John Foster Dulles on Jewish influence on American foreign policy

I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy not approved by the Jews. 

~ John Foster Dulles

2007

 

Caitlin Johnstone on the Israel lobby

It’s so gross that western society tolerates the existence of an Israel lobby.  Like “Oh so you’re here to convince my government to stomp out my free speech rights and use my tax dollars for wars and genocide to advance the interests of an apartheid state?  Yeah cool, I guess that’s fine.”

The existence of the Israel lobby should be treated the same as a Nazi lobby or a pedophilia lobby.  Taking donations from pro-Israel groups should be as stigmatized as taking donations from the KKK or NAMBLA.

It’s not okay that each western nation has its own high-powered lobby group whose whole entire job is to insert itself into key points of influence and persuade our governments to destroy our civil rights and commit genocide.  Nobody should tolerate the existence of these groups. 

~ Caitlin Johnstone, "Israel Admits It Bombed A Hospital To Kill A Journalist For Doing Journalism," Caitlin Johnstone, May 14, 2025

Andrew Day on how the Israel lobby undermines sovereignty

Right-wingers tend to conceive of politics not in terms of rights, but of power.  One political ideal that relates to power and that MAGA conservatives should cherish is sovereignty.  What Mearsheimer’s comment suggests, even if he wouldn’t put the point in this way, is that Israel and the Israel lobby presently undermine the sovereignty of the United States. 

Sovereignty refers to the exclusive authority of a state over the country it rules and the nation it defends.  It is the glue that holds a political grouping together and safeguards its survival and liberty.  A state, to truly possess sovereignty, must have the power to make decisions free from foreign influence.  One reason the actions against Khalil should give MAGA pause is that the administration seems to be acting on behalf of Israel, not the American people. 

Here’s the plain truth: Khalil was arrested not because he posed a threat to the United States, but because he protested against Israel.  Drop Site News reported that Khalil’s arrest “followed a two-day targeted online campaign against Khalil by pro-Israel groups and individuals” (emphasis added).  President Donald Trump has alleged that Khalil supports Hamas, an enemy of Israel. Khalil led protests against the Israeli war in Gaza.  Miriam Adelson, a top donor to Trump’s presidential campaigns, has pushed the president to take pro-Israel actions and is leading the charge against critics of Israel on college campuses. 

As if to make clear which nation’s interests are actually implicated in the Khalil episode, the White House’s X account has written “Shalom Mahmoud,” using the Hebrew word for “goodbye.” 

I had thought English was America’s official language now.

[...]

The undue influence that pro-Israel groups exert over the U.S. government deserves close scrutiny and blunt criticism.  Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long tried to drag the U.S. into war with Iran, which poses little threat to the American homeland.  The president seems on the verge of giving Bibi what he wants, though in Trump’s first term he griped that the Israeli leader was “willing to fight Iran to the last American soldier.”  In recent months, Israel’s supporters have sought to thwart foreign policy appointments perceived as inimical to Israel, and they may have succeeded last week.

The Trump administration simply cannot pursue an America-First policy agenda if its military and staffing decisions and the nation’s foundational rights are subject to Israeli veto.  Whatever MAGA conservatives think of Khalil or the views he espoused, they should oppose his deportation—for freedom, for sovereignty, and for America. 

~ Andrew Day, "Mahmoud Khalil, Viewed From the Right: MAGA should oppose the arrest and deportation of the pro-Palestinian activist," The American Conservative, March 19, 2025

2007

Clyde Prestowitz on Joe Biden's support of Israel

Joe was not a bad senator, but neither was he an outstanding one.  He had a major distinction as a big backer of Israel and was the all time champion for collection of campaign funding from the America Israel Political Action Committee. 

As a Vice President and adviser to the young President Obama, he provided, I thought, valuable experiential advice and realism.  He also, of course, had the opportunity to spend eight years in the White House watching how it worked, absorbing all the intelligence reports of the years and meeting all the world’s top leaders. 

This is where I thought Joe gained a real geo-political edge.  No one except a President, and in this case a Vice President, gets this experience and this view of the world and the world’s leaders.  Joe was well ready to run and win in 2020 and was, in my mind, the best guy for the job at the time. 

He has done a decent job over the past four years.  But he has also slipped badly physically and mentally over the past two years.  He is not the Joe we elected in 2020. 

