The Western governments continue to give unconditional support to Israel. The Western military, political, diplomatic and economic support is not for the security of Israel but for the continuation of the Israeli genocidal atrocities against innocent civilians. The United States and other Western countries are complicit in Israel’s genocide crime. Everybody knows well that without the support of the West, Israel cannot attack Palestinians and cannot continue its expansionist and colonial settlement policies.
Until the latest Israeli atrocities in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government and its supporters in the Western countries, the Israeli lobby in the West, convinced the Western public opinion that Western and Israeli interests are identical. However, an increasing share of the Western public opinion has begun to see more clearly that this is not true. They see how the Western states pay the price for the Israeli crimes committed against the innocent Palestinians. That is, the Israeli atrocities unconditionally supported by the Western governments have increased awareness of Western public opinion. The Western public is more aware that Israel and its supporters have taken most of the Western governments, including the U.S., hostage.
After the latest developments in Gaza, the Western public has begun to criticize the monopoly of Israel and the Zionist lobby in their respective countries. On the one hand, Israel and its lobby still force Western politicians to make remarks, put pressure on the mainstream Western media to hide the facts, threaten academic institutions to deny the Israeli atrocities and threaten to punish the business circles for their support to the Israeli military. On the other hand, the Western public has increasingly become aware of and opposed Israel’s policies in the Middle East and interventions in the domestic affairs of the Western countries.
‘The Israel Lobby’
Today, it is time to remember the famous article entitled “The Israel Lobby,” written by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt and published in The London Review of Books (Vol. 28, No. 6, March 23, 2006) 18 years ago. The authors also posted a revised version of their article on the Working Paper website of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The article was severely criticized by mainstream Western academia. Mearsheimer and Walt later wrote that these criticisms were largely “weak and ill-founded.”
They firmly claim, “The U.S. will not be able to deal with the vexing problems in the Middle East if it cannot have a serious and candid discussion of the role of the Israeli lobby.” The authors assert that not the U.S. national interest but its relations with Israel are the object of the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. They continue their claims that this policy jeopardizes U.S. security.
While responding to criticisms, the authors of the article claim that throughout the text, they cite mainstream American media such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, Israeli scholars and journalists, Israeli and international human rights organizations, the members of the Israeli lobby and testimony from politicians who worked with them.
What these two well-known academics did took great courage. In a sense, they crossed the red line and criticized Israel and its lobby in the U.S. However, although the authors are two globally known academicians, they really feared the criticisms from the Israeli lobby. Therefore, they had to provide hundreds of references supporting their claims. Unusually and interestingly, the references part is larger than the main text.
Nowadays, more and more criticism is raised against the unconditional support of the Western governments for Israel’s crimes. For instance, the Houthi attacks against the trade ships in the Red Sea are a reaction to the Israeli atrocities. That is, the U.S. has already begun to pay the price. Different violent nonstate actors have begun to attack U.S. targets in the Middle East. The latest attack ended up killing three American soldiers and wounding more than 30 of them. It is clear that besides these short-term prices, the Western countries will continue to pay the price in the mid and long terms.
The collapse of the world system will increase the cost for all states, including the Western countries. The lack of order will cause numerous security, political and economic problems worldwide. Today, the supply chain and world trade are in danger. In other words, the Western states are both complicit in the commission of crimes against humanity and also suffer political and economic losses. Sooner or later, with the pressure coming from the public, the arrows of criticism in the Western states will be directed toward Israel and its supporters.
