Why the West Backs Israel…
JVL Introduction
These two articles by Jonathan Cook cover many crucial points. In the first he emphasises that Israel is a client state of the Western powers and it is not Israel calling the shots, despite the undoubted power of its lobby groups. In the second, he talks about Israel being the ongoing outlet for western colonialism and control over the world’s resources. The horrors in Gaza, which all but the most intransigent, recognise is a genocide is threatening to the powerful. “But Israel’s genocide in Gaza is stress-testing to ruin this way of doing politics.” Cook outlines some of the ways in which people’s fury and astonishment at the lack of action to stop and, indeed, ongoing complicity in, the genocide. Most people want to believe that governments are there to operate in the interest of the people and it is painful for many to realise that this is not the case – that the political class, with a few honourable exceptions, operate to keep the system going; the system that allows poverty, repression, climate catastrophe and genocide while allowing the increase in billionaire wealth.
LL
This article was originally published by Substack on Wed 10 Sep 2025. Read the original here.
The billionaire class want you thinking Israel controls the West
Western elites don’t care what you think or say, so long as you don’t notice that they are the ones making money from a genocide, asset-stripping western economies and trashing our planet
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In August 1982, President Reagan got on the phone and told Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that the Israeli bombardment of Beirut must stop as it was disproportionate.
It stopped.
This has been really helpful to me in clarifying some issues
Useful information and much helpful comment. However, it is not a ‘billionaire class’ or ‘financial elite’ that is the problem but the mode of production – capitalism – and the ruling class, capitalists. It is i important for analysis to be clear on this.
I don’t find Jonathan Cook’s description of Israel as a ‘client state’ very convincing. Client states have to be USEFUL to larger states, because of their natural resources or strategic location. Israel has few natural resources and is surrounded by Arab states that wished it didn’t exist. Mearsheimer and Walt, in their book on the Israel lobby, conclude that Israel is ‘of little strategic value to America’.
Of course capitalist governments usually follow foreign policies that benefit their own capitalists, but sometimes they are swayed by other motives, and that seems to be the case with Israel.
I always suspect we will see who the real anti-Semites are, if the billionaire class senses pitchforks on the horizon.