But there are two things even more important.  One is great danger that he cannot beat Trump in his present state.  The second is that Joe and his undying commitment to Israel are at odds with what is good for America, for Israel, and for the middle east.  He does not understand that Prime Minister Netanyahu is running rings around him (Joe).  He does not understand that Israel is not only a genocidal country but that it is making America one too.  By standing steadfastly with the Zionist drive to destroy Palestine and Palestinians, he is destroying American credibility globally and driving domestic division. 

This is why I say now, TIME TO GO JOE.

~ Clyde Prestowitz, "Gotta Go Joe: Determination is not enough," July 9, 2024

Sheldon Richman on the proposed bill to force a sale of TikTok

According to Glenn Greenwald, the bill had been floating around for a few years but had not garnered enough support to get through Congress.  That changed recently, according to Greenwald, citing articles in the Wall Street Journal, Economist, and Bari Weiss's Free Press.  Why?  As Greenwald documents, anxiety about TikTok took a quantum leap beginning on Oct. 7, 2023, the day Hamas killed and kidnapped hundreds of Israeli civilians and Israel began retaliating against the people of the Gaza Strip. 

What has this got to do with TikTok? you ask.  Good question.  Israel's defenders in the United States, such as Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, are upset that TikTok's young users are being exposed to what he calls anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic disinformation.  "It's Al Jazeera on steroids," Greenblatt said on MSNBC.  During a leaked phone call, he complained, "We have a TikTok problem," by which he means a generational problem.  Younger people -- including younger Jewish people -- are appalled at what Israel's military is doing in Gaza.  (To complicate things, it looks like TikTok and Instagram have suppressed pro-Palestinian information.) 

Would an American-owned TikTok be easier to control?  Experience says yes.  Have a look at the Twitter Files, which document how American officials, Chinese-style, pressured social media to censor or suppress dissenting views on important matters such as the COVID-19 response and the 2020 election.  A federal judge likened the government's efforts to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Do we want to become more like China?

~ Sheldon Richman, "TGIF: Leave TikTok Alone," Free Association, March 22, 2024

Bernie Sanders on U.S. aid to Israel

I am very worried about what Netanyahu is doing and some of his allies in government and what may happen to the Palestinian people.  And let me tell you something: I haven't said this publicly, but I think the United States gives billions of dollars in aid to Israel, and I think we've got to put some strings attached to that.  And so you cannot run a racist government, you cannot turn your back on the two-state solution, you cannot demean the Palestinian people there.  You just can't do it and come to America and ask for money.

~ Bernie Sanders, "Bernie Sanders on the Truth About Israel and AIPAC," The Majority Report, February 21, 2023

Roger Waters on the Israel lobby's attempt to cancel him in Chile

My heart and my brain are so full of all the political as well as humanitarian machinations of the Gaza question and the Palestine question right now that I find it difficult to escape from it.  And all the bullshit that I've been experiencing in South America with them trying to - they just tried to cancel my show here in Santiago in Chile where I know I'm enormously popular, not just because the shows are sold out.  They were in Buenos Aires as well.  And yet the Israeli lobby still tried to get my shows in Buenos Aires cancelled on the grounds that I'm an anti-Semite, which I'm not, obviously.  It's such arrogant nonsense, and yet they make up stories and then amplify them and then print them again and again and again and again and again and again.  And I know we're not allowed to say it, but it's right out of Goebbels' playbook, and Goering.  This is exactly what they said and what they absolutely did.  They said "we have to lie and lie and lie and the bigger the lie, the more likely people are to believe."  That's what these stupid assholes have been doing against me...  These are very very dim people and they are completely attached to the idea of the illegal settler colonialism of the Zionist movement in Palestine.  

And the other crazy people who've attached themselves to this are Christian evangelicals in the United States who support Israel, like Biden.  And why? Because they want to see the Jews all burn in hell when Jesus comes down in the Second Coming and they all go to heaven holding hands with Jesus.  And they believe this bullshit!  And they're prepared to sacrifice this entire beautiful planet that we live on...  They're sacrificing the whole thing.  They should believe what they want, but they should not hold positions of political power because this is crazy.

~ Roger Waters, 18:40 mark, December 5, 2023