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Can someone materially explain to me why Israel is so important to American bourgeois interests? I understand they’re the cornerstone of US foreign policy or whatever the phrase is, but why?
Are they just an opposition to Iran, who’s less friendly with the US and influences key trade markets? Is that all it boils down to?
Israel is important for controlling the movement of people (i.e. labor) from Africa into East Asia and, eventually, Europe.
Israel is important for controlling trade in the Red Sea (although Ansar Allah has shown Israel's weakness here)
Israel is important as a live testing ground for border technology, surveillance technology, and prison technology (although Hamas showed Israel's weakness here on Oct 7th)
Israel is important as an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East, allowing for power projection into both North Africa and the Arabian peninsula and the rest of West Asia. They (along with the Saudi kingdom to a lesser extent) are critical for controlling a huge chunk of the world's oil and gas supplies (and disciplining OPEC if ever necessary)
Israel is important for the production and reproduction of whiteness. Israel acts as a release valve where the West can encourage its Jews to live, away from the metropoles. Israel, itself, transforms a historically very radical ethnic group into white people.
Israel, itself, transforms a historically very radical ethnic group into white people.
Again, and I think we don't push this talking point nearly enough: Zionism is a fundamentally anti-Semitic project.
My father in law's family is Zionist. We don't talk about this stuff, but how would you describe Zionism is antisemitic? It's obvious that Isntreal and zionism is bad for Jews, but how is if antisemitic?
It boils down to the systemic reason of the existence of widespread anti-Semitism in Europe : the building of the nation-state. Jewish people, just as nomadic people of europe, were a community that existed beyond borders, so they threatened the notion of a nation state like nobody. Typically, the jews were seen as "untrustworthy" precisely because they had "no nation".
To make a parallel, this is the same reason trans and gay people are being persecuted, because they threaten patriarchy.
So back to Zionism, the anti-Semitic nation states of Europe wanted the jews out because they showed how arbitrary their existence ultimately is. But how? A solution was found with the most self-hating members of the Jewish community. They wanted to address the "problem" of being a people without a nation-state. They had internalised anti-Semitism and were ready to use colonialism to renounce what made them special. So that way, anti-semites could send the jews "back where they belong", and eventually see them as expatriates from Israel rather than true citizens of the country they lived in which didn't threaten their nationhood.
So basically as long as Isn'treal exists, Jewish people are forced into a position of renouncing their special revolutionary potential as a people beyond borders. Support for zionism is an attempt to erease Jewishness, to make them exactly like the white and most importantly to deny that they belong where they live, to treat them as expatriates even if they lived in Europe for centuries
Lil_tank gave a good response but one telling giveaway is the antisemitic moral panic that Israel generated in the West where real cases of antisemitism were drowned out by Zionists calling any antizionist Jew a "auto-antisemite"
Also Israel collaborated with the Nazis which I think is antisemitic but I'm sure the CEO of Judaism ("Israel") can correct me on this one /sarcasm.
The reason you don't talk about it because antizionist Jews are in danger of being hate crimed and ostracized by their Zionist peers and family. It is a death cult of anti-Jewish thought that runs counter to all of ancestral Jewry that was enabled by the same antisemitic west that led to the european shoah.
the zionist colony acts as an imperial outpost to destabilize and weaken a region that is critical for a key strategic resource (petroleum), it's a central pillar of US hegemony
I'm still not convinced they couldn't achieve the same strategic objectives with existing client states rather than creating a new puppet colony. It'd certainly give the empire less trouble than the zionists. Look at how loyal the eu, japan and rok are to america
well white supremacy was definitely involved in the choice of this strategy, like only anglo states are in the Five Eyes
All US client states in the region only have the individuals at the very top - kings, some of the national bourgeoisie - who are allied with the US. The overwhelming majority of the people despise the US. Not a stable situation for an ally. The client states also have their own allegiances and enemies across the region. Those entanglements make unilateral action harder. Israel is a completely foreign entity to the region without any sort of entanglements - everyone hates them. And as you have seen over the last year, these clients have to tread very carefully with their own populations in terms of being seen openly helping the US. Israel has a population that is bloodthirsty and loves it when their military causes death and destruction in the region.
besides isntreal, what's empire's strongest client state there, saud? from at least the 70s to today they've only been half under the boot compared to japan or bad korea
maybe because of the importance of the aforementioned key strategic resource, idk