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Since early 2023, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated against Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and his cabinet, due to its proposed judicial reforms, the handling of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas and the Gaza genocide. So, why is he still in power? Recently, Israel’s...
original.antiwar.com
"Big money and US-Israeli neoconservatism
In Israel, Irving Moskowitz was among the major U.S. billionaires funding Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, Messianic religious schools and universities, Jewish far-right groups and paramilitary activities.
Moskowitz was not only Netanyahu’s donor and one of the many in his “millionaire list.” He was also an associate of the right-wing Ariel Center for Policy Research, a hardline advocacy group espousing the Likud line on Israeli security. In the United States, he was among the funders of major neoconservative think tanks promoting the War on Terror and hardline Israel-centric Middle East policies, including the Hudson Institute, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
Along with other pivotal financiers, Moskowitz contributed to the rise of neoconservatism in America, and the movement’s many Jewish leaders who shared the ideas of revisionist Zionism, including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, and so on.
Led by Kristol and Kagan, neoconservatives founded their think tank,
Project for the New American Century (PNAC) with a view to sustaining America’s unipolar moment for decades to come. Whatever was in the interest of Israel, according to Netanyahu’s Likud, was in the national interest of America.
Other donors followed, including the casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson. For some two decades until his death in 2021, when Forbes estimated his net worth at $35 billion, Adelson was a major sponsor of Netanyahu and kingmaker among the Republicans who helped fund Trump’s drive to the White House.
Israeli neocon manifesto
Thanks to their commonalities, the neoconservatives in the U.S. and the Israeli hard-right Likud party cooperated in a policy document,
A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, described as “a kind of U.S.-Israeli neoconservative manifesto.”
Published in 1996, the report called for a muscular U.S. Middle East policy to defend Israeli interests, including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq (which ensued in 2003), a proxy war in Syria (which followed in 2011), rejection of any Israeli-Palestinian solution that would include a Palestinian state (one of the Trump administration’s motives for pursuing the 2020 Abraham Accords), among other things.
Membership in the neoconservative club had its benefits: it made Netanyahu rich. Despite his lofty legal fees, estimates of Netanyahu’s wealth amounted up to some $50 million, already a decade ago. But precise, verifiable sources are lacking, due to his political office, dark donors and extraordinarily opaque financial disclosures."
External occupation becomes internal policy.
Criticism becomes treason.
Citizens become targets, not voters.
Any power that claims authority to kill citizens for disagreement
If criticism = enemy, democracy = corpse."
