

The same dynamic applies with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). 139 countries are signatories to the Rome Statute, while 29 have declined, among them Russia, the United States, Iran, and Israel. The US had originally agreed to be a signatory, but President Clinton walked away. The common denominator for both the treaty and seats on the UN Security Council is the US and Russia. In short, the US and Russia have long placed themselves outside the framework of accountability under international law and used their veto to repeatedly thwart actions for the greater good.

No more has the US been more effective with its UN veto power than to protect Israel repeatedly when it comes to any attempt to hold them accountable, especially when it comes to illegal settler developments and violence in the occupied territories; more recently, its patronage has been sickeningly evident in Gaza, where the US has, time and time again, shielded Israel from accusations of UN-declared war crimes. If you add to that the totally unjustified sanctions applied to officers of the International Criminal Court, the US have acted in an unconscionable manner.

History tells us the US is happy to agree with the ICC when it comes to Russian war crimes, but dismissive of it when it comes to war crimes committed by Israel, in which it is itself judged to be complicit. Its geopolitical domination of global affairs has long placed it above the law, yet it’s more than happy to condemn others who might affect its foreign interests. This is why Israel’s relationship with the US is so mission-critical. For far too long, the US has provided a shield protecting it from accountability for its actions.

President Harry Truman (left) receives a menorah from Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (centre) and Israeli Ambassador to the United States Abba Eban (right) on May 8, 1951. Image - Harry S. Truman Library/National Archives

With the above in mind, it’s worth looking at how Israeli influence has grown within US foreign policy. AIPAC has been around since the 1950s, when it began life as the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs. At the time, the US Arab relationship was vital because of Oil, so Israel had little to no leverage. It was not until 1962, when JFK supplied the MIM-23 HAWK anti-aircraft system to Israel, that the first meaningful geopolitical relationship began. Kennedy made this pragmatic move to address the balance of Soviet influence at the time, as the Soviets were supplying new MiG jets to the Egyptian air force. These were dangerous Cold War times; it was the year that saw the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Kennedy was focused on preventing communist expansion, especially in the Middle East.

That said, the advent of AIPAC's real leverage didn't emerge until 1967 and the Six-Day War. At a time of heightened tension between the Soviet Union and the US, the decisive victory by Israel convinced US policymakers that seeing Israel as a key US ally in the region was critical to advancing US foreign policy. From this perceived military imperative was born Qualitative Military Edge (QME); it was a policy that provided:

“commitment that the United States will continue to preserve Israel’s qualitative military edge in everything related to supplying weapons and military systems to countries in the Middle East.”

If you’d like to dig into the details of QME, I recommend this piece by Josh Paul from December 23rd 2025, written for Responsible Statecraft. For context, US law never formally defined QME until the Naval Vessels Transfer Act of 2008, in which it was defined as:

The ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means, possessed in sufficient quantity, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition of states or non-state actors.

Returning to the 1960s, AIPAC still didn't have the leverage Israel sought, but it had a foot in the door and was fully aware of how critical a US regional ally it was.

While QME signalled progress, it took until the 1980s for it to begin developing the power it has in US politics to this day. There is no question Benjamin Netanyahu was a key architect of the leverage gained. He played a pivotal role in their contemporary rise within the US political establishment. He served throughout the 1980s as Israeli Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington. By the end of the 80’s, AIPAC had worked relentlessly to buy power and influence to the point that, by the end of the decade, they’d achieved near-consensus bipartisan support, having perfected strategies to reward supportive lawmakers while mounting highly effective primary campaigns against those who refused to support them. They have since, effectively, become the lobby group few are prepared to cross or turn down an advance from.

There’s no question that AIPAC have used loopholes in the law to avoid being forced to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), as one would expect. To this day, they appear to be a protected species when it comes to lobbying groups, but that’s what happens when the mob has lawmakers on its payroll.

The truth of the matter is that the relationship between the US and Israel became a critical strategic alliance during the Cold War, and Netanyahu became the tic that fed on the alliance and delivered the ever-expanding Israeli political infestation that is now the modern-day Israeli lobby. A lobby that is in the midst of what looks likely to become its finest hour with the proposed integration of Israeli military and surveillance technology into the US military-industrial complex. Netanyahu has spiked the drink of US ambition with Rohypnol; when America wakes up, it will be too late. Netanyahu will have a smile on his face, and the US will have no escape hatch from its abuser.

If the NDAA passes in full, it would mark the successful penetration of the US military's inner sanctum and, with it, the most audacious infiltration of the US security framework in history. A nation of 10 million people operating an apartheid state would be in a position to operate at the very heart of the alleged most powerful nation on earth. Then the real leverage begins; it’s the stuff of Hollywood movies. Israel has arguably the most sophisticated and effective intelligence apparatus on earth, and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are, of their own volition, under Section 219 of the National Defence Authorisation Act FY 2027, inviting a tiger to dinner without considering they are about to be on the AIPAC menu, not reading it, if the Senate greenlights the bill.

It’s imperative when discussing Israel’s behaviour to understand that it’s like the irresponsible rich dad’s son. Time and time again, it misbehaves and daddy bails it out. In 2008, the US codified QME, and in 2016, under President Obama, a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding was signed to provide guaranteed military aid of $3.8 billion each year from 2019 to 2028, a total of $38 billion, making Israel the largest recipient of US military aid. In addition, since October 2023, the US has provided about $17 billion in additional military aid to support its errant child’s genocidal ambitions.

In short, AIPAC has quite literally taken US Middle East policy hostage and deliberately dragged a gullible idiot into a war with Iran as part of Netanyahu’s long-held ambition to deliver on the ‘Greater Israel Project’. At what point will the US wake up to the fact that it is in a toxic relationship with a manipulative abuser? Until they do, American tax dollars will continue to pay for the genocidal adventures of a dangerous maniac while hard-working Americans pick up the tab. It’s my belief that this cancer needs to be excised at the root, because the level of metasticisation is out of control.

I had hoped to wrap this up today, but alas it will take one more episode, so apologies for that.

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